14th Floor

"Do you believe in after world?" a girl with long blond hair asked, in her usual dreamy tone, "This is what V and I believe. Well, it's actually more like I believe what V thinks.. It's a bit different from what my religion tells me,"

A gentle breeze swept the green meadow around them, giving them a slight chill into their skin, a sign of autumn coming. He gazed deeply into the girl beside her, her eyes shone brightly as she talked about V. There was nothing he could do other than listening to what Rika said.

"When my body dies.. my soul becomes free and able to go anywhere. It can go across dimensions to a world where anything is possible.. What should I call that place? Heaven.. maybe?" Rika smiled, "And.. when I go to heaven, I can meet other souls that had lived with me, and visit my friends on earth. But.." she scowled, "Because there's no body, the souls can't feel nor touch each other. My friends on earth won't be able to feel or touch me either.. So, when you meet another soul in heaven and fall in love, it hurts so much.." she continued, a disappointment filled her green mirthless eyes, "So they make a promise to each other… To have a body on earth and experience love together.."

He still didn't say anything. He kept his mouth shut.

"V and I… might have been two souls that met in heaven. Because I feel it… It was fate…" she turned into a guy beside her, adding a faint smile, making her beauty seeped into every cell within his body

He closed his eyes and smiled to her as bright as usual.

Yes, saying anything wouldn't change her heart after all..

...

12.00 pm

It was sunny day. Lee Eun Ha was doing her routines in the office tel. Sweeping, mopping, and cleaning the dust stuck to the entire corner of the office tel were all she had been doing from the first time she stepped on that place. Abandoned for almost 2 years by the deceased previous owner, of course it took extra effort to clean every inch of that office tel. She wiped her sweat that was coming toward her eyes. She smiled. Thankfully she didn't find any animal carcasses. Rats or cockroaches presence were no big deal for her, but the smell of a dead thing.. It was a big no for her. Apparently, some of her friends found it odd because normally, girls hated them. She didn't really understand why girls would scream at rats or cockroaches.

"What harm would they do to human except it was unhealthy? I mean, why they have to scream?" she answered to everyone who asked her abnormality as a girl

Finally, she was done cleansing. She put the mop down and washed her hand. Her eyes darted into a pack of instant coffee that she brought from her own apartment. She smiled again. "Having a glass of ice coffee while enjoying Seoul's view was perfection after laboring," she thought. She took one sachet and poured cold water to her coffee.

She took a deep breath, "Nice," she smiled. Her eyes were glistening in joy at the present of her favorite coffee. Good day coffee freeze mocafrio. The real explanation of pleasure was having a good nice coffee – hot or cold, it's up to you – while having a conversation with the one you love. She giggled at her own imagination. Silly her. There was no one she could call best friend at the time being. Just a coworker and a few acquaintances she met briefly. Ah.. and her college friends..

She took a laggard march into the balcony, while sipping her coffee every now and then. The view of Seoul from this 14th floor in the afternoon was pretty decent. Cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians got in a perfect line, no traffic anywhere. The sun shone lightly from above too. The weather was not so hot since she could walk around in the balcony as long as she wanted to.

VIXX's song, Error, was played in her iPod. The upbeat song echoes from her headset. It began with Leo's sweet voice and the build up to the chorus was beautifully done. She could never get tired listening to this music.

This song sounds mystical as the song told you a tale of a robots coming to life by imitating the sound of a heartbeat. Robots.. Hmm, she remembered the error in her life just a few hours ago. She kind of had a feeling that those people were just robots at first. She never knew that she would meet a group of people that would change her entire life with just a simple click on her phone.

It was started just a moment ago.

...

12 hours before..

It was almost midnight, and she was on her way to her apartment in Sinchon. Drinking soju and going karaoke with her friends was her college reunion agenda. She enjoyed that night, but she was dead tired to speak with anyone on the bus. Let alone, people had a new habit of doing things with their smart phones, so chatting directly face to face was almost gone nowadays. Smartphone zombie apocalypse – that was the new phenomenon. But she couldn't blame them as she was with her phone as well. Her head rested on the window as she scrolled her SNS timeline to find interesting tweets, but no new tweet. Well, it was midnight, who would tweet on midnight, right? Except for the twitter bot where you could see hundreds photos of celebrity.

Zen.. That was that celebrity's name, her bias. He was not so famous like Cho Kyuhyun from Super Junior to be honest, considering his work in theatre was not majorily liked by people nowadays, unlike boybands from SM Entertainment, but she loved him still. Sometimes she would stay in her SNS just to see that twitter bot posted Zen's beautiful photos every single day. She didn't know who managed that twitter bot, but she couldn't deny that she would grant him or her gratitude for spreading those beautiful actor photos.

After a while, she closed her twitter and got off from the bus. She lazily walked down the street, rubbing her eyes one at a time. She yawned, not a ladylike. No one was around, so she thought she didn't have to impress anyone. Her apartment was not too far from that place. That road was almost empty, only a couple cars went by. She dragged her feet. Suddenly she tought of Jarvis from Iron Man. It would've been nice to have Iron Man suit. You could simply sleep inside the suit, and voila.. You've arrived in your destination. Simply saying, "Jarvis, take me home," and Jarvis would likely said, "Right away, Miss Lee,"

She chuckled. What an impossible idea.

