Taeyeon’s POV

Where the hell am I?

This isn’t my bed. It doesn’t feel like my bed. The ceiling fan spinning above me would be wood colored not black if this were my room. My arms being the only thing I was willing to move, I felt around my surrounds.

Am I ?

This is surely not clothes.. This is definitely my bare thigh.. Stomach.. …?

Oh god…

I forced my head to turn. Gravity was seriously showing off right now.. There was somebody laying in the bed right beside me. Her oh-so familiar back was to me. I looked up at the ceiling fan again and shut my eyes.

“Oh my god.” I groaned, pressing my palms into my eyes in the most pleasant and satisfying way.

Sooyoung mumbled beside me. I looked at her back again but she was still sleeping.

“Sooyoung-ah.” I murmured. “Sooyoung-ah wake up." I grabbed her bare shoulder and shook her lightly.

“Mmmm?” She groaned and pulled my arm around her.

“Sooyoung, wake up.” I said more clearly, halfheartedly attempting to pull away.

“Whatdoyouwant..” She groaned again.

“I think we had , Sooyoung.” I said and saw her eyes flutter open finally.

She turned to see who was talking to her and saw my face before turning back away and letting go of my arm. “Oh my god, are you serious?” She groaned.

“What is that supposed to mean??” I asked, feeling offended by the way she said it.

“Nothing, Taeng. I’m honestly not that surprised this happened.” Sooyoung looked back up into my face. A few seconds of looking at one another and we started laughing.

“Oh my god.” I groaned amusingly and I laid back down on the bed. “Where are we even?”

“I have no clue.. But we should get dressed and figure it out.” Sooyoung said as she shamelessly stood from the bed completely in search for her clothes. She tossed me my own clothes and I got up and changed.

We left the room to find Hyoyeon sitting at a table drinking out of a mug. She looked up at us. “Look who’s up! The love birds have decided it was time to show themselves, Minah!”

Minah, our bartender friend from Club f(x) popped her head out from behind a wall. “Well, well, well. Good morning you two. Come have some tea. It’ll help with the hangover.”

“I’m actually not that hungover…” I said, finally realizing that I didn’t have such a bad headache.

Minah sniggered. “That would be because I started giving you all cups of water to replace your drinks. Free of charge, of course. But you girls were so drunk you didn’t even notice.”

“Well while you two were busy in that room last night, Minah and I had a little fun too.” Hyoyeon winked at us.

“Yeah, we sure did." Minah glared at Hyoyeon. "If you call holding your hair out of your face while you threw up for thirty minutes and then dragging your passed out body to the bed fun, then yeah. Loads of fun, Hyoyeon.” She shook her head as she drank her cup of tea.

“Well it sounds like I had fun last night.” Hyoyeon said. “And you two obviously did! It was bound to happen one day! You guys have always had pent up ual frustration toward each other.”

Sooyoung and I sat down at the small table and poured drinks of our own.

“So how was it??” Hyoyeon pressed.

“I have no idea.” Sooyoung laughed. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“Ouch. Taeyeon, you must have been really bad for her to have blocked it out of her mind.” Hyoyeon teased. Sooyoung opened to object.

“I don’t remember anything either.” I said first. “We were so plastered.. I don’t remember most of the night, honestly.”

“That makes two of us.” Sooyoung said. She lifted her mug to toast with me.

“Three of us.” Hyoyeon laughed, clinking her mug with ours.

“You all definitely had lots of fun last night.” Minah sat down now. “Couldn’t get you out of my damn club. I had to bring you to my place.”

I felt something in my pants move and reached down to find my phone. Oh . Hayeon..

27 missed calls

11 messages

I unlocked my phone and read the messages.

From Hayeon:

unnie im so sorry for not telling u about krystal.. please come back home so we can talk..

unnie im sorry… :,(

where are u?

it’s super late….. when r u coming home?

are u coming home tonight???

it’s 5 in the morning where r u??

ANSWER MY CALL.

this isn’t funny, taeyeon.

I dont care how angry u r with me. u need to answer my call.

Im seriously so worried right now im crying.

Im going to call the police if you dont answer back in the next hour. this is bull.

“, we have to go.. Hayeon is freaking out…”

“I’ll get my keys and take you to your cars.” Minah got up and was out of sight.

~~~~~

“Where the hell have you been???” Hayeon practically screamed when I walked through the yet to be completely fixed front door. “I have stayed up all night waiting for you to call or text or come back home! Do you know how worried I was???” Tears were welling up in my sister’s eyes now. “Did you not even think about telling me you were going to go off for the whole stupid night??? I cannot beli—”

I pulled Hayeon into a hug and she stopped yelling. She sobbed into my shoulder and the first stream of salty tears touched my own cheeks. We cried in that spot for at least ten minutes, not saying a word to each other the whole time. When we parted, she wiped the tears from my face.

“Where were you all night?” She said more delicately now.

“I couldn’t drive home last night,” I said. “Minah the bartender drove me and Hyoyeon and Sooyoung to her apartment and we stayed there.” I decided it would be best to leave out the other information.

“Thank her for me, will you?” Hayeon smiled sadly at me. That seemed to be the only kind of smile I got from her nowadays… “Are Sooyoung and Hyoyeon not coming down for dinner?”

“No, definitely not.” I looked at the watch on my wrist. “Wow.. I can’t believe it’s already five.. I have to get dinner ready already?? I only woke up like an hour ago…”

“Maye that will teach you not to drink so much, unnie.” Hayeon wrapped an arm around my waist and I winced. She led me to the kitchen where we prepared dinner together.

~~~~~

“You really stayed up all night for me?”

