1.

Myungsoo boards the last train at midnight, stumbling down the narrow aisle into a seat as the train cruises out of the station. He thinks someone should widen the aisle before a passenger trips with the ever-growing load of luggage that people seem to like carrying. Then he looks at the items in his hand – his mobile phone whose battery is nearly flat, a couple of coins just enough for a trip back, a sketchbook and a pencil.

Oh, no, Myungsoo can’t draw, but he does like to pretend he’s an artist sometimes.

He surveys the cabin and notices a nest of hair peeping out three seats in front of him. Assuring himself that he’s merely curious and not some creep with nothing better to do, he moves himself two seats forward and proceeds to burn holes through that mess of wire-like material.

Her name is Bae Suji, twenty-eight years old and what one would call a wanderer (she thinks traveller sounds better). She isn’t particularly smart or the least bit talented, but years of slogging away at an office job had given her sufficient cash to explore the world a little. Suji sips at a cup of warm coffee, bathing herself in a rare moment of melancholy and what she believes is sophistication. She gazes out the window that isn’t quite clean with the amount of fingerprints and unsightly oil stains marring the surface. She also notices the stare that makes her skin prickle slightly.

They greet, converse a little, and Suji makes Myungsoo draw a portrait of her which doesn’t turn out well, what with the occasional jolts and bumps from the train and not to mention, Myungsoo’s absolute lack of artistic skills.

2.

Myungsoo’s insomnia worsens and he finds himself back on the train, armed with the same instruments he’d brought the first time. It takes a few more trips before he meets her again – the lady who seems to have too much time on her hands; Myungsoo sort of envies her until he realises she isn’t much better off than he is.

Suji orders two cups of beverages, milo for Myungsoo because he wouldn’t fall asleep anyway, or so he claims.

“I have this fear of not living.” She confides in this stranger – whom she wasn’t supposed to meet more than once – for the first time.

“You mean, dying?” Myungsoo chuckles inwardly as he says the words, a tinge of bitter on his tongue.

“No, just, not living.”

“Aren’t they the same?”

“It means simply existing, just being, but not really living. Simply being an empty shell, you know? Just being here because you have to, not because you want to. Or just surviving. Yes, that’s the word. Surviving. Without emotions or aims or leaving any footprints behind.”

His lips twitch a little and Myungsoo sighs at this so-called ‘moment’ that he believes every teenager goes through. Except Suji isn’t exactly a teenager anymore and he doesn’t know what sort of response he should return to her.

In the end, Myungsoo decides on the standard wake-up call and makes himself the bad guy who tells Suji that Santa Claus isn’t real.

“Everyone exists for a reason. There’s no such thing as an insignificant person.”

“Who defines ‘significant’? The reason you’re speaking of, who defines it? How do they know what is truly important to each individual? How can they even have the slightest idea of what really means something to us?”

The lack of sleep makes Myungsoo cranky and he finds himself drowning in the questions Suji throws at him. A frown displays itself and then he’s surprised by Suji’s apparent ability to know when to shut up, seeing as he had thought her rather oblivious for a person. He becomes just a little worried when she stays quiet for too long and thinks he might have offended her with his behaviour. Resting his cheek against the cold table, Myungsoo scrawls out a supposed Pegasus with his non-writing hand and slides the sketchbook over to Suji.

“What is it?”

“A unicorn.”

“Liar. It doesn’t even have a horn.” He sees a grin tugging at her lips and buries his face into his arms, mumbling out barely audible words.

“Someone must’ve chopped it off then. It’s magical after all.”

“Gross.”

“Thanks.”

3.

Myungsoo slumps across the table and Suji examines the dark rims below his closed eyes.

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” He laughs and it sounds real hollow. Suji forces him to sit upright and she’s taken back when he looks at her. His eyes are blood-shot, and there’s a hint of panic, as well as some almost tangible desperation.

“Did something happen?”

He shakes his head but she thinks his words contradict his actions.

“Suji, are you afraid of falling?”

“Falling down?”

“Yeah, and all other sorts of falling. Falling sideways, forward, backward, diagonally. You don’t fall upwards do you?” She doesn’t know how he finds the strength to joke when he looks as though he’s about to pass out anytime.

“Ha, funny.”

“I try. Oh, and there’s falling in and out of love, and falling without anyone to catch you. Not because they don’t want to, mind you, but because they can’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No idea, just wondering. Are you afraid?”

“Of falling in and out of love, I guess. There’s always this voice telling me I’ll get hurt somehow.”

“And you believe it?”

“Why not?”

He avoids the question and replies with something else.

“I’m afraid of falling endlessly. With no ground to land on and no resting platform along the way. The feeling of just, dropping. It’s pretty scary you know?”

“Like a rollercoaster going downwards?”

“Something like that. Just without the seatbelts.”

“And without the tracks?”

“And without the tracks.”

4.

5.

6.

