Private Finished Like Poetry in the Wind

As Fe handed him the sheet of paper, Carmin felt a wave of relief wash over him. This little nightmare of his was finally over. Or not. He went to grab it and noticed that the stranger hadn’t let go of it yet. Then the question that followed caught him completely off guard.

“W-what? Why? It’s bad enough you saw it, I don’t really want anyone else laughing at it...” Money would’ve actually been nice, especially for something as worthless as that poem. He’d been trying to save up money for a guitar but it wasn’t going so great seeing as how he didn’t have a job. Just, it wasn’t worth the humiliation he’d have to face.

Carmin tilted his head at the first point, unsure of how much better that was but still understanding that she wasn’t wrong.

the second point didn’t get taken much better. Sure it would technically be anonymous, that was good. However, her saying that basically confirmed his suspicions that she was trying to show it to friends.

the last point was rather unexpected. Carmin had to take a moment to register that. “Seriously? Song lyrics? But that’s...” He avoided eye contact. “Are you some kind of singer?”

Carmin turned to look up at her as she admitted to being a singer. He had a hunch already, but he hadn’t expected to find that it was more than just a hobby.

That much was a lot easier to believe than the second part.There was a split second of sparkle in Carmin’s eyes when she told him that his poem could become a hit song, but he came back to reality pretty quickly.

He looked down at his poem pretty skeptically, reading it to finally see which one this even was. “There’s nothing special about this one, just another dumb poem...” Carmin looked down at the folder in his other hand, questioning why he didn’t just burn them all.

Carmin tensed up, becoming a mix of embarrassed and defeated as Fe hit the target right on the mark. This made it easy for her to steal the poem back, leaving Carmin with too little time to do much more than raise his hand slightly as it was yoinked from his grasp.

He looked up at her angrily, getting very flustered over this whole situation. But what she said next seemed to diffuse him. It seemed that she was actually serious. Carmin couldn't wrap his head around how she could be so confident about such an absurd goal, but he envied it. This girl legitimately thought the poem was good and that she'd be able to get a hit song out of it.

The plant boy kept silent for a few more seconds after, trying to figure out what he should do. When he finally spoke, he was very hesitant. "You promise you won't tell anyone where it came from?"

Carmin watched as she pocketed the poem before he'd even agreed to giving it to her. He quietly muttered "I never said that you could..." Before giving up and deciding to just let her have it.

"A pen name?" He blushed a little. "Um, I don't really care as long as people don't know that it's me." He didn't want to come up with something on his own and have it sound stupid. All that mattered was that it couldn't be linked back to him.