The alarm didn’t ring.

Not because she missed it, Lee Minseo never set alarms.

Her flip phone, tucked neatly beside a stack of unpaid water bills, expired instant ramen coupons, and empty coffee sachets, remained silent, like the rest of her world. The pale morning light crept through the dusty blinds of her studio apartment, brushing over the beige walls that hadn’t changed in three years. Neither had she.

Minseo sat on the edge of her bed, legs dangling, eyes vacant, face blank. Her thoughts felt like static on an old television, fuzzy, dull, and endless. She didn’t sigh. She didn’t stretch. She simply stared forward as if waiting for something, though she couldn’t tell what.

She reached for her coat, same as yesterday, and the day before, and the hundred days before that, and slipped it on like a second skin. Her bag was already packed: sketchbook, charger, tissue packet, half-eaten protein bar. She never unpacked it. No time, no reason. Life wasn’t surprising anymore. It was a checklist.

The hallway outside her apartment reeked faintly of burnt toast and loneliness. She didn’t mind. She didn’t notice much anymore.

“If the world was ending,” she thought, pushing the elevator button that took forever to glow, “I’d probably be brushing my teeth, kissing a wall, or checking for deadlines.”

She exhaled. Dry. Tired.

"Never in my life has a boy held my hand."

The thought came out of nowhere. It annoyed her. Not because she longed for it. But because she realized she didn’t even know what she was missing. And maybe she never would.

At the office, the fluorescent lights hummed louder than the people.

Park Jiwoo was already seated, black blazer, black under-eye circles, blacker mood. Her monitor glared with unfinished slides and pixel errors. Minseo didn’t greet her. Jiwoo wouldn’t answer anyway, not until her morning espresso dissolved into her veins.

Two desks down, Yoon Yumi tapped away at her phone, humming under her breath. Her screen glowed with edits of NEONIX—the boy group half the company secretly fangirled over. A new behind-the-scenes video had just dropped.

“Minseo,” Yumi called softly, swinging in her chair, “They released the acoustic version of ‘Glasswall.’ You’ll love it. The harmonies, Jong-Su’s voice? Literal medicine. I teared up. I’m not joking.”

Minseo blinked. Flip phone. No app store. No music. No Jong-Su.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she muttered, turning on her computer. Her desktop wallpaper was a gray mountain. Not aesthetic. Not moody. Just default. Just like her.

She opened her project folder. Same thumbnails. Same client notes. Same revision cycles. She traced the rim of her chipped coffee mug, cold already. Bitter, even without a sip. Her chair creaked like it was exhausted too.

Across the aisle, Yumi was still scrolling.

“Minseo, you really should watch their performance from last night. Jong-Su’s eyes looked like he’d been crying. It was so raw.”

Minseo stared at her blankly. Then looked away.

And for a split second, just a second, she imagined what it would feel like to cry for a boy she never met.

Not from sadness.

But from being moved.

Touched.

Alive.

But she shook the thought off.

Deadlines first. Feelings later.

Or never.

The office A/C rattled above her like a distant engine. Outside the tinted window, morning faded into late morning. Her inbox pinged. A new file arrived. 9:04 a.m. Her coffee had gone from cold to room temperature in exactly twelve minutes.

Her mind was still empty.

But there was a rhythm now.

Not quite music.

Just the ghost of it.

She imagined, somewhere across the city, someone writing a song they’d never know was about her.

And for the first time in a long time, she almost hoped.

Almost.

I don’t remember what I looked like as a child.

Not the version in school ID cards or the blurry graduation pictures, those still sit, dusty and pale, on my mother’s shelf back in Daejeon. I mean the real kind. The me that existed before school uniforms and polite smiles. The girl who sat on rooftops with scraped knees and imagined stars falling just for her.

She faded somewhere along the way.

Maybe in high school, when group projects meant being spoken over. Maybe in college, when I walked out of a design presentation and realized no one had remembered my name. Or maybe later, when I moved to Seoul alone with two suitcases, a portfolio of half-finished ideas, and a flip phone no one bothered to text.

I am 23 now.

And every morning, I brush my teeth to the sound of my upstairs neighbor’s television and wonder if I’m wasting my youth.

—

I became a graphic designer because I didn’t want to talk much. Design lets you say things without saying them. Colors, fonts, spacing they speak without a voice. And I liked that. I still do. Though lately, everything I make feels muted. Like I’ve forgotten how to feel loud.

I spend my weekdays wrapped in grayscale. My flip phone only rings when Jiwoo yells at me from two desks away. It’s old, scratched, and stubborn, but it doesn’t distract me with updates or noise. It doesn’t remind me that everyone else has something I don’t.

Sometimes I think I’ve already lived the most vibrant part of my life. At 16, I had dreams. At 18, I had drive. Now I have decent insurance and a cardigan with holes in the sleeves. But no one has ever held my hand.

Not once.

—

Yumi says I need to “experience something.”

She means it in that sunny, slightly-exasperated tone of hers, like I’m a plant she’s trying to coax into blooming.

Yumi is... different.

