The scent of rain was always so clean.

It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking seven. YooNa Im, her face nuzzled into her white muffler, in an effort to retain the warmth, slipped through the sliding glass doors of the Metrolink station. 

The station was buzzing with activity, smelling of coffee and cleaner. At one end of the station was a cafe, adorned with busy men and women, scrambling for a fresh pastry or a piping hot cup of coffee to escape the rainwater chills from outside. There was a mess of spills and trips and clamors. YooNa turned towards the escalator. She was not in the mood for exercise, given that she would have to go through a whole day with active legs. 

There was another coffee shop at her level, with the smell of roast and frothed milk drifting through the air. A voice was ringing through the station, calling departures and times and security calls. YooNa let out a yawn and placed her earbuds back into her ear before staring at her phone. It was off. She glossed over her dim reflection: a small face, with rather large doe-like eyes, their size emphasized with the thick white muffler covering her frown and the puffiness that could only come from numerous amounts of all nighters. Her hair was a dark, chocolate brown, loosely curled and to the chest with half of it tied up with a scarlet red ribbon. Her skin was fair, yet the bags under her eyes failed to bring her a youthful glow that a young adult should display.

Outside rain was pittering amongst the glass window panes, matching some sort of undefined rhythm. Down the street little gusts of wind brushed against the trees and people, and though there was no blue sky, the sun happily peeked amongst the silvery-white clouds. Men and women in coats and umbrellas weaved in and out from the station. 

YooNa put her earbuds back in her pocket and took out a novel. After college, YooNa was fully awakened to how little time she had with leisure after being so fully caught up with the pressures of adult life. She came to the station fairly early so she could finally sit back with a chilling mystery novel, keeping this time to herself. After the first three pages, she glanced over at the stack of newspapers next to her seat.

It was rather interesting how newspapers were still available, seeing as though news has taken to the internet and television for the modern times. Personally, she preferred the experience of turning pages and touching words to LED lights and mouse scrolling when she was winding down with reading. Maybe she should refer to her new internship at the Paper Sentinel as a blessing, rather than a letdown compared to interning at book publishing. 

Turning away from her novel, she picked out a copy of the Paper Sentinel and flipped through. Nothing special. Articles and advertisements and more useless articles. There was no craft, no care that came into writing any of this. Movie "reviews" were summaries with opinions meagerly placed in the end to avoid conflict. News was news, just a spring of facts in a paragraph or two. Informative articles were informative, but that was basically it. No story. No color. No anything. Just words.

She was surprised to why a newspaper like this would be so successful when this kind of mediocre writing could come from any middle schooler who tried to write. 

Scoffing, YooNa mused to herself over the fact that she was about to work for an outlet she clearly was not inte