Irene woke up to the sound of her wooden door being pushed against its frame. Thud and click, thud and click, over and over again until the monotonous sound managed to pull her fully out of her shallow slumber. With a groan she rubbed the crust off her eyelids, unwilling to accept the fact that this was probably going to be a new addition to her daily routine. This was the fifth night in a row that it’d happen.

 

With a simple roll and a plop of her hand, Irene got ahold of her phone from between the folds of her bedsheet to check the time. She didn’t need to do that, as her bedside alarm clock was staring at her with its four blinking red eyes of doom, but she did it anyway because her muscle memory dictated her to do so.

 

7 AM, it said, after the period of annoyance caused by her forgetting to reduce the brightness of her phone’s display before she went to sleep had come and gone, and Irene could read what was written on her phone screen without feeling like her eyeballs were one second away from being burned into ashes.

 

Learning that she was awoken an hour early than her supposed waking time, Irene contemplated on putting in her earplugs and ignore the sound, just for that morning. Yesterday was hell at work and that day would probably be hell too so why did she has to be the one to deal with this intrusion that was never supposed to be hers to deal with in the first place?

 

But then she heard one long, painfully adorable meow and Irene was defeated. Once again. Five times in a row. It’s set. She is defeatable by a cat that wasn’t even hers.

 

“Yes, yes, yes…” Irene mumbled as she made her way to the door, absentmindedly turning on the reading lamp beside her bed on the way there and tripping over last night’s clothes that were still sprawled all around the floor even when the soft yellow glow from the tiny lightbulb was there to show her the way. The door opened with a creak and there it was, the cat. A little thing, a mostly white calico with long tail and stomach that looked like it just swallowed a large tub of peanut butter. She has a little blob of black fur running over her left eye so Irene, out of habit (as she is a slave to her habits) has started to call the cat ‘Patchy’, inspired by the pirate on Spongebob Squarepants. She still did that even if the cat carried a tag around its neck that said ‘hello, my name is Sophie.’

 

Because who the hell named a calico cat Sophie. That’s not a name suited for a calico cat, Irene stubbornly thought.

 

“Come Patchy,” she said while tapping her hand on her thighs, walking surely to the kitchen with Patchy’s paws pattering on the parquet floor closely behind her. Irene didn’t bother to fix her voice that was still a hoarse, phlegmy mess, because cats don’t care if she sounded like she’s 10 years, 20 kgs, and one pack a cigarette per day more than what she really was.

 

As she poured in one spoonful of dried cat food to Patchy’s bowl, Irene spotted the usual yet unusual item stuck on the fridge. Usual because it’s been a week that she found litterings of rectangular post-it in the colour of an angry neon blue around the house, and unusual because this new housemate of hers was the first person that ever did so, even though she has an extensive history of sharing houses together with many peculiar people.

 

‘Thankyou for always giving Ms. Sophie her breakfast when I forgot to do so. Don’t forget, there’s leftover granola and yoghurt from yesterday, please help yourself.

 

I know you like them :D

 

xx Wendy.’

 

Wendy. The ever mysterious Wendy. Irene’s new housemate whose face she never saw. Not even once.

 

Because Irene was away on a business trip when she moved in and turns out, working in a bakery is not all fun and games. Contrary to what she believed working in a bakery would be like. Waking up at 2 AM and sleeping at 8 PM, their biological clock was literally the antithesis of one another.

 

Irene took out the tub of yoghurt and the huge plastic bag containing a honey-cinnamon granola (Wendy always labels her leftovers with utmost care) and walked half asleep to the sofa at their living room. At that point, she was too awake to go back to sleep, so why not eat her way through the stash of heavenly breakfast food?

 

On the corner of the sofa, Irene found a tall pile of recipe books and printouts, and on top of it all, another blue post-it that read,

 

‘I’m sorry for the mess! Please don’t mind it, I’ll tidy it up once I’m home.

 

xx Wendy.’

