Dramatic Melody
mud?
When I first saw the quarterly challenge in the second issue of the Fan Fiction Quarterly, I laughed at how appropriate the term “challenge” was for it when applied to me, seeing as the prompt of the challenge—to write an entire story with no dialogue—was the exact opposite of the form I chose for my main project right now. I knew that pretty much all of my works relied on dialogues, thoughts, and conversation to move the plot or project forward, so trying to create a story where all of that is taken away was really a challenge for me.
“Stationary” is the result of that attempt. It took weeks of convincing myself to find time to sit down and write it, and it pretty much just poured out in one sitting of wanting to see how I fared with the challenge. I’m not even sure if I managed to follow the prompt since I couldn’t help but insert some form of the protagonist’s thoughts here and there. I did make sure that they were presented as actions rather than unspoken dialogue, but if ever you catch anything that breaks the rules of the prompt, feel free to call me out on it.
The story itself is very simple and short, revolving around an idea I thought would fit well with the prompt—a man waits for someone to arrive in a train station. It’s been done a lot of times, but I wanted to go with it partly because of how it fit the prompt and partly because I wanted to create a story set in Johto, which would allow me to say that I’ve visited all six regions in my past six works. Shallow, yes, but the challenge did give me a reason to finally write the Johto one-shot I’ve been wanting to write for the past year, and I did!
So, yeah, comments and criticism are highly appreciated, especially in terms of how it relates to the challenge. Thanks for reading “Stationary”, and I hope you enjoy it.
“Stationary” is the result of that attempt. It took weeks of convincing myself to find time to sit down and write it, and it pretty much just poured out in one sitting of wanting to see how I fared with the challenge. I’m not even sure if I managed to follow the prompt since I couldn’t help but insert some form of the protagonist’s thoughts here and there. I did make sure that they were presented as actions rather than unspoken dialogue, but if ever you catch anything that breaks the rules of the prompt, feel free to call me out on it.
The story itself is very simple and short, revolving around an idea I thought would fit well with the prompt—a man waits for someone to arrive in a train station. It’s been done a lot of times, but I wanted to go with it partly because of how it fit the prompt and partly because I wanted to create a story set in Johto, which would allow me to say that I’ve visited all six regions in my past six works. Shallow, yes, but the challenge did give me a reason to finally write the Johto one-shot I’ve been wanting to write for the past year, and I did!
So, yeah, comments and criticism are highly appreciated, especially in terms of how it relates to the challenge. Thanks for reading “Stationary”, and I hope you enjoy it.
Stationary
He sat on the left side of a two-seater bench waiting for the right train to arrive.
He checked the time: 9:16 p.m.
He had been sitting there for four hours and eleven minutes, only standing up thrice to go to the bathroom, twice to stretch his legs, and once to remove a rock that had been playing with his left foot. In each instance, he left his bag in his seat to secure his position, as he didn’t want to give up the seat nearest the platform’s sole entrance and exit. For the same reason, he opted to skip dinner, though that was more motivated by not wanting to dine alone—he hoped that she would join him this particular night.
As usual, he didn’t know which train she would board, for her schedule with the Pokémon Center was erratic at best. So he went there on the whim that she would board the Magnet Train in Saffron after her afternoon shift ends—if she had an afternoon shift today—which meant that she would arrive on the 4:30 train, twenty-five minutes after he sat down on the bench.
When the 4:30 train arrived and she wasn’t among the exiting passengers, he chuckled at his shallow and overoptimistic reasoning and assumed that she would be on the 5:30 train so that she wouldn’t be pressured to hurry to the station right after her shift ended. When the 5:30 train arrived and she wasn’t among the exiting passengers, he figured that she must have started a later shift and therefore ended later. When the 6:30 train arrived and she wasn’t among the exiting passengers, he thought that she must have taken a nap at her apartment before taking the train so that she would be fully rested once she arrived. When the 7:30 train arrived and she wasn’t among the exiting passengers, he found it strange that she was working for such late hours. And when the 8:30 train arrived and she wasn’t among the exiting passengers, he was sure that she would be arriving on the final train an hour later, his only reasoning being that it was odd of her to miss their monthly visits to each other.
He checked the time: 9:18 p.m.
They had been going out for more than a year now, though the long distance only came into play six months ago. He was offered a high position at the Goldenrod Radio Tower, the salary more than double his pay at Silph Co. Increasing expenditures and waning interest in Silph convinced him to accept the offer, a decision she half-heartedly agreed to. She tried convincing her boss to allow her to transfer to the Goldenrod Pokémon Center, but she was needed in the understaffed Saffron branch now more than ever.
As a way to make the distance less agonizing, they agreed to set aside the last weekend of each month so that they could see each other. They alternated on who would visit who—if he went to Saffron one month, she would go to Goldenrod in the next. They spent the whole weekend together, arranging it so that they would take the first possible train they could on Friday and the last possible train they could on Sunday. Their time together in Saffron last month went by smoothly, so he didn’t know what would delay her visit today.
He had tried calling her several times in the past few hours, although all of them were met with the same generic message of a number that couldn’t be reached. The calls became more frequent as the Saffron trains came and went, but he became more worried and dejected as each call failed.
He checked the time: 9:22 p.m.
Someone sat down beside him, a woman around his age. He assumed she was from Goldenrod because of the distinct perfume that only people in the city wore. He heard her let out a big sigh when she sat down, but he couldn’t tell if it was out of relief or out of nervousness.
