Chapter Twenty Two –

There are two types of being alone in the world.

The first is the good type of being alone; it’s the one where you chose to have some time off from everyone and just focus on you. That’s the time where you learn more about yourself, about what you desire and want out of life. It’s comparable to breathing country air for the first time after living a busy life in a pollution filled city.

The second type is different though. It’s not just being physically alone; it’s where loneliness accompanies you. It’s not by choice, it’s due to being deserted by others, and it’s due to pushing others away from you. It’s due to many factors, but it isn’t refreshing like the first option. It’s comparable to entering an old house and the smell of mould and musk hits your olfactory almost instantly. It lingers; it never leaves you.

The loud clacking sounds of my keyboard are the only sounds that can be heard above the soft humming of the heater. The office is basically empty besides me at this hour. My co-workers have long left the building but I just can’t leave right now – there’s far too much for me to do.

‘Don’t stay around for too long again, Kyung Mi’

My manage bid as he left for the night, 3 hours ago.

‘Don’t over work yourself,’
Minki warned as he left for the night, 4 hours ago.

‘Isn’t it a little late to still be working?’

Kang Dongho said as I rang him a mere half an hour ago to ask him to fax me some files. He’s out of the office already, he said but promised would get them to me first thing tomorrow morning.

My cases have slowly built up, I’ve spent too much of my time chasing and trying to find the origin of those dodgy case files. I’ve left many of my open cases on my to-do list, and it’s about time that I actually take a proper look at them. I can’t go home knowing that I didn’t complete my duty for these people and their cases.

Did I spend too much time trying to track those dodgy files? Why did I spend so much time? I could have just let it all go – I could have turned a blind eye on it and let someone else find out about it. The stress of those files – I should have passed it onto someone else.

The staff kitchenette and break room has become my own little kitchen and home away from home basically. A have a stack of ramen cups in one of the cupboards, a carton of eggs in the fridge, also ham and cheese as well as a loaf of bread. You can’t work on an empty stomach – well you can’t get productive work done on an empty stomach.

That, and I also promised Daehwi that I wouldn’t skip any of my meals. So I’ve been having my dinner here as I finish off some work. It’s slightly contradicting that I’m telling people how they should eat healthily to improve their wellbeing and yet I’ve been eating this for the past 2 weeks.

I’ve just been busy, I swear. I’m not avoiding home or anything along those lines at all.

All the cases I need to work on stares at me, begging for me to get to them. And yet, I can only find myself staring at my computer monitor. All those files from the dodgy cases are opened and yet there isn’t a single piece of information that could help me at all.

I stare at my computer monitor – all these files open but none of them have a single piece of information that would help me right now. How can I find out who did this and why they would do it? Why can’t I do it?

How do these files of children and adults who don’t exist, make it here? Okay, well some of the names and addresses match together but they match up to people who have died. It just doesn’t add up anymore.

It’s not the minister anymore, that’s for certain – the election has concluded and he won. If he were behind it all, these weird files would have ceased and yet keep arising. It wouldn’t make much sense anyways for the workload to continue to increase here, and yet slow down to normal with social services.

I wanted to blame the minister though. I wanted an easy answer, I wanted to put this quickly aside and solve it. I need to get back to everything before this – I need to focus energy elsewhere too.

 <