 

Irene then thought, if Wendy called this tidy pile of paper as a ‘mess’, she’d probably have a heart attack if she ever saw Irene’s room. Being a lazy that she is, Irene happily obliged with her faceless housemate’s instruction and proceeded to eat two servings of granola while watching whatever morning program that happened to turn up on the TV screen.

 

(Patchy joined her in the middle of her second round and she had to say no when the cat began to climb her lap and sniff the bowl on her hands.)

 

 

_

 

Irene, thick skulled Irene only realised that she’d never left any substantial or overt showing of her gratitude to her baker housemate about one week after the two of them entered into their silent yet wordy relationship, done through slips of post it notes (in Wendy’s case), and ripped bits of paper (in Irene’s case).

 

The guilt only kicked in during one particular morning, when she was about to make some breakfast for herself and Patchy (she speculated that Wendy knew she’d learned to love her morning routine with Patchy and would deliberately ‘forgot’ to feed her), and found a jar of chocolate chips cookie standing on their kitchen island with a note posted on it that said,

 

‘Another batch of your fave cookies! Leave some for me if you can hohoho.

 

xx Wendy.’

 

She’d learned of Irene’s favourite midnight snack (chocolate chips cookies, obviously). Irene’s favourite breakfast item (granola). Irene’s favourite dessert (toffee pudding). And Wendy would make sure to always stock at least one of those sweets inside their kitchen cupboards. Yet Irene knows essentially nothing about Wendy aside from her penchant for anything blue and anything Disney.

 

Irene didn’t even have the decency to make her replies to Wendy to be nice and tidy, only using ripped edges of magazine pages or newspaper or useless receipts to say her ‘thankyou’ and ‘have a nice day’. And so, when she was about to write Wendy a reply, Irene looked down at the Starbucks receipt that she was about to write on and mumbled to herself, “I can do better than this.”

 

And so, before she could get her hand on a giant stack of pastel pink post-it notes that she planned on stealing from her office’s stationery box, Irene decided that using the back of a leftover origami paper would suffice. A rare, pretty note to say thankyou to Wendy and a reassurance that,

 

‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to leave you one :P

 

xo Irene.’

 

(Irene started to gift her boxes of tea because she noticed how fast Wendy plowed through their stash. Once she pinpointed that Wendy has a general liking to fruit infused tea, as they would always be the first one to run out, there would always be at least one big box of Wendy’s favourite brand in the cupboard.

 

‘Fruit tea for the fruit bat. In exchange, I demand an unlimited stash of cookies from now on.

 

xo Irene.’)

 

_

 

Irene has never really paid that much attention to her peculiar living arrangement. She figured, everyone has a different lifestyle and if fate doesn’t have a plan to have them meet, then why should she bother?

 

But when she told her story to her coworker and said coworker looked at her with such a shocked expression, Irene thought that maybe she’s the weird one, not Wendy.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re not curious? Not at all?” It was lunchtime and her desk mate, Seulgi, leaned towards her so far Irene could hear the sound of her teeth hitting against each other as she was smacking her way through her tuna sandwich.

 

When Irene only answered with a shake of her head, Seulgi groaned and rolled her eyes in exasperated disbelieve, “you’re unbelievable.”

 

“You are unbelievable. Why are you so strung up over my life choices?” Irene answered, her voice coming out in a slight muffle as she was busy chewing through the cinnamon roll that she found tucked at the far corner of their refrigerator.

 

“Because… because! Come on, how can you live with someone without ever meeting them? What about weekends, she surely doesn’t work during weekends?”

 

“She told me Sunday is her off day,” Irene said after she took another big bite of the wholesome pastry courtesy to her mysterious baker housemate, “but she always goes out in the morning doing god knows what. Exercise, probably? By the time she arrives home, I’ll usually be out myself.”

 

With that information, Seulgi shook her head in silence. Only the little clucking of her tongue the only sign that it wasn’t a good time for Irene to cut this conversational topic short and divert it to something more… casual.

