Don't Go Getting Sick Without Permission
Four friends had lined up in a row beside the bedridden Yeoncheong, and the awkwardness in the room was thick enough to cut. On top of that, thinking their patient was asleep, all four of them kept their mouths firmly shut, letting silence settle over everything.
With all of their gazes trained on her like that, the usual Yeoncheong would have died of embarrassment.
But then, she had no idea her pajama top had gaped open in the first place. The medicine was starting to kick in, and a patient who'd gotten a decent amount of porridge into her stomach simply had no spare attention left for such things.
It had been nearly ten minutes since the four friends sat there without a word.
Soft, steady breathing began to drift from Yeoncheong's lips as she lay with her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in an even rhythm. Once they confirmed her squirming as she searched for a comfortable position, Nayun whispered quietly.
"She's asleep, right?"
"Looks like it."
"Let's head out. Ah—wait, I need to grab a photo first."
Nayun switched on her phone camera, muttering something about saving it to tease her someday. Worried as they were, this was apparently a separate matter entirely — the other friends immediately asked her to send the picture to them too.
Photos shared and bags gathered, the friends rose one by one.
"Should we put off the birthday celebration and just grab lunch before splitting up?"
"Works for me."
At the birthday girl's agreement, Hasol, Seoha, and Nayun murmured their way toward the door. But one of them was still hovering at the bedside, fidgeting, at a complete loss for what to do.
Wondering at her friend's strange half-up, half-down behavior, Nayun walked back to the bed.
As she drew closer, Nayun's voice dropped lower and lower.
"Hey, why aren't you coming?"
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Suyeon leaned her upper body back slightly, wordlessly revealing her predicament.
For reasons unknown, one of her arms was pinned under Yeoncheong's grasp. Embarrassed, she scratched her cheek with her free hand and offered an awkward smile.
Watching the scene unfold, Nayun felt an overwhelming urge to smack her own forehead.
"Ha... What on earth were you doing with your hand to get it caught?"
"It slipped out from under the blanket, so I was tucking it back in and..."
She hadn't done it with any ulterior motive — it had been pure goodwill — so even Nayun couldn't bring herself to say anything harsh.
Nayun gestured toward Seoha and Hasol, who were waiting by the door.
The two, already shoe-clad and waiting, got caught up on the situation. Hasol peered down at her friend, trapped helplessly by a single arm.
"You seriously didn't do it on purpose, right?"
"I swear. I'm starving here."
Suyeon raised her voice slightly, protesting her innocence.
Hasol checked the clock on the wall. Given the hour, it seemed unlikely to be a lie.
Seoha carefully tried to untangle the intertwined arms from beside her, but...
"Mmm..."
The moment Yeoncheong stirred and showed signs of waking, she gave up instantly.
Then, as if she somehow knew what the others were thinking, the squirming girl rolled onto her side. Only after clasping Suyeon's arm with both hands did Yeoncheong finally settle into a faint smile.
Suyeon flinched. Her face twisted into something strange — a tangle of contradictory feelings, wanting to be happy but unable to indulge it with the others watching.
Seoha settled back into her seat, lips twitching with hesitation.
"We can't pull her free right now. She needs to sleep more deeply first."
"But I'm hungry..."
At Suyeon's low, strained voice — she'd barely managed to keep her expression in check — Hasol let out a sigh.
"I'll go grab something from the convenience store. Nayun, come with me."
"Ha... Fine. You two okay with anything?"
Seoha gave a quiet nod, while Suyeon tapped at her smartphone one-handed and held it up to show Nayun.
Even in the middle of all this, she was placing an order. Nayun gave her friend's head a light smack of surrender, but still copied Suyeon's request into her own phone before looking down at the sleeping Yeoncheong.
"Maybe it's because she's sick, but she really is high-maintenance..."
Nayun stared at that smooth, exposed forehead, sorely tempted to play a game of tic-tac-toe on it.
Heavy eyelids slid open, and the blue eyes resting behind them peeked out at the world. Every blink seemed to restore a little more light, and those blue irises, unlike before she'd slept, brimmed with vitality.
The medicine she'd taken before bed was finally taking hold — that, and the restorative combination of a full stomach and a generous dose of sleep's own healing magic.
Bathroom...
She'd drunk glass after glass of water while chatting with her visiting friends. She let go of whatever it was she'd been clutching tightly out of necessity, then pushed back the thick comforter.
