by Evan Kim
It was a hot and busy day in the streets. Businessmen going to work, homeless people
lying down on the streets, and frustrated parents frantically looking for their children who
wandered off into the overcrowded groups and masses of people.
It was at 8 a.m. on a normal Monday. People were moving quickly into the subway
station, attempting to catch their trains so that they wouldn’t be late. I was walking in the crowds of people, trying to get to the subway tracks, looking around at everyone else running as fast as they could while clutching onto their shoulder bag, wallets, and phones. It was just like every other day; nothing was happening that was out of the ordinary. Just like every single day in the week, I saw people running down the corridors, pushing through the masses of people, and at times tripping over others and falling to the ground, which was personally quite amusing to look at, to be honest.
That day, I didn’t know what I was thinking, but somehow, I began walking to the wrong
subway station. When I finally reached the entrance, I realized my mistake.
Sighing, I turned myself backward, and that was when a man bumped into me. He was
wearing black sunglasses, wired earphones, a black suit with a black necktie, and holding a black leather briefcase. He crashed into me, knocking me down. I looked around. There was no one there. I couldn’t even see the man who had just knocked me down: he left without a trace.
I slowly got up, looking around, when I saw a small black notebook. I picked it up, and
thought, ‘Who could’ve possibly dropped this..?’ I flipped the notebook over, and there was
small writing on the front cover, with the words: TOP SECRET: NOT TO BE SHOWN IN
PUBLIC. I then carefully examined all of the details that I could see without opening the
notebook. I immediately thought, ‘what could this possibly be?? It says TOP Secret, but is this
actually true, or is it just to make other people anxious? Should I try opening it?’ Thoughts
rushed through my mind. I regretted picking up the notebook and knew that I should have just
gone on with my day. I also felt that I should return it to the man or even report the information
that could be inside this notebook to the police. I didn’t know what I had to do. I became
extremely sensitive, reacting to even the slightest movement, constantly looking around, and I
knew that I was suddenly facing an important dilemma.
Holding the notebook in one hand, and my phone in the other, I felt sweat trickling down
my hands. I was extremely nervous as I knew that the longer I had the notebook with me, the
more danger I could be facing and the possibility of myself becoming a target because of the
writing on the book with its details.
At the time, I didn’t have a clue on what I should do, yet I opened a flashlight app from
my phone, and carefully and anxiously opened the notebook. The first page had nothing on it.
Confused, I flipped through the other pages, and all of the other pages as well. There was
absolutely nothing on it! I murmured to myself, “what is wrong with this notebook. Had I spent
almost an hour trying to figure out what could be laying behind this notebook, and ending up
finding nothing? Absolutely blank pages of nothing??!” I was so irritated and also now coming
up to conclusions. After looking up some of the possible searches about the identity of the
notebook, I finally concluded that this notebook was a false alarm; it was just an ordinary
notebook used by organizations to fool the government or other strangers, like me. Not knowing what to do now, I felt that it was dangerous for me to keep the notebook around me, so I decided to leave the notebook on one of the seats of a public bus.
Tired and exhausted, I reflected on what had happened in just one day. The only plans
that I had next were to go home and rest after such a tiring day. As I was getting out of the bus, I left the notebook where I was sitting, wanting to get rid of it, since it wasn’t safe for me to keep it. There was nobody on the bus, but when I looked back, the notebook had strangely
disappeared, and when I checked back, there was absolutely nothing there.
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