Cassie sat waiting for three o’ clock to come and while she aimlessly scrolled through her Pinterest board, she found herself wondering how no one thought she was the biggest pervert yet.

She sat nearly drooling at fictional characters when it finally turned three and she got herself ready to interact normally with real people. Five minutes passed and she saw both Koto and Ankara walking towards her, she smiled and met them halfway.

“I’m glad you could be here Cassie.” Ankara said. She smiled and nodded.

“Anything for a friend.” Though I still have next to no idea what I’m helping Koto with.

“But we should talk more in the meeting room.” Cassie nodded and turned to walk with them. Koto had been walking, but he looked more nervous than usual.

He didn’t even greet Cassie when they began to walk in the room together. When they settled in the meeting room, Ankara spoke up.

“I’m sure you’re curious as to why you’re even here.” Cassie nodded. “Well, Koto has ignored me time and time again when I give him suggestions to consider in his work. Then I found out you’re nice enough to help him and he actually takes what you say into consideration.” She nods, “So, what I’ve decided to do is work with you in giving Koto suggestions about his latest idea and show him what he should be considering when he’s editing his own work, as well as make him listen to what I and the editor have to say.” Ankara explained.

“I do listen to you!” Koto came out and said. “It’s just I always change my mind on what you say at the last minute.”

“That’s no excuse to never take what I say into consideration.” Koto pouted, Cassie let out a soft chuckle.

“Well, you know he rarely listens to me as well. He only listens to me when he directly asks me for help.”

Ankara sighed, “I can imagine, but I have faith that your criticism will teach him how to take it and apply it to his own editing skills.” Cassie had to agree with him, Ankara then looked to Koto. “Now show us what you have.” Koto did so, but slowly. In this time, Ankara asked Cassie to sit a bit closer and now was beside Koto as he got out his paper and his laptop.

“Okay, I haven’t printed it yet. I finished writing the first part of the script and I stopped for revisions.” They nodded, “But so far I think it’s pretty perfect!” Well that’s a problem. Ankara sighed. “W-what?” He said to their disappointed looks.

“Cassie, could you please explain to him what’s wrong with that?” She nods.

“Well, it’s not to hate your first drafts, but that’s why they're called first drafts. They’re not supposed to be perfect. It’s your raw ideas without a filter, so naturally there’s gonna be some issues in it, from as small as a few spelling errors to an entire scene needing to be rewritten or removed. So there’s no way your first draft is perfect.” Koto puffed his cheeks.

“Are you listening to her?” Ankara said.

“Yeah I am…” Koto said with a sigh. “I just can't figure out why I have to go through it with a fine tooth comb.”

“No one’s saying that. We have an editorial team for that. What we’re saying is that you should always consider that you can write something even better than you already have.”

“Really?” Ankara nodded, “Hmm… well then what about you Cassie?” She looked at him, “Do you really think that or are you just saying it to teach me something?” I’m not a teacher so why would I just be saying that?

“No, I honestly hate everything I write. Of course mine is a bit extreme, but I’m always dissatisfied with what I’ve written. I just try and get it where I’m not as annoyed at it. I re-write pieces all the time, even things that are completed and are years old. I find mistakes and will continuously go back and fix them.”

“Really?” He seemed shocked, “Pretty much all your stuff has like forty pages.” She nods.

“It’s a lot of work, but I do love it.” Plus if it gives me an excuse to stay away from people longer.

Koto still was in disbelief, “E-even if that is the case, my stuff is short all I need to do is make sure my lines aren’t messed up and that’s it for me!”

Ankara sighed, “Koto, you have an extremely great talent in storytelling. You take what you’ve heard and manage to retell it down to the letter. So why is it that you refuse to take criticism or any kind of responsibility in editing your own work?” Ankara asked. Cassie was curious about this as well and was listening intently. Koto sat there for a while before he gripped the papers in his hand. He shook his head and stared at them.

“You guys don’t get that this stuff is more important to others than it is to me… not that I don’t care about it, but I can’t honor other’s words if I take them and try to make them better. What makes these stories interesting is their human fallacy. If I go through and try to make it as perfect as I can, it takes away from what I heard.” He looked to them as he spoke. “Like this one I’m writing, I was in the hospital a while back and a woman was contemplating getting an abortion. We were talking because my own mother considered aborting me, but she told me she doesn’t want to ruin another life by bringing this one into the world. In a world where she’s castrated because of religion, she didn’t know what to do. I talked to her for a while and even after I was released, I came back to see her decision. All I told her was she should think about what she may lose or gain by getting rid of it. Her child could love her more than life itself or they could just be a normal child, but she’ll never know and if she doesn’t want to know then it’s fine by me at least. Though she was telling me a lot of stuff about being unsure about what to do with her family. So I told her if her family doesn’t want to accept this for what it is then she should make or get her own family that will accept her choices.” Koto paused. Ankara and Cassie looked to each other. “But I can’t edit anything we talked about because if I do we’ll lose everything that makes this piece so… perfect.”

“Koto you-”

“I know, I talked for too long. I can’t help it!”

“I wasn’t going to say that.” Ankara began, “I didn’t think you were concerned about all this.” Koto looked to Ankara, “But I’ll still advise you to listen to things about where scenes should be placed and other things of that nature, but I’ll let it go that you refuse to edit parts in this story.”

“W-wait, I wasn’t saying all that just to get out of this.”

“You’re not off the hook. Consider this a handout; I’ll let your mistakes be for now, but if I ever see a piece of yours with a huge error, it’ll be on you and I won’t be nice about it.” Way to scare him shitless.

“A-alright! I’ll be sure not to mess up.” Ankara chuckled.

“That’s all I really wanted to talk about, thank you for joining us Cassie, but for now, both of you need to keep working. If you have any questions, feel free to stop by my office.” Ankara got up and then left the room. Cassie and Koto sat in a stiff silence for a bit before Koto got up letting out a rather loud sigh.

“I thought he was going to kill me.” Koto said resting his head on the table. Cassie smiled and relaxed in her chair.

“Still, I didn’t think what you wrote was nonfiction.”Cassie asked.

“Well it’s kind of not. I just take things I’ve heard from other people and give it to fictional characters. I wouldn’t want anyone to get mad that I used their story with their name.” Cassie couldn’t help but smile at him, “But hey, you really dislike what you write?”

“For the most part. I kind of dislike everything about me, that I do, or anything pertaining to me.”

“Come on Cassie, have a little bit of faith in yourself.” But that is how I give myself faith.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better that’s kind of how I give myself confidence.”

“Huh?”

“I somewhat separate my actions and my thoughts into ‘people’. My thoughts discourage me, saying I’m never gonna be any good, I can’t write and so forth, but my actions tell me just ignore them. You can do this and if ‘they’ say I can’t, then I have to prove them wrong.” She let out an awkward giggle. “It’s kind of strange, but it’s how I say it’s gotten me to where I am today.” Koto stared at her.

“That’s… amazing! I’ve never heard that from someone else… do you mind if I write it down?” She shook her head, Koto got a big grin on his face and began to write on the papers in his hands. Cassie watched him feeling a bit of ease knowing that Koto was like this.

You guys may sometimes get on my nerves, but I guess I’ll stick around for a while longer.