One

Kang Seulgi has been living alone in her own apartment for about a year now. She has been keeping herself hidden from everyone, going outside to the very minimal. She has an online job as a remote web developer which didn’t require her to meet her employer or her clients when she’s doing freelance work. Technology nowadays is very handy for introverts like her.

Not that she doesn’t like talking to people. In fact, she enjoyed having conversations. Her main source of social interaction is through chatting virtually for games and conversing with strangers on Tinder.

It’s just another day to waste. Seulgi wakes up at dawn, grabbing her phone from the bedside table. She reads the time and it’s seven minutes past four. She keeps waking up at this hour. No matter how late she sleeps, it’s the same. It’s like her body alarm clock has been set to this ungodly hour. She cannot control it. She has no power over it even if she wants to sleep again, she just can’t. She tried going back to sleep, shutting her eyes real hard. But to no avail, after thirty minutes or so, she’s still awake.

She gets up from the bed and walks towards the bathroom. She gave up on sleeping again. She only slept for four hours and her head is taking a toll on her. She cups a handful of water and splashes it on her face. She looks at the mirror and saw that her eyes are complete bloodshot. If her mother could see her now, she could be mistaken for a drug addict. Her face has slimmed down too. That would definitely give her away.

It’s due to the fact that she only eats twice a day. Breakfast isn’t that important for her. Maybe it was. But who would order for take-out at this time of the dawn? If she is honest, she looks like someone who is sick to the bone. She slaps her cheeks with both of her hands. She feels the sting of the impact and the ringing sound it produced. It echoed throughout the bathroom emphasizing that her whole apartment is too quiet.

She decides the need to take a shower. She craves to distract herself from becoming more insane than usual. Her neurologist might be correct. She’s too cloistered at home and it is not healthy for her physically and mentally. Her being introvert has become too much. She doesn’t even meet her family. She doesn’t have friends to meet up with. She is a homebody who put up her walls too high that no one would be able to break it. She is depressed, clinically speaking. God knows for how long. It’s been a year but it feels like she’s had it for more than her years of existence. She bears the weight of it all.  

Perhaps she would take that suggestion from the neurologist, or more likely acts like a shrink. It wouldn’t hurt to go outsi