The Space Between Us: Part I

The mini-mart glows against the darkness of the night with serenity. Some whirring from the lights can be heard, sure, but it’s mostly quiet, reserved for the passing cars and motorcycles on the main road from afar.

The electronic bell dings as you cross the threshold into the blue of the mini-mart — clean, somehow melancholic. It greets you with the smell of fishcakes and seafood meatballs at the first whiff — so familiar, so disarming as always. Other patrons don’t seem to care about your presence, still searching for their stuff. Your fingers tap on the side of your thighs as you walk towards the instant noodles section, breaths getting colder from the thankless air conditioners. It spills into your lungs with ease, wrapping you in the comfort of your favorite place — almost your second home.

You walk through rows of goods into the store. Your desired late-night meal seems to be buried far inside here, along with the kettle and the ‘cooking’ table. Not that it looks and feels like the land before time, just far from the entrance. You recognize a few faces as you walk deeper into the mart, and you just give them a polite smile. The staff are working diligently, arranging stuff with vigor despite the time closing in on a new day. You’ve heard that the pay is pretty decent here.

You continue to tread into the store until you find the column — your heaven — and you start to locate the container of the ramen you’ve been craving. It’s sweet. It’s spicy. It’s dry, and you’re expecting more of the same today. You keep searching and searching for it until a black-red paper cup meets your eyes.

Splendid.

You pick it up in a haste before backtracking towards the cashiers. Your hand places it onto the desk, and the sound seems to startle the woman on the store’s only computer a little. From behind, the pixie, bleached hair is more than prominent. She looks a layer cooler with it. The blue marine shirt fits her body perfectly. Just a few kilograms different from this and she has to shift a size.

And she turns around.

That’s Kim Jiwoo for you.

She takes a quick scan of you and the object you’re holding. Her hands are bunched up in the middle between her legs on the seat, and she smiles.

“Aren’t you gonna try anything new?” Jiwoo asks with a chuckle, getting off her chair. It creaks lightly as she comes down.

You shrug before replying, “I’m happy with this.”

Jiwoo picks up the cup, lifting it to the side of her face. “Could’ve at least added some vegetables,” she tells you.

“Maybe next time,” you say, watching her put the cup’s barcode to the scanner. A loud beep fills the brief silence between the two of you.

“I should be in charge of your diet.”

“Really?”

“ Really.”

You just chuckle lightly as you whip out your phone to scan the QR code on the doohickey machine every store seems to have — a beep, and the payment is processed. It’s as quick as a quick brown fox that jumps over the lazy dog.

“Can I ask you one thing?” Jiwoo utters as the receipt is being printed out. She places her hand on the printer, waiting to rip the paper off and hand it to you.

“Go ahead.”

“Do you mind if I walk back with you? I’m clocking out at midnight,” she suggests, twisting her hips slightly.

You take a quick glance at your watch — eight minutes left. No harm in waiting for a bit, perhaps.

“Yeah, sure,” and you look back at Jiwoo, who’s now smiling against the darkness of the night, brighter than the lights of the mini-mart.

—

“So, are you going back home this holiday?” you ask. Each step feels heavy under the unforgiving summer heat, occupying the serenity of the street. It’s the kind of climate you’ve gotten quite used to, but it’s still pretty daunting to walk under this temperature.

“Yeah, I’ll be gone for a few days,” Jiwoo replies. Her bleached white hair shines against the night. She’s still in her store uniform from the earlier shift. “My family could use a visit right now. How about yours?”

Your mind wanders back to your parents, a few hours from here. You just talked to your mom yesterday about how your work was going — another model booked for tomorrow, another one next week. Judging from her voice, they’re probably doing fine. There’s nothing to be worried about for now.

“I’ll stay here, maybe splash the cash in the city area or something like that,” you say with a shrug. Your hands swing leisurely as you walk through the dimly lit street.

“I’d go with you if I hadn’t already booked the train ticket,” Jiwoo scoffs, eliciting a breathy chuckle out of your nose.

The two of you continue to tread through the asphalt street into the night. You pass the houses and the apartments and the closed stores with each step. Your eyes sweep around you, taking in the atmosphere of the night — quiet, secure. Strange, you usually don’t really pay attention this much walking back alone, scrolling your phone mindlessly every single occasion. Maybe it’s the fact that there’s somebody with you this entire time, accompanying you back to your place on this peaceful night. Jiwoo’s a pleasant company to have, even if the two of you see each other’s faces barely an hour per week. She just flips through every page of you so easily.

“What do you usually order at the cafes?” Jiwoo cuts through the calmness of the night as she looks at you. Her right hand grips her bag strap firmly. “I just … don’t wanna deal with the silence with you.”

With you?

You quickly brush off the lingering thought before replying, “Uh … Assam tea? I think it’s delicious.”

“Okay,” Jiwoo sings. “Any second place?”

“Milk tea, probably Taiwanese?” you respond, raising your eyebrow slightly.

“Too bad I’m a coffee girl, then,” Jiwoo says with a chuckle. “We’re probably not that compatible, after all.”

You laugh along with her. “Opposites attract~”

“Many such cases, I guess.”

And the two of you laugh boisterously into the stillness of the night, alerting the residents of your bothersome presence.

Jiwoo asks with the residue of her laugh, “Do you wanna come up to my place and grab a few beers? I need someone to help drink it.”

“Woah, that’s an incredibly brazen invitation, Miss,” you say playfully, pulling yourself away from Jiwoo a bit, and she just chuckles.

“What? Are you scared?”

“Of course not,” you rebut. “It’s just that I have work to do, that’s all.”

Jiwoo squints her eyes into slits. She moves closer to you, examining your body language. The faint smell of her sweat hits your nose — familiar, addictive — and that seems to trigger something inside your body.

Suddenly, Jiwoo lets out a raucous laugh into the calmness of the night, making you scrunch your eyebrows slightly.

“I’m just kidding!” Jiwoo shouts, laughing as if she’s at the end of the world. “Just grab a few beers from my fridge and go back to your place — just that. They expire in like … I don’t know … a week?”

Well, that little fragment of lust burns into ashes quickly. The remnants of her sweat dissipate back into the vast darkness of the night. Then, with a beat, you laugh out of pure comfort.

“You are-you are very good at this, Jiwoo,” you say with a hand on your chest, body arching back slightly as you walk through the night together.

Jiwoo just smiles before saying, “Come on, we’re almost there.”

—

Her room looks mostly neatly kept and cozy, except for the small lump of stuff on her now-unusable table. The bed looks comfortable with the purple sheets, filled with so many kinds of plushies.