“Eunji-ah!” Chorong sounded mad. “How could you get drunk last night? More importantly, how could you manage to get both Hayoung-ah and Naeun-ah drunk? I thought I could trust you with taking care of the members.”

“And you can!” Eunji hated fighting with anyone, and she hated fighting with Chorong and Bomi the most. She made sure the two were alone before even daring to raise her voice a little bit at the leader. “You just have to know that you're not the only one having a hard time because of Bomi, okay?”

“So you're just drowning your problems in alcohol?” Chorong's comment reminded Eunji of Naeun's reply last night.

“I know it wasn't the greatest thing to do, but I've had a lot going on lately and no one who I could talk it about,” Eunji answered harshly. “She might be your girlfriend, but she's my best friend, and she's been for a long time. There's no one I need more than her right now.”

“Not even Naeun-ah?” Chorong's voice sounded off, nothing like her, but she was getting into the fight now and, honestly, she had been going through a hard time too. “Doesn't she mean more to you? Or is she just a game you're playing to muffle your problems?

“How dare you...?” Eunji's eyes were open in shock, very surprised to hear her leader say that. Chorong was always the kind-hearted one, never raising her voice, and Eunji was the one who had to help her scold the members when necessary.

Chorong and Eunji stared at each other intensely for a while. The heat of the argument was filling the room, the silence becoming thick and tense.

“You have no idea about what's going on with me and Naeun-ah,” Eunji said bitterly, “and you have no right to set your eyes on our affairs. You were the one who hurt Bomi before you started dating, you were the one who made her want to give up on everything she care about, no matter how much you love her now. And I can promise you right now that I'm not going to hurt Naeun. If you're concerned about me acting like you did, don't worry, because I won't.”

Chorong was astonished, her eyes huge and her eyebrows buried in her chocolate bangs. Eunji had never talked to her like that before.

“I really hope it's the effects of the hangover speaking,” she started, her eyes filling up with tears. She was the weakest one, after all. “Because if this is the Eunji I have always looked up to, I'd better find another role model.”

Now it was Eunji who looked shocked. But the tears were already falling down Chorong's face, and it had been her fault, just like Naeun's last night.

“Unnie!” There she was. Naeun came into the room at that exact second. “What happened? Did you make her cry?”

“I'm sorry, Naeun-ah.”

“It's not me you should be apologizing to!”

“Unnie...” Eunji looked at Chorong, her eyes full of guilt. “I'm sorry, unnie. I'm just-
Chorong cut her.”

“Don't excuse yourself,” she said. “I don't know if it's the last effects of the alcohol in your system or if you're just tired, but you are partly right, and that's what hurts the most. I am sorry too, Eunji-ah.”

The two girls hugged each other, tears still falling down from Chorong's pale face under Naeun's attentive gaze. When they separated, the younger girl spoke.

“Eunji-unnie, can we talk for a second?” Eunji nodded, and Chorong took that as her sign for leaving.

“I'll make some breakfast and see how Hayoungie is doing.”

∼

“Unnie…” Naeun started, but Eunji cut her off.

“Please, don’t.” The older girl was avoiding Naeun’s eyes. “I know what you’re going to say. I shouldn’t have spoken to Chorong-unnie like that.”

“Then why did you?” Naeun saw everything simply.

Eunji looked at the younger girl for a few seconds in silence.

“I-I’m not sure,” Eunji said after thinking. “Something’s happening to me. What’s happening to Bomi hurt me in a way I can’t really understand; I feel like it’s my fault, don’t you see it? And then you just come and everything’s so complicated and I am sorry about last night but then you just woke up and said you love me?”

Naeun shook her head and hugged the older girl, and they stood there in silence for a while. That hug was trying to comfort Eunji. Naeun was astonished because she had never seen the other member go through such hardships without saying anything, but she had also never seen her get drunk with such desperation. The expression on Eunji’s eyes last night… Naeun couldn’t get it out of her mind. They needed to talk things through way more than they had up to that moment, but with everything that was going on with Bomi, Naeun knew it wasn’t the time.

“I said it because I’m quite sure it’s true,” the younger girl whispered in Eunji’s ear. “I really do think I love you, unnie.”

∼

“I'm here!”