 

“At the very least you should do it to show that you have a good manner. With what you two are doing right now, it seems that she can take you as being a haughty prick that doesn’t like to socialise,” there was a small pause before Seulgi continued, when she realised that she’d said something that hurt her case against Irene’s behaviour, “no, the fact that you’re already a haughty prick that doesn’t like to socialise is not an excuse to not interact with her.”

 

Common sense. Basic decency. Those words sounded really big and important to Irene, and for one reason or another (most probably because she felt indebted from Wendy’s constant showering of pastries and sweets), even if in the past she didn’t find it a problem if she didn’t see her housemate for days on end, Irene decided that maybe she really should do something about it this time around.

 

And so, influenced by Seulgi’s words, Irene finally attempted to catch the ever elusive Wendy by staying awake on one lazy weekday night, watching midnight TV programs at the living room until well past her bedtime. But being a slave of her habit that she was, even if she’d made sure to drink a glass of coffee beforehand and set the TV volume to be as loud yet still faint enough to not disturb her housemate, Irene still dozed off fifteen minutes into whatever trashy b-movie was playing on the screen.

 

And as she was a really deep sleeper, Irene didn’t hear when Wendy’s door clicked open, or when Wendy let out an amused giggle when she saw her sleeping with her head half dangling over the armrest of the sofa, or when Wendy grabbed one of her spare blanket and draped it carefully over her shoulders. Irene was such a deep sleeper that she only woke up when Patchy jumped on her lap, seemingly wanting to join in on her snuggle.

 

And she immediately saw it. There, on the edge of the armrest, another page of neon-blue post it that stared at her like a silent blare of a fire truck horn,

 

‘I wanted to tell you to sleep on your bed, but you looked so peaceful I didn’t have the heart to wake you up.

 

PS: if you’re cold, Sophie is a great, free, natural heat pack. Use as you will but don’t forget to recharge her afterwards :P

 

xx Wendy.’

 

She looked down at the two gifts that Wendy had given her on that early morning. Patchy, and a patchwork quilt that looked like it was hand made stitch by stitch. Something far too delicate and important to be given to someone who hasn’t exchanged even one word of spoken conversation. “Ah, what can you do about it,” Irene mumbled to herself as she held onto Patchy and snuggled further into Wendy’s blanket, effortlessly going back to slumbertown and ignoring her failure because her brain was still filled with a fog of fatigue and she still needed to go up and about in around three hours from then.

 

Her dream that morning was filled with her chasing after a female figure with an ever shifting feature. Long hair, short hair, black, blonde, brunette. Her face was a blur of motion, as if it was a window overlooking from a speeding car. But as they were running through the forested area, a fruit orchard, Irene later pinpointed, one thing was always constant. The girl’s blue dress that would swirl by the wind that smelled thickly of apples.

 

(Irene only realised the fact that Wendy has used her plan against herself, which means that Wendy had seen her face, when she was brushing her teeth. Irene choked on the foam of her toothpaste so hard it painted her bathroom’s mirror in speckles of white.)

 

_

 

Seulgi, silly little Seulgi grew more and more obsessed with the situation in her home.

 

She suggested that Irene go to the security office of their housing area and ask to see the recorded footage captured from in front of their house in the guise of ‘dropping her spare keys.’ When Irene asked, “why don’t I just install a hidden motion activated camera in front of her door?” Seulgi answered with, “that’s a breach of privacy, stupid.”

 

They had this discussion at the end of a very long work day and Irene didn’t have it in her any leftover strength to remind Seulgi that her plan also shared the same major flaw as Irene’s own.

 

Seulgi told her to wake up early on Sundays so maybe Irene could spot this ‘Wendy’ before she go and have whatever morning activity she always do, almost religiously so.

 

“Your tummy needs a bit of jiggling anyway. All that chocolate chips cookie shouldn’t be good for you.”

 

“Are you calling me fat.”

 

“Hey, you’re the one who said it, not me.”

