Introduction to Creative Writing - Short Story

 7th September 2023 - 5th October (Week 2 - Week 6)

Asma' Binti Mohd Jailani / 0354335 / Bachelor of Mass Communication (Honours) 

Introduction to Creative Writing

Task 1 / The Short Story

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The Illusion of Choice

February, 2022. Climbing Gym.

No. 

Mia traces the line of his smile to the crinkle by his eyes. The light sheen of sweat on his brow. The slight heave of his chest as he catches his breath. The exuberant way he looks up at the wall behind her, studded with multicoloured stone and jutting slabs of granite. 

Mia leans back on her palms, chalk caked around and underneath her fingernails. Idly, she watches as a little girl in purple leggings fearlessly climbs up the wall adjacent to them, the tag ranking the climb’s difficulty at a modest 6. 

Ten minutes ago, Mia could barely manage a level 3 climb without bashing her knee against the wall every 5 seconds. 

Her eyes drift back towards Hanif, who’s still lying flat against the foam mattress, brow slightly furrowed. His gaze is fixed on the wall before them, still trying to figure out a way to crack the trail.

Mia wonders if she’s staring too much. 

Then she wonders why she cares about staring too much.

Why is she even staring at this boy again? 

More importantly- since when did Hanif have a mole on the side of his nose? How had she never noticed it when they were kids? When did that even get there? Did moles just appear at random on people’s bodies as they grew older? It’s that how moles worked??

“Mia.” 

Her face turns to stone as his gaze meets hers; as if she hadn’t been actively burning a hole through the side of his nose mere seconds ago. 

She raises an eyebrow. Cool. Nonchalant. “What?”

“What course are you taking in uni again?”

God.

“Journalism,” she most definitely does not squeak out. “Final year.” Her palms feel slick against the mattress underneath her. 

“Journalism, huh?” He echoes. Then he grins. “Sounds right up your alley.”

Mia wants to kiss him on the curve of his cheek. 

God, she thinks despairingly. Please kill me. 

September or October, 2017. Hanif’s Front Porch

They’re playing ping pong. 

Mia doesn’t know how to play ping pong. 

It’s a wonder she even manages to get the ball over the net and across the table. But they’re playing ping pong, because Hanif got the table as a birthday present and their moms are talking about whatever it is that moms talk about and it’s not like they have anything better to do while Mia waits so, ping pong it is. But anyway- 

It’s not the ping pong that’s important.  

It’s the confession. 

“I like you,” says Mia. 

Hanif returns her pathetic serve with ease, then looks up at her. The ball sails over the net before bouncing off the tabletop and down the driveway. Mia rushes to grab it before it can escape past the house gates. 

When she returns, Hanif is still staring at her. Not in disgust or in dismay. But not with unabashed joy either. He just seems surprised. 

“Oh,” he says. “I’m flattered, but, I’m sorry. I just… can’t see you like that.”

Mia shrugs. “It’s okay.” 

I never expected you to reciprocate anyway, she doesn’t say. 

She will admit, it does feel rather anticlimactic. The culmination of years upon years of hopeless pining and one-sided affection, all boiling down to this: A ping pong table between them and the rubber grip of the paddle sticking to Mia’s palm, leaving streaky black marks whenever she lets go. 

She’s hoping the relief will come later. Once her mother’s done gossiping and they’ve made it back home and she can collapse onto her bed and bury her face into her raggedy plush cat Kitty VI. 

Or maybe it’ll be grief. God forbid. What is there to grieve in an outcome she had already anticipated? 

Whatever it is, she hopes the relief will kick in later. 

Because right now, she doesn’t feel much of anything. 

She bounces the ping pong ball once on the table and serves it to Hanif. It makes it over the net. Hanif hits it back. The rally lasts for several seconds, before Mia misses a shot and the ball hits the edge of the table with a sharp plastic ping!

This time Hanif runs for the ball. When he comes back, it’s with the ball and a question.

“Why?” His face turns sheepish. “Uh, sorry, wait- can I ask that?”

Mia snorts. “Sure.”

“Then… why me?”

Mia thinks about it. Or at least, she pretends to. She doesn’t really feel like telling him. Besides, it’s not like she has a whole list already compiled in her head. 

That would be stupid. 

She pretends to think about it for a second more. Then she shrugs. “I dunno. I just… do.”

The front door swings open. Hanif’s mom pokes her head out. “Kids, it’s almost maghrib!” She calls. 