Her family lived in a country side, Masan. She got full scholarship in The Department of Korean Language and Literature in Yonsei University, thus she got a job as an assistant lecturer after graduated and a translator as her main job. Things were good in her life now, remembering all those hard times when she got into Seoul for the first time. Not only because of her heavy accent of Gyeongsang dialect - when almost all Seoul people made fun of - but she hardly have any money to support her life in Seoul.

A mere few steps she had been taking, yet she got bored eventually. As one of the zombie victim, she took out her phone again from her jeans. Finding twitter not amusing enough, she scrolled news on her browser when suddenly, a message pop out in her screen. She stopped walking. Frowned a while. She thought it was only a spam. She meant to click 'No' as always. She was too lazy to read what it was. But she clicked 'Yes' accidentally.

Then her screen went black. Her almost-sleepy-eyes widened up.

"Damn it!" she cursed

She clicked and tapped her phone over and over again. It was dead. Cold sweat ran down her spine.

"Oh please," she begged desperately

She was almost tearing up when suddenly the display from her phone turned into a very basic BIOS level script. Those green codes with a complete dark background seemed to process for a while. She waited and prayed that her phone would get back to normal in a minute or two. Suddenly, the camera light came on and the display shone brightly. And what seemed to be chat room was opened..

Unknown : …Hello…?

Some guy named Unknown appeared in the chat room. "What the hell?" she whispered it for herself. She couldn't say anything except typing question mark.

Eun Ha : ?

Unknown : Can you see this?

Eun Ha : Yes, I can.

Unknown : …Finally connected. Thank God.

Unknown : It's not every day you get a text from a stranger.

Unknown : I'm a bit flustered myself. I found a smart phone at the subway station, but all it had was this messenger app.

Unknown : I want to find the owner, but I don't see any contact info or call records…

Unknown : I've been sending messages with this app but no reply…

Unknown : All I see is address and some important-looking numbers saved in notes.

Unknown : I'd like to go there myself but I'm currently abroad…

She wrinkled her eyebrows. Her inner self kept muttering questions like who's this person, why me, what happened with my phone earlier, what's with this strange chat room, what should I do?

Eun Ha looked around, but she still didn't see anyone nearby. She tried to turn off her phone again, or call someone else, but the screen remained the same. She pressed hard for homescreen, her camera, the back of her phone. Everything. But nothing happened. She could do nothing except typing replies. "Shit," she cursed. She sighed. And braced herself. The only way to know what was going on was chatting with this curious person.

Eun Ha : First, who are you?

Unknown : Me? Oh sorry. I didn't even introduce myself.

Unknown : I'm just … a student studying abroad. I'm Korean. Here is my pic. Thought you would feel less cautious after seeing it… :)

A picture of a smiling young man with black hair and green mint eyes appeared at her screen. He was being true though, he didn't seem like a bad guy from his picture.

Unknown : I could tell you my name, but it doesn't really matter. You won't find me on search engines.^^;

Unknown : But, anyways..

Unknown : Can you help me find the owner of this phone?

Unknown : I know you're surprised to have someone suddenly pop up and ask you a favor like this.

Unknown : But still…

Unknown : I'd appreciate if you could help.

Confused was the best term for explaining the situation she got into. However she tried to grasp the information given. So, this Unknown guy found a phone at subway station.. He said he was studying abroad which could be inferred that he found that phone at subway outside Korea.. Wait.. Outside Korea? That info was ridiculous, why did he bother to find the owner of the phone so far from his place to his homeland? He could just give it to police or make an announcement somewhere near that place. The owner must live abroad as well if he or she lost it at subway station outside Korea, so there wouldn't likely be any use of her finding the owner in Seoul.

Eun Ha : Why are you so obsessed with finding the owner? You can just give it to the police or the post office.

Unknown : Well, normal people won't be able to understand…

Unknown : To be honest, I have a religion.

Unknown : My religion says that you must not miss any opportunity to do good, no matter how small. Well, some say that it's just being nosy. But I'm not like normal people. I can't help but think about how stressed the owner might be…

Unknown : It's really a safe place. I know the area. It's developed.

Unknown : Please?

Eun Ha : Fine… I'll leave right away if it feels sketchy.

Unknown : You trust me… Thank you!

Unknown : Just a sec. I'll send you the address.

She stood still in her place, waiting for another chat this Unknown guy sent.

Unknown : Found it. Now, you should go to apartment number 1422 on 14th floor when you reached the address.

The address was sent to the chat room. It was indeed a developed area. Mapo District, Seoul, an area that lies northwest of the Han River, famous for Hongdae Street, Namsan Tower, 63 Building.. Places that often appeared in many Variety Shows or dramas. The image of a tall building for the place she was about to go occurred to her mind. The point was she probably couldn't afford of living there with her current income. She went to the address right away. She stopped another bus, and took it into another route. Thank God, there was at least one last bus.

