𝐒𝐇𝐄’𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐘 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐒. seoul nights grow hotter despite the chill of the running air conditioner and jina awakes with a fever start. it’s a gasp, a startle, star-dusted eyes and a mumbled curse that detaches her from the realm of sleep. her dreams fizzle to an end and her memory grows hazy. what had just happened never comes to and she finds herself disoriented as the darkness of the room fills her vision. seoul skylines do nothing to faze her, lights strung behind closed windows as jina looks around her room like she’s on display. feigned surprise at the stillness, the emptiness that decorated walls and pale pinks hold stare back at her and jina feels it deepen her reality. distracted eyes glance at looming red and the time fucks with her because she has an eight o’clock divination lecture tomorrow that she’s not looking forward to, at all, and she’s headed straight for raccoon eyes the size of mars. she’s parched, not looking forward to tomorrow and there’s a dull ache somewhere in her body that she wishes not to place. a sigh falls and she’s staring at the ceiling.
it’s bothersome, the itch in her throat grows; the ache in her body dulls and she mulls over her options before swinging dainty feet off her bed; silk following suit as she replaces sheets with the fluff of her dolce slippers. they take her away, of a hallway of closed doors and dim lights. of silence and buzzing static at a different side of the home. her destination: kitchen -- where the stars actually take her: jungmi. the other’s words are warmth personified, made to wrap her in the lushest fabrics, of a love she longs for but never fully attains. but it’s enough -- it has to be because wanting for nothing never amounts for any good: jina would know. she knows this too well. she doesn’t say much, and jina never needs to -- not with jungmi. because jungmi has good sense, she has jina’s best intentions at heart -- for jina, jungmi is her salvation and without her, she is lost. for jina, she can let all the walls and tiresome dilemmas crash to her feet and the burden of teenage adolescent angst surface. what she toils, she effortlessly drops for jungmi to pick up the pieces because for jina, jungmi was always there to fix her when everything was lost.
when there was no one left to put her back together again.
so she hugs her tight, when knees sink into scattered papers and her footsteps leave blind prints; falling into an embrace as she digs her head into the other’s neck and feels the tears turn in her eyes. “jihye’s back,” she whispers against flawless skin, like an omen breathed to life. she feels the words take her back to stricken voices, a slap against skin and heated tears on her cheeks; she feels them and bites back a sharp breath.
to a glance it’s utter chaos, the sprawl of books and technology, from folders, to notebooks, her recorder and work laptop. but there’s a precise measure to this chaos ( she had began at her desk across the room and slowly but surely, ran out of room ) then again, if you’re a kwak currently living within the posh kwak condo jidam shelled out for, the sight of jungmi dispersed across any surface of the apartment she feels like ( often being a broad portion of ground in any given room ) isn’t abnormal. surrounded by her proliferation of work materials, with her reading glasses that seem to come with an extra feature, as she had never put them on before without her face immediately scrunching into a serious frown. as if they were equipped with a spell to turn jungmi’s expression sour with focus. a pencil on hand for scribbling ( not a pen; she had learned that lesson, when her idly habit of chewing on the ends while thinking too hard, had burst one before ) and a tape recorder shoved into the small pocket in the front breast pocket of her t-shirt. there’s a manic kind of calm about her, a humming bird at rest, bursts of movement in between the serenity and soft hum of concentration.
whatever sound it is that originates from the door, she doesn’t even glance up. from her near yoga-like post, bent over at the waist as she scribbles down a messy scribble of heterogeneous thoughts, something to refine later, before it can escape her tired mind. “hmm?” she hums by way of a greeting, more of a question of why someone has come for her in the first place after she had shrieked across the house like a warning bell that she was going to start working hours earlier. she doesn’t even know which sibling it is, her gaze pinpointed intently at the hangul she scratches across the page in a mess, “unnie is working on something, sorry, gimme a sec,” she explains lightly as she finishes up her sentences and stretches, unwinds her spine out, throwing the pencil as she turns towards the door with an expectant ( admittedly soft, but drained and tight ) expression, “did you come to bug me?” she teases, twice as hard when it’s @mmjina she spots and everything sisterly and warm from within her sparks like a low light ( it had only gotten stronger since the disappearance and reappearance of jihye, her appreciation for jina doubling, and then strangely, tripling ) (( at least jina wouldn’t leave her )) her eyes crinkling at the corners with a smile ( no teeth because she’s just a little too exhausted, not just the time of night but the subject matter of her assignment exacting its due ) and she manages a scrunch of her nose.