Strange wholesomeness

She’s been sitting in this coffee for a while now. It’s been a long, long while and it's been one of the countless days she spent there. Was it loneliness, boredom or she was just inhaling the unfamiliar atmosphere of the world she was almost forced to enter? Whatever it was, it made her spend way more time in the dim corner spot than she probably should have.  Sitting there gave her a sense of wholesomeness where she could enjoy being around people while not being around them for real. She was a stranger there. A damn lonely one. But as a stranger, she knew her place so she sat quietly in her spot to avoid awkward looks of people surprised by her exotic features.  And looking they did. It’s not that she felt anyhow special, but she stood out from the very first moment she landed at the Seul airport. As a 180cm tall, blonde-haired woman in her early 30s with a cold glare of green eyes, she couldn’t hide anywhere in the huge city. Even her landlord, while extremely happy with the regular, obscenely high rent he collected from her company for a 3 room condo, couldn’t help but feel uneasy when he first saw her. There was something scary in this woman, he later said to his wife. As if she wanted to eat you alive just by looking at you from the above. He avoided visiting her ever since. Not that he had to anyways. She was a perfect tenant, almost non-existent. As if she was just on paper.  And that’s exactly how she felt for the last 5 months since she came to Korea. She wasn’t sad though, she was determined. She had a mission to accomplish and she was damn sure nobody could do it better than her. She was extremely competent. Obviously, she had nothing more in her life than this work so she became a perfect corporate machine. Years and decades younger than her subordinates, she was made to lead a huge team of people in a foreign country she knew very little about. Forcing herself to speak a language she barely understood. She wasn’t unhappy though. At least that’s what she kept saying to herself to get up from bed every day.  Strangely there was only one thing she was waiting for each afternoon. She knew no one there. Or at least no one for real, her team didn’t want to hang out with her after work. And she didn’t blame them. Apart from the language barrier that made things awkward enough, she wasn’t necessarily the likeable type. She didn’t befriend anyone here, partly on purpose, partly because there wasn’t anybody keen on knowing her. So she kept discovering the city on her own, getting lost in the alleys, entering restaurants she barely could name, eating food she never saw before. These strange adventures brought her joy and always ended in this cafe where she sat for the remaining hours before going back home straight to sleep. And it was just one of the identical days, mid-November. It was already pretty dark outside and the silent piano music played in the background. The pleasant chatter surrounded her while she dug into the Korean handbook she forced herself to go through every day for at least an hour. Her hangul was awful and she knew it, she overheard some administration girls joking about it earlier that day thinking she wouldn’t understand anyway. She’d better not. But she did and it strangely stung her pride so she decided to focus more on the art of writing. She started scribbling in her notebook making pretty silly mistakes along the way. Not that Korean is an easy language to learn- she kept saying to herself.  And that's when something strange happened. A red spot landed on the white page and started pouring down straight onto her white trousers. A low gasp escaped her mouth as she vigorously stood up from her spot just to check the source of the whole red mess.  Shortly she spotted a dangerously lopsided cup filled with a reddish liquid that started giving away its content straight onto her. The owner of the cup seemed to be so deeply in his thoughts that he didn’t see the upcoming tragedy. And before she fully stood up, the rest of the liquid covered her scribbling as well as half of the outfit she chose for today.  > Excuse me, are you blind? She unconsciously half-shouted in English to a slim boy whose hand was holding the unlucky, already empty cup.  He turned his head and gasped at the look of an exotic lady that looked like she just left the slaughterhouse. It took him 30 seconds to realize that she actually didn’t need an ambulance but a serious apology and wash refund and the culprit was no one else but himself.