Chorong came into the room in the exact moment when Bomi was trying to get up and go to the bathroom on her own. It was painful, but she could bear it better when there was no one else there she had to fake in front of.

“Do you need help?” A concerned Chorong asked Bomi, the younger girl shaking her head almost instantaneously. But after she tried to walk without holding onto anything, she turned to Chorong with a pitiful face.

“I might need some,” she hated admitting it, but she needed Chorong more than she was willing to say out loud.

After helping Bomi with the bathroom issue, Chorong started updating the girl on what had happened at the bungalow last night and that morning.

“When I got there, they were both completely asleep,” she was saying. “In each other's arms! This morning they were acting awkwardly, though.”

The breakfast table was set and the members were sitting around the table. Excluding Bomi for obvious reasons, it was the first time they all sat together for a couple of days, which was pretty weird for them.

“I think we all know that we need to talk,” Chorong started. Naeun and Eunji didn’t look like they were paying her much attention, though, acting strangely. They were obviously communicating but they seemed to be avoiding the other’s eyes, nothing about it looking like they were listening to Chorong. “Hello? Are you both here or still drunk from last night?”

At least Naeun had the decency to look ashamed, while Eunji avoided Chorong’s gaze.

“Now, someone please explain what went wrong with all of you last night.”

The only answer Chorong got for a couple of minutes was empty silence. Then Eunji started.

“It was my fault.” When she saw the leader nod in agreement, she continued. “I wasn’t in my right mind and started drinking to forget my problems, and then somehow I ended up convincing Hayoung-ah to join me.”

Hayoung looked at her unnie, immersed in her own thoughts.

“And about Naeun-ah…2 Eunji looked at the younger girl next to her and grabbed her hand, linking their fingers. “I don’t think it’s any of your business, but let’s say we’re going through something together and we are having a hard time, so we argued and she…”

“I ended up drinking on my own,” Naeun stood up for Eunji, “it wasn’t her fault. I drank my sorrows away, and we just fought harder then. I am sorry, but it wasn’t really in my hands.”

Chorong looked at the two of them, one at a time. The two girls were supporting each other in front of the leader, and Chorong sort of liked that, even if it was against her. Since all this thing with Eunji started, Naeun had been abandoning her shier self to become bolder.

“I can understand you getting drunk. I’m not in favor, but I can understand it. I’ve gotten drunk too sometimes, and it’s sort of normal.” She recalled that night at the bar with Bomi not that long ago. But when Hayoung nodded in agreement, she kept talking. “No, not for you, Hayoung-ah. You should not be drinking, no matter what. But about the others… I’m disappointed on you because I’ve been going through a lot lately and I shouldn’t be spending that little time I have looking after my members, who aren’t babies anymore.”

“I am sorry too, unnie,” Namjoo said, “maybe I should’ve tried more on my own before calling you and leaving Bomi-unnie on her own.”

“Don’t apologize,” Chorong replied. “That’s not it. You shouldn’t be the one taking care of them.”

“But unnie,” Eunji cut the leader, and Namjoo raised her eyebrows in disbelief, “we all have our problems, individual issues that are affecting us too. Sometimes I just can’t be the strong one, and I shouldn’t have to apologize for that.”

The girls looked guilty, but Eunji looked defiant. She was fighting for what she believed in. She and Naeun were holding each other’s hand while taking the blame for last night. Hayoung didn’t look like she was feeling excessively well, her face pale and her eye bags swollen. But she spoke anyways.

“Can I say something?” When her unnies shrugged she continued. “I think Eunji-unnie is right. We are more than a group, but we also have problems. And Bomi-unnie being at the hospital and everything that’s coming along with it is affecting us, not only you, Chorong-unnie. I think we did wrong last night, but I am glad that for a while I could forget about how horribly life is treating some of our members.

∼

“And Hayoung-ah stood up for her unnie.” Chorong was still telling the story when the beeping of her phone cut her off. She looked at the screen, and her eyes widened in shock.

“What’s wrong?” Bomi asked, concern filling up her face.

“The president is calling me,” she said, and walked out of the room to speak more comfortably.

When she came back ten minutes later, her face was pale and there were tears drying on her cheeks. She looked visibly altered with whatever had just happened.

“He wants Apink to break up.”