“Of course.” Hayeon said. We were cuddled up on the couch together after dinner. “I was worried sick. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“I promise I won’t..” It was a promise I was never going to intentionally break again.

There was a pause in the moment in which I could tell Hayeon was trying to decide what to say. “I know you were upset about the whole… thing.. last night,” Hayeon said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean you can just—”

“I know, Hayeon-ah.. I’m sorry. I won’t do something like that again. Last night—well I guess this morning—I realized I shouldn’t stay depressed about someone that doesn’t care about me. I’ve been taking up too much of my time acting like my life has no meaning anymore. I’ve been through this before. I know I’ll be okay at some point…”

“Unnie…” Hayeon squeezed my arms lightly. “I’m sorry.. Krystal is sorry.. She misses you, Krystal does. You should know that..”

“I miss her too..” I whispered. I had been staring off into nothingness this whole time, but focused my eyes to find I was staring at the piano against the window. I got up from my spot on the couch and found myself sitting at on the bench in front of it.

“Are you going to play a song, unnie?” Hayeon sounded uncertain but interested and excited.

“I… have actually been working on something..” I said, pressing random keys and listening to their sounds. “While I’m not at work and when you’re at school, I was working on something.”

“Really?” I could see Hayeon sit up straighter on the couch from the reflection in the dark window. “I love when you make your own stuff, unnie. Are you going to play it?”

My answer does not come from my lips, but instead from the first notes I play; my fingers dancing on the black and white bars with a mind of their own.

“Your soft voice rings in my ears.
Whether my eyes are open or closed,
I keep looking for you.
My eyes meet yours as I’m in your warm embrace.
Baby give me one more kiss,
Just one more kiss, whisper to me”

I closed my eyes, putting all of my emotion into the sound I created with the piano and with my voice.

“I smile at your smile,
You make me forget all fear, you make me breathe.

You're everything I’ve been looking for,
Will you protect me?
The moment I was with you and your love,
Even if pain from the faded past comes
I will always tell you.
My heart that only beats toward you.”

Jessica was sent to live with me so I could protect her. Instead, it felt as though she was sent here to protect me from myself; from my anger and my past. So what do I do without her?

“You, you, you. Only for you, you, you.”

I stopped playing but didn’t turn away from the piano. I wish I could keep playing. I wish I could play for the rest of my life without stopping. Playing is one of the only things that brings me peace nowadays. It’s just like how it was before…

“That’s it,” I said to the quiet Hayeon. “That’s all I have right now.”

“That was beautiful, unnie.” She said. “You’ll get it finished, I know. You make your best songs when you’re broken, I’ve noticed that.” She got up from her spot on the couch, kissed me on the cheek and bid me goodnight before climbing the stairs and disappearing in her bedroom.

I played with the piano for a little longer before realizing my eyelids had started to grow heavy. I stripped down in front of my bedroom mirror and took a look at my body. Dark red patches were placed in random areas of my body; my hips, thighs, stomach, arms, and around my s. There was a bite mark on my hip as well.

“Dammit Soo. You attacked my body like a hungry animal.” I mumbled, pressing a finger onto the bite mark and wincing as I did when Hayeon touched it.

“Don’t get me started. I look like I’m in an abusive relationship. Just be glad you don’t have any visible when you wear clothes. Unlike me.”

Hours into the night, I was still rolling in my bed, having the worst trouble sleeping. it. I got out of bed and blindly made my way to Hayeon’s room. I quietly crawled into the extra space on her bed and wrapped an arm around her. She stirred in her sleep and looks up into the darkness at me.

“Unnie..?”

“I’m so sorry, Yeon… I’m so sorry…” I cried suddenly. “I’m the worst sister in the entire world.. I haven’t been paying enough attention to you since you moved back and I am the worst person ever for that… I completely understand if you want to move back in with Jiwoong…”

“Wait.. Tae, what’s the matter..? Of course I don't want to move back in with Jioong oppa!” Hayeon rolled around to face me. “Why are you crying? I thought we already talk this through?”

I didn’t know why I was crying so hard all of a sudden. The feeling had just unexpectedly hit me once she said “unnie” and I couldn’t hold it in.

“I just can’t stop thinking how much I’ve been lacking as guardian of my baby sister…”

“Yah. Baby sister? I am not a baby anymore!” She protested, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

“You will always be my baby sister, Yeon, don’t be silly.” I snuggled into her chest as tears rolled into my hair and ear. “But I’m such a ty big sister…”

Hayeon’s my hair and rubbed my arm in reassurance. “You are not. Don’t say that anymore, Taeyeonie. You’re just going through stuff. I’d be surprised if you weren’t retaliating in some way, to be honest. I know you too well. You’re my sister after all.”

“I shouldn’t have let something like this cause problems with you, though..”

“You’re not. You’re here right now. You’re opening up about it which is what I’ve been hoping you’d do this whole time. I’m so proud of you, unnie. There’s no trouble between us. There never has been and there never will be.”

I cried harder. “How come it feels like you’re the big sister and I’m the little sister all of a sudden?”

Hayeon chuckled. “The roles have been swapped.”

“I love you, Hayeon-ah.” I said softly. “So much. I won’t act the way I’ve been acting anymore. I’ll take much better care of you now and I won’t go out drinking anymore, okay? I’ll be the responsible unnie I should have been years ago.”

“I love you too, Taeyeonie.” And like that, we fell asleep.

So I'm back with an update over a month later. I wasnted this chapter to be a lot better, but I didn't have much time for it, honestly.. I'm exhausted for one.. And second, it's super late and I need to wake up early for work tomorrow and I should have been asleep hours ago... D: I hope you're not too made at me for the hiatus! And the crappy update..