Seven Steps Apart

The fan on the corner of his desk was losing the fight.

You’d cracked the window open earlier hoping for some kind of relief but all it let in was more of the same. Warm dead air and the distant sound of the street below. Sunday morning in Seoul during summer was its own particular kind of punishment. You pulled your chair in, spread your notes across the desk and got to work.

You were deep enough into it that you’d stopped noticing the heat when the noise started.

Not noise exactly. A voice.

You looked up from your notes.

Someone’s having a bad morning.

The thought came and went. You went back to your notes. The voice didn’t stop. If anything it got sharper, more concentrated, the kind of sound that had a specific target. You put your highlighter down and walked to the window.

Down below at the building entrance a girl was standing in front of a moving truck.

Even from the seventh floor you could see she was furious. Not the loud falling apart kind of furious. The other kind. The kind that had been building since before today, that had a whole history behind it that this moving man was just unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of right now. Arms crossed, chin up, not moving an inch. The man in front of her was bigger, louder, gesturing with his whole body the way people did when they assumed size and volume were the same thing as being right.

She didn’t flinch once.

You’d seen enough arguments to know when someone was losing and when someone had simply decided they were done. She’d decided. The man just hadn’t figured that out yet.

You leaned against the window frame and watched without meaning to.

There was something about the way she stood. Like the heat and the boxes and the fact that she was arguing with a stranger on a Sunday morning in front of her entire life packed into cardboard was all just an inconvenience she was moving through on the way to something else. No performance. No tears. Just this flat immovable certainty that she was right and she was going to stay right until the universe acknowledged it.

The man threw his hands up.

Said something you couldn’t hear but could feel from seven floors up.

His two assistants climbed back into the truck without looking at her. The engine turned over. And just like that the truck pulled out and disappeared around the corner leaving behind a pile of boxes and furniture and bags and one small shelving unit sitting in the direct path of the summer sun.

And her.

Standing exactly where she’d been standing. Arms still crossed. Staring at the space where the truck had been like she was giving it ten seconds to come back and make better choices.

It didn’t.

Something shifted in her posture then. Just slightly. The certainty was still there but underneath it, just briefly, you caught a glimpse of something else. The particular stillness of a person who is completely alone with a problem and has just fully understood the size of it.

She’s going to move all of that herself.

You looked at the pile. Then back at her. Then at the pile again.

You grabbed your keys off the desk.

The heat hit immediately stepping outside. You crossed the small distance between the entrance and where she was standing and she didn’t notice you until you were a few feet away. Up close she was sharper than she’d looked from the window. Jaw defined, eyes dark, a few strands of hair escaped from the high ponytail around her face. The black hoodie she was wearing made no sense for this weather but somehow she was pulling it off through sheer force of not caring.

She was staring at the pile with the focused expression of someone doing very unpleasant mathematics in their head.

“Need any help?”

She turned fast.

The look she gave you could have stripped paint. Her eyes moved over you once, quick and flat, and whatever conclusion she reached was not a generous one.

“I just dealt with a creep.” Even and precise. “I don’t want to deal with another one.”

Something about it caught you off guard. Not the words exactly but the delivery. The complete absence of apology in it. Like she’d said it so many times today it had stopped costing her anything.

A quiet huff of air left you before you could think about it. Not a laugh. Just the involuntary sound of someone who hadn’t expected that particular sentence in that particular tone at that particular moment.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Sorry.” You found your footing. “Late introduction. I’m not a creep. I’m your neighbour. I live right across from you.”

She looked at you for a long second. Something moved behind her eyes. Recalculating.

“You live in 113?”

“Yep.”

The crossed arms dropped. Not all at once, just enough. She exhaled and it carried more than just the last five minutes in it. More like the last several hours. Maybe longer.

“Sorry for calling you a creep.” Less sharp now. Not soft exactly, just human. “I’ve been dealing with that guy since eight in the morning and he was ogling my ass—” She stopped. Reset. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear all of that.”

“Moving is a headache on a good day.” You glanced at the pile. “Today’s not a good day.”

She followed your eyes to the pile and said nothing for a moment.

“You really don’t have to do this.” When she looked back at you it was direct, no performance behind it. “You don’t know me.”

“Is anyone coming to help? A friend, anyone?”

“No, but—”

“No buts.”

“Moving all of this alone in this heat will take forever.”

“But you don’t even know my—”

You’d already turned toward the pile. The biggest cardboard box was closest, sealed and marked FRAGILE on two sides in red marker. You crouched down, got your arms underneath it and stood.

“Let’s finish this and order Jajangmyeon after.” Already moving toward the entrance. “I know a good place.”

Silence behind you.

Then small footsteps.