And then—
Yeoncheong, stretching her legs out of bed, couldn't help but jolt.
What the...?
The friends she'd assumed had left were sprawled over the edge of the bed, sleeping side by side.
The bed had rocked as Yeoncheong sat up, and Hasol and Seoha stretched themselves awake.
"Oh, Yeoncheong's up."
"You... you guys... Ahem. Ahem..."
Her throat had gone dry in her sleep. As Yeoncheong coughed, Seoha handed her the cup sitting on the nightstand.
Wetting her throat with the now-lukewarm water, Yeoncheong licked her lips.
"Why are you... why are you all still here?"
"You're the one who asked us to stay until you fell asleep, Yeoncheong."
At Hasol's half-scolding reply, Yeoncheong racked her memory for what had happened right before she'd drifted off. She remembered it perfectly well herself, so there was nothing she could say in her defense.
The color that had only partially returned to her face flushed crimson all over again, and Yeoncheong yanked the blanket up to hide behind it.
"Once you saw I was asleep, you should've gone home. If I came home and found people in my house, I'd ask the same thing."
"I guess the floor was warm. We dozed off without meaning to. And..."
"You were holding onto Suyeon's arm, Yeoncheong."
Seoha's bombshell followed right on the heels of Hasol's words. Yeoncheong's gaze swung toward the friend still lying beside her.
"I was?"
"Yep. We didn't want to wake you, so we just waited."
Only then did the situation come into rough focus for Yeoncheong. She'd latched onto Suyeon in her sleep, and the friends who'd planned to free her arm and slip away at the first opportunity had all ended up falling asleep too.
The heating was on, so the floor was warm, and they'd probably tired themselves out fussing over their sick friend in a dozen different ways.
Since she herself was the culprit of the whole mess, she could do nothing but open and close her mouth wordlessly — and that was when it happened.
"Y-Yeoncheong..."
Suyeon, whom everyone had assumed was asleep, turned only her head to look up at her.
"Suyeon's awake too."
"Hey, how was anyone supposed to keep sleeping through all this racket?"
Yeoncheong's head swiveled toward the next voice. At the foot of the bed, Nayun sat up as well, yawning behind her hand.
Now the only one still sprawled against the bed was Suyeon.
Her friend, blinking blankly in her awkward half-position, muttered as she gazed down at her own limp arm.
"My arm... I can't feel my arm."
"I'll massage it for you. Come here."
"Wait, Hasol. Gently. Gently...!"
As Hasol beside her set about reviving Suyeon's numb arm, Nayun checked Yeoncheong's complexion.
The sickness hadn't completely burned itself out, but her eyes looked far more alive than before she'd slept.
"You look better?"
"Thanks to you all."
Part of it was simply that her condition had improved, but watching Suyeon writhe around in agony coaxed the laughter right out of her.
Yeoncheong took care of the business that her friends had briefly interrupted, and thanks to Hasol's dedicated massage, Suyeon recovered the feeling in her arm.
Sitting at the head of the bed with a pillow wedged behind her, Yeoncheong bowed her head to her friends.
A surreptitious glance at the clock told her nearly three hours had slipped by since she'd lain down. No TV, no proper lunch, and they'd had to sit quietly beside a sleeping patient — she had nothing but apologies to offer them.
Especially—
"Seoha, I'm sorry."
Now that her head was somewhat clear, she had even less excuse in front of Seoha, whose birthday it was today.
But despite the sincerity of Yeoncheong's apology, her friends' eyes started wandering pointlessly around the room. Convinced that Yeoncheong couldn't possibly miss the hint, Nayun pointed a finger straight at the place where bare skin was on full display.
"Hey, if your brain's working again, how about covering up first?"
Yeoncheong's eyes followed Nayun's finger and—
She hastily gathered her collar shut and buried her face.
Only then did her friends look away, coughing awkwardly or scratching their cheeks. Once she'd fixed her appearance, Yeoncheong dragged the blanket all the way up to her chin and licked her lips nervously.
"S-since when has it been like that?"
"No idea. It sort of slid down bit by bit, and at some point it was just... like that."
"You could've said something..."
"How were we supposed to know we'd be here this long..."
Since Nayun had been the one to broach the subject, the answering naturally fell to her as well.
Perhaps realizing that pushing the conversation further would do no one any good, the two of them clamped their mouths shut. An unspoken, mutually agreed silence descended.
It was an indescribably awkward atmosphere.
