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(Chapter 6)

 ‘Are you having trouble sleeping again?’, Irene heard a child’s voice rang inside her head.

‘Yeah..’ another voice echoed.

‘It’s okay, I’ll accompany you’

Suddenly, she was standing inside a bedroom with four children, two of them were snoring loudly and sleeping peacefully, while the other two were awake.

 The room was dark, the only source of light was the moonlight that illuminated the room through the window.

She saw a little girl sitting on a sofa, legs closed to her chest. And then Irene’s attention averted to another girl who was walking toward the sofa.

“Scoot over” Irene heard the one who was standing said. And seconds after that, the two children were engulfed in a cuddle position.

No one said anything for a while, before the one who just sat on the sofa talked.

“Is this okay?”

Her voice was so soft that Irene couldn’t hear it if she didn’t pay her full attention to the two of them.

And it didn’t help that the room was filled with snoring sounds from the other two children.

She saw the smaller girl nodded her head shyly.

“..I’m sorry for waking you up”

She shake her head.

“It’s okay, try to sleep, I’m here, there will be no monsters that will attack you”

She noticed the girl smiled to herself when the smaller girl let herself getting embraced by her as she closed her eyes.

Irene just watched them in silence, absorbing what she was seeing.

The taller girl was humming a song, drowning the snoring sounds that were previously filling the room with her voice.

Irene unconsciously closed her eyes, It was just so soothing and relaxing that she can’t help herself but felt herself drowning, not by water, but by the girl’s voice.

She was so absorbed by her voice that she didn’t realized the humming had stop, she had stop singing while the other one was already falling in a deep slumber.

She opened her eyes only to see the girl’s lips made a contact with the already-sleeping girl’s forehead, lingering there for a few seconds before she pulled away, settling her own little body to a more comfortable position before her eyes closed slowly.

“Goodnight Irene”

Irene?

Her body shook slightly, only to stop when she felt her eyelids fluttered, groaning when lights hit her eyes brightly.

She realized that she fell asleep when Wendy’s face was the first thing she saw.

“I’m sorry, you fell asleep for a long time and I just figured that maybe you should just go home and take a rest” Wendy said, watching Irene who were rubbing her eyes and moving her neck that was stiff in a circular motion.

“No it’s okay, let’s just continue it”

Even though the blonde seemed unsure, she nodded her head anyway.

So they continued to do the work.

The three of them were sitting there, Wendy and Irene working on the project with Seulgi helping them on their work.

Seulgi advanced her shift, and it was a good thing because Wendy and her could go home faster than before. So, she settled to help her bestfriend and Irene instead of doing nothing and just wait for them to finish the project.

Irene tried to contain her sleepiness, but sometimes she just couldn’t keep it as she would yawn.

She can’t help it, she didn’t get enough sleep last night anyway.

After a few minutes that were filled with Irene yawning, Wendy had enough.

“You know what, you should really just take a rest”, She said as she dropped her work on the table, while Seulgi nodded her head in agreement. “You don’t look good anyway”

Even though Irene wanted to deny that, it was true.

Maybe sleep was all she needed for now.

But she didn’t want to go back to her house, not when her own family’s relationship was not on a good terms.

But she knew it was unavoidable, if not at her own house, where else would she sleep?

So she just agreed half-heartedly.

“Okay”

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Irene found herself walking with some companions.

She agreed a while ago in the café that she would just go home, but before she could thank them, Seulgi stop her by sign language-ing.

Irene had improve a lot in it, even though she was still often confused with what Seulgi was implying, The two besties always taught her patiently.

She had only learned the basic though, so complicated signs like what Seulgi was making now confused her.

On the other hand, Wendy understand completely what Seulgi was saying as she would replied her from time to time.

She waited for a while, observing their interactions. She noticed that Wendy would sometimes glanced at her before looking back to Seulgi.

The conversation ended with Wendy nodding her head to Seulgi, while the latter just smiled.

Turned out that they both were talking about accompanying Irene to her house.

Irene thought that there was no hurt in having some companions, she enjoyed spending her time with them anyway, so why not?

So here they are, walking together with Seulgi leading, walking slightly in front of them.

Wendy told her that Seulgi wanted to take her to an ice cream shop before going back to her house.

Irene learned that they would sometimes go there after their shifts at the café, the place was Seulgi’s favorite ice cream shop so she figured that maybe she could took Irene with them there.

When Seulgi caught the ice cream shop within her line of sight, she immediately turned her head toward them and smile brightly, index finger pointed to the destination.

The shop was not too big, quite average for a size of shop. It was not crowded, but there were some people in there, eating their ice cream with their companion.

Seulgi was the first one who entered it, followed by Wendy and then Irene. The former told them to just sit and wait for her while she ordered the ice creams.

“She was concern about you” Wendy suddenly said as Seulgi walked away from them to the counter.

Irene just lifted her eyebrow.

“When you were sleeping earlier at the café, she told me that you didn’t look good today. You know, especially because of your eyebags. So she told me that maybe we could take you here to brighten you up.”

Irene didn’t say anything back, but Wendy saw the flicker in her eyes that said the contrast of what she was trying to expressed. After some time, Irene seemed to gave in, eyes looking to the ground with a hint of emotion on her face.

Her wall cracked.

“..oh, I didn’t know she think that”

Wendy just smiled. “Don’t tell her that I told you this though, she would probably kill me”

Irene felt her lips twitched upwards.

They ate their ice creams contently in the shop, unknown to them that someone was watching them from afar.

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The bullying became worse than before.

Even though Irene became more passive in that activity, the others were becaming more active than usual.

She watched as the victims would sometimes got physically hurt, she would sometimes caught them gazing at her, as if pleading to her to make them stop.

A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t give a about them. But now, she felt guilt slowly rising up to her everytime she let the group bullied others.

“Yeah, your sister really left you for good”

That sentence echoed in her head.

“it’s a good thing that she will never see her own sister bullied other people for their own enjoyment right?”

She gritted her teeth.

She didn’t enjoyed it. She never enjoyed it.

But they needed her.

Do they really?

She found herself questioning herself more and more often everytime she watched them do it.

Her sister won’t be proud of her if she knew this.

Ju hye loathed bully.

She remembered the time when her sister’s eyebrows would met each other, eyes gone darker and lips tugged downward when she asked her what she thought about them.

“I hate them”

Before that, she never saw her sister got that mad over Irene’s question.

She remembered herself getting amused