 

But try as she might, Irene could never wake up before eight on a Sunday. Not even Patchy’s insistent scratching on her door could wake her up. Which was why she soon find that Wendy has learned to not bother her on a Sunday and begun to feed Patchy herself on that particular day.

 

Through all that, the post-its exchange was still going strong though, even becoming more and more absurdly complicated as they go. Ranging from conversations about each others’ favourite movies, books, tv series, jokes about Patchy, at this point, it was more of what they haven’t talked about. Truthfully, they were probably only this close to dusting off their pens and papers and exchanged their post-it notes with legitimate writing paper, communicating with each other using this weird version of a snail mail. Where distance was not the problem, but time is.

 

Seulgi once got her hand on one blue note that was stuck at the side of her handbag, one that had a long youtube url written on it and when she stared back at Irene, the look on her face clearly conveyed the words that she was about to say next.

 

“Are you kidding me.”

 

It was of a flat, tired unamusement.

 

“Ask for her phone number!” She said, “ask for her email! Facebook! Twitter! Instagram! Irene we are not living in the 1930s!”

 

She could ask Wendy for all that, and Wendy would probably write it down on her blue note with a smiley face to accompany it.

 

The problem here is, Irene didn’t want to do that. Something in her seemingly has attached itself to the habit of opening her door and smiling when she saw three post-it notes pasted on her door. The little numbers at their right corners telling her the order for which she should read Wendy’s little message for her.

 

Then finding one on the side of the milk jug. If it’s near empty, Wendy would write,

 

‘Don’t you dare put the empty milk bottle back to the fridge… AGAIN, you stupid cretin. I will kill you once we finally meet.

 

\0^0/ Wendy.’

 

(Even after seeing that, Irene would still put back the empty jug back, beside a full one that she bought on her way home, of course. She’d left a note that said,

 

‘Come and catch me.

 

xo Irene.’

 

And would laugh at whatever crude drawing of an angry cartoon that Wendy would left her in return.)

 

One on Patchy’s food box, one on the sofa, sometimes one on the bathroom mirror, and the last one on their front door.

 

‘Have a nice day~

 

xx Wendy.’

 

Irene would take that last one and put it inside her bag. Always. In its place, she’s put her pastel pink post-it and write on it,

 

‘Welcome home!

 

xo Irene.’

 

(At work, Seulgi would only roll her eyes when she saw Irene reach into her bag and put up another one of those blue notes of hers. The board that separated their cubicles was almost completely covered with them, people has started to for having a ‘glow in the dark table’

 

“You’re so hopeless,” Seulgi mumbled before going back to work on her laptop, thinking that Irene couldn’t possibly hear what she said, with it being all faint and all that.

 

Oh, but she heard it.

 

Irene heard it and it made her smile. Something faint and involuntary, with the apples of her cheek turning into the shade borrowed from her own post-it notes. It surprised her, being able to feel that way to her mysterious baker. Because could someone develop a crush without ever seeing the face of the object of her desire?

 

After contemplating on it for a while, a really short while, only the time it took for her to scan through her wall of sweet, early morning pick-me-up messages, Irene knew the answer for her question.

 

As clear as the cups of fruit jellies that Wendy made last week.

 

Yes. Yes they could.

 

_

 

It was the first Friday night of a new month and Seulgi managed to drag Irene off for a fun, mindless round of drinks at a club near their workplace.

 

Auberge de la Truite. Fancy name for a small club hidden at the basement of a rundown building. Although, when Irene tried and ran the name on google translate, turns out they were drinking in a place that calls itself ‘trout hostel’.

 

Why is it called that? Why do trouts need hostels? How would a trout hostel looks like? Aren’t we too old to go clubbing?

 

But enough of those existential questions. Irene found herself holding two shot glasses of what must be the most potent drink this establishment owned (because that’s just how Seulgi rolled. She aint got no time for cocktails and mixers and stuff like that. Either the strongest or none at all).

