The door-banging finally stopped.
Link heard the landlord, Smith, muttering and walking off, his heavy footsteps echoing down the hallway until the stairwell door slammed shut with a BANG. Silence fell back over the dingy apartment.
He let out a breath and put down his pen.
His fingers were still trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from a rush of pure excitement. It was a strange feeling. Like standing on the edge of a cliff with a sheer drop below and a storm ahead, and the only choice left was to take the plunge.
The piece of paper lay quietly on the desk.
PULP FICTION
The ink was still wet, like a bomb waiting to go off.
Link closed his eyes, and the scenes the system had injected into his memory flashed again.
Two hitmen in black suits talking about burgers and foot massages in a car; the boss's wife swaying in the dance hall; a boxer running off with a gold watch, only to turn back and save a life.
Three lives, three timelines, all tangled up. Absurd, violent, yet strangely poetic.
He opened his eyes, his heart still racing.
"Gotta start with the structure."
He grabbed his pen and quickly jotted down:
\[ACT ONE: VINCENT VEGA AND MARSELLUS WALLACE'S WIFE]
\[ACT TWO: THE GOLD WATCH]
\[ACT THREE: THE BONNIE SITUATION]
Next came the scenes.
\[PUMPKIN and HONEY BUNNY discuss the stick-up in the diner.
Picking up the briefcase at the apartment.
Vincent accidentally kills Marvin.
The Wolf cleans up the mess.
Returning to the diner for the ending.]
The pen scratched across the paper, shh-shh, like he was etching the rhythm of fate.
But halfway through, he stopped cold. He remembered the shots, but the dialogue was gone. That whole burger conversation—he knew the content was "They call it a Royale with Cheese in France," but the rhythm of the joke, the actors' timing, the comedic flavor of the language? All hazy.
He looked up at The Godfather poster on his wall. Vito Corleone's eyes, half-hidden in the shadow, seemed to be sizing up the rookie screenwriter.
"The memory only gave me sixty percent..." Link muttered. The remaining forty percent? He'd have to figure that out himself.
He leaned back in his chair, slowly steadying his breathing. The original Link was a UCLA Film School grad with a solid foundation in screenwriting. His past self (before the transmigration) had spent five years writing twenty-plus failed web novels.
One understood structure, the other understood pacing. The two lives, stacked together, created a strange, perfect synergy.
"Maybe... I can pull this off."
He picked up the pen again, choosing to start with what he felt most confident about—the opening.
\[INT. SMALL DINER - MORNING]
\[A young couple sits in a booth by the window. PUMPKIN, in a cheap leather jacket, and HONEY BUNNY, with dyed blonde hair, a nervous smile playing on her lips. They're talking about a robbery.]
Link wrote slowly. The scene formed in his mind: the diner's bustle, the coffee smell, the blinding L.A. sunlight outside the window. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, just like any low-level hustlers, were dreaming up impossible schemes. The dialogue appeared on the paper, word by word.
\[PUMPKIN says: "Robbing banks is too risky, and bars are too broke."
HONEY BUNNY's eyes suddenly light up: "Then we stick up a diner!"
The next second, both pull out guns simultaneously.
"EVERYBODY BE COOL! THIS IS A ROBBERY!"]
The pen paused. Link smiled to himself. That's the feeling—violent, absurd, and a little pathetic in its romance.
He kept going.
\[Vincent and Jules in the car, talking about burgers.
Talking about the boss's wife's foot massage.
They're wearing black suits, looking like government agents on the clock.]
The rhythm of those conversations gradually took shape in his head. He wrote faster and faster, not even stopping to think, just letting that familiar linguistic flow carry him forward.
The sunlight outside the window began to slant, changing from blinding to soft, and then from soft to a deep amber. The only sounds in the room were the scratching of his pen and the faint, distant radio from the street. The Beatles' "Let It Be" drifted in vaguely, mixed with the smell of gasoline and coffee.
Link didn't stop. He wrote about the golden light spilling out of the briefcase when it opened, and Jules reciting that Bible passage:
"The path of the righteous man..."
He wrote about Vincent taking Mia out dancing, about the moment the adrenaline shot plunged into her chest—it was like the whole movie was jolted back to life by that needle.
Then came Butch's story. The boxer's escape, his redemption, and his exit. That was the flash of humanity inside all the violence.
Link's hand started to cramp up. But he couldn't stop. He knew that if he paused now, the inspiration might slip away like sand through his fingers.
Not until the final period was placed.
He leaned back in his chair, gasping for breath.
Night had fallen. The streetlights outside came on, and their orange-yellow glow flickered on The Godfather poster. A thick stack of manuscript paper was piled on the desk. Sixty-three pages.
Not enough.
A complete script needs at least ninety to one hundred and twenty pages. He'd only written about half, and a lot of the dialogue still needed polish, a lot of scenes needed more detail.
But the skeleton was there.
Link picked up the first page and reread the opening dialogue. Then he smiled. "Not bad."
He got up and walked to the window. The car wash on the corner was already dark, and a distant siren wailed and then faded.
Link looked down at the system panel.
\[COUNTDOWN: 16 HOURS 12 MINUTES]
He took a deep breath, turned around.
He sat back down and picked up his pen.
And he kept writing. Because he knew this wasn't just a screenplay.
This was his first shot at Hollywood.