Part 11 ⧫ Tribulation

trib·u·la·tion

/ˌtribyəˈlāSH(ə)n/

noun

Grievous trouble; severe trial or suffering.

An instance of this; an affliction, trouble, etc.

_______

Iseul, someone was saying. Iseul… what was that again? Right, my name. Han Iseul.

“Iseul,” the voice said again, more persistently. “Iseul, wake up.”

I tried to shut the voice out of my head, only resulting with a hand on my shoulder. Shaking me, to be exact. “Iseul, wake up.” The voice was kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place who’s voice it was, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to sleep.

Desperately, I attempted to squirm away from that voice and go back to dreamland, but it was already too late for that -- especially with the last loud, “HAN ISEUL!” and this time, unmistakably, it was from Byun Baekhyun.  

I shot up.

Immediately, I knew my hair was in extreme disarray -- it wasn’t surprising; I always looked like a zombie when waking up -- but I still felt somewhat self conscious that Byun Baekhyun was here. Before I could run any fingers through my hair however, he frowned at me. “You look worse than me,” he started, scanning my face. “Were you drinking?”

As the first response I had, I picked up my pillow and chucked it at his face. I still felt half asleep and not quite awake, brain not quite functioning yet, woozy and still half in dreamland. My vision was blurry -- blurrier than usual, even without my glasses. My aim was undoubtedly horribly off, but Baekhyun ducked anyways. The pillow went sailing towards my bedroom door, landing on the ground with a barely audible thunk, a far distance away from his head, even if he hadn’t dodged it in the first place.

“What?” he demanded defensively.

“Why are you here and what are you even doing and-”

Before I could finish yelling at him, he held up my alarm clock with his right hand, which I didn’t even notice him holding until now. “I think this thing was supposed to ring,” he said casually, though something in his weirdly cheerful voice brought a strange kind of trepidation onto me. “And it didn’t, and it does tell me that it’s already six thirty. Not sure if this is when you normally wake up, or… whatever it is, we do have school today. Also, you’re going to wake your grandma up if you talk any louder.”

Despite Baekhyun’s warning about waking up my grandma, I fought the urge to scream and throw something -- this time something harder and more breakable than a pillow -- at him. Instead, I swallowed my yelp and took a deep breath. “We’re late,” I said in the most hushed and composed tone I could conjure up. “And screwed.”

***

By the time I had my uniform on and my backpack packed, I was positively sure that Baekhyun and I were going to be extremely late. Not to mention my grandma was probably going to wake up any minute and I just couldn’t wait to see her expression when she spotted Baekhyun. Who was going to get killed. And we hadn’t had the chance to eat breakfast, either. I had the vague feeling that this day was just going to go downhill from here.

Even if we managed to get out of the house safely (honestly, I wouldn’t lie -- that sounded like a horror story, but sometimes, my grandma was not a force to be reckoned with), Baekhyun was screwed. He was going to get into unimaginable trouble for going to school without a uniform -- especially with sweats and an oversized sweater that my gut instinct told me belonged to either Chanyeol or Jongin. It was just so, so untidy. And then, how could I forget the fact that both of us were going to be horrifyingly late?

“Do you feel any better?” I asked him while stuffing textbooks into my backpack. “You better. I went through so much trying to get you out of the flipping closet.”

Baekhyun shrugged, frowning. “I guess? My head still hurts but it’s better. And I have no recollection of last night whatsoever, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. I think I was burning too high for my brain to even function properly.”

I swallowed the urge to say, when has your brain ever functioned properly? and instead, I muttered, “Just to prevent any incidents, take another cup of medicine.”

His eyes widened comically, to the point that just about forgot about all the trouble we were probably in (just because I had been too tired to remember to turn on my alarm clock). Obviously, that medicine was to some degree extremely bitter. I figured he remembered as much as the medicine, even if he insisted he ‘had no recollection of last night whatsoever.’

“I’m not sick,” Baekhyun said weakly -- I wasn’t sure if his voice was like that because of the medicine or because of the fever and the cold.