He checked his surroundings to see why she had picked the empty seat next to him, and he was confused when he saw various unoccupied benches behind him. In the four hours and seventeen minutes that he stayed on the spot, he had never had a seatmate, partly because he would sometimes place his bag beside him to deter them and partly because many of the bench occupants didn’t want to be bothered by someone who looked like he had been sitting there for days. But he didn’t want to ask her to move now, especially when she looked like she needed to sit in that particular bench as much as he did.
She hurriedly retrieved her Pokégear and started texting, her fingers moving as if they were automatic. He resisted taking a peek with all his might, but he could tell from the quick beeping that it was a message that needed to be sent at that very moment. The many beeps suggested a long text, and her grip on the Pokégear made it look like she was hanging on to the reply like oxygen.
He checked the time: 9:25 p.m.
He managed to sneak a longer glance at her while she was staring at the blank screen of her Pokégear. The first thing he noticed was her nurse’s outfit—that distinct uniform he could have seen from miles away. The tatteredness of her clothes and headgear said that she had just come from her shift in the Goldenrod Center, and her decision to not change to more casual clothes made it clear that she was also looking forward to the arrival of the 9:30 train.
He played around with the thought of talking to her to relieve some of the tension, but it didn’t seem like she was in the mood for any sort of conversation. In fact, the way she looked mirrored how he had been acting for the past four hours and twenty minutes: crossed legs that changed position whenever it had the chance, interlocked fingers that closed around a Pokégear that served more and more as a relic or precious heirloom, a chest that rose and fell rhythmically and frequently, a pair of shifting eyes that seemed to look at possibilities rather than realities, a worried look that teetered between certainty and hopelessness.
And that’s when it hit him—they were there for the exact same reason.
He checked the time: 9:28 p.m.
He hoped that his assumption was wrong, although he knew that it was the most certain thought he had mustered up in the past four hours and twenty-three minutes. In a sense, he was envious of her, for she didn’t have to wait as long as he would for her visitor to arrive—her later arrival meant that they must have talked about what time they would meet, and she at least had the distraction of work to make the waiting less stationary. But as he watched her incessantly check the time on her Pokégear and grip it even tighter, he knew that her waiting wasn’t any better—her firm stare at the platform didn’t look as though the difference between their waiting times mattered.
He thought about talking to her, this time more sure of his intentions as he wanted to offer some relief by making her know that he shared her uneasiness, that he shared her pain. But he knew that it was meaningless, that anything he would say would fall into deaf ears, for they both wanted their next words to reach their respective visitors, words that would melt away any doubt and fear that built up over all their waiting.
He checked the time: 9:30 p.m.
He heard the familiar whistle, and both his and his seatmate’s expressions lit up. Their breathing synchronized with the sounds of the Magnet Train’s engine as it rested on the platform and opened its doors. The first few passengers exited, and they scanned each face in the hopes that one would meet theirs. They sighed as a passenger would reunite with one of the people they waited with, imagining how happier their own reunions would be compared to theirs.
But as each passenger reunited with their respective waiters, their faces’ glows became less and less. The passengers kept on coming, but none of them put an end to their expecting, an assurance to their uncertainty. He knew that it took at least ten minutes for all of the passengers to exit the platform, but he also knew that those ten minutes were the fastest in the day to come and go.
All his thoughts stopped when he saw her, in her Pokémon Center outfit and carrying a duffel bag he assumed was new. In that moment, the strain from the four and a half hours of waiting ceased to exist, and it was replaced by thoughts of a pleasant weekend four weeks in the making. His seatmate’s plight he obsessed over in the past few minutes didn’t cross his mind anymore, as all his thoughts shifted to welcoming her back and giving her the best weekend possible.
Then he saw her lift her face up, and all the strain came back upon realizing he didn’t know who the passenger was.
He watched the nurse exit the platform and walk hurriedly to a man a few rows behind him, the two hugging almost immediately. They shared a small kiss he knew would be longer in the night that followed, and he watched them exit the station, his right arm draped around her shoulders to proclaim to all of Goldenrod that she was here, that she was with him.
The last of the passengers exited the platform, and the first set of the station’s lights were turned off. Both he and his seatmate looked intently at the platform’s exit up to the last passenger, and even after that. They both waited for any more passengers to show up, but the platform’s lights closing put the final nail in the coffin.
He then heard his seatmate cry, her sobs quiet and loud at the same time. He saw that her hands were over her face, her tears seeping through the gaps between her fingers. She grabbed her headpiece and squeezed it as hard as possible, almost tearing it in half from all the pressure applied to it. She then withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her face, although they were replaced by new tears immediately after.
He thought about consoling her, about asking her if he could do anything to make her feel better, but he knew that it wouldn’t help at all. He knew that their pain, though shared, wasn’t mutually understood, and he didn’t know how much comfort he could offer if he himself needed it.
As a second set of lights in the station closed, she stood up and walked away slowly. He still heard her sobs as she neared the exit, each step away somehow making them louder. And as she left him all alone in the station, the realization of his own exit being similar had fully hit him.
He checked the time: 9:45 p.m.
He put his bag in the now empty seat next to him and crossed his legs. His fingers were now interlocked, and his face stared lifelessly at the dark platform. As the last set of lights of the station were turned off, he remained in his seat and continued waiting.
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