“Unnie?” Hayoung could barely walk straight when she fetched Namjoo for help.

“Hayoung-ah!” Namjoo’s eyes almost came out of their sockets. “What did you do? How… how could you get drunk?”

“Eunji-unnie…” Hayoung stared shyly at the floor. “But it was my fault; she’s just… not able to think straight.”

Namjoo couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Eunji drunk?

“Oh my…” She sighed deeply. “Let’s get you to bed.”

The two girls walked from the porch to the corridor where their room was in silence, Hayoung slightly leaning on Namjoo’s shoulder for support. But then they saw what was happening there.

“Naeun-ah, open the freaking door!” Eunji was hitting the door with her hands, her face struck with dry tears and her hair hanging around her face like she just woke up. She looked pretty crazy and desperate.

“Unnie! What are you doing?” Namjoo ran towards Eunji and stopped her from tearing the door down. “What’s wrong with all of you today? What did Naeun-unnie do?”

“She won’t let me in!” In that exact moment the door opened and a furious Naeun came out.

“Could you stop hitting the door?” She exclaimed. “Do you even know what time it is? You are freaking drunk and you act like crazy, trying to take advantage of me and now this? Don’t you get it? I don’t want to see you until you’re back to yourself!”

Namjoo opened her eyes in shock. She had never seen Naeun shout while being this mad, and she had never seen her unnie act this… disrespectful towards Eunji. The admiration Naeun had for Eunji had always guided her to act peacefully and shyly towards the older girl.

“Just in case you didn’t know,” Hayoung added in Namjoo’s ear. “They want to jump each other’s bones out.”

Namjoo had thought this couldn’t get worse, but they kept surprising her again and again. Naeun and Eunji, together? And now they looked like they wanted to kill each other.

“And give me this!” Naeun took the vodka bottle from Eunji’s hand forcefully.

Naeun closed the door again, and Eunji remained still for a moment. Namjoo used that to take Hayoung to her bed and give her some water.

“Drink this,” she told the maknae. “And sleep it all off. If you can, with this house full of crazy people. You are lucky I like you when you’re drunk, otherwise I wouldn’t accept any more craziness from all of you people. When did my members act like this?”

She stayed with Hayoung for a while, but when the screams started again she had to do something. Naeun was crying loudly while kneeling on her bedroom’s floor, and Eunji was sobbing in the corridor. The bottle of vodka was empty and rolling around the wooden floor, forgotten once they emptied it. While crying, the two girls were shouting incoherent things at each other, something Namjoo couldn’t really understand.

“What’s wrong with you?!” She tried to make herself be heard but it wasn’t working.

“And then you go freaking crazy!” Naeun was shouting. “You attacked me!”

“I am just hurt!” Eunji seemed to be talking about something else. “What am I going to do without the stronger one? I needed you, Naeun-ah!”

“Couldn’t you just act normally?” Naeun tried to take a deep breath. “I feel as sad and mad as you, but I don’t swallow my problems with a bottle of vodka! I thought I knew you! I thought you were better than this!”

Namjoo was getting more and more nervous, and she finally walked past her unnies’ room and took the needed measures.

“Unnie, I am sorry to call you this late,” she said after dialing a number. “But this is getting out of my hands. They are all freaking crazy. And drunk.”

∼

“But, what’s wrong with you?” Chorong was out of her shocked state; she could raise her voice too. “Haven’t you learned anything? Of course you shouldn’t lie when I ask you something this important!”

Bomi avoided her girlfriend’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, unnie,” she sounded half-guilty, half-tired. “I won’t lie to you again, I promise.”

Chorong moved her head approvingly and sighed.

“Now, come here,” Bomi patted the empty side of the bed next to her.

Minutes later, they were lying next to each other with the lights off, their fingers intertwined. Chorong kept moving to the side, trying to give Bomi more space so she could be as comfortable as possible.

“Can you stop moving?” Bomi was impatient. “I’m okay.  I don’t need more space. I promise.”

“I just… I want to help you as much as I can,” Chorong muttered.

“I know, unnie.” Bomi gave a sad smile. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s nothing you can do to help me. There’s nothing you can do that will save me.”