They head back in, and nothing more is said. 

November, 2019. An A-Levels College in the Middle of the Malaysian Wilderness

A-Levels is hell. 

But it’s also some of the most fun Mia’s had in ages. Between the illegal cooking in her hutan dormitory, musical marathon weekends with her friends, and the occasional existential all-nighter, Mia’s having a blast. 

She doesn’t think about Hanif anymore. Doesn’t see him either, except for the occasional glimpse of him during the annual Hari Raya open house at her place. Sometimes they exchange words, but the conversation is hardly meaningful. She wouldn’t call it awkward. No. It’s more like… a lack of things to say to each other. Not that they were ever close even as kids. 

Why had she crushed on him for so long again? 

Well, regardless, it’s not like Hanif matters anymore. Because-

“I’d marry him,” Mia says, to a chorus of ohhhs??? and raised eyebrows. “Like, I wouldn’t date him but, I’d marry him.”

“Isn’t that the same thing to you?” scoffs Qis. She’s perched on the edge of Mia’s bed, curly bleached hair a wild halo around her head. Kitty VI is squished between her palms, looking miserable yet resigned to this age-old routine. “You’d never date someone unless you think you could actually marry him, no?”

“Well… yes,” Mia relents. She clatters back from her attached bathroom, setting her electric pot to dry on the table in the communal area. “But I don’t want to date anyone now, you know?”

“Cos you don’t want to get married now,” chips in Yazmin. She’s slumped against Mia’s beanbag, her hand buried in a bag of Super Rings. The laptop in front of her is buffering their choice of entertainment for tonight: a bootleg of the Heathers musical. “But like, maybe in the future, you’d consider dating Ariq Aiman so you can marry him?”

It’s a rhetorical question, because her friends know her well enough by now, and it helps that Mia’s as easy to read as the back of a cereal box. 

Mia shrugs and pointedly doesn’t look at either of them as she rummages in her cupboard for a juice box. “Well…”

Ariq Aiman is smart and lanky and cute enough if you tilt your head to the side and squint a bit. He’s slated for Engineering at MIT come graduation, and he also just happens to be the male counterpart to Mia’s role on the student council. He seems unassuming but is eloquent with his words, and Mia thinks he might be flirting with her over text. 

“No, no, I’m all for it.” Qis grins. “He’s rich, about to go to MIT, prescribes to the same kind of religious Islamic lifestyle that your family aligns with-”

Yazmin nods. “Yeah, dude’s stinkin rich.”

“-Also, he’s insanely smart? You know how hard it is to get into MIT??”

Mia groans. “You’re making it sound like I’m only interested in him because of those things.”

“Noooo, of course you’re not,” says Qis. “It’s the wireframe glasses. The leather jacket. The waxing poetic about literature.”

“Oh Ariq, talk Tolstoy to me again,” Yazmin swoons, cheese dusted fingers pressed away from her forehead. 

“You guys are so annoying,” Mia grouses, but she’s laughing, and then they’re all laughing, and then Yazmin’s screeching as Mia and Qis bombard her so they can all squish onto her dinky beanbag and finally start musical night. 

February, 2020. The Inside of Mia’s Dorm Room in the A-Level Wilderness

Her head is pounding. 

She blinks blearily, sleep still crusting the inside of her brain, as she swipes at the now dry tear tracks on her cheeks. The window says it’s close to evening, judging from the weak orange glow that trails its away across her desk and onto the edge of her mattress. 

For someone who did the rejecting, she’d cried an awful lot over it. 

The confession had been sweet, albeit out of the blue. She didn’t think Ariq Aiman was the kind of guy to make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day. Yet there he was, at the classroom he’d asked her to meet him at, stammering and red in the face as he pulled out a slice of cake from his bag like a rabbit from a hat. 

“I-I like you,” he’d stammered, unable to meet her eyes, and all Mia could feel was the heat rushing past her ears to fill up her face. 

And then came the dread. 

Because no matter how much she’d liked this boy, she could not bring herself to respond in kind. 

“I’m sorry,” she’d said, after accepting the red cakebox from his shaking hands. “It’s not you, it’s just- I… I don’t think I can be in a relationship. At least, not now.”

Ariq had taken it well. He was understanding about it, which somehow made it all a thousand times worse. 

Mia doesn’t remember how she’d fled from the scene or even how she returned to her room, but she does remember collapsing onto her bed and sobbing. 

She must’ve passed out at some point. 

