With sticky, sweaty hands stuck to the paved walls, Chan Hee stumbled on. Her breath left her in pants, and she was gasping for some fresh air. The sewer smelt just like she had imagined it to; dead. Behind her a hand touched the small of her back, sending shivers up her spine but urging her on. She saw the tall masked figures passing on either side of her and knew she didn’t have the luxury of simply waiting anymore.

For wishful thinking she remembered the day she’d first gotten here. The day the sun darkened upon the realization that this was real. Her fingers trembled against the ugly, stained concrete and she felt sweat roll down her temples as she sloshed through the mess and after the four men ahead of her. She still didn’t feel like it was real, but where was her reason to deny it?

Something like the piercing cry of a creature in agony came from up ahead, stopping the group dead in their tracks. Her limbs fell dead, but she stood as if all they’d done was turn to stone. She closed her eyes for a moment, wishing for all the bravery in the world.

“Believe, believe,” she reminded herself, her grip tightening around the base of the handle of a metal bat that hadn’t been there before. She twisted it slowly in her wet palm and whispered to herself again. Believe.

She opened her eyes.

 

The sun was shining bright on the officetel floors and the sound of the washing machine rumbling in the background was welcomed over the noise of the light early afternoon traffic below. The windows were just slightly open, allowing the warm summer breeze to tickle the baby hairs on her cheeks. Snuggled into the corner of the odd three seat sectional, Chan Hee’s hands were running over the spine of a weathered Charles Dickens novel. Well, less than a novel she assumed, more that of a reference book, but she loved it all the same. 

Her eyes scanned the pages with wonder, her mind being filled with all the endless possibilities of how he could have connected words together to make magic. She marveled at the writing, though her English was as bad as her Chinese; which was saying something. With her free hand she the crucifix necklace around her neck and continued to stare down at the pages.

“Hee!” the call came from the loft and she huffed loudly in response to Ki Young. The elder of the two girls, Ki Young was always calling from her work studio up the stairs. She ate, slept and very scarcely wanted to leave the space she was in, save when she had a hot date with the ddeokbokki stands from the market. Her voice, while gentle enough, was the source of Chan Hee’s misery whenever she realized how much she needed. “Hee!” she called again.

“Eonni!” Chan Hee called back, tilting her head back to stare up at her. “What?”

“How rude you are to me,” she tsked, clicking her tongue. “I ought to discipline you.”

“With a paintbrush?” she sarcastically teased back, waving her arms around like she was an octopus in distress. “Oh please, save me.”

Ki Young split a nasty look with the generous smile she seemed to have painted on her face. Padding down the steps in her paisley print jumper and white tee she shoved her hands into her pockets, leaning over the couch to stare right into her face. “Let’s go eat something good,” she cooed as if she were talking to a baby and pinched her cheeks. With a loud whine, Chan Hee slapped her hands away and watched as her meagerly five foot friend skipped away to the freezer, propping her chin inside of it.  

Turning in her seat to look back at her, she rolled her eyes. “Again?” she questioned, her voice filled with exasperation. She heard her loud grunt from inside the freezer door. “You always want to go eat.”

“It’s how I get my inspiration to draw,” she called back.

“And how you rob me of my poor savings,” she mumbled under her breath, after giving her friend a rather unfriendly glare, and turned back around to her book. “You go eat by yourself. Just bring me back something,” she responded, propping the peeling book spine onto her knees.

She didn’t miss the sound of the freezer closing and cringed long before the palm of Ki Young’s hand swiped the back of her head. Hissing, she began rubbing at it while Ki Young started giving her the third degree talk; her hands went to her waist, nose wrinkled up and her voice leaked with the sounds of a mother scolding her children for misbehaving. “You know you can’t let me go out by myself,” she said, shaking her head full of chestnut brown hair. Her warm eyes slanted towards her and grew demanding. “You know how I get when I go out by myself. All…”

“Anxious. I know, I know,” she waved her down from her soapbox before she could stack it a level higher. The truth was that Ki Young had a real abandonment issue, and her problem with being alone was that she never knew what to do with herself. When they’d been in high school Chan Hee would by leaving her alone in the courtyard for as long as possible, her own form of therapy she called it. But she hadn’t done it since she’d witnessed her having an actual breakdown from her parents leaving the house without notifying her. The shock of watching her crumble was enough to make her cringe every time she thought of teasing her again. Moving into the officetel with her hadn’t been her first option either. She’d been renting on a small two bedroom place with her mother during her first year of school, but when she had learned that Ki Young was also living in the area, and attending the same university, they “decided” to live together.

