“Are you kidding me right now?” I heard a tired voice exclaim from my doorway. I looked up and blinked, noticing for the first time how incredibly dry my eyes were. I glanced at my clock, wondering what my roommate was doing awake so early, and I was met with sunlight. To my surprise, it was already 7 AM, and I had spent the entire night awake. Again. Youngji rolled her eyes at as I shrugged. 

“No sane person would stay up all night doing absolutely nothing.” She marched over to me and closed my laptop shut. “Go to sleep, .” 

I wasn’t sleepy. I rarely ever slept. Since I was a kid, I never had the urgency to sleep, and I could very well live off of 10 hours of sleep per week. Plus, the night market was always the best. I always need to be busy, I always want to be busy. My way of keeping busy was with an online store. There’s enough labor, with receiving orders and shipping orders, and all of the junk in between to keep me busy enough. And that’s why being awake late at night is crucial; bids go down because all of the wimps are asleep, and I always get the ridiculously cheap goods before anyone else (and then sell them at 50% more expensive than they already were. A girl’s gotta eat). 

As if on cue, Youngji shrieked after she presumably bumped into one of my boxes. Everyday, I heard endless nagging about keeping my junk everywhere, and I told her repeatedly that this junk was the only reason we ever got to eat good quality produce, which would shut her up for about a day. It actually might be the assortment of useless trinkets I buy impulsively she always refers to, but that’s a minor detail. 

I had all of this money, and I had nothing to do with it, so I bought trinkets. I didn’t go to school, I didn’t have friends, or go out except for a part time job I had, and had absolutely nothing else to spend my money on, so I bought useless, tacky trinkets. To put it into perspective, my apartment was the result of the little mermaid being set loose in a flea market. 

“I’m leaving!” Youngji yelled from the door before slamming it in her typical careless nature. Youngji always urged me to enroll in her university, and I always refused profusely. I actually had a business degree already; it was an online business degree, and I wasn’t sure how valid it was exactly, but it was still there. 

The rest of my morning went by as routine as ever. I always took a quick nap, showered, arranged orders to be shipped, and left them at the post office on my way to work. 

“Punctual as ever, Semi.” My manager smiled at me. It was one of those strange smiles that came about when people pursed their lips in disapproval, but tried to maintain themselves politely. My manager hated me, and I knew it. There was something about a female delivery person he just didn’t see fit, always murmuring that I would get hurt somehow, or that I wasn’t strong enough to fight back should someone try to rob me, as if my being a female had anything to do with how well I could delivery greasy chicken to the unsuspecting public. I knew better than anyone how he secretly wanted me to crash into a pole everyday before work started, but I knew that if I was ever going to get in an accident, I would make it happen on the premises so I could at least get a paid leave. 

By now, it was 11 AM, and I could never understand why so many people wanted chicken so early. We had only been open for a few minutes, and tons of orders were already being prepared. I went to grab my uniform and an order that was ready to be delivered. 

“Put that down, Semi.” I retracted my hand, that in reality hadn’t even grabbed the box yet. I put my hands up in fake surrender, and raised my eyebrow at my manager. “We’ll just let Hyunsu take that order.” 

“He’s not even here yet.” I didn’t try to mask my voice or try to act polite.

“He’ll be here soon, just sit down and wait for a while.” I shrugged and pulled a chair out from a table. 

“Your call, boss man.” I twiddled my thumbs and looked around the store. “Just remember that you’re paying me for nothing and that your customers don’t like freezing food.” I smiled at him, and he very unwillingly nodded his head towards the box, signaling for me to go. I flashed him a triumphant smile and skipped over to the box waiting to be carried out. Every so often, us being a chain and all, we would get boxes with celebrities on them.  A couple of things about this always baffled me; how was it possible that a couple of guys on a box could make chicken sales go up, why would anyone buy so much chicken just for something they would eventually have to throw away, who the hell were all these unrecognizable faces that seemed to emerge every week, who had time to pay attention to them, and why did celebrities want to sell chicken so badly? 

“Who even are these guys?” I murmured while grabbing my helmet and walking towards the door. Apparently, I was too focused on the subject of prepubescent hormonal activity, because I almost bumped into my coworker, who just barely moved out of the way. 

