Lists, schedules, routines, control. That’s how Soyoung likes to live her life. She wouldn’t necessarily call it OCD, but she likes to know what is going on in her life and what she’s doing. Being in control of what happens in her life gives her comfort. She hates the uncertainty of life and tries her best to plan and strategize what goes on. Being a college student, she lives her life with a very simple routine. Class, eat, study, sleep, repeat. Change makes her nervous and gives her anxiety. Even when she was in high school, she planned to go to college and major in nursing. It would take her about 4 years to get her degree and then she plans on going to graduate school to become a pediatric nurse. Sometimes she create lists of what she has to do and gives herself time for each task. It helps keep her organized and keeps the stress at a minimum. Today is Thursday and the schedule is as follows:

10AM-11:50AM : Nursing 101

12:30PM – 1:45PM : Psychology 101

3PM – 4:50PM : Anatomy Lab

5:30PM – 6:45PM : Anatomy Lecture

7:30PM-9PM : Study For Anatomy Test

9PM – 11PM : Relax

11:30PM : Sleep

Soyoung just finished her psychology lecture and is waiting in line to buy food. The line is taking forever and she worries because she wanted to get some studying done before her anatomy lab started since she had a quiz that day. She finally got her food and starts to eat as she pulls her book out to study the bones of the body. Her phone starts to buzz and she sees that her dad is calling her. She picks up the phone to answer it.

“Hi Daddy!” she says as she smiles. She hadn’t seen her dad in over a month and she misses him a lot.

“Hey sweetie.” His voice sounds tired.

“What’s wrong? Did you just wake up from a nap?”

“No, I’m in the hospital.” He says with a sigh.

“What?! What’s wrong? Did something happen?” worry starts to wash over her as she think of the worst.

“I don’t know, my chest started to tighten and hurt while I was at work and I was sent to the ER. They’re doing tests right now.”

“I’ll come visit you tomorrow since I don’t have class.” said said as calmly as she could.

“Okay, but don’t worry too much okay, I’ll be fine.” her dad says reassuring her.

“I won’t, I promise.”

“Okay, I have to go. Have a good day and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, love you daddy.” she says and hangs up. She set aside the sandwich she was eating because she lost her appetite after hearing the bad news. She already has a lot to do tomorrow since Friday was a big study day for her. She managed to get through the rest of her day without trying to think about her dad, although she couldn’t sleep very well.

Soyoung wakes up the next morning at 9AM. Friday’s schedule:

9AM : Wake up

9AM – 10AM : Shower and get ready

11AM – 12PM : Eat lunch

12:15PM – 2PM : Visit dad at hospital

2:30PM – 4:30PM : Study group at library

5PM – 5:30PM : Eat dinner

6PM – 7PM : Study

8PM – 10PM : Relax/Do laundry

10:30PM : Sleep

She had to cancel hanging out with her best friend Eunae because she has to visit her dad at the hospital. Eunae didn’t mind and said they could reschedule another day. After eating her lunch, Soyoung drove to the hospital. She asked the lady at the front desk what room her dad was in. She took the elevator and found his room. She walks in and sees her dad reading a newspaper. When he sees her, his face immediately lights up. Soyoung’s mom died when she was 11 leaving just her and her dad by themselves. So she would be devastated is something were to happen to her dad. She gives her dad a hug and asks him if they found anything about what happened to him. He tells her it’s nothing serious and that he needs to recover in the hospital for a couple of days and then he gets to go home. She relaxes a bit when she finds out it’s nothing serious.

The 2 hours fly by and it’s already time to leave. Soyoung gives her dad a hug goodbye and walks out of the room. As she turns around the corner she runs into someone holding a stack of books in their hands. All the books fall out of their hands and onto the floor. Soyoung quickly apologizes and helps the person pick up the books. The person laughs really loud and apologizes too. She looks at him and analyzes his face. She recognizes him as being in her psychology class but she couldn’t remember his name. She hands him the last few books that were on the ground.

“Hey, you’re in my psych class!” he exclaimed as she looks at her.

“Yeah, I am. I’m Jung Soyoung.” She smiles.

“Lee Jaehwan, nice to meet you.” He smiles as he carefully offers his hand for a handshake under all the books. She gently shakes it careful not to make him drop the books again.

“What are you doing with all these books?” she asks seeing that the books are little kids books not chapter books.

“Just donating some books for the kids to read here.” He smiles. “These have been in the back of my closet for years so I decided to donate them to the hospital.”

“How generous of you.” Soyoung notices that she’s late for her study group and tells Jaehwan goodbye.

“Okay, well I’ll see you in psych class.” He says as he turns and walks away.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much a blur for Soyoung. All she seems to be doing these days is studying for tests and quizzes and stress never seems to leave her. Just one more week until spring break and she could finally take a break from studying and just relax and sleep in.

