Delay Time (Kyu-Sik; Alyssa)

Another day successful and Kyu-Sik was on his way home. He had gotten off a bit earlier than usual thanks to the overtime he had put in previously. For him, it was only good in the sense that he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and he was tired despite his refusal to let it show. He was usually the type of person who preferred to stand whenever he rode on a bus. Simply put, it kept him awake whereas he found that long enough bus rides often made him even drowsier. The last thing he needed was to drift off and miss his stop. The vehicle still had some empty seats, but Kyu-Sik found comfortable support just taking a place by one of the hand rings. He was ready. And that's when the driver let them know the bad news over the intercom.

A delay. A thirty-minute delay. A frown fell upon the boy's face, looking up at the speaker and sighing. The area he lived in was pretty much centrally located in LA, so usually it was easy to find a quick route home. However, from where he was now, it would take him just as long to walk as it would to wait out the schedule delay. Plus, he had already paid to get on the bus. He didn't want to deal with the hassle of asking for a refund. As much as the young man dreaded the idea of waiting for so long in somewhere crowded enough, he didn't have a better option. Besides, he had been in worse transportation predicaments.

This did mean he had to rethink his plan to stand on the ride, though. His eyes scanned around at the available seats. Ignoring the other passengers for the most part, he focused on the ones that would at least feel less crowded. The empty seats facing toward the middle were just less claustrophobic. Sure, there was someone who appeared to possibly have a cold sitting there, but it was still a better option than squishing himself and his satchel into one of the other seats amongst other people.

The suitcase had fallen as he was walking over. Not a person to just step over a problem, he bent down to wordlessly hand the man his suitcase. Then, he went ahead and took the seat beside him. He didn't really have an interest in starting any conversations and he was rather good at blocking out the noise of fellow travelers in situations like these. Not even screaming children or bickering passengers were enough to divert his attention. Had he known that he would be stuck on a bus, he would've brought his knitting just to keep himself busy. Instead, he pulled out his cellphone. Making a to-do list for the days to come would suffice. And… the battery was dead.

"Aigo…" Kyu-Sik found himself muttering in a quiet breath of frustration. He may not have been a fluent speaker in Korean, but he still grew up with parents who were. If nothing else, he had caught on to that bit of irritated slang. What was it about a stalled bus that nibbled on his usual amounts of patience? Rather than let out any more noises that let on any sort of annoyance, he took a short moment to collect himself, put the phone back in his bag and pull out a pad of paper instead. If he couldn't make a digital list, he would just make a paper list.

Then came problem number two. The pad was fine, but the pen kept attached was apparently lacking ink. It only took two words for the letters to fade into oblivion. Kyu-Sik stared at the failure in disbelief at the lack of luck being showered upon him at the moment. Thankfully, he wasn't a quitter. He glanced over to the person he sat down next to. "Sorry," he began calmly with a small, but apologetic nod, "would you happen to have a pen?"

MADE BY PEBBLE OF BTN

The sounds of a lonely soul

ECHO IN THE NIGHT

Nantan closed his eyes in frustration. This building noise was starting to give Nantan a headache. At his spot from the bus, it turned out that not only was he unable to seclude from the noise, but he was in fact in the middle of it. The small boy who had been yelling at his mother was now sitting on her lap, whining loudly for a juice box. The man who had been yelling was now on the phone with some poor acquaintance of his, listening to him screech and holler about how inconvenient the Los Angeles bus system was. Which was slightly funny, considering that in the two year span Nantan had started riding the bus he had never seen that man before today. Ah well, people always had their reasons. They weren't coworkers, and now that Nantan saw the man, would certainly never be in a case together, so the man's life was none of his concern. Under any other circumstance Nantan would have tuned him out, but the best he could do was attempt to focus on something else.

Nantan had only just begun to fiddle with the latch of his suitcase (resulting in his headband falling onto the dirty ground, of course) when he started to notice the increasingly frustrated movements of the young man seated next to him. Not only was his phone out of use, but he seemed to be facing trouble with the pen on his notepad. Poor kid. Nantan felt a bit of compassion towards the one person who had elected to remain silent throughout the commotion. “Hold on a moment,” Nantan said, just as the young man next to him had begun to ask for a pen. He finally got the contraption open and started rummaging around, checking his neatly folded trouser pants. But as he finally found a thick blue pen, a young woman came by, offering the man next to him a pencil. Odd how that turned out, Nantan thought as he looked at the lady in front of him.

She could not be older than 23, that much was certain. She was well put together and smelled sweet, vaguely reminding Nantan of the women in his college classes. However, she didn't seem as petty as those women were. Maybe it was because she held a music case, but the girl in front of the him seemed much more personable and didn't seem to wish them any harm. However, it still didn't change the strange fact that she had been watching the two. It was almost as if she was waiting to let herself into their bubble, curious about what would happen if she popped it. Nantan's reverie was halted when his hair began to slide back to the front of his face, tickling the stubble he couldn't shave off of his cheekbones. Nantan bent over quickly, hoping to reach his headband without seeming perverted. However, he fell out of his seat yet again, this time as he felt a wave of exhaustion and nausea overcome him.

Since when did he get headaches? This wasn't like him, really. Shakily, he pushed himself off the ground, pulling himself up into a sitting position in front of the seat. He really could not understand why there was THIS much stress over two small cases, really. Ah well, at least he had gotten the hairband as he tumbled down the seat. It had gotten the small boy to stop moaning, anyhow. Thankfully, he hadn't thrown up. THAT would have been an awkward situation.