S E W A K T U

The Devil Came and We Had a Chat

I leaned forward, placing my weight on the cold metal railing and stared onto the blinking red lights atop the rectangular high building. They were rather far from where I was standing, a kilometer away at the very least, fifteen minutes by feet during the daylight. It is a day before the weekend, and the sun was already nowhere to be seen. Yet most of the windows are still brightly lit, white, stark and vulgar. It was exactly at the top of these three building the red lights were blinking slowly, sleepily, steadily.

This is Seoul, South Korea, the city of contemporary entertainment dream, a city that never sleeps. I moved here on February for my master degree, a decision I thought would help me advance my career. I thought I have outgrown Singapore, but being just a little girl, Seoul still feels a little too big for me. I haven't get used to the train station, I haven't yet memorized the bus numbering system, I still don't know how long does it take from here to Seoul Station.

"One, two..." I counted the interval seconds between the blinking red lights. A gust of wind blew past me and I shivered. It was early summer and late spring, the season when the chill wind still could bite through my thin cardigan. Being new as I was, I still couldn't tell the lines between seasons.

I was daydreaming when I heard the door to the balcony creaked open. I was hoping that it was someone I didn't know, for I was not in the mood to talk to anyone at all tonight. It has been an exhausting day, not because of school, but because I had been furiously writing my novel, learning Korean, and trying to find a part-time job, all while having to fight with my own self-doubt. Lately, they had been bothering me quite a lot.

There was a two-second pause before I heard the guest –my guest– coming down to the unfinished concrete floor and closed the door gently. Curious, I looked back and saw a girl, thin as I am, walking towards me. I could not discern her face as the balcony has almost no lighting at all.

"Were you at it again?" She asked. I didn't reply. I knew that voice. It wasn't the most pleasant voice to hear, as polite as it may be.

"It is not good to be alone, people will think you are weird." She said again.

I looked at my guest and smiled. Standing there was a woman. Now that she came over and had been standing a meter away from me, I could see part of her face illuminated by the streetlight below us. She looked exactly like me, a girl in her mid twenty, with short hair and fair skin, wearing a thin summer dress and black flowing cardigan. She had a sweet, sweet smile across her lips, and I know her by name.

"Isn't it very lonely inducing? Standing like this alone in a high place, dreaming of a place far away." She leaned on the steel railing. It shook as she placed her weight on the metal bar. I

She went on as I didn't give her any answer, "It's like a reminder that you're here by yourself, that you're just a foreigner in a land some people consider home, a young girl in a place whose language doesn't even look like any of that she knows."

"Look at those people there, down below," She pointed to the park below us. "They have friends, they are happier."

"So?" I looked at the park down across the balcony. I can hear people laughing and calling her friends. A dog barked somewhere.

"You won't be happy there."

"How do you know?"

"It's too difficult," the lady snickered. She turned and pointed to one of the buildings with a glowing blue light on top, her eyes were bright with intelligence, "look, from here to there, there were only darkness and silence. You will suffer. It will be a night after night of microwave dinner and canned food, alone."

I placed my elbow on the railing and my chin on my palm. A plane flew past by the buildings, I couldn't make out the figure, but I have seen countless of planes I could tell only by its taillight. It was speeding towards the earth. For a second there my thoughts flew back to when I landed in this country. Everything felt strange, everything felt foreign. I felt lost and lonely. What would be of me if I stay here? Will I ever see the sunlight one day? Will I ever be free from worries of having no fixed income, no friends, nobody to come home and call to?

I fixed my eyes at the two towers standing far away. She was right. Between here and there, just like this part of the city I was living in, there was no flower path, there was only row and row of dark alleys and dark houses full of people whose name I don't even know.

"I didn't come here to give up," I replied.

"It's never too late to do so," she sounded concerned, "you weren't beyond salvation."

"Why should I be salvaged?" I turned to her.

"You're too weak for whatever was there and nobody will help you over there. You aren't fit for such works; you aren't even fit for the journey. Today was one failure, it will be another one tomorrow, it will be a hundred more next year and you won't be able to see the end of it."

"Maybe if you give up now you will be able to find a just nice job, meet a man, get married, have kids. Maybe it is not the ideal life you're dreaming about, maybe it's a little boring, but it's safe, and probably a little easier than it is now."

This entire thing was said in a motherly tone.

I sighed and smiled. She was right. I am too weak and small, I am sensitive and I cry easily. My dreams and my likings are far ahead of me, but I know I wasn't born to stand in one place and watch myself go about my life. It is a foolish, daring decision to come here and to re-start. It was a crazy decision to finally run after what I had wanted to run after, even though it meant I had to learn a thousand more things than I had already learned, even though it meant a thousand and one lonely nights to spend.

She was right but I believe in miracles, and I believe in myself, and I believe that I am meant for it.

"Let's give up," she said again, looking at me with pleading eyes.

"Thank you for the concern, iblis, but not today," I smiled, "I will decide what to do myself."

The girl sighed and hung her head low.

"I have told you but you have never listened to me," she said quietly, "If you don't listen to me you will never be happy, you will always suffer. I don't want that."

"No," I said, "you don't. You just want me to follow my fear and give up."

I watched the figure fades away and vanished into thin air, leaving alone a sound of rustled leaves and a glitter of gold on the floor. I turned and stared back at the red lights, they were still blinking steadily, unaffected by our encounter, unaware of their spectators. They were the color of coldness and sadness stretched between the floor where I was standing and the building on which they were perching. They were now the absence of sound in the starless night.

I shivered.

"So many things to do," I muttered. I turned and went back into the building. The devil's word echoed in my mind, loud and clear.

"You're too weak. You will never be able to do it."

Ah, I sighed as I pushed the thought aside, I think I have left my dinner a minute too long in the microwave.