Chorong’s eyes were huge with shock at how Bomi didn’t even flinch while saying that. She was about to protest, but Bomi tightened her grip around the older girl’s fingers and she remained quiet. It wasn’t an awkward silence; it was just filled with sadness.

“Bomi-ah… can I ask you something without you getting mad at me?” When Bomi nodded, she continued. “If you had gotten it checked weeks ago… would it have been better? Would it have been useful?”

Bomi looked into Chorong’s dark orbs for a while before answering.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Bomi said. “It would’ve helped… partly. We’ll never know for sure. But the probabilities of me making it out of this are as nearly non-existent as they would’ve been a week or so ago.”

“How can you talk like this... like it’s not such a big deal that you might not make it out of this?” Chorong’s eyes were filled with tears. “You are going to leave me. You are going to go and I’m going to be the one suffering here. I’ll be the one who’s left on her own, without the most important part of me.”

“I...” Bomi hesitated. She didn’t really know what to say. “I don’t want to hear you talk like this, unnie. I can imagine exactly what’s going to happen when I... leave. And I cannot – I do not – want to think about you being all down and depressed. Promise me you won’t. Promise me!”

The last exclamation was accompanied by a sudden movement from Bomi, and then she groaned in pain. Her bones felt like they were burning, pain and heat going up and down her spine. And there was nothing she could really do except getting used to it and surrendering under the effects of morphine or whatever drug was that her doctor was feeding her.

“Are you okay?” Chorong looked concerned, and expression she hadn’t been able to fix for the last twenty-four hours. “And don’t you dare lie to me again.”

“It does hurt, but it’s alright,” Bomi answered. “And I’ve already promised I won’t lie to you again about this.”

“I just… you lying to me about being alright… it gives the impression that you don’t really care about how much I am hurting inside,” the older girl said, her head down. “I know you’re the one in pain, but I’m here for you. I’m the one who spends every minute thinking about you, about how you must be, about how much I really need you. Because I need you, Bomi-ah… so freaking much that my life would be meaningless without you.”

Bomi looked at Chorong intensely.

“You think this is easier for me?” Bomi wasn’t trying to fake a smile anymore. “There’s no way I can bear the thought of leaving you. Of leaving you here alone? I would never do that!”

“I know, Bomi-ah... I know.”

“I am so scared, unnie,” Bomi muttered really quietly. “You have no idea how scared I really am.”

Out of a sudden, Bomi was crying. Bomi who hardly ever cried in front of the members was sobbing loudly while holding onto Chorong, the two girls tightly hugging each other under the bed covers, their limbs intertwined. Chorong could feel Bomi’s faltering breathing on her neck, her eyes filling up with tears when the weight of the situation went down on her.

“Don’t leave me, Bomi-ah.” Chorong was crying too, the two girls holding each other in the darkness. “I can’t live without you.”

“I won’t. I will never really leave you.” Bomi pressed her hand against Chorong’s chest, where her heart would be. “I’ll be here. Forever.”

Chorong tried really hard to smile, but only a new flow of tears was coming.

“Wow... this sounded even cheesy.” Chorong didn’t have the strength to roll her eyes at the comment, she didn’t find anything funny anymore.

“I love you so much, Park Chorong,” Bomi stated between sobs. “I just want you to know that and always remember it. Promise me you will. Promise me you will remember me holding you, me whispering how much I love you in your ear right before you fall asleep. Those are the things that I want you to remember, not this cold hospital room where they’re holding you!”

Chorong could do nothing but pull Bomi closer, kissing her softly on the lips.

“You don’t have to be scared, Bomi-ah,” Chorong said, tears still flowing out of her dark eyes, “because I’m here with you. Every single second.”

That’s when the phone rang, and Chorong could do nothing but sigh and kiss Bomi on the forehead before getting up and picking up the phone.

“Namjoo-ah?” She answered, wiping her tears. “What? Are you serious? Where’s Eunji-ah?”

Chorong’s eyes were huge with shock, Bomi trying to sit up on the bed to understand better what was going on. Chorong finished talking and shook her head in disbelief.

“I’ll be right there.”