The ticking of the clock echoed in Haruto’s mind as he sat at his desk, fingers hovering over the keyboard, staring at a blank screen. The glowing cursor blinked mockingly at him, as if daring him to write something coherent. Around him, the room was far from silent. His friends had claimed various corners, each one contributing to the growing sense of chaos.

Haruto rubbed his temples, trying to focus. “Alright, guys, we need to get this script down. Something that makes sense. Something—”

“DRAMA!” Yuki interrupted, throwing herself onto the couch in an exaggerated pose. “We need at least five monologues where I dramatically declare my undying love for… something. Maybe the ocean. I like oceans.”

“No oceans. We’re doing an action film, remember?” Haruto sighed, typing out half a sentence before backspacing it furiously.

Daichi sat cross-legged in the corner, reading a book about existential philosophy, only occasionally lifting his head to throw in sarcastic comments. “Does it matter? We’re making this thing up as we go anyway.”

Taro, meanwhile, was busy constructing a model of the school using leftover snack wrappers. “What if the school was secretly a training ground for spies? Think about it, man. The cafeteria is a front for covert operations!”

Haruto’s head throbbed. Focus? What was that again?

The flashing cursor triggered a flashback to Haruto’s last attempt at writing a “serious” project. It was supposed to be an epic detective story. Instead, it became an absurd mess where the detective’s partner was inexplicably a talking goat, and every suspect delivered lines like, *“It wasn’t me, I swear! The cheese made me do it!”*

Haruto cringed at the memory of his teachers’ baffled expressions when they read his project. One even asked if it was supposed to be a parody. It wasn’t.

Shaking the memory away, he reminded himself that *this* time would be different. Somehow.

Yuki’s voice pierced through his thoughts again. “Haruto, darling! The people need to feel my pain!” She flung herself dramatically onto the floor, arms outstretched. “How will they understand my character’s inner turmoil without at least three soliloquies? We need layers. Depth.”

“No monologues!” Haruto insisted, tapping furiously at his keyboard as if the rapid sound would drown her out.

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“Are you even listening to me?” she shot back, now rolling dramatically across the floor, knocking over Taro’s snack-wrapper model in the process.

“Can we at least agree on one dramatic line?” she pleaded. “Just one? Maybe something like, ‘I am but a pebble in the river of fate!’”

“No.”

“A single tear falling from the corner of my eye as I whisper, ‘This is my destiny...’”

“No!”

Yuki huffed, crossing her arms. “You have no vision.”

Suddenly, the door creaked open and in walked a student no one was happy to see. Koji “The Script Stealer” Nakamura. His reputation was infamous—he had a habit of stealing others’ creative work and passing it off as his own, and worse, he was known for making it worse.

Koji sauntered in with a smirk, glancing around the chaotic room. “I hear you guys are working on something big for the film festival.”

Haruto immediately narrowed his eyes. “What do you want, Koji?”

“Just checking out the competition,” Koji replied, pretending to be casual but eyeing Haruto’s laptop. “You know, I’m always looking for... inspiration.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Haruto warned, covering his laptop like a parent shielding their child from danger.

Koji shrugged, backing off with a smug grin. “Just remember, if you run out of ideas, I’ll be around.”

As soon as he left, the group collectively groaned. They didn’t need this guy sniffing around their project.

What followed was a chaotic brainstorming session, as the group threw out ideas with reckless abandon. Haruto tried to wrangle them into something usable, but the suggestions kept getting weirder.

Yuki suggested they make it a love triangle between a pirate, a samurai, and an alien princess. “It’s edgy,” she argued, winking dramatically.

Daichi, without looking up from his book, said, “Why not make the alien princess a detective investigating the pirate for tax fraud?”

Taro, excited by the prospect, added, “And the samurai’s sword could be a portal to another dimension! Like... the cafeteria!”

Haruto’s fingers hovered over the keyboard as he tried to weave these ideas together. “Are we making a film or a fever dream?”

“Why not both?” Yuki grinned.

As they debated, Taro suddenly sat up straight, eyes wide with excitement. “Wait! I’ve got it! Our film isn’t just a film—it’s a *metaphor* for school life!”

Everyone groaned, knowing what was coming.

“Think about it!” Taro continued, “The pirate represents authority, always trying to take our treasures—aka our free time. The alien princess symbolizes the unknown future we’re all afraid of, and the samurai is, like, the past, you know? It’s deep!”

Yuki gasped. “That’s... actually brilliant.”

“No, it’s not,” Haruto said flatly, continuing to type. But part of him knew he’d probably have to add at least a little of Taro’s “deep” idea into the script.

Just as they were putting the finishing touches on their insane plot, Misaki strode into the room unannounced. Again.

“What’s this? Another failure in the making?” she sneered, crossing her arms.

“We’re doing just fine, thank you,” Haruto snapped back.

Misaki raised an eyebrow. “Really? I heard your ideas. Sounds *very* familiar. You know, unoriginality is a big no-no in the festival. Maybe I’ll report you for plagiarizing.”

“That’s rich coming from you!” Yuki shot back, glaring.

Misaki flipped her hair and walked out with a smirk, leaving an ominous sense of rivalry hanging in the air.

After hours of arguing, flashbacks, conspiracy theories, and interruptions, the group finally reached a consensus—well, a kind of consensus. The script they pieced together was a hodgepodge of all their absurd ideas.

The plot now featured a tax-evading pirate, a dimension-hopping samurai, and an alien princess who was both a detective and a metaphor for existential dread. Somehow, it all tied together with a mysterious villain who wanted to steal all the world's creativity (based loosely on Koji).

Haruto stared at the finished product on his screen. “Well... this is either going to be the greatest film ever or the weirdest.”

“Why not both?” Taro winked.