v. if not just a shadow

There's something so cruel about everything, the way cruelty bounces off the high walls and moans back into her ears, the way she begs to be felt; not her body. The way the two-tone walls speak to her more than she has ever said makes her feel mute, like a failure altogether. But she pants when the girl leaves her, when her weight stops pressing onto TaeYeon's stomach and the pants lying in the doorway is picked up and dusted once, twice, and then those stalking pair of legs remain concealed to her and the rest of the world.

To her, Jessica is a little too harsh, a little too unforgiving, a little too brash and impulsive in sharing skin.

Jessica's back is a lovely tan she has gotten from an American summer, with freckles make-up often hid running up her left shoulder blade--TaeYeon doesn't remember the taste of that expanse of skin.

And they say nothing--Jessica's lips only move to mull whispered, muted goodbyes into TaeYeon's hair, smelling like cigarettes and everything that's made the world go bad and rotten.

TaeYeon swears she sees scars every time Jessica's lips press into hers, beneath the blackness of her shut eyelids, and it scares her. TaeYeon's tongue goes numb and floppy, and she doesn't even bother to watch the door shut, when Jessica slips through the small crack of the door and then pretend it never happened; that TaeYeon never happened.

Her ness feels humiliating. Suffocating.

The door creaks open. Someone comes in holding her phone to her chest, too tall to be Sunny, too short to be YoonA or YuRi or even SeoHyun. The girl puts the phone on the nightstand, looking at the crinkled side of TaeYeon's blanket before slipping underneath it and hesitantly reach out to hug TaeYeon's waist.

TaeYeon, for the benefit of Tiffany, pretends like she's just been sleeping, consciously counting the heaves of breath she takes, the rise and fall of her chest, everything.

"I just saw Jessi leave the room, Tae."

TaeYeon can't seem to open her eyes but whispers, "It was just a shadow."

—ジュリエット