Joy feels extremely guilty, and sits with her hands folded on her lap, her thumbs rubbing against each other in agitation. In front of her, Joohyun looks extremely vexed, her lips pressed tightly and drawn into a thin line. She breathes in and out, trying to calm herself down, and has one hand firmly gripping Yeri’s arm, squeezing it until painfully red fingerprints form on the younger girl’s skin.

Wendy is the first to break the silence. “Joohyun, please. You’re hurting her.” The woman with amethyst hair quickly withdraws her hand and mutters an apology. The four continue to sit quietly after that, until the doorbell to Wendy and Joy’s shared flat rings continuously without pause. The smaller brunette makes her way to the door and gingerly opens it, and Seulgi bursts through the small gap to embrace Wendy in her arms desperately.

“Oh gods, are you okay?” She pulls away and scans Wendy with frantic eyes, searching for any kind of injury on her body, before settling on the freshly bandaged arm. “Oh no…” The crack in her voice is audible, and the sound of it is like a stab into Joy’s conscience-stricken heart. She should have informed her about the incident immediately, instead of delaying and leaving it to Joohyun. “Who did this to you?” She vaguely hears Seulgi ask, and allows a sigh to escape from her lips.

“Seulong.” Joohyun’s tone is crisp and full of disapproval as she says his name, and Seulgi utters a low growl. She storms over to Joy, more than prepared to shout at the girl for allowing him to injure her girlfriend, but Wendy and Yeri both jump between them. The brunette places a hand on Seulgi’s raised arm to lower it while Yeri stands protectively in front of Joy. 

Undeterred, Seulgi raises her voice to shout: “We told you not to agree to his requests! Look at what happened now. Are you going to take responsibility?”

“Stop,” Joohyun says quietly, immediately silencing Seulgi, and flips her lavender hair around the nape of her neck. “The main problem here is Seulong. If there aren’t any disagreements, I am going to report him to the Dean, as well as the police.” She rises from where she sits on the couch and opens the door to exit, not wasting a single second to wait for anyone to reply. Seulgi and Wendy follow her out, presumably to calm the angry bear-like woman down, leaving Yeri and Joy alone together in the apartment.

They sit in silence for a while, allowing the dust to settle, before Joy starts to speak. “Yeri, I’m really sorry about this whole thing.” The younger girl opens to disagree, that no, this is nothing to apologise about, but Joy wags a finger and shakes her head. “The unnies have always disapproved of Seulong, especially when Joohyun had heard from another friend that he could be quite, let’s say, volatile. But, you know, he looked so sincere when he asked me out, I thought that her friends were jealous. Or even if he was going to be unpredictable, I thought I could change him.”

She takes a shuddering breath, trying to hold in the tears that threaten to spill over. “It looks like I was wrong. Seulgi was right, it… It’s my fault that Wendy got hurt.” Yeri looks around for a box of tissues, trying to find the words to say. She wants to admit that, yes, technically, Joy did indirectly cause Wendy’s injury, but at the same time, she couldn’t have controlled when the girl chose to come around to deliver her brownies. 

Grabbing a few tissues from a box she spies, she shuffles over to sit next to Joy and dabs at the streaks of tears that run down the girl’s cheeks. “Fine, okay, maybe a bit…” The brunette moans and buries her face in her hands, and Yeri immediately retracts her statement. “No, no, it’s not your fault. Joy, please, look at me.” Cupping the older woman’s face in her hands, Yeri turns her head so that they are facing each other, and looks Joy straight in the eyes. 

“I know some people change, but he just happened to be one that… well, didn’t. We should all be grateful that you and Wendy have managed to escape with only a small injury, instead of anything more serious.” The redhead smiles, and wipes a stray tear that leaks from Joy’s eyes with her thumb. She reaches for the brunette’s hands and holds them firmly in her own to comfort, but as her long fingers brush against Joy’s wrists she feels lines, ever-so-slightly raised, like injuries from a long time ago.

Joy realises a beat too late that Yeri has found her scars, and raises her gaze to look into Yeri’s widened eyes. “Yeri.” Her voice trembles and fails her before she can attempt to explain anything, before she can say that it wasn’t all caused by Seulong, but also—

“Also who?” The redhead sitting next to her asks, even though she thinks she already knows the answer. Joy realises that she has been talking aloud the whole time. constricts at the memories of sharp scissors and blunt razors sliding across her skin after arguments with Seulong, the rivulets of red that dripped down in pearls into the bathtub and sink when she thought she wasn’t good enough, the increasing number of long-sleeved shirts and sweaters she had started to buy after Wendy had caught a hint of a fresh cut on her wrist. Her voice cracks audibly.

“Me.”

Somewhere else, a trio of girls — one tall and slender with fiery-orange hair, another slightly shorter with hair the colour of smoky pastel purple, and the last with a simple chocolate ponytail and a bandage on her right forearm — make their way stormily to a police station, accompanied by a grey-haired and bespectacled man who identifies himself as the Dean of the University.

And only just a few blocks away from Wendy and Joy’s shared apartment, Seulong steps in rhythm, following the neon green light flashing from a GPS app on his phone screen. There you are.

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hi everyone! it's ash here, author of this story. i will be away on holiday next week, and thus will not be able to update. the next one will be on the week beginning on the 26th of december.

thank you for reading!