 

“Bottoms up!” Seulgi clinked her shot glasses to Irene’s and proceeded to down them in two quick successions. As she did that, Irene could hear a few loud hoots and cheers coming from the small group of what must be college-aged kids standing around not so far behind the two of them. “Way to go!” One of them shouted over the loud music and leaned in to give Seulgi a high five, which, she casually reciprocate with an accompanying side of manic laughter. This group of people have their drinks in hand, their lips pulled into an excited grin, and their eyes all zoning on on Irene and her two fully filled shot glasses.

 

She didn’t know who started it (most probably it was Seulgi because who else), but little by little Irene could hear the sound of people chanting, “do it, do it, do it” that went louder and louder until it miraculously drowned the music that was blasting through the low-ceilinged room.

 

Knowing that she got nowhere to go and nothing to lose, Irene shrugged and chugged the two doses of liquid in one long inhale. The high alcohol content burned the hell out of her mucous membrane and Irene could only let out an ugly grimace as she raised up her hand to receive all the high fives given by these students of the nearby culinary school. Culinary school. She was sure of it, what with how they all smelled like they just bathed in a vat of warm milk and freshly baked bread.

 

Seulgi was quick in appraising the situation, noticing that any social barriers were broken after they’ve proven their worth (and their willingness to party like any youths would, even though they were dressed to the teeth in unmistakable corporate attires), and effortlessly saddled herself into the group of youngsters, cozying her drunken self up to this one adorably tall, gazelle-like girl with jet black hair pulled into a high ponytail, and fox-like eyes that seemed to act as a contradiction to what she said her name was. “Joy, my name is Joy.”

 

‘Of course Seulgi goes for the tall ones,’ Irene mumbled to herself as she scanned her eyes through the rest of the group. There were these two guys. Cute, but obviously too infatuated with each other to care about poor ol’ Irene. Another guy who was already eyeing the dance floor, his skinny feet doing minute little jumps to the beat of the song, and a girl who looked more interested in whatever thing she was reading on her phone than the chaotic atmosphere that surrounded her physical self.

 

Another night, another no-action?

 

“Oh my god!” Irene’s idle mind was just starting to heat up from all the alcohol fumes rising into the nooks and crannies of her skull, that it took her so long to react to the loud exclamation that came from beside her.

 

She turned her head to her right, only after she blinked the alcoholic haze off her eyes, thinking that she’d stepped on someone’s foot or something. But instead of facing an annoyed party goer, Irene found herself to be in the presence of a girl who was staring at her with a very wide, very surprised grin.

 

But the grin didn’t stay there for long, as when the girl saw that Irene was only looking at her with a weirded out frown, it quickly shifted into one of embarrassment, “sorry, I thought you’re someone I knew.”

 

The girl proceeded to briskly walk past Irene, head hung low in shame, although Irene caught the quick glances she threw at her from beneath the curtain of her dusty blonde hair. From how she smelled (like newborn puppy and all the good things in this world), Irene already guessed that the girl was one of Seulgi’s Baker Babes (that’s a term Irene mindlessly came up with, just roll with it). But she didn’t say anything about it, not until she crashed herself onto one of the love-stricken guy, the tallest one of the bunch, and went onto her tiptoes to engage him in one frantic whispery conversation.

 

Irene felt the guy’s gaze occasionally flicking to her spot through the duration of their discussion, as if he was checking her up. But not in an objective way that’ll make her skin crawl, more in a ‘what is this weird ’ kind of way. Irene didn’t mind it too much either way, what with her already busy drinking the glass of water on her hand to mind other people’s business (given oh so kindly by the nice bartender after she’d seen her chug down the liquor), and also busy laughing at Seulgi who’s jumped into the dance floor, dragging both Joy and the itching-for-a-dance guy behind her before she twirled around and started dancing her shameless dance moves in the middle of the hall.

 

Sadly, Irene’s time of getting to ignore her surroundings didn’t last long. She knew it won’t last long, but she would’ve never guessed that the two bickering pair would resolve their problem this quickly. The song blasting through the sound system hasn't even completely ran its course before she had to take a deep breath and face the tall Baker Babes dude with an amicable smile.

