Daily life of Maruyama

The room was dark, only illuminated by the light coming from the monitor screen. The door was closed so the vigorous tapping on the keyboard could not be heard from the outside but it was very audible inside the room.

"It's 3:00 A.M. already… huh?"

Maruyama had returned from work around 6:00 P.M. As soon as he had entered his apartment, he had thrown his clothes on the bed. He, then, had prepared cup noodles and finished it, all in five minutes. He was on the computer since, only getting up to fill the bottle of water and to go to the toilet. Even the clothes were still on the bed.

His work had made very little progress. He had already decided on the title of the 15th volume, the half wood-elf Godkin, but did not know how to progress the tale. He had planned to finish the novels within 17 volumes. There were still things to do about Platinum Dragon Lord (PDL), Argland Council State and the City-State Alliance. All that would take around two volumes with all new characters and locations and everything. So, he had decided to finish the story of the subjugation of the Elf Kingdom and the war on the Slaine Theocracy in the same volume but that was proving to be difficult.

He was typing and deleting content almost every five minutes. This was the second time he had deleted what he had typed since looking at the time. Just this session, he had deleted whatever he wrote more than 50 times.

Maruyama got startled from the ringing sound that his phone, lying on the table, produced. "So it's time.", he thought as he turned off the alarm he had set for 3:15. It was his bedtime. He got off the chair. It was a black Secretlab Titan 2020 series. He had replaced his old office chair with this one because the old one had started creaking whenever he made slight movements when he sat on it. He collected the clothes he had thrown on the bed and dumped them on the chair he had just gotten off of.

He turned the lights on. It revealed spacious with only a closet, a bed, a table, on which his desktop sat, and his newly bought chair in the name of furniture. The walls were coloured bright turquoise, and a carpet coloured governor blue coveted the floor. They combined made the room look pretty cool and the AC actually made the room cool.

The door was in the corner of the room. Along the wall that consisted of the door was his bed perpendicular to the wall. Below the bed was a closet and to the left of the closet was the table and chair where he spent most of his time. The AC that was blowing cool air in the room was situated above the table. Maruyama was against the idea of screwing the AC into the wall right above his Rs. 2,50,000 desktop. He had stated his objection to the electrician but the electrician had told him this was the only spot possible so, he had no choice but to count on the fact that the electrician was not incompetent and had done her work properly. He was still unsure whether what she said was true or not.

With that thought in mind, Maruyama opened the closet doors and took out his blanket. He spread it over his bed. His blanket was dull grey in colour. Then, he closed the closet door. He turned the lights off and dove under the blanket.

"No progress today either."

Maruyama sighed as he said that. It had been almost 3 weeks since he had made any proper progress. He had started questioning his capabilities as an author. He had called his editor, Lief Magos, a week ago but he received the same advice he always had.

"Your mind is never truly empty so you should write whatever comes to your mind. Among the things you will write at least one thing will always be intriguing because you are an amazing author." Maruyama recalled the words his editor had told him. After volume 11 was published, he was introduced to his current editor. That was what he got whenever he asked for unspecific advice. Maruyama would have asked for a new editor already if not for the advice he got for specific things he asked. When he had heard those words, he was annoyed at himself for asking something so vague. Imagine you were walking down the street and a stranger asked you what he should do. You wouldn't know what to answer, right? That was the level of vagueness with which he had asked for advice.

Still, he had written whatever came to his mind but nothing felt intriguing. He wondered if he would even be able to complete Volume 15 considering the rate he was progressing with. With the unease he felt in his heart, he slowly drifted to sleep.