 It all worked in favor of her mother who was going back to the countryside for a more natural setting, and had helped her pay the renting fees to their landlady. The only problem now was that Chan Hee didn’t know if she was going to get move out before Ki Young got married. They seemed to do everything together, and it wasn’t because they were that close; it was because she could never be away for more than an hour before Ki Young would check in. Their relationship was calming, in most ways, but also entirely too frustrating.

Plopping herself on the couch she rubbed at her head and stared down at the back of the book. “You’re reading that again?” she asked as if it weren’t obvious. She didn’t give her an answer. “Please,” she sighed. “I’ll get you a new copy if you come with me.”

“With what money?” Chan Hee looked up at her and scoffed. “You’re as broke as I am.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said.

“And you still want to go out to eat?” she scoffed. “What about emergency money? What if the toilet decides to do that weird stopping thing again and we can’t fix it with the…”

“I get it,” she sighed, waving her down and looking out the window. “But it’s such a nice day.” Her voice was very sing-song, like she did it for a living. The most she ever did was sell her paintings online and use the money to buy useless things. The rent money and money for utilities was funded through her parents and by Chan Hee. Groceries were limited to whatever was on sale typically, but there was always more than enough daikon kimchi available. Of course, that could have been because of Ki Young’s terrible habit to always buy it and then want to eat out; she wasn’t pointing any fingers, yet. Suddenly, Ki Young perked up so fast she made the chair shake. “We could go get that new CD you want.”

Tempted but still broke, she set the book aside and folded her arms across her chest. “Again, I ask, with what money?”

“We have credit!” she cheered, bouncing up and leaning over towards her. Her eyes were hopeful and pleading, matching a puppy’s. She bounced on the chair and started humming the catchy tune to one of the songs. Chan Hee began melting, but stood firm, shaking her head. “Oh come on! Fine! We’ll get ice cream too.”

Looking out the window past her friend, she realized that the sun was still high enough that they could be back before the shadows of the buildings cut out the light from reaching the city streets. Still, the idea of leaving home so close to dusk made her anxious all the same. Her fear, equated to loneliness, was the fear of dark, or rather being left in it. With a long sigh, she uncrossed her legs and anxiously rubbed her ankles together. “I don’t know,” she glanced further out the window at the building tops.

“Oh come on!” she whined. “The city lights are enough to give the whole street enough light for us to walk home in!” Her eyes twinkled, but that didn’t give her much hope still. “We’ll only get ice cream, then we’ll come right back.”

Chan Hee sighed, but stood and hitched her shorts higher up on her waist.

“Fine,” she said, the sound of disappointment leaking in her voice. “If you want to-“

“Oh, I do!” Ki Young popped up on the couch, from where she could see the top of Chan Hee’s head and pat it fervently. “You’re such a good pet!”

Waving her off, she watched as her friend recklessly bounded over the back of the chair and jogged the stairs. “You’ll hurt yourself if you keep jumping like that,” she shook her head and listened for her response that didn’t come.

She lifted a hand to the cross at her neck again and thumbed it. Her hand went to swipe her phone up from the couch beside her, but where it’d been sitting had been vacated. Sticking her hand down into the chair’s crevices she wriggled her fingers to see if she felt it and came up short. When Ki Young returned, over shoulder bag and thin cardigan on, she abandoned the search for later.

“You’re buying,” she warned her as they passed her room and she swiped her sneakers from by the door. They headed out, followed by the loud whines of a protesting, immature, twenty-one year old.

The blanketed roars of the cars in the city rushed up to meet them as soon as they stepped through the glass doors of the business building below. Chan Hee bundled her hands deep into her pockets, welcoming the oddly cool summer breeze to ruffle her loose tee and short, shoulder cut hair. Beside her Ki Young sang about all the food she could go for, but never changed beat from their initial movement towards an ice cream shop around the corner from their place.

