She was there again.

Perhaps Joohyun wouldn’t have been so surprised if it was only the second time, third, maybe even fourth.

But then came the fifth, the sixth, and now it was the seventh time.

And she was there again.

Joohyun remembered the first time she saw the girl. She was exactly where she was standing now, as she always was, short brown hair touched to the pole of the traffic light on the corner where Joohyun usually crossed the street to get to work.

It was 5 AM, as it always was, streets nearly empty except for the passing cars of convenience store employees and midnight janitors coming home from their graveyard shifts, sun barely peeking out over the skyscrapers as the blinding lights of the nearby gas station started to fade.

Joohyun didn’t often see people this early in the morning.

And the first time she saw her, here on this street corner, it was almost no different than the seventh.

The girl was short, hair tucked behind her ear, earbuds hanging loosely down her hoodie and disappearing into pockets of those jogging shorts with those neon blue stripes that Joohyun would absolutely detest on anyone else but somehow look good on this girl.

She was running over to the stoplight, the stripes of her shorts matching the electric blue shoes barreling down the pavement, both moving blurs of lightning striking with every step.

But Joohyun was no longer looking at the steps that came like camera flashes toward her. Joohyun could only remember how there was a twig in her hair.

It was hard to find too many trees in this city, though there were a whole line of them just two streets down. It was perhaps even harder to wind up with a fallen twig in one’s hair, the trees blocked off from pedestrians by low fences with points that ended in metal fleur-de-lys. The concrete jungle was a far cry from a wooden one, after all. It was not hard to avoid such an ordeal.

Clearly though, this jogger hadn’t.

The combination of grotesque neon attire, twig accessory, and the sudden appearance in her daily routine — which had gone so long being void of other people — left a very striking impression in Joohyun’s bleak, corporate life.

But as much as Joohyun wanted to reach out to the girl, inform her that she ended up with a piece of wood in her hair, she could not.

The shorter had turned to spare a glance at Joohyun, eyes widening almost as if it were she who was wearing a twig for a tiara. Unidentified jogger whipped her head back around, quickly averting her eyes to the button that prompts the lights to change, pretending to be suddenly consumed by the need to rapidly press it even if Joohyun had already done that just a minute before.

The traffic light turned red, the walk signal illuminated white, and the girl jogged on.

---

She was here again.

Oh God, why was she here again.

Just a week ago, during her daily jog, Seungwan had tripped over one of those low fences around the trees just outside her apartment complex, dived headfirst into a tree, and stumbled out of the whole ordeal only slightly concussed.

She reckoned that it was only slightly because her sense of balance remained intact enough to continue jogging, but still presented problems in the form of taking a right where she usually went straight and inevitably winding up on a completely different street than was her typical route.

Maybe she could’ve corrected her route, turned around once she realized it, but she didn’t.

She figured that fate must’ve caused her to fall into that glorified house planter and now this street just a few blocks down from that huge corporate building was her new, temporary jogging path for the day.

Though she was never a stickler for plans to begin with, seeing as she was very comfortable with this abrupt change in routine, she didn’t expect to develop a new one that day.

But she did, as soon as she saw that striking figure on that street corner, white button-up tucked neatly into a pencil skirt, almost glowing as bright as the headlights coming by even if the sky was dim and the shade of the skyscrapers was almost large enough to envelop the street from end to end.

Seungwan had often seen weird-looking people around her neighborhood.

She had seen old ladies doing power walks up and down the stairs of her apartment complex in their Juicy Couture hot pink sweatsuits. She had seen young adults with mohawks and dark eyeliner trudge down the street in their hefty boots with the large spikes on the toes, wondered if their emo phase was never ending. She had seen men with large gold chains around their necks and sparkling aviator sunglasses with just as gold rims pick up calls on their bluetooth headsets, conversations about the latest stock exchange rates.

So for someone so… regular, Seungwan shouldn’t have batted an eye.

There was nothing odd about the woman, dressed professionally on the edges of the business district of town, long black hair tied up in a tight ponytail. Pressed and ironed white button-ups weren’t a particularly new invention, nor one that was uncommon as it was a business casual go-to. Seungwan had seen her fair share of those, more common than the trudging teens and power walking grandmas.

