Renewing Her Dark Past
'Agh... I'm thirsty...'
A pitch-black room.
What had woken Yeoncheong in the middle of the night was thirst.
Why is the house so hot?
Shoving aside the blanket her kind friends had tucked over her, she instinctively checked the air conditioner. Set to sleep mode, it was still humming away, dutifully restrained.
Feeling around her own body in the dark, Yeoncheong quickly found the culprit.
Oh. I fell asleep in this.
The tracksuit was the problem. She wore it around the house all the time, but during the sweltering summer she always took it off to sleep—apparently she'd passed out before getting around to it this time.
She peeled off the tracksuit, crammed it into a corner, and stretched a foot out of the bed.
"Ugh."
Jolted awake by the squishy sensation under her foot, she leaned down to look.
For some reason, someone was sleeping pressed right up against the bed. The other friends were huddled together in a cluster, sharing a single blanket laid across them sideways.
Relying on her dark-adjusted eyes and the blurry outlines of her friends, Yeoncheong stretched her foot out again. She stepped on quite a few things along the way, but thankfully made it across without waking anyone, and even in her half-asleep haze she found her way to the refrigerator with practiced ease.
The spot where water was always kept. Without even looking, she found the water and quenched her thirst.
While I'm up, might as well use the bathroom...
Yeoncheong didn't trust herself to make it over the obstacle course of sprawled friends twice, so she headed straight to the bathroom while she was at it. Even half-asleep, she had plenty of time to appreciate the fact that sitting down drastically reduced the chances of splashing.
After finishing up, she returned to bed and was out in seconds.
Whether she'd flushed her memories down the toilet along with everything else, she had no idea she'd lain down—using the soft blanket her friends had spread over them as her bed.
***
How could anyone fail to notice a whole person sleeping on top of them?
Especially one tossing and turning up there.
The moment Yeoncheong fell asleep, her friends opened their eyes as if on shift change, peering around blearily in the darkness.
"Ugh... whose foot is this on me?"
The only sound in the house was the faint drone of the air conditioner. At Hasol's small mutter, the other friends quietly exchanged information in hushed voices.
"A foot? I've got a body over here."
"I've got... a head."
Apparently fond of the chill the bed gave off, everyone except Nayun—who had been sleeping pressed right up against it—had someone on top of them. At this point, there was no mistaking who it was.
"Yeoncheong?"
Unable to fathom why on earth she'd left the bed to sprawl on top of the blanket, the friends each shook her from their respective positions.
However.
"Mmmm."
Yeoncheong only squirmed, letting out sounds she never would have made while awake.
"Does being drunk normally last this long?"
"No idea. You'd have to have actually drunk before to know."
"She got tipsy off a single can, so maybe it just lasts longer for her."
Three friends, all convinced Yeoncheong was still drunk. They tried to carry her back to the bed, but she resisted fiercely, as though her current spot were perfectly comfortable.
And in the process, countless touches that Yeoncheong herself had absolutely no intention of making took place in the dark.
"Khh...!"
"Yeoncheong, do NOT touch me there!"
They kept their voices as low as they could, but it was obvious these were cries of sheer panic.
As she twisted this way and that, like someone searching for a comfortable position in a hammock, Yeoncheong mauled Hasol's thigh with her foot, rolled across Seoha's stomach as if it were an open field, and used Suyeon's chest as a pillow, wearing the happiest expression in the world.
"Heh, heheh..."
Whatever happy dream she was having, she kept grinning in her sleep for good measure.
It was technically on top of the blanket—but only a thin summer blanket, hardly enough to come between Yeoncheong and her friends.
Every one of Yeoncheong's movements came through that thin layer of fabric. The friends, subjected to unwitting sexual harassment, flushed red.
Suyeon, whose chest had been conscripted into pillow duty, was by far the most flustered.
"Is she... not actually asleep?"
The thought did cross their minds, given how desperately she clung on every time they tried to peel her off.
