All of My Days

3

December 2018

The light from her desk lamp flickered a bit, causing Seri to turn her head away from her computer screen. It was 11am on a Monday the following week and she was busy looking through the students' grant applications. She heard some commotion outside her office in the common staff area but did not pay too much attention. Her assistant, Sue, was off on Mondays, and she enjoyed the quiet time in the office, especially right before the Christmas break, when students were gone and the campus was almost completely vacant. Many of her colleagues were already off for the holidays too, so the common staff area was quieter this last week.

Seri turned her head towards her office door as she heard a soft knock.

"Seri?" the admin assistant's voice came in as the door opened and the girl peeked in. "Oh, you are here."

She let herself into the office and opened the door a little wider to let someone else in.

"I am just giving our new IT specialist a tour here. Jeong Hyeok, this is Seri Yoon, one of our program coordinators. Seri, this is Jeong Hyeok."

The man in question squeezed himself through the door and stared at her blankly.

"Yes, we've met," Seri got up from her desk and bowed slightly.

Damn, why did I do that, we're not in Korea, she thought, flinching.

Jeong Hyeok seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"Right, at the interview," he bowed a little in return, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.

"Oh, you were on the hiring committee? I don't need to tell you much then," the admin assistant exhaled. She was clearly tired of telling the same thing in every office. "Jeong Hyeok will be working on your computer update this week and the first week of January, as well as the whole system update," she gestured at the door as a sign to the new IT tech that they can leave now, but Seri stopped them with a question.

"Isn't Paul working on my computer update?" Paul was their usual IT tech for their department and Seri expected the older man to continue working on it.

"He's off this week and the first half of January," the admin assistant informed.

"Oh, I see," Seri nodded, accepting the answer, and glanced at Jeong Hyeok briefly, feeling his gaze on her. Did he catch a note of disappointment in her voice?

He averted his eyes as he saw her looking at him and glanced over her office, nodding politely as a goodbye. For a brief moment though, Seri saw his eyes linger on the little floating shelf above her desk as she mumbled a farewell. They left the office promptly and moved on to the rest of their colleagues down the hall as Seri lowered herself back into the chair. She blinked a few times, collecting her thoughts, and was about to return back to work when her eye caught the floating shelf too.

There, next to an artificial succulent "growing" in a trendy mason jar, stood her half-empty tube of Aloe Vera hand cream.

* * *

September 2006

Yoon Seri was sweating.

Her running shoes landing on the track surface with a dull thud every step she took as she ran around the field. The sun was blinding her, scorching Seoul heat making everyone sweat even without exercising. But she needed the distraction. She felt her ponytail bouncing up and down and a stray lock of hair, now wet with perspiration, getting into her eyes, and she brushed it off, annoyed.

She's been jogging for almost an hour already in hopes to clear her head, so far without much success.

How did her life become more complicated suddenly?