“Are you serious?” He asked in disbelief. “Even I know who they are.” 

“You’re late.” I said, glaring up at him. 

“And you’re out of the loop.” He cocked his eyebrow up at me and smirked. “You really don’t know who Got7 is?” 

“Am I supposed to?” I retorted, matching his expression. 

“You’re a girl, aren’t you?” 

“Yeah, but I’m like, 20. Aren’t these guys made to appeal to 15 year olds?” 

“So you don’t even think one of them is attractive?” I looked down at the photo, examining every face. 

“No.” I said honestly. “Not one.” 

“You don’t think idols are attractive, you don’t think I’m attractive. Do you think anyone is?” He shook his head at me while walking to pick up another order. 

“I guess s aren’t my type.” I shrugged and walked out to begin my work day. 

The good thing about never sleeping is that you tend to forget what day of the week it is, and Friday always comes as a huge surprise. Friday was Youngji and I’s “Girl’s Night” - the one time we set aside our extreme personality differences, ate the trashiest food possible, and marathoned movies. Tonight’s theme was horror, and we were already halfway through The Exorcist when we heard banging noises next door. Legend has it, and by legend I mean the word of the 14 year old twins that live a floor below us, that someone was definitely (probably) murdered in the apartment next to ours, and we didn’t doubt it one bit. Every so often, during one of my late night online shopping trips, I would hear banging on the wall. It wasn’t just me, Youngji would hear it too, and refuse to leave my room for the remainder of the night. It would explain why no one had moved into it during our entire stay here, and why it gave everyone the chills. 

I shrieked when the banging came during one of the scary parts of the film, as if the entire film wasn’t a giant nightmare, and Youngji cackled at me, suddenly forgetting all the times I've played the part of the macho housemate. I smacked her, and she only kept laughing. 

“Like you don’t get scared at that too.” I rolled my eyes. 

“Not when I know it’s sounds from people moving in.” She was passed the point of cackling and on to soft giggling at this point. 

“No way? Into the murder room?” I paused the film an gave her my full attention. 

“Yes. I heard it from our trustworthy news source this morning.” She was referring to the twins, and more often than not, we’d give them the benefit of the doubt. 

“No way.” I repeated. “Did they happen to mention who?” I leaned in closer. I wasn’t very much in the loop of everything, but apartment complex gossip is one thing I could never resist. 

“Nothing much, other than it’s apparently 7 guys.” She shrugged. I frowned at that statement.

“7 guys? In a two room apartment? What losers.” I scoffed and lost interest, going back to play the film, only to jump as soon as I looked at the screen and realized what an unfortunate moment I had chosen to pause it. It sent Youngji into another laughing fit, and me into a fit of annoyance. 

Hours had passed, and it was now about 3 AM. Youngji had fallen asleep on my lap, much to my disgust, and I was onto the 3rd installment of Whispering Corridors. I had been trying to ignore it for quite some time now, but the speaking from next door was getting louder than necessary, and I was not going to have it ruin my movie night. Aside from that, Youngji kept whining every time someone next door laughed and urging me to go shut them up, and that was getting to be annoying too, so I eventually gave him. I don’t know why she even asked me to go, considering the fact that she tagged along with me anyway. 

It took a considerable amount of banging before getting a response. 

“They’re too loud to even hear me knocking.” I shook my head in frustration. 

“Maybe we should just go then. They shut up anyway.” Youngji turned around to leave, but I grabbed her arm to stop. 

“You’re right, they did shut up suspiciously close to after I knocked. But if we leave now, they’re just gonna get loud again as soon as we close the door.” She should know better by now that I am the no nonsense type, and that I would not sit here and watch these people singlehandedly disturb the peace in our building. 

I knocked again, and pressed my ear to the door, catching various voices murmuring and urging someone not to open it.  

“Hey s.” I whispered at their door. “Open up, I can hear you.” I stood up in front of their door again and could slowly hear locks slowly being undone, and the door knob turning. 

The door opened, and Youngji and I were met with 7 terrified guys, some muttering curses, some covering their faces, and all of them looking like judgment day had just been announced.