A 15-Minute Story

Our lives are, needless to say, a continuum of time.
We simply move forward, riding the flow of a great river that flows from the past to the future and never reverses.
However, on very rare occasions, isn't there a moment when that flow stagnates and forms a small eddy?
A mysterious gap, a short span of just a few minutes, or perhaps a dozen, that passes in the blink of an eye, where the laws of daily life are slightly distorted.

What I am about to tell is a story of just 15 minutes that occurred in such an ordinary daily life.
It is a record of a small miracle that seems like it could happen to anyone, yet is something no one can explain.
I would be happy if you could spare a thought for the existence of another time that flows within our hearts, separate from the cold, unfeeling time ticked away by the hands of a clock.

✅ 10 minutes before

That night, I was at a laundromat.
A weekly, ritual-like time.
The white light of the fluorescent lamps illuminates the stainless steel drums lined up in an orderly fashion, and only the low hum of the motors resonates as a monotonous background track.
It was well past 11:00 PM, and outside the window, the world was submerged in a darkness like dissolved ink.

I was just blankly watching my laundry being tossed about by the hot air on the other side of the glass.
T-shirts dance in the air, socks tangle together, and sheets undulate like a large living creature.
It is a familiar sight.
I secretly liked this time, where no one disturbs me and my thoughts come to a halt.

I noticed the anomaly just when the remaining time on the dryer display hit '10 minutes'.

At first, I thought it was my imagination.
I could hear something else from beyond the sound of the motor.
It was not the music from the background broadcast playing in the store.
A sound that was fainter, with a more personal resonance.
If I had to compare it, it was like someone humming in the distance.

I looked up and scanned the store.
Of course, there were no other customers besides me.
The glass door at the entrance was firmly closed, and I could only see headlights sliding past on the street outside.
I strained my ears to find the source of the sound.
It seemed to be coming from the washing machine two units away from the one I was using.

That washing machine, of course, was not in use.
The door was closed, but the lights on the control panel were off, and it was a machine that should have been maintaining silence.
I tilted my head. Was it an auditory hallucination caused by late-night fatigue?
Or perhaps I was mistaking a sound echoing from somewhere else for one coming from right nearby.
I told myself that, and cast my eyes back down to my smartphone screen.
However, once I had become aware of that sound, I could no longer ignore it.

It was playing a specific melody.
A melody that felt nostalgic, as if I had heard it somewhere before, or perhaps not.
It was like a sound hesitantly knocking on the door of a forgotten memory.
Unconsciously, I began to turn my thoughts toward discovering the identity of that sound.
It was the moment this boring ritual time began to change its appearance just a little.

✅ 5 minutes before!

The digital display on the dryer changed to '5 minutes'.
At that moment, as if it were a signal, the volume of that humming increased just a little.
It was no longer an auditory hallucination. It was a definite sound, vibrating my eardrums.

And then, I clearly realized what that melody was.

I was struck by a sensation as if the blood in my entire body was flowing backward.
It was the lullaby my grandmother always sang by my bedside when I was a child and had a fever.
It was not a fixed song like one found in a music score.
It was a lullaby that was hers alone, spun by my grandmother according to her mood at the time.
Therefore, the only people in this world who should know that melody are my late grandmother and me, who grew up listening to it.

Why?
Why is a song that no one else should know playing here, at this time?

Confusion and an unexplainable fear.
But at the same time, what welled up from the depths of my chest was an overwhelmingly strong sense of nostalgia.
I stood up and, as if drawn by something, slowly approached the washing machine from which the sound was coming.
Three steps, two steps, one step.
I stood in front of the cold stainless steel casing.

The song was definitely coming from inside this.
I gently touched the thick glass door of the washing machine with trembling fingers.
A cool sensation traveled from my fingertips.
At that moment, I felt as if something had been reflected for just an instant on the surface of the glass, which was reflecting the light of the fluorescent lamp.

It was the face of a young girl with a bob cut.

'Huh,' I let out a voice.
I recoiled in surprise.
However, when I looked at the glass again, all that was reflected there was my own face, looking suspicious.
I misread it.
I'm tired.
I told myself that desperately.
But the nostalgic lullaby that kept ringing in my ears would not allow it.

Is this reality, or is it a continuation of a dream?
The boundary line was rapidly becoming ambiguous.
I could only stand there, frozen in place.
I felt as if the sound of my heartbeat was echoing through the store, louder than the sound of the dryer's motor.

✅Now!!

Beep, beep, beep.

The shrill electronic sound pulled my thoughts back to reality.
It was the buzzer announcing the end of the drying cycle.
As if startled by the sound, the lullaby that I had heard so clearly stopped abruptly.
As if a spell had been broken.

Silence returned.
No, the shop, with the motor noise gone, felt wrapped in a deeper silence than before.
Forgetting to stop the still-buzzing alarm, I fearfully brought my face close to the washing machine next to it again.
I peered into the glass door.

The inside was empty.

The dry stainless steel drum, without a single drop of water, was just dully reflecting the fluorescent light.
Of course, there was no way a girl with a bob cut could be there.
I let out a breath and relaxed my body, as if a spirit had left me.
After all, it was just an illusion caused by fatigue.
It was just as I was about to conclude that, when it happened.

I took the freshly washed laundry out of my dryer.
A warm scent wafted up from the T-shirt I picked up.
It wasn't the artificial scent of detergent or fabric softener.
It was a gentler, more nostalgic scent, like a sunny spot.

The moment I smelled it, I gasped.

It was the scent of the veranda at my grandmother's house where I spent my childhood.
The smell of bedding dried in the sun. The smell of the plants in the garden.
And the warm scent of my grandmother herself, who was always by my side.

I couldn't help but hug the T-shirt tightly.
It was warm.
It wasn't just the heat from the dryer; there was something like human warmth there, for sure.

What on earth were those 15 minutes?
Auditory and visual hallucinations.
If I dismiss it as that, the story is simple.
But how do I explain the warmth remaining in my chest and the nostalgic scent tickling my nostrils?

There is no answer.
And there probably never will be.

We live our lives calling only what we can see and explain "reality".
But perhaps, in a corner of this world, laws unknown to us are at work, and someone from beyond time and space is quietly sending us a gentle signal.
It is a small miracle allowed only during the brief 15 minutes until the dryer stops.

I sat down once more on the cold chair in the laundromat, still hugging the T-shirt that smelled of a sunny spot.
Outside the window, it was still wrapped in deep darkness.
However, that darkness looked a little different than it had just a moment ago.
The boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary might be much more ambiguous and gentler than we think.
And perhaps we are just passing through every day without noticing such miraculous moments.

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