 

“My friend wants to dance with you,” he screamed out to Irene. And behind him, his friend was trying so hard to stop him from doing the inevitable. Probably begging him to turn back time and regretting her decision for ever coming to him to tell him of whatever thoughts were nagging her after the earlier mishap.

 

“That sounds nice!” Irene yelled back, topping it off with a friendly wave directed to the shy girl. It was specially brought up from the recesses of her ‘nice gestures to help in social situations’ that wouldn’t have ever surfaced if she wasn’t already drowning in her shoddy pool of intoxication.

 

The tall guy reached behind his back and dragged the shy girl forward, pushing her slightly until she stopped with a start right in front of Irene’s nose. The blush blooming across her cheeks were so clear and evident, even under the club’s ambient lighting.

 

“Hi.” Irene leaned in a stage-whispered her greeting into the girl’s bright red ears. The grin on her face when she saw how it made the girl go even more flustered was certifiably evil. Oh, don’t ever give Irene alcohol because she’ll turn from a shrinking violet to the loudest, brightest red rose on a flower hedge, “what’s your name?”

 

“I’m uh… I’m Seungwan,” she said it in a way that made it seem as if that’s not her real name. As if it’s only an alias. But Irene only smiled at that, an understanding smile that came from the familiar feeling of the confusion that often came from having two names. “You can call me Seungwan.”

 

“I’m Irene, nice to meet you,-” Irene hasn’t even completed her introduction before Seungwan sort of interrupted it by swivelling around to slap her tall guy-friend with a much too enthusiastic slap. The guy, bless his heart, started shaking Seungwan’s shoulders while mouthing a few rapid oh my god. “I’m sorry but am I missing anything here?”

 

The two of them suddenly stopped whatever internal self-hyping that they were doing and proceeded to stare at Irene with something she could best describe as ‘a broken will.’

 

“We… uh,” Seungwan stuttered as her gaze jumped from Irene’s confused one and her friend’s empathetic one, before she finally shook her head and yelled back, “sorry but you look like someone I know.”

 

That explanation garnered her a strong, annoyed slap by her friend, who obviously didn’t look happy that she… lied? Held back information? Something? Seungwan shot her friend a very sharp glare that managed to clearly spell shut up even without her having to waste one ounce of breath to do so.

 

Well, anything it was could wait because Irene was getting restless and jittery from the bubbling alcohol rushing through her veins, and didn’t Seungwan asked if she could dance with her? Then why weren’t they dancing?

 

“Come,” Irene half-mumbled and half-giggled her way of dragging the clearly sober Seungwan to the empty spot right beside Seulgi and her two adorable entourages, “before you weird me out even more.”

 

Usually, Irene is not much of a dancer. But two shots of potent liquor and being surrounded by a company of hyper people was enough to turn her into the next Dancing Queen.mp3 by ABBA. She linked her sight numerous times with Seulgi’s dancer boy, someone who seemingly would prefer to hide under the shadow unless we’re talking about dancing. Then he bloomed, like a morning glory bud when the first ray of sunlight fell upon it. His name was Tae… something, Irene didn’t catch the entirety of it, because she was busy being entertained and laughing at Seungwan’s silly dance move.

 

Much like the Tae guy, and Irene too, she realised, Seungwan seemed to be someone that’ll bloom only under certain circumstances. And her special circumstance is laughter. And probably dark rooms that deprived everyone of their much needed senses. But Irene saw it clearly, Seungwan’s petals slowly peeling back, one by one, little by little, with each silly moves and each twirl she managed to coax Irene into doing. Until finally there was nothing less but a fully bloomed sunflower jumping around in front of her, The highlight in Seungwan’s hair catching the neon strobe light that swept through the dance floor as they bobbed freely around her neck. Spreading around the faint smell of her shampoo. Apples.

 

Apples?

 

“Are you okay?”

 

How long has Irene been staring at Seungwan’s face? How long since the last shot she had with Seulgi and Joy? How long has she been standing in this dance floor? She truly didn’t know.

