Deepening Night, Deepening Chatter, Heading Home
Seoha ran without pause until she reached the lodging, then turned to look behind her.
They're not in sight yet.
It was only natural — Yeoncheong would need time to collect herself.
Hasol had the key anyway, and rather than stew in the stuffy room, Seoha had chosen to wait outside. She gazed down the path they'd come, lost in thought.
Maybe I went a little too far.
Her friends' crimson faces — Suyeon's reaction in particular — had stirred a strange unease in her, and before she knew it, she'd given in to mischief.
A brief flicker of guilt passed through her, but Seoha quickly shook her head.
At the very least, you should say those things where she isn't.
With a friend who'd openly declared her feelings sitting right there beside them, such talk was unforgivable.
As Seoha justified her emotional outburst to herself, Yeoncheong and the others finally came into view in the distance.
She shook her head lightly to shake off the stray thoughts and smiled at her friends — at Yeoncheong especially.
"The walk was nice and refreshing, wasn't it?"
Yeoncheong narrowed her eyes at her.
There was no hiding the way her shoulders rose and fell, or the ragged sound of her breathing.
But as if determined to stand by her word, Yeoncheong painfully dragged up the corners of her trembling mouth.
"Y-yeah... of course it was."
Whether it was that very effort that made her cute, Seoha let out a soft giggle and headed inside first, with Yeoncheong and the rest trailing after her.
On the way back, having heard Yeoncheong's fury-filled muttering, the friends had seriously debated whether it was safe to leave the two of them alone together for the night.
An awkward tension hung between Yeoncheong and Seoha.
To put it more precisely, Seoha simply kept smiling sweetly, while Yeoncheong alone stood bristling with vigilance.
The perceptive Suyeon and Hasol traded a glance.
"Ahh~ Must be from all that walking. I'm getting a little peckish."
"Right? Let's eat some of those snacks we bought earlier."
As the two tore open the snacks, Nayun also read the room and slipped away toward the mini fridge in the corner.
She pulled out the chilled drinks and the fruit Yeoncheong had brought, setting them down within reach.
Preparation didn't take long. Seating Yeoncheong and Seoha at the far end of the room across from them, the three friends wedged themselves in between.
Hasol opened the conversation by asking how everyone had spent the break.
Suyeon said she'd occasionally visited the library with Siyeon and lived an unremarkable daily life, while Nayun — as everyone knew — had taken literature remedial classes with Yeoncheong.
Yeoncheong had been only half-listening when Hasol mentioned spending her days relaxing at home with her pet, and her ears perked right up.
Or rather, that was how the friends perceived it.
Their eyes met in a shared this is it moment, and Hasol picked up the smartphone she'd tossed carelessly onto the bed to show them photos.
"Want to see?"
Yeoncheong threw one glance at Seoha, then leaned in slightly to look.
"Whoa..."
An involuntary gasp of admiration slipped from Yeoncheong's lips.
The pet Hasol had been raising was a cat.
Some of the photos were dynamic blurs caught mid-motion, but in most of them the cat's face was captured crisply and clearly. It behaved like a creature that knew perfectly well it was being photographed.
Suyeon, looking alongside her, seemed to be thinking the same thing.
"So cute! I think this one knows when it's being photographed?"
"Exactly. When she's in a bad mood she runs off, but most of the time she'll wait patiently until you get the shot."
With that, Hasol swiped through her screen, explaining the story behind each photo.
As the girls huddled together with their heads close, admiring the pictures, Seoha quietly and stealthily eased her way into the circle.
Her mischief toward Yeoncheong was one thing, but even Seoha couldn't resist cat photos.
And so Hasol's proud doting-on-the-youngest showcase came to an end.
At some point Suyeon had grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest, leaning back against the head of the bed.
"Ahh~ I always wanted to raise a puppy."
The pet talk continued naturally.
"Your parents wouldn't allow it?"
At Nayun's question, Suyeon nodded, cheeks puffed out in a full sulk.
"They say me and Siyeon are more than enough noise for one house."
"Haha! Your parents are smart!"