Myungsoo finds himself in the cabin again, Suji waiting in the same seat with a cup full of coffee and the other filled with milo. He smiles and walks towards her with sketchbook and pencil in hand. A few steps later he trips over the uneven carpeting and lands flat on his face.

It doesn’t hurt, but he sees red liquid dripping onto a fresh sheet of paper (and Myungsoo is too taken in by the images formed, he doesn’t realise that if he is bleeding then he should be screaming in pain).

The red seems to sink into the processed wood pulp and swirl out beneath its surface, little tributaries reaching faraway corners that he wouldn’t usually touch when drawing. He can only watch, mesmerised, as the expensive paint forms a caricature of Suji so distorted yet her.

 His precious sketchbook is snatched away and the page torn out. Red drains out in tiny streams as Myungsoo’s eyes widen in horror and utter shock. Suji kneels in front of him (he briefly acknowledges that he’s still sprawled on the ground) and holds up the grotesque image beside her face.

“Do we really look alike?” He thinks it’s somewhat like a masterpiece but since Suji seems visibly upset by it, he gulps silently and tries to convince her otherwise.

“You’re lying.” Her face scrunches up and tears escape as ugly black rivulets. Suji doesn’t wear mascara. Who are you?

“You’re lying!” Myungsoo feels thin fingers close around his throat and begins gasping for air, clawing in vain at cold hard skin.

The cabin shatters into pieces and Suji fades away. Myungsoo blinks again and recognises the doctor and his parents surrounding him. He collapses back onto his pillow, taking in air with shallow breaths.

7.

8.

Myungsoo cups his face and stares at her, more cautious this time. She seems unnerved by his actions and waves in his line of sight. Seeing as he isn’t planning on giving up, Suji resorts to reading a newspaper dated two months back and attempts to ignore the constant gaze charring holes (once again) into her head.

“Do you know what they call people like us?” Myungsoo blinks and realises she’s talking to him while looking at the grey reading material in her lap. He sighs in relief because Suji seems to be rather real after all, and arranges a piece of paper on the table to sketch the top view of her ‘crowning glory’.

“What?”

Suji deliberates for a moment.

“Leftovers.”

Myungsoo is slightly startled.

“You mean, like the leftovers from a meal of some sort?”

“Similar, I suppose. Except we’re the leftovers of society.” Myungsoo rests his elbows on the table. There she goes again.

He decides to humour her a little.

“That doesn’t sound nice. At all.”

Myungsoo doesn’t get to hear her reply because he blinks and Suji is gone once more.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Suji pauses in the midst of stirring her plain coffee and shoots up immediately to grasp onto the man who eerily resembles a walking corpse. Much like one of those Tim Burton inspired characters. Pale, pale complexion, stick-thin limbs and eyes void of life.

“What in the world happened to you? Are you on drugs?”

Myungsoo collapses onto the seat and smiles weakly, lifting a hand to wave at her. Suji is torn between laughing at his attempt and yelling for medical assistance for this person who turns up after approximately nine months looking just about dead (she doesn’t really have a legitimate reason for waiting).

“Tell me Suji, what do you think they call people like us?”

“W-What? What do you mean?” Suji feels frightened by the unfocused gaze he tries to direct at her.

“I don’t know.” He smiles and shows off the way his skin stretches over bony facial structures.

“Hey, Myungsoo, stop it. You’re scaring me. Why are you acting like this?”

He giggles and Suji is just this close to fleeing, whichever station comes next.

“Will you sing? Maybe I’ll fall asleep if you sing.” Suji clears and scrambles through her mind for a bedtime lullaby. She doesn’t get past the first two lines before Myungsoo asks her to stop.

She watches as Myungsoo sobs quietly, unable to find strength to make a more audible noise.

“Leftovers, Suji. We’re leftovers. No one wants us. Does anyone want you? I don’t think so, or you wouldn’t be here with me. Maybe it’s good that no one wants us, or just me, for that matter. Maybe it’s good.”

His whispered confessions linger along with his deadened presence as Myungsoo drags himself off the train and Suji sits in the same familiar place.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Suji picks up a newspaper dated two weeks back. She flips past the headlines; Suji prefers reading on less significant things. She comes across an article on the recent death of a young man and registers the words ‘fatal familial insomnia’. There is a collection of his artworks that they had decided to publish out of respect for the son of an elite, reputable family, and Suji traces over the image of a badly drawn Pegasus and an ugly portrait.

Suji ends her eighteen months of wandering (or travelling, as she’d like to call it).

Leftovers should disintegrate, but they don’t. Bae Suji would tell you that they burn in, hard, stitched within every fibre and woven into all of your dreams. That they creep up on you and leave imprints but you won’t really notice. That they sketch out memories and carve them down for keepsake. And that leftovers don’t just disappear; that these broken bits and scraps littered as waste remain throughout your life and into the next – that leftovers live forever.