It took her half an hour to get into that address. And it was true. The building before her eyes soaring so high, making her jaw dropped at the luxury of its exterior designed alongwith its interior. The one who lived in this tall building probably wouldn't even mind for losing a mere smartphone, they could just buy the new one if they had money to live there. She didn't understand why that Unknown guy insisted on giving it back to its owner.

She reached the lobby. There, she found a woman in her mid 30s sitting at the receptionist table. Eun Ha came over her. That woman stared judgingly at the first glance, but giving out a smile at the next attempt. Perhaps she was just curious as it was not a familiar face entering the apartment building. The woman let her go to the elevator anyway, after they had a bit chit chat as to explain her purpose for getting into the apartment. She was supposed to take an elevator to reach the 14th floor, the floor in which Unknown guy told her before. A hesitation filled her head when she was about to press the Up button on the cold marble wall. She never liked elevator.

"It's a cramped room with no window," she always thought

Nevertheless, she hesitatingly pushed that button and waited for the elevator gone down from 20th floor. The elevator came down in a very short time. Perhaps it was already midnight. Everybody had their back stretched finely at their cozy bed, shut their eyes, and prepared for tomorrow. Good for them.

She took one step to the elevator and pressed the 14th floor button. She closed her eyes tightly and clenched her fist as strong as she could, hoping that the bell dings as soon as possible to tell her that she had arrived in 14th floor.

Finally, after a moment that felt like eternity, she stepped off half running from that elevator as if she would be locked inside that damn elevator if she didn't get out as soon as possible. While exhaling deeply, she looked around. She found the apartment room that Unknown guy told her about. Number 1422 was on the door across the elevator. She didn't know what to do at that time. She looked around and spotted CCTV at the corner up of the ceilings. She tilted her head, waving and smiling to the CCTV. She liked it when there was CCTV, finding out that there might be someone who saw her pranks in CCTV made her happy a bit.

"Maybe, someone would practically smile as well when they watch this footage," she thought, smiling

Unknown : Are you there? ^^ See. Nothing strange.

A sudden notification from her phone startled her a bit. He texted her right after she arrived. Her curiosity aroused, how the hell did this guy know she had arrived? The timing was too precise for a coincident took place. The idea of him hiding somewhere near her crossed her mind, though she had no desire for looking around that place. The hall was empty, she had goose bumps along her arms and she could feel the hairs on the nape of her neck standing up. She hated the quietude. She was the only living thing around, well, not only her actually, there were pot of green plants in front of each room. She meant, she was the only living thing that had an ability to speak and think around that empty hall. The image of something white appeared out of nowhere making things worse. She blamed herself for her tendency of liking horror movies despite her cowardness toward spiritual beings.

Unknown : Is there a password lock on the door?

She glanced at the door and took a few step forward. There was indeed a password lock on the door. It required a password to get inside the apartment, something new to her.

Eun Ha : Yes.

Unknown : I'll send you the digit. Try it.

A password that was likely a key to open the door was listed in the chat room. She hesitated. Could she really barge inside it? What if she got jailed because of breaking and entry? Or worse, what if it was only a set up and turned out that it was the nest of criminals??

Eun Ha : …Shouldn't I ring the doorbell first?

Unknown : Hmmm.. You're right! Sorry, I wasn't thinking straight. Then, ring the doorbell..

She rang the doorbell, but there was no answer.

Eun Ha : I don't think anyone's inside…

Unknown : Hmm, no choice then. I guess the place is empty. Why don't you press the code?

Eun Ha : Uhm, ok. I will.

Unknown : Good.

She input the password given with confused thoughts. The sound of 'clicked' echoed throughout the hall.

Eun Ha : The door's open.

Unknown : Good, why don't you go inside?

She furrowed her eyebrows. She began to feel there was something wrong with this guy. Set aside his wish to do good deed, barging in to a stranger house was not polite. At least, if it were her apartment, she would likely be pissed if there were some other stranger casually entering her place.

Eun Ha : Can I just enter a stranger house?

Unknown : You can just leave a note. I'll give you my info. If something happens, you can just show my messages. That'll do.

"Leave a note?" she thought.

A lot of questions dwelled inside her mind. What if an alarm ring or something happened when she entered the apartment? Spending a night in a jail was not going to be a nice memory for her, moreover if her family found out about it. She might get dragged into her hometown if she screwed her life in Seoul. Anyway, she ended up agreeing this guy's request. If there were indeed something wrong, she could just show that chat room with him. It could be a decent proof to her innocence.

Eun Ha : Then.. Alright.

Unknown : Th

Unknown : ank

Unknown : you…

She got inside. To her surprised, the chat room changed into BIOS level script once again. The chat room between her and Unknown disappeared, replaced with a couple people chatting. She couldn't say a thing. She was too flustered to even say anything or made announcement that she got into that suspicious chat room without her intention.