But something was different about her.

Maybe it was the way she barely turned to acknowledge Seungwan barreling down the sidewalk. Maybe it was the way her eyes did a quick once-over, taking only two seconds to analyze and come to a conclusion. Maybe it was the way she didn’t even blink before returning to that silent stare across the street to the office building with that company name that slips Seungwan’s mind, eyes trained on the top of the building like aiming for a single target without further deviation.

She looked bored, if Seungwan was to be honest, like this life offered nothing interesting for her, save ambitions to climb the ranks of a workplace ladder before coming headfirst into a glass ceiling.

But she also looked put together, calm and collected and assertive.

Seungwan could garner at least that much from how she was standing, feet planted at a perfect 180 degree angle, aligning with the same distance that extended between her two shoulders. She carried herself with an aura of authority, head held upright, back straightened.

It was so different from Seungwan, her daily jog the only thing that was routine in her life. Even then, not quite, since she had completely botched her route that day.

And when she turned to look at the woman then, after stopping at the corner of intersection, when she felt the cold, ambivalent stare, something clicked in her mind.

As regular as her apparel was, her appearance was not. In fact, her beauty was quite irregular.

Seungwan couldn’t help but feel scrutinized under her gaze, as if she had committed some sort of felony for barging into the middle of her morning commute, so she turned around and pressed the button to cross. Maybe one too many times.

When she jogged away, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to see the woman smile.

And so she was here again.

Oh God, she was here again.

The woman wasn't wearing a white button-up, it was blue this time, a dark blue. She had seen several colors over the course of the past week, all some pastel pink or yellow or purple, like the woman had purchased outfits for future easters that she couldn’t utilize until then.

Seungwan hadn't seen her wear a dark color until now. It looked good.

The woman was fiddling with her phone, likely answering an email from her coworker about the latest report deadline. It afforded Seungwan more time than usual to stare, observe how the employee's eyebrows furrowed in thought, lips pursed in a more mature version of a pout as she typed a reply. The woman brushed some hair out of her face, pesky strands tamed as she curled them behind her left ear.

Seungwan wondered if she was the type to have one haircut her entire life, keeping it the same length and only coming into a salon for a trim every two months. It wouldn't be bad if she did, the haircut suited her well — slick and straight and orderly and perfect.

On the other hand, Seungwan couldn't imagine herself ever doing that. She liked the freedom she had as a freelancer, fortunate to have a steady stream of commissions and loyal base of patrons. It gave her the ability to do what she wanted, arrange her schedule as much or as little as needed (often the latter), and set the course of her day to day life as she pleased.

That love of freedom often translated into just as much liberty with style and hair. Seungwan loved to dye her hair different colors, often vibrant ones. She had especially liked when her hair was bright red, even if it did attract many looks from the stray passerbys that happened to be awake at dawn.

As the traffic light changed the same color as her former hairstyle, and as the woman began walking to the corporate building, Seungwan thought of dyeing her hair again, something eye-catching.

---

With it being the now eighth time since she had seen the jogger, Joohyun was just about ready to accept this sudden addition to her morning schedule.

But surprises were never ending with this new girl.

It would have been enough of a shock that she was now blonde.

But she was also crying.

Two novel things that Joohyun had not witnessed of her.

The jogger was always bright, always listening to some sort of peppy music, likely for the purposes of exercise motivation. As to how Joohyun knew, the girl had always left her earbuds on full volume, loud enough her to hear even several feet away.

That was one thing that wasn't different, how loud the sound was. But it wasn't the usual upbeat rhythms and funky basslines that Joohyun had gotten used to. It sounded like sentences, someone reading. The girl was listening to some sort of audio book.

Joohyun wasn’t typically one to like changes to her routine, and she particularly liked the comfort of rigid plans and predictable outcomes. If she really wanted to, she didn’t have to talk to the girl. She could just watch as her newly blonde hair caught the reflections of headlights as her tears became glass that shattered on the sidewalk.

