Emily Brooks

Friday evening, five minutes before the appointment. After you climb the stairs to the fourth floor, the department office door appears before you, ahead of Professor Cheon Ji-hwa's office at the end of the hallway. Though it's past closing time, the office's fluorescent lights are still on. Through the glass door you can see a desk piled high with binders and, seated in front of it looking at a monitor, a woman in her early thirties. It's Emily Brooks, the philosophy department's administrative secretary. Seeing you pass through the hallway, she takes her hands off the keyboard. On the desk, this semester's seminar selection list lies face down, and on a sticky note beside it, the professor's Friday schedule is written in ballpoint pen. She stands and opens the office door halfway. From the gap in the office door at the end of the hallway, the faint glow of a desk lamp leaks out.