It was late at night on a Sunday night in the city, and Ilinca, alone in her room, with most of her homework unfinished for the upcoming weeks, and also a very important essay which she really had to finish by Monday morning to keep her scholarship going.

The moment she wanted to start writing the essay on paper, having the sheets of paper and three different pens, ready, something happened, the unexpected which was really to be expected, Ilinca’s phone rang, and we all know what happens if you want to study or do your homework and your phone suddenly gets a notification… well… you check out the notification and you’re 4 hours later now, with 0 work done, eh?

The mistake that caught Ilinca in the net, was that her phone wasn’t on DND… big mistake, really big mistake.

The notification came from the movie app she had installed, sending a notification of the appearance of a new movie in the app.

“Watch this brand new and NON-CLICHE love triangle of two boys in love with the same girl in the mountains, right now, on a moviestar”.

The movie, from Ilinca’s thoughts, was “pretty entertaining, but very cliche for some reason; they even said non-cliche, which… would be clickbait for people to watch it”.

Three hours and a movie later, it was Monday morning, very early in the morning, at around 1AM Iliinca totally forgot about the essay she had to have finished in a few hours.

She got really agitated, and overstimulated, fearing of losing the scholarship so she decided

“Come on girl, lock in, lock in”

Every normal human would do what I’m doing on a Sunday night with school tomorrow… of course I’m doing anything but my homework, duuuh! But listen to this—Ilinca here does the impossible, something straight out of motivational movies, like a coach teaching a student about life and stuff like that, motivating him into playing ball because he’s good at it or something like that, I can’t think straight right now, it’s so friggin’ late. 

I have no clue why I won’t just go to sleep. I guess I’m just a stubborn 20; too stubborn to just give up and let my dreams die, which, by the way, will never happen because I love writing and I love entertaining people but unfortunately nobody really cares; the motivation comes from within, and the urge to give up grows stronger and stronger everyday, hopefully the spark in my heart, the fainting light, will eventually burst out into a strong arson inside my ribcage, firing up my soul once again for this beautiful hobby.

The desk lamp was on and everything was ready to use, but the next problem was that she was really tired. Ilinca would usually go to sleep at around 10PM, but movies were her weakness all the time, and she would lose sleep schedules over it, unwillingly, it would just happen so that she watches a movie and the movie just catches her attention so much that she can’t stop watching it.

Her eyes started giving up from staying up more than she was supposed to, so she tried finding ways to keep herself awake for about 45 minutes, that’s about how long it would take her to finish the 8 page essay about evolution of humankind.

She hopped on the search engine on the internet and started searching for some info about the topic, and it was a hard topic as well, I mean “humankind” is no joke as a topic for an essay. There is so much to write about it, so… the hard thing was to choose the important stuff about it.

Before something would be created, and when I say created, I say “made”, slash, brought to existence, aight? She would have to make the mood, a comfortable one in which she would spend her time in, and make her creativity to hop on easier. First, she turned on her humidifier with an orange and cherry wood smell, followed by a chill lofi song on the music to create good vibes in the room, and the very unexpected happened then and there… the sleep kicked in

“Yaaaaawnnn…”

Idk why did I yawn right when I wrote her sentence, what a coincidence xDD

Everyone knows that when sleep kicks in… you gotta sleep, right? But what choice did Ilinca have? She had to finish the essay, but unironically, everything she did to change the mood, has made her even sleepier.

The actual work started when Ilinca started copying entire paragraphs of letters and just highlighted everything by eye, to see the important stuff and then to write the ideas around which is very logical to do, eh?

Right now, one and a half in the morning, her eyes were obsidian heavy; the sleep was already irreversible for her eyelids, she is… what we can call it in the modern words, “cooked”, or “half-cooked”, since she could bare a little bit more. 

Now the ultra-awake montage was going on, a complex routine: splash of cold water on face, that worked for like five minutes. The next idea was to sleep with one eye open and one eye closed. She thought it would work, but it didn’t, it’s the same if she would stay awake with both eyes open.

One last resort that she had to get used to, was to get used to standing up while doing the homework, and with this, Ilinca moved left and right, not being able to control the exhaustion that settled in already with the sleep, but even with this, she got to work, and one word after one word, sentences after sentences, Ilinca did what we call “lock in”.

Pressing enter and then… finished! Ilinca sent in her essay to the teacher. It was 3AM but she did it, she did the impossible, she fought the sleep

She did a little dancy-dance, joyfully shouting and acclaiming herself like she would have won a competition or a trophy or something, there, inside the room, imagining the cavaliers by her side, confetti falling from the skies and the rounds of people in her sides.

Thrown herself on the bed now, she could finally get herself a good night's sleep, but when she closed her eyes and instantly fell into deep sleep, her alarm clock rang aloud on her phone, a jazz music typa song.

“What in the…but it’s only 3 in the morning”

Said Ilinca irritated, barely opening her eyelids a little bit to check the alarm clock on her phone and she saw that the alarm was set for seven in the morning, which meant she was late for school.

“Frick.”

—

Thank you for reading “Ilinca.A” 

End of book 1. Book 2 will appear in 2026.