Click, Click

Chapter 1

Your apartment in South Korea didn't have any ceiling fans.

You pressed your lips contemplatively together as you stared up at the spot that should have held a ceiling fan. You stared at it blankly as if the more you looked the more likely it were to show up. It was... hot, much too hot for you to really be comfortable while sitting on the fluffy covers that lay rested over your bed. You could open a window but... That would require movement.

You rested your head against the wall behind you, watching as the YouTube video on your phone you had previously been trying to pay attention to zoomed in on one of the characters hands.

The hand wasn't moving. You found that odd. The image lay fixed on that perfectly still hand for seconds as the time clicked by. At first, you waited patiently for something, anything to happen on screen. You were surprised when nothing did to the point that you even tapped the screen to make sure that the video hadn't frozen.

It hadn't.

You stared contemplatively at the hand, you waited expectantly for it to twitch, wondering if that much time really was passing or if maybe you were just so zoned out that it seemed that way only in your own mind.

You turned your eyes and rested your own hand similarly on the bed, suddenly feeling the urge to mirror what you were seeing. You tried to make your own fingers twitch. You flexed them contemplatively, once, twice. No... No that was no good. It looked much too unnatural. If you were the person in the video there would surely be comment after comment about how fake your finger movement had been. You raised your hand to inspect your own fingers more closely. Maybe your issue lied in your fingers themselves?

You set your hands back down after only a moment. Your hands were shaking too hard for you to really determine anything.

You sighed and retracted your eyes from your shaking hand to the hand on the screen. It was still so motionless. It hadn't twitched, and it wasn't shaking, and you couldn't help but wonder how that could be. How could someone keep so still? Keep so calm?

Suddenly on the screen, another hand joined the first one. It intertwined with the original. You retracted your own hand from its previous state and turned the video off.

Ha, of course, that had been it.

You thought the silence would be better than what you had before. At least without the video playing in the background, you weren't left craving a personal intimacy you could never expect any of your friends to return. But the silence... It was deafening.

You remained frozen for a moment, just staring across the room at the other wall. There was nothing on it. You had just moved into this room after all, and you still had to put up the extent of your wall decor.

You considered doing it right then, but when you shifted to hold a tentative hand in the air, you decided against it.

Shaking hands would make it difficult to put up posters.

"Are you really still in bed? Come on, the day is young! I won't let you waste it all in bed!"

Your bedroom door burst open and one of your roommates, Julia, burst into the room. She was shorter than you were, Filipino, and one of the sweetest people that you knew. She just... could sometimes be a little assertive.

"We're in Korea for a year, at least. Why do I need to rush around on our first day here?" You responded wearily. You had initially been really excited for your first day in Korea. There were so many places you wanted to go and so many things you wanted to see, and honestly, a year didn't feel like long enough to do it all.