Nayun snickered into her drink, and Yeoncheong desperately fought to hide the laughter leaking out of her.
Suyeon snatched up her pillow and walloped Nayun mercilessly.
Wearing the most pitiful expression she could muster, she appealed to Hasol and Seoha for help. But Hasol, apparently sharing the parents' opinion, only offered an awkward smile.
Seoha deflected with a question.
"You don't like cats?"
"Ah, I don't mind them, it's just that my dad hates cats, so..."
"Well, can't be helped, then."
Nayun, who had been quietly mulling it over, spoke up.
"Honestly, I like dogs more than cats."
"Why? Cats are adorable."
At Suyeon's question, Hasol — a certified cat servant — waited for the answer too.
When Seoha and Yeoncheong also shot her curious looks, Nayun hesitated, her lips fluttering.
"I like the affectionate, energetic kind. Like a dog."
The friends nodded in understanding. It was a fitting reason for a girl who loved sports.
Naturally, the gazes shifted toward Yeoncheong and Seoha.
It meant: which do you two prefer — dogs or cats?
"Hmm... our parents are away from home a lot, so we've never really considered it at all."
Following Seoha, Yeoncheong opened her mouth.
"Cats, for me. Dogs take a lot of looking after. I wouldn't trust myself to keep up with every little thing."
At such a ruthlessly practical answer, the friends booed her, calling it boring.
Yeoncheong snorted at their playful heckling. She was clearly in a much better mood than before.
Seeing the atmosphere ease considerably, the friends quietly relaxed inside, and the conversation blossomed on and on.
Only crumbs remained in the snack bags, the disposable containers sat neatly emptied, and the two bottles of drinks they'd bought were somehow down to half of one.
Suyeon's birthday, now just around the corner. Their grievances about the deepening summer heat. The friends' questions about how it felt to have become a girl.
Chattering away over every topic under the sun, the time had flown by.
When it was finally time to sleep, Yeoncheong and the friends returned from brushing their teeth and eyed the beds warily.
Two beds. Each just about the right size for two people to lie down comfortably.
Unless they were sleeping on the floor, one bed would naturally have to squeeze in three bodies, huddled close together.
Nayun's voice cut through the silence.
"Let's decide it with ghost leg."
Reading the silence as consent, Nayun moved fast.
She set two O's and three X's at the bottom of the ladder on her smartphone app, then put the phone down.
"Anyone want to pick first?"
"Me, second spot."
Since nobody challenged Suyeon's claim, Nayun wrote her name in the second slot at the top of the ladder.
Next, Hasol and Nayun each picked their rungs in turn, and Seoha passed the choice to Yeoncheong, as if telling her to go first.
When Yeoncheong closed her eyes and muttered the names of every god she could think of, Nayun needled her.
"Doesn't god get mad about two-timing and refuse to answer?"
"God wouldn't be that petty."
Yeoncheong snapped her eyes open and picked a rung. The last one naturally fell to Seoha.
Nayun reached out to reveal the results, and the friends — all craving a comfortable night's sleep — narrowed their eyes and waited.
Yeoncheong was still offering prayers to every deity in existence, while Seoha kept sneaking glances at her, clearly hoping to sleep beside her.
The hidden ladder traced along with Nayun's finger came into view, and the eyes of the friends huddled around the little screen darted rapidly back and forth.
Nayun and Hasol were about to high-five in celebration when they took in the scene before them.
Yeoncheong, despondent at the result. Seoha, smiling as if this much was satisfaction enough. And between the two of them, Suyeon wearing an utterly puzzled expression.
It was enough to make one wonder whether emotions this contradictory could really coexist in a single frame.
Seoha leaned forward slightly toward the collapsed Yeoncheong.
"Yeoncheong. I know a philosopher's words that suit this exact situation."
"...What?"
Seoha cleared her throat, let the moment hang for a beat, then said:
"God is dead."
Though her face looked suitably sympathetic, there was laughter laced through her voice, and Yeoncheong's eyes narrowed to slits.
In that precise moment, Yeoncheong genuinely wanted to punch Seoha's lights out.
