Streetlamps glowed a soft orange. Fine rain fell, making everything wet as if a silk curtain had been lowered from the sky. Soon, the city adopted a translucent quality that made the artificial lights dance on the forming puddles.

A girl ran through the street, pressing her body against the facades of the many shops, trying to escape the rain. Her effort had clearly been in vain. Her hair stuck to her face at the most awkward places, her jeans weighed down, drenched with rainwater, so much that she had had to tighten her belt to stop them slipping down. She wore her backpack front-to-back, hidden underneath a varsity jacket, two shades darker than it had been thirty minutes ago and with every step she took, one could almost hear the squelching noises coming from her white Converses.

She was cold and wet and tired and exasperated at the drizzling rain. Her eyes kept darting back and forth, looking for the bus stop sign, but she had left her glasses back at the music room and right now, her world was composed of dancing orange blurs- the light from the streetlamps.

‘Come on, bus stop…’ she muttered ‘Where the hell are you…’

It wasn’t even one of those covered bus stops- or bus shelters as they were otherwise known. It was a ty little post with graffiti-ed time-tables and buses that were always late. Last time she tried taking this bus, the driver had refused to take her on because she only had a 1000 won note. In the end, she just told him to keep the change. You’d think the poor bastard would have been in ecstasy with the large (and underserved) tip he got, but he still scowled at her and muttered under his breath as he chucked the ticket at her.

She kept running, or stumbling, until she reached a 24 hour convenience store, tucked neatly between a shady massage parlour and an equally shifty hairdresser. She’d never seen them before so this time she was sure she had gone too far.

‘That’s the last time I’m leaving my glasses behind’

She turned around, head hung low and proceeded to retrace her steps.

‘’s sake, this is completely stupid’

The rain had picked up, and she could even feel the heavier raindrops pounding against her head.

‘Way to go, Kim Taeyeon, way to go’

She looked inside her jacket, and peeled it off the backpack. The backpack was starting to get wet.

‘Anything else that could go wrong…’

She was temporarily blinded by a white light. When she managed to open her eyes again, she could barely distinguish two red lights to the sides and the silhouette of a bus.

‘What? , no, no’

She ran, not caring if she stepped on any puddles or if her change fell out of her pockets. The bus was speeding away and she was pretty sure it was the last one. She tried to spur on, telling her legs to go faster, telling her brain to tell her legs to go faster and meanwhile praying that the bus driver would see a girl flailing around in the streets and decide to stop, even if it was only out of pure curiosity.

The bus left her sight as it took a curve.

She stopped short in her tracks, her heart about to explode, her knees weak and her hair all over her face. She had just thrown away all of her dignity for a stupid ing bus.

‘ it. it. it. IT!’

‘I’ll just ing walk home then’

‘Somehow…’

She realized she had no idea how to walk back home. She had always done the journey by bus.

***

She leaned against a fire-hydrant. There weren’t any benches around so her choice was between getting her wet on a piece of a metal or getting her wet on the pavement. She looked at her watch, rubbing the face of it with her sleeve, as she attempted to see the time. It read 9:04. PM. Wonderful.

At this point she could try going back to the studio, maybe the cleaning staff would still be there and she could convince them to let her stay over as she had done on other occasions. It was a risky move though, there was no guarantee of anyone actually been there and she didn’t feel like walking for 20 minutes in vain. She could try and find another bus stop, hopefully with a different line and from there on pray that she had enough money to somehow tour her city’s public transport service and still have enough to make it home. That reminded her. Money.

She dipped her hand in her pocket. She felt four coins. Four coins! Impossible, she had pretty much grabbed a handful from the kitchen counter where she dropped her change. She counted the coins. 75 won. They must have fallen out when she was running. Great, now she was cold, hungry, wet AND poor.

‘I give up’ she breathed.

It was also getting colder, the rain hadn’t stopped but the wind had picked up and her clothes felt like slabs of ice pressed against her skin. She had given up on trying to make her way back to the studio, it was too cold to even consider walking back. She looked around and saw the convenience 24-hr sign. It was a white blur in her limited vision but she could still make out the numbers if she squinted.

Well, at least she would be warm.