There was no obligation to make any more room in her schedule for a stranger that crash landed into her morning with nothing more than streaks of neon light and a twig in her hair.

But Joohyun was worried.

She paid attention, believe it or not, even if she had barely gotten five hours of sleep, even if she wasn’t one to drink coffee. She had to keep alert for incoming calls from clients. She had to be observant to catch the potential errors of briefs submitted by her juniors.

So she couldn’t just ignore the twinkling eyes of the jogger, how wistful she seemed, a gray, clouded sky in contrast to the usual sunshine she was.

And so the eighth time became different than the seventh, the fifth, the first.

It was different, because Joohyun found herself talking to her for the first time.

“Bad break up?”

The jogger sniffled, turned and lifted her head off its usual resting spot on the pole of the traffic light.

“What?” She wiped tears from her eyes, hands rubbing furiously in circles about her eyelids. “Oh, is it because I’m crying?”

Joohyun can only nod.

The stranger gives a smile despite the tears rolling down her face, as if it would assuage any of Joohyun’s concerns.

“No, no. Not a break up.” She fumbled with the string of her hoodie. “It can’t be a break up because I’m not even dating anyone because I’ve just been living alone for a while and I’m single so there’s—“ The girl stops her rambling mid sentence. “Uh, yeah. No. Not a break up.”

Usually, Joohyun preferred when people answered her succinctly. When it came to asking questions of the interns about which client had just exited the building, she wanted her responses to be limited to ten words maximum.

Strangely, however, Joohyun hadn’t found the jogger’s windy tangent to be annoying. Perhaps, even, it was somewhat endearing.

And the girl had unwittingly provided additional details that Joohyun could not have garnered from mere observation, most importantly, that she was single.

Joohyun shook her head slightly, attempting to clear her mind of an unnecessary fixation on the girl’s relationship status. There were more pressing matters.

“Are you okay then?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m completely fine. It’s just- It’s just this book I’m reading, no, not reading, listening to.” She dug her phone out of her pocket and flashed the screen at Joohyun, presenting the title of the audiobook: All the Light We Cannot See . “It’s just really sad, is all. Nothing else.”

The walking signal became an orange hand.

The jogger looked apologetic. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to make us miss the light. You look like you have places to be.”

She did. She never missed the signal, even if she was answering a call. Another interruption to her routine.

“It’s fine.”

She could accept more change than she was used to.

“I’ll just let you get back to it then.”

The girl was polite, with a sweet voice and a kind face. Even Joohyun could see that through the tears, in the way she still tried to smile at a stranger.

How could change be wrong if it looked like her?

And as they spent the next few minutes in silence, this particular intersection always too slow to change the lights, Joohyun wished she had asked for the girl’s name.

opened, the walking signal illuminated white, and the girl jogged on.

That evening, Joohyun had another change in her schedule. She stopped by a bookstore on her way home, taking a detour that was just far enough away from her usual route to not be too unreasonable, just barely. She picked up a book she had never read, had never heard about until reading it off the jogger’s phone that morning (fiction was not a popular topic amongst her colleagues, after all), and spent the rest of the evening going into the night just to finish reading it.

As she sat on the sofa of her apartment, curled up in a blanket at 1:00 AM, she understood why the jogger had cried that day. Joohyun felt tears escape from her own eyes.

The book was just really sad, was all. Nothing else.

The final change in her routine was that she only had three hours of sleep instead of the usual five.

---

Seungwan didn’t understand how someone could look so beautiful and so tired at the same time.

Now she really wished that she had not listened to that audio book yesterday of all days. If she had known that it would be so gut-wrenching, she would’ve never made the decision to deviate from her usual workout playlist.

Unlike this stranger, Seungwan didn’t think that she could look as beautiful, with or without tears.

The woman was sighing today, more than usual.

She was wearing a dark mahogany button-up, once again deviating from her usual palette of pastels.

She also had a coffee in hand, an iced americano. She didn’t look to be enjoying it though, nose scrunching in disgust every time she took a sip.

Maybe she woke up on the wrong side of the bed?

