8:21 am

"I told you not to follow me," Soojin sighed as her eyes lazily fell over to the boy, who only scratched his head then let out a small yawn.

"I interrupted you."

"That's why I am saying," The middle aged lady from the food stall over the side of the road shoved a plate of tteokbokki towards Soojin and the younger lass looked over the food, before she continued. "Leave me be."

The boy was the strangest thing she had encountered in her life, she couldn’t help but think.

"Where did you get them?" his eyes followed the bruise on her cheek and she moved her head away, causing some slicks of hair falling on her face and hiding the mark the boy was so curious of.

"If you want to eat I can pay." Soojin's eyes stayed low as she held the thin stick, fiddling with the hot rice cakes that laid helplessly on the plate. Steam coming out from them that clouded Soojin's vision and her mind, suddenly she felt suffocated.

"Our Soojin-ah likes tteokbokki so much! Mommy will make it tonight, okay babyboo?" little Soojin clung to her mom as her loving mother caressed the child's head gently.

"I'm all good," the stranger said making her snap back from her reverie.

Losing someone so close to you hurts so much that the pain is incomparable, their memory engraved on your soul like the quotes that are cemented on their grave.

The memories, cold. But they burn.

Soojin looked at the boy with eyes filled with sudden rage. "If you think I'm easy and that's why you're following me then you're dead wrong."

"Why would I think that?" the lad shoved his hands in his pants pocket. Eyes a little amused, a small of a smile on the corner of his lips.

Soojin moved her head away again. Silence fell, the misty morning was slowly fading away with the streets becoming busier, sun starting to scorch above their head.

Nine o'clock, almost. Busiest time on the mangwon street with youngsters and teenagers leaving for schools, workers leaving for their offices.

"What's your name?" stirring up a conversation wasn’t what Soojin had in mind, her head, was still occupied with the train she missed earlier in the morning, at the same time her mother. Her dead mother that kept on visiting her memory more on this particular day than any other.

"You don't need to know that."

Soojin sighed, "I am Lee Soojin." And the boy stayed quiet.

She was done eating the spicy race cakes, paying her bill she turned knowing somewhere in her mind that the lad was going to follow anyway. And she clutched tightly on her bag's strap as she walked, there were heavy footsteps indeed, following.

"Where are you going?" there was sheer curiosity in his voice which made Soojin want to roll her eyes.

"School," but she shortly answered.

"You want to attend school on the day you die?" Soojin didn’t know if the stranger felt amused or not, she didn’t need to. "I mean if it's one of your death wishes then who am I to say anything." She could see the boy taking rushed steps before he was by her side from her peripheral vision.

It wasn’t a wish, she didn’t have any wishes, to attend school for the last time or anything corny like that. She needed money to stay the whole day outside and she had some on her school locker, that was all that mattered.

"You know? I am perhaps a stranger to you." she could feel the boy let out a dry chuckle as her eyes stayed on the road.

"But you are not to me," he finished saying.