It’s almost two o’clock in the morning.

Joohyun never comes home late, especially when we have a schedule the next day.

...

I hope she’s okay.

    Seulgi had given up trying to contact the older girl when she’d called and it had immediately went to voicemail. Joohyun’s phone must have died. She said she was going out with her sister for dinner, and maybe a drink after. There was absolutely no way they would stay out this late. Joohyun didn’t like drinking, and she preferred to go to sleep early. Maybe something had happened?

Seulgi pushed that disturbing thought away into the corner of her mind and returned to staring at the clock. 1:57am. Just three more minutes, and Seulgi would call their manager. She didn’t want to, because she knew she would be getting Joohyun into a lot of trouble. It made the monolidded girl feel terrible that she was even considering doing it; it felt like she was betraying Joohyun. But that wasn’t it, not at all. She was merely concerned for the older girl’s safety. She wanted to make sure Joohyun was okay.

The problem was, Seulgi had been telling herself that for awhile now. Since midnight, she’d sat in their half-lit kitchen, waiting patiently for her leader to come home, idly scrolling through Twitter and Instagram.

Just a few more minutes, and I’ll call our manager.

And every time, she’d hesitated at the last second, mentally willing Joohyun to hurry up and walk through the door, unscathed and exhausted. The raw anxiety that was incessantly churning about Seulgi’s insides felt acidic, as if it were burning away at her gradually, and the only thing that could alleviate the pain was the safe return of Joohyun.

It was 1:59am when the door opened with a soft click.

Seulgi’s nodding head popped up immediately, and she shot to her feet, knocking over the stool she was formerly seated on. The noise caused the newcomer to shriek in surprise, dropping her keys to floor. As she bent to pick up the fallen pieces of metal, Seulgi did a quick double-check to ensure her sleep-deprived mind wasn’t playing tricks on her.

Yes, it was Bae Joohyun, clad in a sleek black dress that outlined her curves just right, her soft, womanly facial features extenuated by just the right amount of makeup, her plump lips complimented by the perfect shade of lipstick she wore.

    Warm, blissful relief filled Seulgi’s body as she stared at her group leader.

“Seulgi?” the older girl whispered in a shocked voice as she scooped up her keys from the floor, “What are you doing up so late?”

“Waiting for you,” the younger girl said plainly, hurrying over to embrace Joohyun, “I was worried half to death.”

The hug was tight and needful. It wasn’t enough to see that Joohyun was alright, she needed to feel it too. Needed to make sure that she was still intact, that every bit of her was unharmed. To Seulgi’s relief, the only thing that seemed out of place was Joohyun’s fragrance. She usually smelled like strawberries, but Seulgi could detect something else there as well, as if the scent of Joohyun’s perfume and the scent of someone else’s perfume had blended together. She chalked it up to whatever the black-haired girl’s sister might have been wearing.