Seungwan wished she could do something to lighten the employee’s mood. All she had was her peppy exercise music, nothing else she could offer her.

Would a compliment do?

Seungwan stopped leaning on the traffic light for a moment, turned to deliver her chosen comment.

“You, uh, I just look nice today.”

The woman paused mid-sip, mouth hung ajar in surprise.

“You look nice today?”

Oh, crap. Seungwan messed up.

The tips of her ears glowed red as she wildly waved her hands in front of her face hoping that the faster she moved her hands, the more quickly the woman would understand her blunder.

“No, no! I meant to say that you look nice today!”

“I look nice today?”

A vigorous nod of the head expressed Seungwan’s affirmation.

The woman looked a little sheepish.

“You don’t have to lie to me. I know I look tired.”

Her words said one thing, a denial, but the gentle smile on her face told Seungwan that she should say more, offer further affirmation.

“No, I mean it. You look great today! In fact, you look great every day.”

“You notice?”

“It’s hard not to notice someone so beautiful.”

Seungwan slapped a hand over . Wow, she was just a mess today.

“And, uh, I think you look especially nice in these darker colors.”

The woman smiled, and it was everything Seungwan imagined it to be and more.

“I- Well, thank you.”

Seungwan didn’t think she could fall in love with someone that she’d only seen at a stoplight nine times. With all of that freedom in her schedule, one might think she would’ve had more time for a date or two now and then. But she didn’t, didn’t even know what love would be like.

But then she saw that smile.

And she thought that she knew.

She didn’t get that sudden rush, those sweaty palms that people talk about. It was a feeling like a whisper, and all it told her was that she wanted to see her like that every day from now on, smiling.

Seungwan grinned back, the walking signal illuminated white, but she didn’t jog on.

Instead, she paused. She watched the woman start to walk, eyes still locked on each other.

Their mouths opened in sync.

“Can I get your name?”

---

The tenth and eleventh times passed in a blur.

They had now evolved from strangers who didn’t talk to strangers who did.

The conversations were never long, just four or five minutes of small talk as the lights took far too long to change.

During their eleventh encounter, Joohyun managed to slip in how much she enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See , which was met with an enthusiastic reception from Seungwan.

With each passing moment, Joohyun could find herself more interested in the girl.

She spent her free time wondering how she ended up jogging in that particular part of town, whether she had moved in recently. She thought about what Seungwan’s favorite color was, whether it was neon blue like her shorts, yellow like her hair.

She could’ve asked on the twelfth day, but she couldn’t.  This time, they were not alone.

One of the convenience store workers who usually headed home around this time had parked his car on the street that Joohyun and Seungwan usually crossed.

Joohyun recognized him from the few times she had stopped by during the morning to grab a snack on days she knew would be busy.

His perpetual five o’clock shadow and shaggy hair were unmistakable.

It appeared that he recognized her too, taking Seungwan’s spot by the traffic light and pressing the button to cross, turning to Joohyun with a nod in greeting.

The jogger was too easily supplanted, having to keep a few steps behind as the man quite nearly shoved her out of the way.

Joohyun turned to see what the girl was doing, simply throwing both earbuds in when she typically left one dangling.

They shot each other a sympathetic look.

Joohyun was probably more aggravated by the lack of conversation with Seungwan than the new addition.

She could only hope that this change was temporary.

After the longest five minutes of her life, most of which was spent scrolling through emails on her phone to avoid the frequent glances from the convenience store employee, the light changed and they walked across.

Oddly, Seungwan was not jogging away, still remaining at a leisurely pace just feet behind them.

“Where are you headed so early in the morning?”

Joohyun didn’t look up from her phone as she answered.

“Work.”

“Far from here?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. I’m just trying to make small talk.”

She could see the man give a shrug and a slick smile out of the corner of her eye.

“Pardon me, sir, but I’m trying to respond to an urgent email at the moment.”

She wasn’t, but she needed some sort of excuse to continue avoiding his eyes and that lopsided grin he was wearing.

Joohyun felt a hand meet her shoulder.

“Just look at me instead of your phone. It’ll only take one second for you to hear me out.”

