Story.
The room glooms in eerie light as the afternoon
sunlight penetrates the green velvet curtain. A single fan is rattling as it
blows cool air to my bare legs. The sound of rapid mouse clicks echoes around
the empty room. My eyes are fixed into the screen as my hands moves at the
speed of light, taking down all enemy champions. The word “Penta Kill” appears
on the screen. I am the legend of the league.
It’s
the weekend after the SAT, and I am at my dorm room, curtains closed, clicking
away nonstop: I'm living every Korean teenage boy’s view of utopia. But I had no idea that
a utopia could be so terribly, terribly boring.
Sure, it was fun the first 3 hours- catching up with all the stuff that I wanted
to do during the SAT season- but after that, after so many hours of staring
into the computer screen, I was actually starting to feel dizzy and
aloof, as if I was a ghost floating around my head, detached from the rest of
the body. That was terrible enough. But the thing that bothered me the most was
the ‘repetition'. The game- it always repeated itself, and I was beginning to get sick of it. There was no adventure in it. There was no romance in it. There was,
so to speak, no ‘story’ in it. All that was in there was a ‘dead end’- very elaborately designed, perhaps, but nonetheless, a dead end.
And regardless of the seemingly myriads of choices that I seem to get, in the
end I chose this dead end. All I ever did was just play by someone else’s rules: I was stuck in their game,
bound by their rule, bound by their words, and bound to yield to the options
given to me. Sure, the game itself was great, but I just wasn’t a part of it. It was
someone else’s story.
I closed the laptop and climbed into the bed.
“What am I doing?” I muttered to myself. "What is my story?"
The memories of the last few week passed by in a flash. All those hours spent on studying endlessly- this wasn’t me, no! My life wasn’t a
combination of GPA, AP, SAT, and occasional LOL. It
was something much more than that. It was a ‘life’, and it was a ‘story’.
It was a story
of a boy who actively sought out what he wanted to do. When he wanted to write
a story, he would just go up to a random author and seek advice. When he wanted
to compose music, to learn snowboarding, to mock trial, to help people, to act,
to debate, to have fun, to find meaning, he went ahead and did. It was dramatic!
And the story had never ended- it was merely that the author had put the pen down
for a while.
With the gravity of a man performing open heart surgery, I picked up my mouse. The little arrow on the screen copied my hand as
it trembled over the folder that seemed to mock me, laughing out loud. I took a deep breath. With a
right click and a quick left, it was gone to where it belongs- the trash bin. Through the open window a slight breeze entered the room, cracking open the curtains by an inch. A single ray of
afternoon sunlight fell on my hands. Mesmerized, I walked up to the curtain and
pulled it open with a single stroke. After so many hours in the darkness, the
sudden light made me dizzy.
My eyes teared up
as I watched the beautiful Sunday afternoon waiting right in front of me. I put
my cap on. Let’s go. It was time to weave some unforgettable stories.
It needs a lot of work, especially the transition between the ideas and the thinkings-it is too jumpy. Needs more humour in it!
Word Count: 631
1. 정말 지웠음. 믿으셈. I'm over this, 이런느낌의 detail을 더 넣고, really show that video games are gone from my life.
-> I want to level up in life, not in the game
2. I can show the Korean culture and thingies that Americans are not really used to. And how the Koreans are stressed out by the tests. And Korean highschool life.
-> Why is it that I have to blow off my steam through the games? Maybe I could be doing much more useful things.
3. 어떤 학교인지, 분위기나 상황에 대해서 점 보여줘야된다.