Hasol, positioned by the comparatively weakly defended legs, escaped first, and with her help Seoha and Suyeon extracted themselves from Yeoncheong one by one—one rubbing her stomach, the other crossing her arms protectively over her chest.
Their faces were so red that even in the pitch-black house, you could tell they were burning.
"Girls. We have no choice."
Seoha's red eyes glared at Yeoncheong, snoozing in perfect bliss atop the blanket.
"Let's tie her up."
And with that, she radiated a chill infinitely colder than anything the color red had any right to carry.
***
Outside the window, the noisy sounds of the world preparing for morning. Inside the house, her friends' voices, tinged with a strange sense of déjà vu.
On the bed.
Yeoncheong, who'd been living alarm-free over the break, opened her eyes to a body that felt somehow both foggy and aching all over.
Without the faintest idea what she'd drunk the night before.
Maybe there's alcohol in non-alcoholic drinks after all—she silently mumbled the single most idiotic theory imaginable.
She had no clue how she'd gotten past her friends, but she did remember briefly waking in the middle of the night to drink some water and use the bathroom.
Her friends. Her friends...
Only then did it hit her—she'd fallen asleep without even leaving them the blanket.
Bright morning had already arrived beyond the curtains, but Yeoncheong, as hostess, felt obliged to at least check whether her friends had managed to sleep without their blanket.
She hurriedly pushed herself up.
"Guys...! Hrk—!"
Or tried to.
Her core engaged, her torso rose just fine—but the hands that were supposed to support her afterward found nothing to push against. With a deeply unnatural shriek, Yeoncheong flopped naturally back down.
Only then did she realize she was wrapped up in the blanket like a burrito, utterly unable to move.
"Oh, Yeoncheong's up."
Having heard their hostess's strangled morning cry, the guests gathered around her one by one.
Yeoncheong rolled her eyes upward to look at them. Each of her friends had a piece of bread in her mouth—her usual breakfast routine, brought to her. Suyeon, who'd stayed the night, seemed to have fetched it.
Faced with her friends simply staring blankly down at her, Yeoncheong writhed desperately.
"G-guys? I don't know what I did wrong, but couldn't you maybe untie me?"
"You don't know?"
The friends' gazes were somewhere between cool and glacial.
"Pervert."
"Exhibitionist."
"Sexual harasser."
"Idiot."
Among them was one insult—idiot—that seemed like a pure, almost innocent jab at Yeoncheong's intelligence, but the rest carried a remarkably consistent tone of accusation.
Waking up to a chorus of her friends' condemnation, Yeoncheong could only blink stupidly.
"Do you seriously not remember anything?"
"Wh-what?"
Yeoncheong flinched at the sharp edge in Suyeon's voice. Judging by the atmosphere, she'd clearly done something wrong—but she had absolutely no memory of what.
"You really don't remember groping and feeling up all our bodies?"
"..."
She distinctly remembered climbing over her friends to get water, and going to the bathroom.
"......"
And then coming straight back and diving on top of the blanket to sleep.
Hmm... when I went back to bed, did I... climb over the girls?
"!!!"
Her blue eyes flew wide open.
The moment the thought formed, she could roughly guess what must have happened overnight. And given how her friends were treating her now, it was all but certain.
Watching her reaction, Seoha's lips curved.
"You remember."
"N-no, I just get the general idea of what happened. But it wasn't on purpose! I was asleep! It was in my sleep!"
"Yeoncheong."
Seoha smiled at her, fresh and sweet as a spring morning. The smiles on the friends beside her curved just as pleasantly.
Just as Yeoncheong was thinking that her friends, of all people, were the only ones who understood her heart—
Seoha's voice dropped, cold as ice.
"Not being on purpose doesn't mean it wasn't wrong, does it?"
"Exactly. Stay tied up there and reflect on what you've done."