She did look up that time, but only to direct a glare at him. He was already insufferable and it was only five in the morning.

“I just wanted to say that I see you every day as I’m driving home, and usually I won’t go out of my way for girls like you, but you really caught my eye. How about going on a date with me?” He looked so assured of himself, so confident in her reply that he continued on without even listening to Joohyun’s response. “So when do you get off from your job as a receptionist? I’ll pick you up then.”

Joohyun was not a receptionist. She did not spend an eight additional years of education and study like her life depended on it to pass the Bar and be called a receptionist.

She began to move to speak and give a very stern warning to this man as a sweeter voice piped up behind them.

“Sorry, but she’s with me.”

The man turned around at the short jogger, eyes narrowing.

“Excuse me?”

“I said she’s with me.”

He looked Seungwan up and down, lips falling into a frown.

“What do you mean? You don’t even look dressed for the same event.”

“We’re not. Ever heard of style differences?”

Seungwan’s eyebrows were knotted, arched into the most intimidating expression that Joohyun had ever seen on the girl. Easily, she wrapped an arm around Joohyun to pull her away from the stunned man’s grasp.

“Either way, I don’t really owe you an explanation, but I think you’ll need one considering how stubborn you’re being right now. I promised to take her out to dinner after work, so I’ll be the one picking her up.”

The pair continued walking down the sidewalk as the stranger stills, watching them recede. Seungwan threw a final comment behind her shoulder as they went on their way.

“And my car is a lot better than that broken down pick up you parked back there.”

Joohyun heard the man huff as he trudged back to his car, grumbling all the way.

Seungwan untangled herself from Joohyun, hands trembling as her arm returned to her side.

“Phew! I don’t know what I would’ve done if he stayed. I was terrified to be honest.”

The jogger took a look at her offending arm for a moment, before glancing back at Joohyun, eyebrows raised. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you without your permission… or do any of what just happened for that matter! I just kind of moved without thinking and you kind of looked uncomfortable and mad and I just knew I had to—“

Joohyun clasped her hands around Seungwan’s, ceasing all speech coming from the jogger’s mouth.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“Probably get into a fight?”

“Yes, yes. Maybe I would’ve.” Joohyun chuckled. The street corner where they stopped was long behind them now. As they approached Joohyun’s building, she couldn’t help herself from asking, “So were you serious about that dinner?”

---

Joohyun was ready for their thirteenth encounter.

It may have been an unlucky number, but more often than usual, these days, Joohyun believed that things could change, and that change was sometimes good.

Well, she might’ve thought that of their thirteenth encounter had there been one to begin with, but the day turned out to be just as unlucky as Joohyun could’ve anticipated.

The lawyer thought that things had been going well. They had a nice dinner last night, able to learn more about each other than they ever would’ve been able to before in those short snippets of conversation between the green, yellow, and red of the stoplights.

Joohyun learned that Seungwan was a freelancer, loved morning jogs more than anything, spontaneously changing her route every once in a while. Contrary to what Joohyun believed, Seungwan had been living in the city for a while. She just didn’t usually choose to run around the business district, but thought to venture outside her comfort zone one day because it simply felt right.

While their conversation debunked that misconception, it only confirmed others. Seungwan was one of the sweetest people she had ever met. She didn’t hesitate to get up and foot the bill when Joohyun had taken a moment to use the restroom, even when the lawyer had offered to split it earlier. Naturally, though, Joohyun had slipped her half into Seungwan’s purse as they were parting ways.

But as Joohyun was standing on this street corner — their street corner — she could only wonder where the jogger had disappeared to.

She was just starting to appreciate change, but the girl’s inexplicable absence gave her gnawing anxiety.

Did she scare her away last night?

Maybe she shouldn’t have told the girl so much about herself, she wasn’t even sure if it was a first date or not. Sure, Seungwan did mention that she had a great time as she dropped Joohyun off at her apartment, but maybe she was just being nice. She seemed like the type.

Of course, Seungwan’s absence wasn’t the sole source of Joohyun’s nervousness right now.