Somewhere on the floor, her phone chirps with a notification. Mia reaches for it blindly, fingers scrabbling against the tile until she manages to pick it up. 

It’s an email. One from her first choice of university for the English Literature degree she was set on doing. 

‘Congratulations!’ She reads. ‘We are delighted to offer you a place to study Creative Writing and English Literature…”

She doesn’t read the rest. She locks her phone resolutely, before settling it on her chest. 

It seems she was headed to the UK. 

She picks up her phone again. Types in the words MIT in her search bar. 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, Boston. United States. 

She locks her phone again. Throws an arm over her face. 

The United States, huh?

That timezone would’ve been a pain in the ass to deal with. 

The Final Week of January, 2022. Mia’s Room at Home

Okay, so maybe he’s into NFTs. And he thinks that AI generated art isn’t a bad thing.

But he’s nice, and well-read, and he seems like a family guy. So everything else makes up for it, right?

Right?

“Girl, red flag. Drop him. Drop. Him.” 

Mia sighs as she stares into the dismayed faces of Qis and Yazmin on her computer screen. “I mean, it could’ve been a lot worse…?”

“Mia are you listening to yourself,” says Qis, disgust dripping from her voice. “He called working artists crybabies for protesting against the use of AI art that plagiarises their work.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then Mia’s sighing again, face buried in her hands. “Okay, okay. You’re right. God, what am I even doing?”

He’d been a friend from uni. Someone in the same degree, who shared a couple of classes with her and seemed nice enough. Funny without being insensitive. Charming, but not obnoxious. So when he’d asked her out, to check out a museum and have lunch, Mia had agreed. 

“I’m tired of hearing about how men continue to disappoint you,” sighs Yazmin. “Change of topic: How’s uni been, babe?”

The English Literature degree never happened. Not after covid left Mia marooned in Malaysia which led to a gap year that spilled into an internship with the local paper that spilled into another gap year where she eventually figured out that what she wanted to do wasn’t analysing stories. 

No, she wanted to tell them. For now, journalism seemed like the most interesting way to do so. 

“It’s going alright,” Mia shrugs. “Have like three assignments backlogged, but y’know. Same ol’.”

There’s a knock on her door. Mia pulls her headphones down and mutes the call as her sister’s head pokes into her room.  

“Hey,” says Nina. “Real random, but do you wanna go bouldering next weekend?”

“Uh… is that the thing like rock climbing but with no harness?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Have you ever done it?”

“Nope. But it looks cool though. You wanna try with me or not?”

“Oh. Uh… sure?”

“Nice.” Nina’s head disappears. Then she’s back again. “Oh, by the way, since Hanif boulders, I asked him to teach us. He said he’s cool with it.”

February, 2022. Post-Bouldering at the Climbing Gym

They’re driving back home, Nina’s early 2010s playlist blaring from the speakers, when Mia breaks the news. 

“Uh, Nina?”

“Hm?”

“What if… I maybe… liked… Hanif again…?”

Mia doesn’t try to catch her expression. Over the speakers, Kesha trills about dying young. 

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“Why does it have to be him?”

“Do you think I want it to be him?”

“He doesn’t deserve you because he rejected you already! Choose someone else!”

“I’m trying!”

May, 2022. Kemboja Resort, Langkawi.

They’re playing ping pong.

This time, Mia actually knows how to play. 

She hits the ball at an angle so it bounces off the table’s edge, ricocheting right past Hanif.

“Very nice,” he says, all tan-skin and kind eyes and the type of smile that hints at a boyhood filled with mischief. 

Mia wants to bury herself in the sand. 

“Thanks, teach.”

Somewhere between now and bouldering in February, they’d started talking again. Mostly through text, occasionally via call. It’s different from when they were kids. 

Perhaps because they’re different people now. 

Through the collective willpower of their mothers, their families are now on a beach resort getaway together. It’s strange, spending this much time with not only Hanif’s family, but Hanif himself, after 5 years of near radio silence from the guy.  

Stranger yet, to have him do things like seek her out in a crowded room, or run through the rain just to hand her an umbrella, or turn down an afternoon of snorkelling with his family to opt for sitting by her side while she hammers out a last minute article submission. 

It’s strange, to feel like he could be treating her like something… special. 

Hanif leans down to grab the ping pong ball, before straightening up. But instead of serving it, he places it on the table with his bat. 

“Um, listen,” he says, the expression on his face lodging Mia’s pulse right in her throat. “I… have something to tell you.”