She wasn’t sure whether it was day or night. The 4 walls of her storeroom, all opaque, all sealed, provided no indication of the situation outside. No clock adorned any corner of the walls; she had left her phone at the door, entering the storeroom by herself, and willing herself to remain there on her own.

Her house, oh the irony, her house, once a place of sanctuary, now only played home to the worst of her dreams. The bed, once her last place of retreat, has now itself turned into the doppelganger of doom.

Her empty, dark storeroom was the only place untouched by the halcyon of her dreams.

Why was fate so cruel? Seolhyun simply couldn’t understand. It wasn’t like she was greedy, or a sinner; in fact, she would say confidently that she was on a straight and comfortable path to heaven (If, of course, she were actually religious. And if her homouality wasn’t itself considered a sin.) Evil conglomerate owners, cruel slave drivers, nasty environment polluters….Seolhyun could come up with a steady list of people who had deserved the nasty blow of fate to their face over and over again, and yet it was up to her, once again, to shoulder the blows.

Why give her a taste of something she was never meant to have? If Seolhyun was destined to be alone, dying in pain and solitude, then why give her a taste of what it’s like to be in bliss? Even prisons, the very epitome of cruelty, didn’t give those in life imprisonment a day out in freedom. They were kept within the chains of hell for eternity.

Instead, Seolhyun was given, even for just a moment, the image of heaven. Imprinted deeply into her mind, to be never removed.

To have her heart broken, to have her soul torn, to have her spirit wrought with anguish.

But her memory, of her (limited) days of bliss, remain smouldering amidst the chaos, shining the sole light of brightness.

Little beads of liquid swelled up at the base of her eyes, trickling down the sides of her cheeks, and eventually falling onto the floor, creating a rhythmic tip-tap sound, resounding clearly amidst the eerie, complete silence of her surroundings. Not even the slightest sound, be it sniffling or cries of anguish, could escape the chains locking , or the prison in her heart.

Drip. Drip. Why couldn’t the liquid, salted slightly (as tears are) be her sweat instead?

Drip. Drip. Why weren’t the source of the taps, as they so often are, the crimson red engine of her life? Life that, more often than not in recent times, she felt as if she no longer needed?

Drip. Drip. Why was she so lonely, so weak, that one breakup, that that one forsakement from someone else that was always destined to leave, could destroy her whole?

Drip. Drip. Why hadn’t she remembered the core rule of loners, of losers like her—never love someone bigger than you, never love someone that you don’t deserve?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Seolhyun could never tell the difference between day and night. Because all her life, she had been surrounded by the darkest of nights.

-----

“Say, Yuna, why haven’t we heard from Seolhyun yet?” Mina asked, recoiling back onto their shared bed in post-ic bliss. Well, not exactly post-ic. They had showered before that, and thus both were relatively clean (and comfortable) when they lied on their bed.

“You’re right,” Yuna responded pensively, thinking back to their relative peace that they had experienced earlier.

(Seolhyun, after all, had always found it incumbent on her to interrupt their weekend meetups with her annoying presence, either through their phone line, or in person.)

“She hasn’t bothered us at all,” Mina continued, sensing that Yuna didn’t really get her line of reasoning.

“Yeah,” Yuna replied, “Maybe she had finally given up on bothering us, now that she has a girlfriend of her own to be with. You know, maybe she has a life now, finally.”

“You think they’re…you know…” Mina hinted, and Yuna got her drift.

“She’s so shy about it and all, you know,” Yuna cut her off, disinterested. “You won’t give it to her, that she is capable of making a move.”

“She did make a move in that club, after all,” Mina replied, cheekily, as both of them cackled at how Seolhyun, their resident loner and no-lifer, managed to pick up someone at the bar.

“Maybe we should ambush them,” Yuna suggested, murmuring, as she snuck her arm over and across Mina’s shoulders.

“You want to sacrifice time with me to see her?” Mina replied jealously, pouting.

“Of…of course not,” Yuna hurriedly replied, not wanting to piss her girlfriend off (though, she knew that Mina was enough that they would definitely make up before the next time they ed). “You know, to catch them in the act and all?” Yuna supplemented, trying to justify her curiousity.

“Nah,” Mina replied flippantly, resting her head back on her pillow boredly.

“Blackmail!” Yuna yelled, shocking Mina back her from her attempted slumber. “You know, we can blackmail Seolhyun with whatever shocking things we catch them doing, right?”

“Nah,” Mina gave the exact same reply, in the exact same bored tone.

“We can blackmail her into getting her rich girlfriend to buy us stuff!” Yuna desperately tried the last weapon she had in her locker.

Mina thought for a while, before getting up off the bed. “Let’s go!”

-----

“Are you sure we’re actually going to get anything?” Mina asked, concerned, as the lodge that they were approaching was eerily silent. The place, indeed, was silent and dark. No one appeared to be inside—not even the tiniest animal. Definitely not prime conditions for catching someone in a blackmailable situation, anyway.

“Believe,” Yuna replied stoically, starting to knock repeatedly against the wooden door.

But they had stood there, knocking for a minute, only to be greeted by complete silence (and the reverberations of their own knocks) as a response.

“They’re not in there. I told you, unnie,” Mina scolded in a whisper, annoyed that they had sacrificed what would have been a nice night chilling together on a forage that ultimately ended up being fruitless.

“They might just have heard us, and gone silent and into hiding, dummy,” Yuna bluffed, though she was getting more and more doubtful of herself by the moment. “Besides, we can just rest here and ambush them once they come back, no?”

“It’s 9 already,” Mina deadpanned, disbelievingly.

Yuna sighed, before unlocking the door herself with a key that Seolhyun had foolishly left with them, to be used only “for emergencies”. Well, this was kind of an emergency anyway, she guessed.

They the lights, and tiptoed down the corridor silently. Those two, after all, could still be engaged in illicit activities, and neither wanted to tip off their targets with excessively loud feet movements.

They, however, had already given the entire place an once-over (though, to be fair, her place wasn’t that large either), and they had found nothing.

“See? There’s nothing here, and you owe me something when we get back,” Mina drawled, annoyed, as they made their way back to the door.

Yuna shushed her (though it was more out of anxiety than defiance inspired by the truth), before replying, “Let’s take one more look around the place, and I’ll admit defeat, okay?”

Reluctantly, Mina nodded in assent, before they started trawling through the place again.

“Hey, Mina, you see that room there? I don’t think we’ve gone through it yet, right?” Yuna asked curiously, as she spied a tiny little door at the corner of the apartment.

“It’s just a storage place, Yuna,” Mina replied with an (attempted) annoyed tone, her soul already bursting with anticipation at the “punishment” that she could soon mete.

Yuna, however, ignored Mina’s comment entirely. Partly because she knew the undercurrent of what Mina had said, but more importantly, she swore she could hear a noise from inside the “empty” storage room.

A tiny whimper, followed by silence again. Then followed by a whimper, which was drowned out by Mina’s annoying voice.

“Why are you—“ Mina had begun, only to be interjected by Yuna.

“Shhhh!” Yuna whispered back. “I heard something. Don’t scare them off!”

Before dragging Mina by the ear, and plastering it next to hers against the frame of the door. They lay there, listening, for awhile, before deciphering that the sounds was probably from someone crying.

“It sounds like someone crying, doesn’t it, Mina?” Yuna whispered in inquiry to the crouching, (half annoyed) girl beside her.

“Does crying sound like blackmailable material to you?” Mina shot back. “But yeah, it does sound like crying.”

Yuna crouched there silently for awhile, before getting up. “We should go in and check on whoever’s crying inside th