She feels too much, all the time. Cries when boy band members cut their hair. Laughs over edits of cat memes. She knows trends before they trend and has three Spotify playlists titled “breakup I never had.” Her desk smells like lavender. Her nails always match her mood.

Sometimes I envy her. Other times I just let her talk while I nod. It’s easier than explaining why I don’t relate.

But she’s kind.

And in this world, kindness isn’t small.

—

Jiwoo, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in soft things.

She’s 25, the boss’s right hand, and has mastered the art of the death glare. She drinks coffee like it’s blood. Her computer never sleeps, and neither does she. But when the lights dim, and no one’s watching, she makes sure my drafts aren’t buried under last-minute edits.

I think she cares about us in her own way. She just doesn’t know how to show it without sounding like she’s yelling.

And even when she is yelling, we never take it personally. Because Jiwoo’s rage is the kind that comes from exhaustion, not cruelty. From being the girl who had to grow up too fast. From holding everyone else's weight, even when no one asked her to.

—

Sometimes I watch the two of them talking.

Yumi animatedly waving her hands. Jiwoo pretending not to care while secretly laughing behind her cup. And me, sitting there quietly, watching their reflections in the office glass like I’m not part of it.

Like I’m outside of everything.

—

But I’m still here.

Living. Existing. Checking email threads. Drafting logos. Eating alone. Drinking instant miso soup for dinner.

Still wondering if I’m doing something wrong, or if this is just what adult life is supposed to feel like.

Quiet.

Colorless.

Lonely in the softest way.

—

And yet, today… I catch Yumi’s voice through my headphones.

“Minseo, listen to this part,” she says, leaning over with her phone in hand. “It’s Choi Jong-Su’s high note from last night. Goosebumps. Literal goosebumps.”

I nod politely, not really hearing it.

But something about the name sticks.

Choi Jong-Su.

She’s mentioned him before. The leader of some boy band. Neon something.

I glance at her phone, just for a second.

There he is on the screen, singing under stage lights with his eyes half-closed, like the music physically hurts to sing. His voice trembles but doesn’t break. And for a moment, I wonder what it’s like to feel something so deeply you let the whole world watch you fall apart.

Then I blink, and I’m back at my desk.

Quiet. Safe. Untouched.

—

But somewhere inside, something shifts.

Not enough to change me.

Just enough to remind me I’m still capable of wanting something more.

The day had flattened out.

Design reviews. Client feedback. Last-minute revisions on a banner no one would remember. Another pointless day tucked into a week that looked just like the last.

Now, the three of us stood in the fluorescent-lit hallway of the twelfth floor, waiting for the elevator to open like we were waiting to be released from captivity.

Yumi was laughing at her phone again, thumb sliding, screen flickering.

“Look at this,” she snorted, eyes glued to a meme. “It’s Minho in a cat filter, he looks illegally adorable. I’m dead.”

Neither I nor Jiwoo responded. Jiwoo looked like she could strangle a filing cabinet.

“Don’t talk to me,” Jiwoo muttered, head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. “If I hear one more K-pop name I’ll start foaming at the mouth.”

I was staring at my phone. Not for any notification. Just staring.

My wallpaper was a grayscale mountain, the kind that comes by default.

I’d been thinking of changing it for three weeks.

Still hadn’t.

What would I even change it to?

Color?

The elevator dinged.

All three of us straightened, not out of excitement, just habit. The sound of freedom, of not being in this building anymore.

The doors slid open with a slow mechanical breath.

Four tall figures stood inside, masked, hooded, dressed like they were trying very hard not to be recognized, which only made them more obvious.

The one in the front gray hoodie, clear eyes, ridiculously symmetrical face made brief, awkward eye contact with us.

A small shuffle. A silent pause. Like both parties were pretending this wasn’t strange.

Yumi, of course, didn’t even look up. She was too busy watching a slow zoom-in of someone’s face with animated glitter text that read “You’re my serotonin.”

Jiwoo walked in first with the grace of someone who had fully given up on the concept of caring. I followed. Then Yumi, still smiling at her screen.

The four men shifted slightly, polite, trying not to take up too much space. You could tell they were famous, not from how they acted, but from how carefully they acted.

I leaned against the side rail, holding my phone.

Still open on the mountain wallpaper.

Should I change it?

Maybe to a cloud.

Or a wave.

Or maybe just... leave it.

I put the phone away.

Didn’t look at them. Didn’t think to.

The silence in the elevator was the kind that hums around the edges of shared exhaustion. We were all just people trying to go home.

I stared at the floor numbers lighting up.

No one spoke.

Not even Yumi, surprisingly.

Maybe even she understood that there were times when you just let silence be.

We reached the lobby. The doors opened.

The four men stepped out first swift, soft, like shadows rehearsed to move without sound.

I didn’t watch them go.

My hand reached into my coat pocket for keys I hadn’t taken out yet.

Yumi finally sighed. “You guys... that was NEONIX.”

I blinked.

Jiwoo’s response was a groan. “I’m hungry.”

Yumi looked at me. “Minseo?”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

That was it.

No fluster. No spark. No realization.

Just another quiet ride in the elevator, down another day in a life that never really changed.