"Lights out."
The instant Nayun flipped the switch, pitch-black darkness swallowed the room.
"Ack!"
"Can't see? Want me to turn on a light?"
"...No. Found it."
Feeling her way through the dark, Hasol climbed into her bed, and soon the room held nothing but the rustle of blankets and quiet breathing.
Perhaps thanks to a whole afternoon of playing at the beach, soft, steady breaths soon filled the room.
Yeoncheong, trapped in the middle under the unspoken rule that she couldn't run away, squirmed.
Too cramped...
Three people squeezed onto one bed made that inevitable, but Yeoncheong felt it more keenly than anyone.
She'd expected Seoha to cling to her; the way Suyeon was quietly closing in was the surprise.
Still, her body must have been thoroughly worn out from the day, because she drifted off before long.
Half-asleep, Yeoncheong turned over in search of a more comfortable position. In the darkness, her head brushed against something soft and yielding, and the corners of her mouth curled up ever so slightly.
She rubbed her head against it a little, settled into place, and soon her breathing evened out into a calm, steady rhythm.
Seoha cracked one eye open, looked on with clear displeasure at her friend, and wrapped her up in a tight hug from behind.
What? What? What?!
Suyeon, who had been feigning sleep, secretly opened her eyes.
Because of Yeoncheong — who had abandoned her own pillow and was now pressed snugly against her chest.
It was a chain reaction: mischievous Seoha kept attaching herself from behind, and Yeoncheong, fleeing her, kept pressing her body ever closer to Suyeon.
Especially whenever that head rubbed against her chest — if she hadn't bitten down hard on her lip, something terribly strange would have escaped her mouth.
But the biggest problem was her heart, pounding without restraint. A heart thudding away, heedless of bedtime.
She tried to calm it down, but it wouldn't obey.
Instead, the racing only grew stronger, and Suyeon spent a good long while staring wide-eyed into the night.
Morning came. First to wake, using the sunlight filtering through the curtains as her alarm, was Hasol.
For some reason, Nayun's body had flipped around the wrong way overnight; Hasol gently slid a pillow under her head and carefully climbed out of bed.
Her amber eyes drifted, entirely of their own accord, toward the bed in question.
There was Seoha, clinging to Yeoncheong in a tight hug from behind, and Yeoncheong, turned her back to escape —
Straight into Suyeon. Worse, Yeoncheong had curled up with her head pressed right against Suyeon's chest, and Suyeon was holding it there so it couldn't escape.
"Ugh... s-save... me..."
As a bonus, Yeoncheong was groaning in her sleep as if trapped in some tormenting nightmare.
This was her just deserts for fleeing Seoha, but Hasol, who knew nothing of it, could only look on with pity.
The sight of her hemmed in front and back was genuinely sad, but all three of them looked ready to wake at the slightest touch, so she didn't dare intervene.
And so Yeoncheong dreamed a crushing nightmare of being pinned beneath something heavy, until Seoha and Suyeon finally woke.
Fingers flew across the passcode pad, and with a click the door swung open.
It had only been a day since she'd left this house, yet somehow so much had happened that it felt welcome.
Yeoncheong was utterly drained.
The trip home had been complete chaos, thanks to Suyeon sleeping in.
Tossing her bag carelessly aside, Yeoncheong dove straight onto her bed. On any normal day she'd have changed into comfortable clothes and unpacked, but she didn't have the strength.
Thanks to that nightmare, it felt like she hadn't slept at all.
Letting out a yawn, Yeoncheong pulled out her smartphone and checked the group chat.
Messages from Hasol and Nayun, who'd shared a taxi home. A message from Seoha, who'd ridden back in her ever-present black sedan. And last of all, word from Suyeon that she'd arrived home.
Yeoncheong, still lying face-down, moved nothing but her fingers to send a message.
Thud.
The phone slipped from her hand.
With that final message, Yeoncheong fell asleep.
As the photos they'd taken throughout the day cascaded into the chat, followed by a message saying they should all hang out together again sometime —
as if in answer, the sleeping Yeoncheong smiled faintly.