Chapter 1: Brown

Sojung stretched her hands and slowly brought them equally at her sides. Her fingers spreaded, facing forward.

She liked it, always had and always would.

She liked to feel the different textures of the cover books at the fingertips of her hands. So that was what she did. She wandered aimlessly around the bookstore from aisle to aisle, from the fiction section to the nonfiction, doing nothing but enjoying the uplifting excitement of her sense of touch.

Sojung always liked those light, lingering feelings, always had and always would.

The bookstore on a Wednesday was always almost empty. She closed her eyes and talking small and gentle steps by steps, talking in molecules from old and new pages book smells.

She had one plan on her mind, which is whatever book that felt nice against the tip of her fingertip, she would choose it to read next.

    She unexpectedly bumped into something hard. Could it be a bookshelf? It happened to her once in a while. But it didn’t feel metalic enough to be a shelf. Perhaps it is a wall. She recalled having stumbled into a wall once.

    She brought her hand up and rubbing her head. Slowly opened her eyes again.

    The stranger took there and observed her silliness. “Umm?” he talked in a small voice like what normal people would talk in a library.

    “Sorry,” she quickly apologized, realizing she had bumped into him.

    The stranger chuckled softly and he had an amusing expression painted on his face. “It’s fine,” he insisted. He turned his back on her and his eyes travel eagerly from one book title to another across the shelf.  

    “What are you looking for?” Sojung asked curiously following slightly behind him. She spent a lot of time in that book store ever since college started. And she just thought maybe he was a new transferred student and thought he needed help searching for some book.

    “Maybe I can help you look for the book you want,” Sojung uttered and began to think that maybe he wasn’t even paying attention to her. She opened and tried again, “I know the store very well, maybe-”

    “Do you work here?” he asked casually without looking at her.

“Not really,” she retorted and added shortly after, “but my friend works here and I help him out with things like putting returned books in their right places and such."

"Oh," he replied nodding understandingly. She waited long, hoping he would say more to it but 'oh' was pretty much all that she received. He reminded her of herself the more that she looked at the way he searching effortlessly for a good book.

He was like her, had no particular preference, gendre, author, title or anything in mind. She had a feeling he was there in the bookstore for a similar reason as her, thats is to kill time. Noting these she decided just leave him alone and secondly it was time for her next class to start. She should make a good impression by going to class early.

"Oh," she said finally and started to make her way to the exit door.

"Excuse me," the same guy she tried to talk to at last spoke up.

She smiled and turned around. "Can you show me where the art section is located? Im having trouble looking for it."

She gestured him to follow and he did, while keeping a good three steps distance behind her.

"You are really lucky," she said turning slightly back, "for a small bookstore like this one, it has a whole section dedicated to art and art related books, oh here it is? What do you think, you like it? -" She twirled completely around and for the first time they met each other eyes contact directly with one another.

Her month left hanging halfway and nervousness showed on her cheeks. He didn't blink even once. He liked her eyes. Round, double lit pearl pairs of eyes. He couldn't sadly put his finger on the exact color of her eyes.

"What color are your eyes?" Asked the tall gentleman almost too bluntingly. He still was examined her eyes. She blinked.

She hesitated a little, "brown~, I think, why?"

He just nodded up and down as he was making a mental note to remember its colour. Brown he recited to himself.

Her eyes were very beautiful.

He came to a conclusion that brown must have been a nice color, a really nice color.