Seoul

4th January, 2190.

Donghae opens his eyes, yawning as he stretches. He looks outside his window, wincing at the sharp barks from his robot dog. The sky is as bleak as it was yesterday. Yesterday. The word sends a shiver down Donghae’s spine, but he shakes the feeling off when a glass of water is delivered into his hands by their family robot servant. He places the empty glass back into the robot’s hands and it bows, moving away. When was the last time he had seen a genuine smile or action from anyone?

“Where are you going, son?” At the monotonous voice, Donghae looks up from his half tied shoelaces. “How many times have I told you to let them tie themselves?”

“Dad, can’t I do things by myself for once?” The man doesn’t say anything else in return for a while, watching the news reporter who appears so vividly in front of the living room sofa. “Can’t you behave like my son for once?” Donghae pauses at those words. He knows that his father’s colleagues always gossip about the inventor’s son who behaves like a human being from decades ago.

“I’ll be back for dinner.” He says, to nobody in particular. His father is engrossed in the news and his mother is swiping through the collection of handbags on the air screen.

He walks down the streets, taking in the sights of the streets he’s lived in for the past twenty years. He often wonders what it had been like a hundred years ago. To walk down the streets without seeing a robot, to be served by an actual human barista at his favourite cafe.

He would leave those thoughts to tomorrow. Tomorrow. Donghae pauses in his tracks. There’s a post it note on the floor, something he had only seen in his history studies book. He walks briskly towards it, picking the tiny piece of paper up.

Yesterday, cafe. Tomorrow-

Tomorrow? Donghae peers curiously at the note, looking around, but nobody is paying him any attention, most of the people busy rushing to the invention fair in town today.

He slips the note into his back pocket, rather confused at the words scribbled on it. It must have been a hasty note made by a student, or perhaps someone about to carry out an errand. Who even uses post it notes nowadays? Donghae wonders.

Yesterday, cafe.

Donghae shrugs, deciding to head to his favourite cafe for a drink, the note reminding him of where he was originally heading to.

The post it note remains folded in his pocket.