A moment later, he burst into a fit of coughing, hacking so badly that his body was shaking, followed by two sneezes. I waited until he was done coughing, and despite being short on time, I raised an eyebrow at him, then handed him the cup of medicine. He eyed it doubtfully. “Sure you’re not sick? We’re leaving after this. You have your bus pass, right?”

Grumbling, he took a sip of it. “I choked on spit,” he mumbled into the cup, as if I would belive it, but proceeded to drink it anyways.

My relief about the fact that we would be leaving soon was short lived, because my halfway through his cup of medicine, a third voice spoke up. “Iseul?” my grandma called. “Are you there…?”

I froze, Baekhyun froze. It would be nice if time and my grandma froze too, but sadly, my life wasn’t a cheesy k-drama because I could hear her approaching footsteps getting nearer and nearer towards us. This was the moment I was dreading, when she woke up and found a freaking stranger -- a boy, too -- in the kitchen.

I responded quicker than Baekhyun did, snatching the cup out of his hand and kicking him towards the kitchen table. Hiding underneath tables is a hiding spot for children, and easily discovered, my brain supplied usefully. For a moment, I had the weird image of shoving Baekhyun under the shoe rack, but it disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “Get under the table!” I hissed as quietly as I could. “Don’t cough. Don’t sneeze. Do everything you can not to make a noise, okay?”

Thank god this was one of the times he was more graceful than clumsy because he slipped under the table quietly and effectively, pulling a chair in front of him so he would be harder to find. Not exactly the best hiding spot, but if I could distract my grandma long enough and direct her to another room, then possibly it’d give Baekhyun enough time to get out of the house and wait outside -- anything.

“Iseul, are you sick?” she asked as she entered the kitchen. “I heard you coughing and sneezing.”

Stay cool, I told myself. You can do this. I considered faking a cough (a sneeze was too hard to fake), but my acting skills had been proven horrible more than once and I figured it was safest if I didn’t.

“Uh, just a slight cold,” I said, hand trembling so bad that I felt like I was going to drop Baekhyun’s cup -- which I still held.

“You sounded like you were talking to yourself, too.”

“Memorizing the periodic table,” I smiled weakly. “I’ve never been able to do it.”

“You’re also late.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Iseul, are you sure you’re good enough to go to school today? You put your uniform on inside out.”

I glanced downwards and cursed mentally. How could I not notice; it was a mystery to myself too. I could only conclude that I was super stupid when in a hurry, which made some sense anyways. And curse Baekhyun for not telling me; he had probably noticed and just didn’t tell me. “I’ll finish the medicine and leave,” I stated in a wavery voice, and to prove that, I raised the cup to my mouth (carefully, to the opposite side of the cup that Baekhyun had been using) and took a tentative sip.

It took all of me not to spit it out, and even then, I was sure my face looked like I was in pain. It really was extremely bitter. I forced myself to swallow it.

“Alright, then you better hurry,” was all she said before she left the kitchen.

The moment I heard her footsteps retreat to her bedroom, I pulled the chair out from the table. “Get out,” I whispered urgently. “Quick. You have your backpack; I’ll grab your sneakers on the way out because I hid them. Just wait at the outside or something, I’ll be out soon.”

He glanced at the cup and nodded, then hurried out the front door. I let out a sigh of relief, just for him to peek in and whisper-shout, “Your shirt’s on backwards!”

I made a shooing motion with my hand and tried not to throw a chair at him.

Not willing to dump the medicine down the sink, I choked down the rest of it and flipped my shirt the right way. It triggered a memory in the back of my mind; the first time I had seen Baekhyun as someone other than an idiot, a jerk, who thought life was a joke and something for him to spend freely. He had been too drunk to think straight and had put the shirt on backwards. This time, I was the one with a shirt on backwards.

Then, snatching up my coat and his shoes, I hurried out the door before my grandma could come out and question me why I was carrying a stranger’s shoes from under the shoe rack, because frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to explain why.

***

By the time Baekhyun and I reached the bus stop, it was already seven fifteen -- fifteen minutes before first period. Even if the traffic miraculously cleared, there was no way we could get to the school in fifteen minutes. Besides, we were late, and I had no idea when the bus would come now. For all I knew, it may be another fifteen minutes before it even showed up at the stop. With the