The music is blasting in her room. The bass rumbles and it feels like her heart is beating to the rhythm of the song. Her fingers are tapping to their own creation of a tempo while her other hand scribbles notes down on a piece of paper. It was the end of June and that meant she got her paycheque.

     “$9.74,” she repeated after her calculation, “I’ve got an extra $9.74 to spend.” She leans back in her chair and continues bob her head.

     The wall behind her thumps to its own beat; not of the song that was playing but its own rhythmic pattern. Her roommate was at it again.

     Chae Daeun closes her eyes and just lets herself drift. $9.74. She could get an extra meal. Or an extra drink at the bar. Or maybe she could just put that into her bank account. But that’d be useless, just sitting there. In the very distance, she hears the thumping of her roommate stop and its door creak open. Another set of doors creak a couple of seconds later. Daeun gets out of her seat and opens the door to her own room.

     Seohyun, her roommate, brushes past her wearing only a pair of shorts and her favourite black laced bra. She walks to the door of their apartment and kisses the man on the lips before taking a drag of the cigarette she was holding in the other hand. He stands with a hand in his pocket and the buttons of his shirt undone. Daeun watches as Seohyun bites his lip before ending the kiss.

     “You’re the best,” Daeun hears the robust mint-haired female say.

     Cue the all too familiar buzzing.

     “Love you, babe,” he says, kissing her one last time before leaving.

     The buzzing halts.

     “Love you too,” Seohyun kisses him one last time before gently pushing him out the door, closing it when he leaves.

     And there returns the buzz.

     Seohyun turns to walk back to her room and notices Daeun standing there. “Hey,” she greets.

     “You know, he actually does like you,” Daeun comments, coming out of her room. She rubs the back of her neck and rotates it once to get rid of the stress.

     Seohyun sits down on the brown couch in their small living room and takes out a tin box. She crosses her legs and rummages through its contents. A cigarette leaves its embers on the ashtray in the table in front of her. “Right. And I like him too,” Seohyun replies, taking out what she had been looking for, “Him and his drugs.” She shakes the white packet before opening it up. She sniffs the contents once and sighs. Making a motion towards Daeun, she offers its contents to her.

     Daeun shakes her head. She returns into her room briefly to turn off the music and grab her phone and jacket. When she walks back out, she sees that the packet is empty and Seohyun is passed out on the couch, fingers still speckled with white dust. Daeun makes a quick stop into Seohyun’s room to grab a blanket for her before locking the keys to their apartment.

     Her apartment, technically. Daeun had been the one to pay full payment and was content in living alone until Seohyun showed up one night, begging for a place to sleep. Daeun couldn’t let her sleep outside so she agreed. That one night turned into a week and finally a year, where Seohyun still stayed.

     It wasn’t like she didn’t enjoy Seohyun’s company. She was nice to be around, always engaging in some next level philosophical topic, particularly when she was high. It was slightly annoying whenever she brought her “boyfriend”, or boyfriends at times, to the place but Daeun had learned to drown out their voices and actions by blasting her music. But what she liked about Seohyun the most was that she didn’t ask questions. The buzzing in her head was also always strangely quieter around the other girl as well.

     She trudged up the stairs and immediately brought a hand to shield her eyes from the bright sun. It was about seven in the evening but still way too bright for her liking. She liked the darkness night brought with it. Serene. Solemn. Locking the gate to the building behind her, she walked down the streets all the while rolling her neck due to its tense state.

     No matter how many times it happened, she’d still feel its pain.

     The lingering pain left as a reminder of Daeun’s unique power; gift; thing. Whatever people wanted to call it.

     Daeun knew whenever somebody told a lie.

     She would feel this strange buzzing at the base of her neck when a person said anything but the truth around her. The buzzing didn’t come every time she talked to somebody - she couldn’t catch all the lies that came out of people’s mouths - but it occurred often enough to be a nuisance to her. While the buzzing wasn’t painful in itself, it always caused her neck to be in sore pain. The pain was not indicative of how big the lie was, however. A lie that involved so many twists and turns that even its creator could not keep track would give her pain. A small white lie would give her the same pain. To her, it was just pain.

     She quickly turned the corner and made her way down the stairs into the subway station. The man at the window gave her a small smile in which she did not return but hastily walked through the gate. One hour. It took 46 minutes to get to the station and another twelve minutes to walk. She had one hour. The subway could not be late.