 

“I’m fiiine~” She could feel Seungwan’s cool palms pressing against the side of her heated cheeks, her pinkies running dangerously close to the underside of her jaw and Irene couldn’t help but let out a bubbly giggle.

 

“Is she okay?” Seungwan’s voice came and went as if it was a buoy stranded on a stormy sea. Up and down, up and down, on and on it goes before a second buoy popped into Irene’s mind vision. An obnoxiously bright yellow buoy that caused her to flinch, when Seulgi leaned in and screamed to her ears,

 

“She’s gonna be fine! It’s just because… she hasn’t been drinking for a while…! Right Irene?”

 

Irene could hear her name being called, and she also knew she wanted to audibly answer Seulgi’s question. But her limbs felt like it was suspended in a field of cotton candy and she couldn’t even feel her tongue pressing against the roof of . Maybe she’s not too fine after all…

 

Everything went like a blur afterwards. Like Adobe Photoshop has suddenly hijacked her vision and someone tampered with the gaussian blur filter, causing everything to bleed into one another like ink would on a wet paper.

 

Irene heard Seungwan saying, “I’ll take her home.”

 

Then she heard Seungwan’s tall friend telling her to calm down and that everything will be fine. ‘Calm down? How drunk am I?’ Irene pondered to herself, and right afterward she slipped on a puddle of spilled beer and stumbled onto Seungwan’s steady arms.

 

“Is this the perk of being a baker?” Irene slurred her words, using her index finger to poke on Seungwan’s exposed upper arm. And to her surprise, Seungwan responded to it with a very calm ‘maybe.’

 

Irene remembered saying bye to Seulgi afterwards, seeing her friend with her arms around the Joy girl in her rare moments of clarity. She quickly made a mental note to later ask Seulgi on how well it all went.

 

Irene also remembered waiting for their taxi at the chilly night air, huddling together with Seungwan being her pillar of stability as her two guy friends (not the dancer one, of course) waited with them until they were sitting safely inside the car.

 

What Irene didn’t remember was giving Seungwan her address.

 

‘Whatever.’ That could be considered as Irene’s last lucid thought, before darkness completely engulfed her consciousness and she finally embraced the warm, welcoming lure of alcohol induced sleep, ‘she must’ve asked Seulgi for it.’

 

_

 

The next time Irene opened her eyes, she was greeted with Patchy’s plastered all over her blurry vision.

 

“Patchy,-!” Irene groaned, using one hand to gently push the cat’s derriere from in front of her and the other to set aside the strands of greasy hair away from her face. With two more blinks, she started to take in more of her surroundings. More calmly this time, and more carefully too.

 

She was lying down on the sofa at her living room, Wendy’s quilted blanket covering the entirety of her lower body. The clock hands showed that it was 12 AM and Irene could only offer herself a defeated laughter, “I am too old for clubs and parties.”

 

“Yes you are, you grumpy grandma.”

 

The way Irene reacted to the interruption to an otherwise quiet night was utterly fantastic. She kicked the blanket off of her, the panic settling in her mind causing her to not care about the fact that said blanket was very delicate, she twirled around to the direction of where the strange owner of the voice must’ve been standing, and grabbed Patchy as a means of… self defense? She has this thought that throwing a cat is a more useful self defense than just to stand around in the presence of a foreign sound.

 

Because the sound was no longer foreign, it was basically a physical anomaly. Because for almost two months now, Irene had never heard any noise made by a human being when she’s home.

 

In front of her was Seungwan. A very confused Seungwan who was holding a cup of cold water. But she has no right to be confused, because as master of the house, Irene had the sole right to be confused.

 

“How did you get us in?” She asked, her voice taking that disgustingly gruff colour as she hasn't cough out the phlegm build up within . But Irene didn’t care. Seungwan has been acting really shady for the duration of the night and Irene decided that this, with her consciousness still not fully there and a faint throbbing of headache drumming at the back of her skull to distract her from using her common sense, was the perfect time for her to square up to her about it, “did you rummage through my purse? Who allowed you to do that?!”

