Day 13 – Next door (Sunday)

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She moved her shoulder slightly and stopped. She moved it again, but this time, to remove the blanket over her body. As she sat up with the help of her forearm, she felt pain on her neck, having slept in the wrong position all night. She had gone early in bed yesterday night, or was it late? She didn’t remember, having gone into deep thinking while looking the ceiling as she hugged her pillow. Before doing that, she had passed an hour kicking soft objects in the house, but when she had ended up kicking the bookshelf, she had cried for a good ten minutes, for the reasons that it hurt her big toe and that she was letting out her anger. She was hugging herself all along and when she had finally calmed down, she had gone into the bathroom, removing the makeup and the ribbons in her hair. She had thrown all her outfit into her closet without folding them and had taken her cotton pyjamas. Since then, she was on the bed, with a bottle of water near her bed’s foot and the remote control near it.

She knew she was hungry, yet she couldn’t help herself to move out of the bed. To make the feeling stop, she clutched her stomach and she looked right in front of her, into the space. What was the hour, anyway? The sun was visible outside her window and it was pretty high up in the sky. It must be near noon, she thought. She decided she would do a good deed if she finally got up and fetched some food for her strained body. She slid her fingers against the wall as she made the contour of the bed till she was into the kitchen. She turned left for her small fridge and opened to see what she had. There was some caramel pudding in the corner and it was the first thing her eye caught. She took it with a spoon from one of the drawers behind her to return to the main room.

She sat back on her bed, a leg under the other as she put the spoon in to open her pudding’s lid. She lowered to scoop the remote and opened the television. She buzzed through the channels until she found some drama to change her mind.

The empty pudding pot laid on the ground side by side with the near empty water bottle while Jooyeon was sitting cross legged, her back against her bed’s border. She giggled as she saw the main host of the variety show was getting himself in an embarrassing situation. A few hours had passed, and she was still in the same situation. The show went into break with pubs coming one after another. She lingered her eyes around the room, when she stopped and started staring outside the window. She still hadn’t forgiven the other girl, and she wasn’t going to, yet. She was still filled with mixed feelings. Just as she watched the sky, a yellow bird appeared at her window’s border. It was a beautiful one, and quite unusual since she had never seen this kind of bird around. Out of curiosity and amazement, she went towards it and watched it, remarking it still hadn’t moved to her view as it was cleaning its wing’s feathers. She slowly slid the window up, to have a better view. The bird flew away when it looked at her for a second. Her hands on the outside border of the window, she looked at it flying away whereas a faint melody was starting to play in the air.

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Her hair was all over her face when she was trying to move around in the bed. What made her wake up was the tickling of the hair in her nose, making her sneeze three times in a row. She even managed falling out of the bed because her hair was hiding her vision. She tried walking further towards the door, and she fell, again, this time because of her blankets all over the floor and circling her feet. She ended up crawling on all four to get out of her bedroom. Once in the living room, she flipped her hair back to have a better view. She saw that the taken spot under the window from yesterday was empty and the lights in the kitchen were open. She quickly crawled back into the bathroom.

“GOOD MOOORNING.” Lizzy jumped in front of the kitchen’s door.

“Morning.” Replied Yujin as she mixed the pot of soup. “Are you always like this in mornings?”

“Hah. You should’ve seen my face a while ago.” She still felt awkward as she remembered the situation the “human” in front of her was in. “Err… Do you need help?”

“If you do not mind, take out some black pepper and salt, I had a hard time finding these anyway.”

“You could’ve waked me up.” Said Lizzy as she opened a cupboard and took out the spices and put them near Yujin. She went into a higher cupboard to take out round bowls.

“You seemed way too comfortable, didn’t want to bother.”

Lizzy watched her as she put the bowls and took out the spoons from a lower drawer. “Uhhh… This might be an awkward question, but it’s because I have no idea when you’re genuinely being nice, so… Why are you speaking in a single dead tone?”

“I was expecting this question anyway, it’s okay. I would say it has changed, I think. I feel like I was talking more monotonous before, not sure…”

Lizzy raised an eyebrow to the confusion of the latter. She seemed way too lost about herself. “And the reason for that is…?”

“I don’t have a heart, isn’t it obvious?” asked Yujin as she poured soup into the bowls.

Lizzy smacked herself on the forehead as she remembered what this girl was exactly. She remained silent as she took the basket of bread while Yujin was coming behind her with the bowls. She put them on the table and took out one of the chairs to sit on. Since Lizzy’s place was at the end of the hallway, it was bigger, a three and half. Her living room felt bigger since it also contained a rectangular dining table with four chairs. At the end, where the big window was, there was a TV on a shelf and two couch, one perpendicular to it and the other one facing it, both a dark brown colour. The walls were beige and the carpet was a mix of pistachio sways with different shades of brown.

They both started drinking from their soups, taking a piece of bread in a while. Yujin quickly got up and went into the kitchen, bringing back two cups and going back. She brought a kettle of tea and poured the insides into the cups. She gave one to Lizzy and continued eating. The latter was wondering where she could start from.

“You can start with the questions.” Yujin had noticed Lizzy staring at her for some time now.

Lizzy was a little embarrassed that she was caught. “O-okay. Tell me; are you a soul, a ghost or something like that, like in movies?”

“You humans have such weird way of thinking. No. I’m not. And there isn’t something like that. I am a dark creature, made of particles. The real form is a skeleton with a layer of particles on it, giving it a form of a human body. Then, there are the light creatures. Except they’re made of light particles, making them completely white coloured, or a light shade of yellow. There is also angels and demons. These are forever trapped into the gates of Hell and Heaven as they wait for Judgement Day. When humans will be classified according to their deeds and go to either one of the places, the angels will be serving the humans for an eternal life having things they never had and so on. On the other hand, demons will be eternally torturing the bad people by chaining them and burning in fire. Whenever they will burn, they will reincarnate to burn again every time.”

“Then what about you? How come you look so human, and on top of that, Korean?”

“I don’t know, really. But the rest are just like what I told you, we even accidentally let our footsteps be heard, sometimes.”

Lizzy’s face was surprised to the reality of things. “Then does that mean the supernatural things that happen around the world are your work?”

“Ummm, yeah, if you say so. Some dark creatures start by punishing the bad ones by scaring them. Sometimes we have visibility problems so you see for a glimpse of a moment, a shadow in your house or outside. And of course, you humans love to exaggerate.” She rolled her eyes.

“Can you show me what it is like?”

Yujin got up from her seat as Lizzy looked at her. Her form suddenly disappeared and Lizzy was left alone. There was silence for one, two, three minutes until the TV started going on and off with the remote in the air and the window closing and opening non-stop. Lizzy’s eyes widened as she still didn’t turn back to see what was going on behind exactly,