     She was not always a walking human lie detector. In fact, she had only been living like this for the past six years of the total of her twenty-four. At least consciously aware of this ability of hers for that time period.

     If she really had to pinpoint when it started, she would connect it to approximately four more years prior to that: first year of high school. The prime time of adolescence.

     She could hear the first subway leave, vibrations through the sole of her feet and its wheels screeching on the tracks. That left two minutes for her to make it to the opposite platform which was for the direction she wanted to go. She glanced at the elevator she was currently standing in front of. It had not budged from G for a while now. She glanced at the stairs just a couple of steps away. Sighing, she left her spot and made her way down the stairs. One and a half minute.

     The first year of high school . Her parents were always screaming at each other and her brother was constantly skipping school. She did not want to be a second disappointment to her parents so she spent all her time studying in the library. It was also an excuse to be out of the house. One day, she returned home and found her mother crying on the steps of their house.

     “Mom, did you and Dad fight again?”

     Her mother did not meet her eyes. “Are you okay?” Daeun asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, trying to console her mother as best as a fourteen year old could do.

     “I’m fine,” her mother answered. That was when she first heard a faint buzzing. It was strange for bees to be around their flowerless yard.

     “You don’t look fine,” Daeun pressed on, “Will you and Dad be okay?”

     Her mother shifted her position and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. She looked at Daeun with a bruised eye and said, “Your dad will be okay.” The buzzing seemed to fade.

     Daeun patted the still damp cheek of her mother and hugged the fragile women. She slowly rubbed her mother’s back in small circles. “Mom, you and Dad will work things out. So promise me you guys won’t leave each other.”

     “I promise,” her mother had reassured her. That was when Daeun cried out in pain as the buzzing attacked her. Her mother had been alarmed and Daeun had laughed it off, saying that a bee had probably stung the back of her neck while she wasn’t aware. The duo then got off the floor and held hands as they walked back into the house.

     Her parents split a week later.

     Daeun had never found it in herself to forgive her mother after that. She hadn’t even known that she had been lied to until she really thought about it in her years as an adult. She just hated the fact that her mother had promised something that she had been planning to break. When high school ended, she picked a college as far away from her mother’s house as she could. She poured all of her time into her academics and never bothered making friends. Throughout the four years there, she had occasionally felt the buzzing but did not really associate it with anything around her. It only became prominent when she started working at her first job.

     To any fresh graduate, this was a hire that was ever only dreamt of. It was a position with a high status in the company: Assistant Director of Internal Affairs. The company had been extremely impressed with her grades and all the extracurriculars she participated in. She had flown to three different cities outside of her own country as an intern and placed first in multiple conferences. It was no mistake that she had gotten in. Daeun had been ecstatic when they spoke to her. She could finally move out of her mother’s house, in which she had temporarily been staying in while job searching; live in a city a thousand miles away from where she currently was, and was able to be somebody whom nobody knew about. It was her dream come true.

     That turned out to be a disaster. Every day she went into work, the buzzing would surround her and send her in pain to the bathroom. She could barely speak to any of her coworkers without wanting to strangle them and tell them to be quiet. She could not attend any of the meetings and she had to call in multiple sick days within her first week there. Needless to say, this affected her work performance and after an agonizing four and a half months, the company fired her.

     Being without a job meant that she had no steady income. So, she moved out of the luxurious apartment she had just bought with her new salary and used the remaining money to buy the dank, run down one she was currently living in. She searched everywhere and finally found a waitress for hire at a bar close to the middle of the city. It was an hour from where she lived, but at least there she could dull the buzzing with alcohol. And this was how she lived for the past two years.

     “Tell me,” the younger man towered over him, “Where did you hide the stash?”

     “I didn’t hide it, man. I swear. It’s where they asked me to leave it,” the bleeding man held his remaining hand in front of him in defense. “Please don’t hurt me.”

     There was a swish and cold metal sliced the air. He was not taller than the man, nor any stronger. But he had youth and a quick mind. More importantly, he had a weapon.

     “Trust me. I wouldn’t want to hurt you, so don’t make me do something I don’t want to do,” he crouched and put his face close to the other man’s. He pressed the knife against his throat.

     The man whimpered as a thin line of fresh blood was drawn. “Please, I beg you. Don’t hurt me,” he said again, voice barely a whisper.

     The two stayed in that position until the younger abruptly stood up. “Fine, I won’t hurt you,” he stepped back, “But it’ll be on you when she gets hurt.”

     His movement was fast and he grabbed the wrist of the single other person in the station.