Their walk to the shop was unusually quiet, as if the noise on the street had stopped when they left their apartment. Looking around she noticed that most people kept rushing forward, as they always did, never stopping to talk or laugh with each other. But even the students who breezed by in their uniforms were not laughing or excited for what had to be their upcoming summer break, as their high school neighbor kept explaining to them. They looked empty, like wandering faces. Arms linked together, heads leaning and faces drained. She shuddered, despite the comfortable temperature. But it wasn’t until when they entered the shop that Chan Hee knew something was unusual was up.

“Slow day?” she asked the owner, a friend of Ki Young’s father, who actually owned the building they operated in. He gave a weary smile but nodded. The chairs sat empty, tucked under tables that looked as if they hadn’t been touched. A young boy with large whites on his eyes and a big smile that reminded Hee of a goofy character from a cartoon, smiled from where he was scrubbing a table top down with a wet rag.

“Kyung Soo!” Ki Young cheered, rocking up on her toes as she waved at him. He gave a half wave back at the two of them, and Chan Hee was just glad to see his face wasn’t as drained as the zombie like figures outside. But she noticed he didn’t look too energized either.

He walked over, holding up a small black plastic container that held no dishes. Slapping his rag down in it he raised his elbow to them, and they bumped each other. “Slow day I see,” Chan Hee said as Ki Young went to browse flavors.

With a slow nod, he opened his mouth to speak. “Yeah,” he said his voice oddly groggy, unlike its usual steady coarseness.

“You tired?” she asked, lifting a hand to his shoulder, where his eyes traveled the space between them. She never let her fingers touch him, trying not to violate his aversion to hands.

“A little,” he nodded punctuating his statement with a yawn. “But I’ll live.” He bowed out of their conversation before the manager could wave him on. Chan Hee watched him waddle off, catching him yawn once more. She smiled thoughtfully towards the child, remembering just how hard he was working in university now and while doing a couple spare job all the same. It must have been harder than what she was doing, at least. She sighed to herself and slipped back into the conversation Ki Young and the manager were having again.

“It’s never been this slow in the middle of July,” he shook his head. “Must be this odd breezy weather we’re having.”

“I find it relaxing,” Ki Young smiled, while sampling a spoonful of plum flavored ice cream. She hummed delightfully and ordered a small cup full. “Not a lot of people will mean that we can get all the ice cream we want,” Hee found that she was listening to her say as Ki Young found them a seat next to a window. Sitting across from her Hee poked at her own small cup of mint and strawberry mixed and stared out. It wasn’t just this shop that was empty; it was the shop across from them as well, and the people next door to them. A vast majority of people seemed to have taken a vacation in spirit of the good weather.

The children that normally played on the street corner were still there, but there was something wrong with the way they were looking at each other, as if they couldn’t say what was bothering them. People looked oddly tired as they walked past the shop windows, and she saw more than a few people with cups of coffee. But they didn’t even seem to be drinking it; they looked like zombies in a horror flick.

“What’re you looking at?” Ki Young asked the back of her spoon and sticking it back into her cup.

“The people,” she nodded out. “Don’t they look empty to you?”

“You know,” she shook her head. “I think they look more full.”

“Full?”  Chan Hee looked long and hard at her before blinking. “There’s no expressions out there.”

“I’m an artist,” she shook her head, waving her plastic spoon in her face. “I see things you don’t.”

“Then tell me, oh great artist, why are the people so empty of emotion today, huh?” she asked, gesturing out the window.

Ki Young stared out for a moment but said nothing. “I don’t know,” she said after a while, her features contorting into her serious face; which they’d coined her Yesung face because she kept slightly ajar as she seemed to stare into space. “Maybe it’s the same reason for your head being so big, and yet so empty.” She was trying to lighten the mood, and it was helping, but it wasn’t enough. Chan Hee offered her a slight smirk and turned to her melting ice cream. “Oh come on,” she shook her head. “You know I’m just trying to make you laugh.”

“Yeah,” she said absently, but tried to smile.

Ki Young reached over and messed her hair over the top of her head until she laughed and slapped it away. “Now, relax and eat your ice cream. I paid some good Won for that.”