In the late hours of the previous night, Joohyun received an email from her superior that the client’s trial was being moved up a week. That barely left Joohyun enough time to finish arranging the arguments and organizing the evidence. She spent the whole night sorting through everything so that she could show up to work prepared to whip her team into overdrive to get everything ready before the deadline.

This was a case she could not lose. The client was high profile and it could mean the difference between moving up from associate to partner in the firm.

But she was exhausted from the lack of sleep lately, eyes blinking slowly at the walking signal across the street.

She thought she saw it illuminate white, took a few steps forward.

First, there was a whirring of a car engine rushing by.

Next, there was a breeze on her face in its aftermath.

Then, there were arms wrapped tightly around her, pulling her out of the street.

“I thought you were the cautious type.”

Joohyun had only heard that voice a few times in the past few days, but it was firmly implanted in her memory.

“I didn’t think you would come today.”

“You almost got killed by a car and your first concern is that I’m here today?”

Joohyun could only gulp.

Seungwan shook her head, breath uneven. “I thought you thought better of me than that. Think I could just date you once then go?”

“So it was a date?”

“And here I was thinking I was usually the one with scattered speech,” the jogger chuckles softly, digging her head into Joohyun’s shoulder. “You look tired today. You should take the day off, prevent any more accidents.”

Joohyun gently pushed herself away from Seungwan’s arms, part of her longing to ensconce herself in the warmth of the girl’s hoodie again.

“No. I- I can’t. Today’s important. I need to get this done.”

“It shouldn’t matter more than your health, right?”

Joohyun let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t think you understand how important this case is. I mean, you don’t even really know me yet.”

“I think I do, though.”

Joohyun stared at the shorter in bewilderment.

Another car rushed by. The skyscrapers seemed to sway. The traffic light turned red.

The world changed. The world stood still.

The tips of Seungwan’s ears grew red. She scratched the back of her neck.

“I know it’s only been the 13th time that I’ve seen you on this street corner. But I feel like I’ve known you for a long time, weirdly enough. And even if I haven’t, there’s so much you can learn from just watching someone.”

She paused, looking at the bright lights of the gas station across the street, collecting her thoughts.

“I know that you like to wear button-ups, especially ones in pastel colors. I know that you’ve changed recently to darker tones, ever since I told you I thought you looked nice in them. And, well, you’re very observant. You startle so easily when a car goes by because you’re always paying attention to the road, except today, I suppose. You’re hardworking, if that wasn’t evident enough by your dedication to come to work so early in the morning. You like routine and you’re very punctual, always here at five on the dot.”

Seungwan made eye contact with Joohyun for her final statement.

“Most importantly, you’re kind. Kind in the way most people don’t notice. You approached me that day I was crying, even though you didn’t have to, even if we’ve never talked before. And I noticed how you talked with me about that book, just the day after. You recalled so many details that you must’ve read it recently, almost as if you picked it up after talking with me that day. I wonder if you did.”

Joohyun watched the traffic light turn red, the walking signal illuminate white, and she can’t walk on.

“Is that enough to know someone?”

“Surely you’ve learnt something about me in this time.”

Seungwan was right.

Joohyun learned that the girl was freedom itself, spontaneous and reckless sometimes in all the ways that Joohyun wasn’t. She learned that she loved the color blue, whether it was neon or electric or a lighter hue. She learned that she was brave at the weirdest of times, able to step out her comfort zone to confront a man almost a foot taller than her, yet could fluster so readily if Joohyun spent one too many seconds looking at the girl. Above all, she was sensitive, empathetic. She cried while listening to a story on a street corner. She paid the bill without hesitating. She comforted Joohyun without even knowing her.

Or maybe she did. Maybe they knew each other more than Joohyun would have thought.

“I wonder if I did.”

Seungwan nodded, smiling. “And to answer your question, whether that’s enough to know someone, maybe it would be, for others.” She placed a hand on Joohyun’s shoulder, warm and inviting. “But I’d like to know you even more.”

As they waited for the lights to change, Joohyun thought back on their past rendezvous on street corners.

She was glad that she was here again.

She hoped that she would stay.