Monday, March tenth 1997.

Han Yebin opened the door of her apartment, put her purse onto the cupboard in the hall, and took off her shoes, dropping them on the wooden floor, which resounded really loudly in the complete quietness and silence of the solitary flat that she called her home. She looked at the clock, sixteen minutes to midnight.

She loathed her job; it made her come home too late. The rest of the city was probably already in bed, preparing for tomorrow, while she hadn’t even had dinner.

She loathed her job as a waitress. She loathed her night shift. But she needed the money to pay for her third year in college. The money her mother had left her had vanished in her apartment rental, transport, and other necessities; while the scholarship she had been given wasn’t a full scholarship.

‘When this school year comes to an end, I promise to look for another better-paying job with fewer hours. I can’t live my life properly like this, I barely have any free hours a day.’ She said to herself as she opened her old fridge to find a pot of mayonnaise, a carton of milk, three apples, and a jug of water. She frowned and went to the cupboards to check if she had at least some instant ramen.

‘I ran out of ramen and I don’t have bread either, great, Han Yebin.’ She ran a hand through her dark blonde hair, angered. Then, she went to the kitchen window and looked at Level’s, a convenience store on the other side of the street.

Now I'm going to have to buy canned food until Friday because I totally forgot to go and buy the groceries. Thank you, Mr. Jeon, thank you for sending that hard project last week.

She tied her hair in a messy ponytail, and quickly picked up her pastel blue wallet and her keys. She put on her denim jacket and black combat boots and went out, not before looking at her clock. One minute for midnight. The walk lasted about three minutes. It was cold, since the nights in March used to be cool.

As she entered, the warm air from the store's heater collided softly against her face and the sound of contemporary R&B reached her ears. She greeted Mrs. Go Jooyoung, the pleasant fifty-year-old only employee and owner of the store, who had worked there since she could remember. She returned the greeting sweetly, with a smile that never left her face.

She headed for the instant food shelves and picked up a bowl of shrimp-flavored ramen, then walked to the refrigerators section to get a few bottles of Sprite, her favorite fizzy drink.

She was humming an old song that was playing through the store speakers and had two small bottles of Sprite in her hands when someone stood beside her. She turned her head slightly to see who it was. It was a simple reflex act, but she was puzzled when she saw that the boy next to her, – who seemed to be around her age, who was choosing a drink and whom she hadn’t seen even once in the twenty-one years of her life – wore the same clothes as her.

Yebin blinked one, two, and three times to make sure that what she was seeing was real. The same clothes, the same denim jacket, the same graphic t-shirt with a picture of a light green alien head, the same black jeans, even the same boots and the same pastel blue wallet!

The boy, who realized that she was looking at him, smiled politely at her, and Yebin didn’t linger around there much longer to smile back at him, she turned around, and hurried towards the cash register, where Mrs. Go greeted her back joyfully.

'Are you alright, Yebin? You look a little pale; you shouldn’t be awake this late.'

'Don’t worry, I’m OK. Mrs. Go, let me ask you something, what time does this store close?’

'We close at 2AM. Everything will be 6030₩.’ Mrs. Go said with a smile. Yebin handed her the money and picked up her bag.

'Thank you.'

'Have a peaceful night.'

She shot a last glance inside when she was closing the door gently, the boy was still there, with a bottle of Fanta and a bag of chips in his hands, looking for something on the few shelves the store had.

During the three-minute walk from the store to her house the scene of the boy and his clothes had replayed in her head, to the point she almost crossed the street when cars were still passing if it wasn’t because a man grabbed her arm. However, the boy and his clothes faded away from her mind once she set a foot in her apartment, at least for a while.

Her cat, Ddalgi, came out to greet her, rubbing against her leg.

'Ddalgi! Where have you been?’ She looked disapprovingly at the animal, who probably went out of the window to hook up with the opposite , and was back at this hour because she was hungry.

'Note to self: close the windows the next time I leave the house...' She mumbled as she walked to the kitchen after taking off her shoes and jacket, and fed the cat. Ddalgi approached in the blink of an eye to eat the superb food her owner had served her. Yebin, watching as the cat approached to eat, put the noodles to boil and proceeded to gift herself with a much deserved warm shower.

~

'You know, Ddalgi, something quite surprising happened to me today.' She stopped her fur so she could grab the Sprite bottle and take a sip from the refreshing drink. The gray tabby looked at her with deep green eyes and tilted her head, as if she understood what Yebin was saying, when in fact all she wanted was the girl to continue caressing her, not caring at all about the stories her owner told her.

'I was at Level’s grabbing something to eat when a guy came up to the fizzy drinks shelf, but you don’t know the best part... he was wearing the same clothes as me, exactly the same! Can you believe it?’ Ddalgi yawned and dropped her head in her lap, closing her eyes.

Yebin smiled and let the cat sleep on her lap, then dropped herself in the arms of Morpheus due to exhaustion, with the television sound in the background, at 12:34 AM.