Static Mornings

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.

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