It turns out Jaehwan was also in Soyoung’s speech class on Mondays and Wednesdays. So for the whole week she saw him 4 days in a row with psych on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And every time he would sit next to her and occasionally talk to her. She thought he was a pretty nice guy, but when he talked to her he was very loud and cracked a lot of jokes that made her laugh. He was nice to be around and it seemed to make all the stress that Soyoung was dealing with that day to disappear. On Thursday, just before psych ended Jaehwan turns to Soyoung and gives her a big smile.

“What?” she says as she admires his smile.

“What are you doing for spring break?” he asks.

“Nothing, just staying in my room and sleeping in.”

“We should hang out, do something fun!” he says.

“Okay, when did you want to do it?”

“Umm, I’m busy this weekend so sometime next week maybe? You should give me your number so I can text you.” He says pulling out his phone. Soyoung agrees and gives him her number.

“Sweet! Okay, I’ll text you when I’m free.” He says as he grabs his backpack and stands up to leave.

“Bye Soyoung!” he says as he flashes her his amazing smile and walks out.

~ ~ ~

It was Monday morning and Soyoung wakes up to a loud knocking at her door. Her roommate is gone for the week and Soyoung stubbles out of bed to the door. She looks through the peep hole and sees Jaehwan’s face, or rather his nose in front of her door. She’s confused since he hadn’t texted or called her at all over the weekend and seeing him outside her door freaked her out. She opens the door slowly and peeks out to make sure it was really him.

“Why aren’t you ready yet?” he asks as he forcefully enters her room.

“What do you mean? You didn’t even text me to plan a day that we could hang out.” Soyoung says still confused.

“Well let’s hang out this week. Come on, hurry up and get dressed.” Jaehwan says as he looks around her room.

“This week? You want to hang out every day?” she asks as she looks through her closet. He’s lucky that she showered last night so she didn’t need to shower in the morning.

“Yeah, let’s go on a trip. Pack enough clothes that will last you a week.” He says brightly.

“But we didn’t even plan anything. Where are we going? What are we gonna do?” she quickly asks.

“I don’t know.” He simply said. He sees a piece of paper on her desk and reads it.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Soyoung immediately asks.

“What’s this?” he asks totally ignoring her question and showing her the paper.

“That was my schedule for last week.” Soyoung quickly grabs her favorite long sleeve shirt and a pair of skinny jeans and walks into the bathroom to change and do her hair. Jaehwan looks at her schedule again and wonders why she writes down everything that she does. Last Thursday was a busy day for Soyoung:

9AM : Wake up

10AM-11:50AM : Nursing 101

12:30PM – 1:45PM : Psychology 101

3PM – 4:50PM : Work on speech

5:30PM – 6:45PM : Anatomy Lecture

7:30PM-9PM : Hang out with Eunae

10PM – 12AM : Eunae’s boyfriend’s bday party

1AM : Sleep

 

Jaehwan sets the paper down and notices a stack of papers that had similar stuff written on them. He looks at each one and sees she had over 50 or more schedules written down. Although they were similar they still had little differences here and there. He notices post-it notes all over her desk of lists and mini schedules of things that Soyoung did or plans on doing for the week/month. Soyoung comes back from changing and sees Jaehwan looking at all her old schedules she had written up.

“Mind telling me why you have your whole life written out hour by hour?” Jaehwan asks with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“I like to be organized.” Soyoung says as she grabs a small suitcase and starts putting clothes and bathroom stuff in it.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to be so OCD about it.” Jaehwan laughs. Soyoung frowns to what he says. She hates that term ‘OCD’ and she hates when people tell her she has it. She doesn’t have it, she just likes to be organized and know what she is doing. There’s nothing wrong with planning out your day. She finishes packing and finds Jaehwan still looking at her lists and schedules.

“Yah, stop looking at those already.” She said annoyed because she could feel him judging her.

“Sorry, I just find it really weird that you do this.”

“Well I like to know what I’m doing and plan things out more than most people. I hate surprises so when I have something planned, I tend to stick to it.” She says with irritation in her voice.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that.” Jaehwan says as he neatly puts her schedules back on her desk. Soyoung takes that as an apology and relaxes.

“Are you sure we should do this? I mean it’s kind of really random and out of the blue. I’d prefer if we plan stuff out before we leave.”  Soyoung’s voice wavers as she says the last sentence.

“Yes of course! Are you ready to go?” He asks as he grabs a piece of paper.

“Yeah.” She says nervously.

“Good,” he hands her the piece of paper. “this is your schedule for the week.”

Soyoung looks at the paper with a confused look on her face. The paper is blank, she even looks on both sides to make sure she didn’t miss something.

“There nothing written on it.” She says as she shows him the white piece of paper.

“Exactly! This week you will live your life not knowing what you’re gonna do at every hour of every day. Just go with the flow of things, it’s much more fun that way.” He says with a big smile on his face.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Soyoung says with worry in her voice. Not knowing what she is doing gives her a lot of anxiety and makes her stress out.

“Just trust me, you won’t regret it.” He says as he takes her suitcase and they walk out the door.