Hasol darted her eyes between the two of them, then clapped her hands and changed the subject.
"Oh, by the way, you got new pajamas? The color and all — they suit you so well."
"They're not— wait, I bought them."
"...Huh?"
"Ah, I mean, I did buy them, but they're not what I ordered. I ordered a different color and the wrong one got shipped."
The delayed delivery had annoyed her enough already, and when the package finally arrived, it was pink pajamas that bore no resemblance whatsoever to her order.
When she contacted the seller, they'd admitted it was their mistake and offered an exchange — but sending them back and waiting for replacements felt like too much hassle. The only difference was the color; there was nothing wrong with wearing them. They were just for around the house anyway.
And that, in short, was how Yeoncheong had come to own pink pajamas.
She'd turned down an exchange purely out of laziness.
Hearing the absurd story behind the pajamas, her friends were freshly reminded that the girl in front of them had once been a boy.
It was an awkward hour to go out and do anything, and Yeoncheong, refreshed after a good nap, looked perfectly fine — so her friends whiled away the time chatting about this and that.
Winter evenings darken just past five o'clock, and when black shadows began to pool outside the window, Yeoncheong was the first to urge her friends to get up and go.
Shooed along by her words, the friends shuffled toward the door while rattling off a string of parting lectures.
Perhaps intending to say her goodbyes separately, Yeoncheong's eyes found Seoha, the last one still lingering. She herself was still sitting on the bed while Seoha stood, so she ended up gazing up at her friend.
"I really am sorry... about your birthday."
She'd felt she owed at least one final apology. But at those words, Seoha looked oddly sulky.
Folding her arms, Seoha bent forward at the waist — an attempt to match her eye level that still left her a little too high.
"The thing I want an apology for isn't that."
Was there some other offense I committed? Just as Yeoncheong's blue eyes locked onto a point at one o'clock and she began rummaging through her memories—
Mwah.
Something warm — warm with body heat yet faintly cool against her forehead — pressed softly against her brow, which still carried the last lingering heat of her fever.
A single second stretched into an eternity, and then the lips that had descended so lightly drew away along a gentle curve.
"Don't go getting sick without permission. It hurts me too."
As Yeoncheong sat there frozen, unable to produce a single word, Seoha chuckled softly, waved, and walked away — while Hasol and the other friends waiting behind her stood with their mouths hanging wide open.
They clearly hadn't expected her to do that with them right there.
But the two of them already knew about Seoha and Suyeon's rivalry. There was no reason to be coy about it here of all places, and seeing Yeoncheong sick, they simply hadn't been able to hold back.
And at that display of boldness from her rival, Suyeon turned to stone.
Wearing a smile of deep satisfaction, Seoha came over and began putting on her shoes — and Suyeon kicked hers off and strode right up to Yeoncheong.
Arriving on pure impulse, Suyeon stared fixedly at Yeoncheong's forehead. In her heart of hearts she wanted to scrub at it furiously and layer her own lips over the spot, but she hadn't forgotten the one thing that mattered: this was fair competition.
Having finished her deliberations, Suyeon bent down even lower at the waist than Seoha had.
A second soft mwa sounded against the cheek of Yeoncheong, who was still adrift in the afterglow.
With both of them behaving as if they were leaving their calling cards behind, Yeoncheong's brain had completely crashed, rendering her incapable of any reaction whatsoever.
It was only her second time being kissed on the cheek, but still, Suyeon seemed to find it awkward somehow, retreating while twisting her head back and forth for no apparent reason.
"Eat dinner and get plenty of rest."
Those were her final words of worry for Yeoncheong. Herding the wide-eyed Hasol and Nayun ahead of them, the friends poured out of the house in a rush.
The place suddenly felt empty and bare, but that wasn't what mattered to Yeoncheong, who flopped back onto the bed. She'd pulled the comforter clear over her head, but unable to bear the stuffy air, she poked her head back out.
"Phwah...!"
From her forehead downward, her fingers traveled, trailing to her cheek.
Her forehead and cheek still tingled faintly with warmth — yet somehow, exactly where the two friends' lips had touched, she felt nothing but cool relief.
With the back of her hand pressed to her face, Yeoncheong murmured softly to herself.
"A bunch of meanies... And then they tell me to rest well, after doing that?"
The sick girl's internal body clock shrieked that it was dinnertime, but Yeoncheong remained buried in her bed for a good long while, unable to bring herself to get up.