She nodded and lifted a spoon of the melting mess to her lips. But she didn’t relax.

The walk back to the officetel was just as scary as their time in the shop had been. There, in the midst of all the cars buzzing about, sat the most horrifying grayness. No one seemed to be having any conversation save the two of them, who looked entirely too energetic against the drained faces around them. The people in the downstairs business seemed to share their enthusiasm some way or another, but they looked as if they were straining too.

When they got inside their living space Ki Young shed her romper for a pair of night shorts and an ugly tee. The sun was just beginning to set beyond the skyline, but Chan Hee didn’t remember how long they’d spent out. It hadn’t been that long, had it? She raised her hand to catch the last rays of sunlight and felt their warmth as they spread over her chest and traveled up her neck and face. She remembered this feeling, being wrapped in her mother’s arms as she gave her kisses goodnight before heading off to work. Their little life had been enough. Her hand rose up again to touch the cross.

“Don’t be afraid of the dark,” she mumbled to herself. “The Lord is your light.”

The sun crept further away and she slipped into her room to change into a pair of sweats. A light flashing from her bed made her jump and she looked down to see her cell phone screen indicating she had a text message. She reached for it but Ki Young burst through the door and shocked her into the dropping it. It turned off suddenly and she sighed loudly.

“Let’s watch a movie!” she cheered.

“I have work tomorrow,” she reminded her ecstatic friend. “You seem to forget.”

“You’re right,” she mumbled her excitement falling from her face; she began turning her hair around in between her fingers. “I do. But…”

“No,” she shook her head. “Not tonight. Ka.”

Ki Young’s face rumpled up in a childish manner and she whined loudly before stomping out the room. Chan Hee heard her feet as they traveled the steps onto the loft, where she stomped twice for the sake of purely annoying her. She laughed to herself, rolled her eyes and reached for her phone. Turning it back on she slipped into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth when her phone blinked again. This time, she made sure to check it before Ki Young could scare her. There was one message from her brother who was busy working on his masters in Germany. It was all left for her to translate, as he’d gained a nasty habit of sending her messages in his new found native language. To her surprise this time though, at the bottom of the message was the translation.

“Don’t drink the water.”

“Don’t drink the water?” she repeated to herself, looking down at the sink and at her toothbrush, which was just under the running tap. She tried to recall if she’d heard anything on the news about the water. It was as it always had been, a little too hard for her but good enough. She shrugged, putting it off as one of his odd jokes.

She turned the phone off and slid it into the pocket of her sleep shorts and used a steaming rag to open her pores before splashing cold water over her face. Patting it dry she took a long look at the shoulder length even cut dark brown hair of her mother’s and the eyes that mimicked the existence of an empty position in her life. She was no beauty queen, that wasn’t her wish either. Her too plain features washed her into the background, and she was just fine with that if it got people to leave her alone. Not the most entirely friendly person, she admitted, reaching into her pocket for her headphones. They weren’t there, and she had a fairly good idea where they were. With a loud huff, she set her mind to hum the song of the theme of her life; all by herself. Finishing quickly in the bathroom she hurried back to her room where she collapsed onto her bed in full fatigue. Her eyes shut, she whispered her prayers.

“God, watch over mom,” she whispered last. “Whatever she’s doing.” It’d been months since she’d seen the woman who’d raised her and her brother, sent them off to school and supplied the deposits to their rentals. She was a wonder woman, working night and day. Her calls were scarce and her appearance even scarcer. Short, but powerful, they . The driving force behind their family because she felt she had to be, Chan Hee had felt so bad to watch her mother fork over the funds for every whim she had. She was still in it to pay her back, but money wouldn’t do. It had to be something better.

Her body buzzed oddly, and she grew cold. Sleep was coming closer, and she embraced it. “Amen,” she whispered softly into the air again. When the creeping fingers of sleep washed over her she accepted them, burrowing herself deep within their unregretful confines.

But something weird happened. Within an instant sleep seemed to take control of her muscles, her nerves. Her fingers locked, her legs locked too. , tight, refused to open and she realized that she could no longer move. Behind her eyes she was slipping into the dark, and fast.

Something was wrong.