Suyeon nodded along in agreement. Concluding that two of them were already beyond saving, Yeoncheong turned her hopeful eyes to Hasol.
"I'm sorry. Just this once, even I..."
But there was no moving the heart of Hasol, one of the victims herself.
Yeoncheong sneaked a glance at Nayun and let out a sigh. Catching her eye, Nayun tilted her head at the reaction.
"Hey, why aren't you asking me to let you out?"
"Because you'd probably leave me like this saying it's too entertaining to watch."
Bullseye. Nayun flinched.
As the bound Yeoncheong took blow after blow from Nayun, Seoha spoke up.
"Stay like that for about an hour, and I'll untie you."
"An hour?!"
Startled, Yeoncheong appealed to Seoha in desperation.
"I can't! I really need to use the bathroom!"
"You could be lying."
"I always go to the bathroom when I wake up! It's a habit!"
"Then thirty minutes."
Even with Seoha's reduced sentence, Yeoncheong shook her head.
"Just hold it."
"Yeah. You already went in the middle of the night, didn't you?"
"That was—that was different...!"
Everyone assumed this was just Yeoncheong grasping at any excuse to be freed. She had gone once in the middle of the night, after all, so it was fair enough to be skeptical.
But then—
"I... hnngh. I'm really... serious..."
As she sniffled, and clear, glistening drops of water began to well up at the corners of her eyes—
the friends finally understood she meant every word.
"Hey! Untie her, NOW!"
In that instant, all four friends threw themselves at the blanket-bound Yeoncheong, none bothering to claim priority.
"Gently! GENTLY!"
Yeoncheong's tearful scream rang out, pitiful and clear.
***
Having (presumably) seen to her urgent business seconds before total catastrophe, Yeoncheong emerged from the bathroom with exquisite caution.
For once, it was Seoha who warily watched Yeoncheong's expression.
"I'm... sorry."
Yeoncheong said nothing. She simply looked at Seoha, and then at the other friends, who were all studiously avoiding her gaze as well.
After glaring at them for a good long while, Yeoncheong finally muttered:
"This time it went too far. You're all banned from contacting me until the end of break."
"Huh?"
Considering they'd nearly committed a catastrophic breach of hospitality on their hostess's own bed, it was a light punishment—but Seoha shook her head in open disbelief, refusing to accept reality. Only days remained before the break ended, and being told not to even contact her was an absurd overreaction.
Hoping to defuse the crushing atmosphere, Nayun opened her mouth.
"Aw c'mon~ what's the big deal? At least you didn't actually go on the floor..."
"You absolute lunatic!"
"How is that COMFORT?!"
Suyeon and Hasol clamped their hands over Nayun's mouth in perfect unison. As the two of them rained blows on her back without mercy, Nayun twisted and squirmed in protest.
Suyeon and Hasol laughed awkwardly, dragged Nayun across the room, and dumped her unceremoniously on the floor.
"We should... we should probably get going. Rest up, okay?"
"Yeah, right! S-see you next time!"
Suyeon and Hasol, bags snatched up in record time, hauled the frozen-solid Seoha out of the house like they were fleeing a crime scene.
"Hey! Hey! How could you leave me behind!"
Nayun, still grumbling about her bruises, also made a lightning-fast exit with a parting 'see you when school starts.'
Bang.
The door closed, and the peace Yeoncheong had longed for so desperately finally descended upon the house...
"AAAAAAAARGH!!!"
With a monstrous shriek, she hurled herself onto the bed and drove her fist into her completely innocent pillow.
She didn't know the details, but the broad strokes were clear enough: drunk out of her mind, she'd committed unspeakable offenses against her friends. A fully grown human being had been brought to tears in front of them over needing the bathroom.
In the span of a single night, she had renewed her dark history. And not just renewed it—she'd set consecutive personal bests.
Knowing all this, Yeoncheong's screams echoed through the house for a good long while.
It was a weekday. The only silver lining was that, today, she could scream as loud as she pleased.