Tao's POV, present

“If an alien visited my home...” I read the words from a list given to me by my creative writing teacher. We were to start a piece using a new list of prompts at the end of every week.

If an alien visited my home. But what was I to do when there really was an alien visiting my home?

Could I do it? Could I just write the truth?

Honestly speaking, the other prompts were boring and tasteless, offering no inspiration, no sudden sparks that yelled, “I have to write this!” from the mountaintops in my brain. It was my theory that the teacher really had no creativity of his own (which is why he taught instead of taking to his passion and writing out long, sappy romance novels like the ones that littered his desk) and used a website meant for children to prod them into writing anything at all.

Could I do it though? Write about my alien friend, currently snuggled up on my bed, hugging a panda plushie to his chest.

If I replace the names and locations, who's to know? Reading in front of the classroom was optional anyways. This was one of the reasons I insisted on being in Mr. Kim's class. He must have had a fear of public speaking as kid, because he was unnaturally understanding about the shy kids who went through school unnoticed. Kim Joonmyun, nicknamed “Suho” by us quiet kids, was a breath of fresh air compared to the other teachers, who insisted on group projects and team games nearly every day. Even if his methods were... below standard, he was still the best teacher there.

I almost cracked my knuckles, before remembering the subtle snores of the gorgeous alien on my bed. Quietly unplugging my laptop and exiting my bedroom, I cringed at the grating of wood as the top of the door scraped against the frame around it, simply too big to close in silence. The snores continued through the door after it closed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way that I'd get any work done if he was awake. He was... distracting to say the least.

I settled down onto the couch and plugged my laptop's cord into the wall. It always moved annoyingly slow if it wasn't connected to the charger and the battery didn't last for too long without it anyways. If I was ever going to fail a class, I'd blame my laptop before anything, but at least it functioned well when I saved often and kept it forever charging. It's lost all it's portability though.

Here, I safely cracked my knuckles, stretched until my limbs felt comfortable, and started describing the day an alien intruded in my life.