November 3, 2019
Bella stretched her body and turned to her right. She looked up at the ceiling and at the four corners of her small rectangular room. It was day 3 in Taipei. She felt she had seen so much in the past two days already. The area around her hotel had come to bear that familiar feeling of home. This bed, a strange one only a couple of days ago, was her little safe space. As painfully small as the room was, she had to admit that it was quite comfortable.
Without looking at her watch, Bella knew that it was still early. Her free walking tour was scheduled for three pm and so she knew she had hours to spare. She debated on whether or not she should go back to sleep. Maybe just thirty minutes more wouldn't hurt.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up again. "I really did fall asleep.", she giggled inwardly. Checking her watch, she saw that it was only 9 am. A good long way to 3pm. She got up and gathered her wicker basket and towel. Bella walked to the washroom on her floor and proceeded to wash her face and brush her teeth. Gathering all her stuff, she walked back to the room and returned the wicker basket and towel to their assigned spots.
She took the bag of nougats from the table as well as the other plastic bags she had collected from her souvenir shopping. She removed all her packages from the plastic. Opening up the boxes of nougats, she counted to thirteen and arranged them neatly on her bed. The fourteenth one went beside number one and so forth until all three boxes had been opened.
Bella set the last box aside. She then opened up the first plastic of keychains that she had bought at the waterfall souvenir shop. She assigned one keychain to each group of nougat. The remaining five went to join the box of nougats. Next, she took out the plastic bag containing the lantern keychains she had bought at the shop near the railway. She assigned one to each group of nougat just as she did earlier.
She reached for the plastic bag from the shop selling paper products and removed the paper bags she had bought from there. She placed them with the box of nougats and the extra keychains.
One by one, she placed the groupings into the mini paper bags. When she was done, she stood up to get her purple pen out of her long purple passport organizer. Picking up each paper bag, she wrote the names of her officemates on the small tag attached to it.
Bella stood up again and removed a black tote bag from her backpack. She packed the plastic with the box of nougats first and then gently arranged the paper bags inside. Once she was done, she placed the tote bag on top of the side table, beside the wicker basket.
With everything in place and her room back to being neatly organized, Bella reached for her phone and the second box of dumplings that she bought yesterday. Sitting up cross-legged, she broke apart the chopsticks and began her rounds of social media.
Within five minutes, she was done. Nothing much caught her attention.
She thought about what Jake was doing.
Should she send him a message on Line to greet him good morning? She thought better of it. She didn't want to seem eager to contact him.
Why would it matter? She countered. He was just some random person she met on a trip anyway. A random, gorgeous, fine specimen of a man.
She thought about what he usually did in his daily life back in Seoul.
She thought about how he sounded when he sang. What were his hobbies? Was he a gamer too?
Bella shook the thoughts out of her head. By tomorrow, they would be in different countries. None of these thoughts should be bothering her. But then how often did a Greek god notice her?