 

“Irene, put Sophie down, we can talk about this nicely.”

 

“So… Sophie?? How do you know Sophie’s name is Sophie?!”

 

(If she was thinking straight, Irene could’ve easily figured that Seungwan must’ve read Patchy’s name tag. But she was not thinking straight, so things like this happened.)

 

“Irene…” Seungwan sighed as she ignored Irene’s terrifying self defense mechanism (which was to raise a very bored Patchy up so that it was in line with Seungwan’s eyes), and went on to approach the panicked woman. Dumbfounded that Seungwan was not deterred by the mild mannered calico, Irene was left petrified on the spot when Seungwan only casually took Patchy away from her hold and let the cat down on the fluffy quilted blanket.

 

Irene was still too shocked that when Seungwan proceeded to shove her the glass of water on her now empty hands, she could only gawk at Seungwan with a frown. She was so shocked, in fact, that Irene could only accept Seungwan’s sudden open-palmed slap on her forehead with what basically was a very welcoming attitude.

 

Seungwan already calmly took her seat on the sofa when Irene reached up to her forehead and peeled back the neon blue post-it note from her oily skin.

 

‘If you feel like throwing up, there’s a bucket under the sofa.

 

PS: don’t forget to drink lots of water ok. You pathetic lightweight.

 

xx Wendy.’

 

Irene leaned slightly down to take a peek at the darkened area under the sofa and saw a green shallow bucket hiding behind the shadows. Seungwan wasn’t lying about putting one down there.

 

So does this mean Seungwan wasn’t lying for saying that she is… Wendy?

 

“Are you really…?”

 

“Yes.”

 

‘Well, that explains her weird behaviour.’

 

“Then why didn’t you…?”

 

Seungwan, wait, Wendy let out one reluctant sigh after Irene asked that question, the smile on her face partially masked by her biting on her upper lip, “I love our post-it note talks.”

 

“I mean… I love it too but you could’ve,-”

 

“Don’t you dare say you could’ve to me,” Wendy raised her voice and pointed her index finger right at Irene’s face. Irene should’ve felt threatened by that, but weirdly, she instead felt at ease with Wendy’s playful jab. She thought, ‘oh, this is how she would’ve sound saying all those threatening messages. Terribly adorable.’

 

“You could’ve given me your phone number,” Wendy breather out, absentmindedly tugging at her tied up hair, catching Irene by surprise when she saw that it was taking a much lighter hue now that she was sitting in a well lit room.

 

“You could’ve given me your phone number too.” Not wanting to be the sole party being dragged down on their discussion of social interaction faux pas, Irene retaliated with her own unoriginal jab after she forced Wendy to wait in an awkward silence while she finished her glass of water. She wiped the moisture off her lips with the back of her hand and Irene could clearly see Wendy’s poor attempt at masking her smile by forcing out a very fake cough (and that little blush on her cheeks that couldn’t have come from a rouge).

 

“Let’s just say we’re both at fault here.”

 

Irene was happy to find that Wendy was willing to back out and relent on her attempt of making Irene feel bad for never being the one who initiate anything.

 

Irene was happy to finally see her not-so-mysterious baker housemate’s face.

 

Irene was happy to find out that her baker housemate’s face is as beautiful as her hand writing.

 

Irene was happy that the words they exchanged verbally could bounce between each other as naturally as the ones they exchanged on the surface of the colourful post-it notes.

 

Irene was also happy that the silence that fell between them didn’t feel painful. When she saw Wendy sitting there on their sofa, Patchy curling up on her lap and her fingers running through the white fur of the cat’s back and she thought, ‘this is perfect.’

 

Irene was happy.

 

And still slightly drunk.

 

And tired.

 

So let’s just say Irene wasn’t thinking with the straightest of mind when she picked up Wendy’s quilted blanket and rolled herself up with it, before plopping herself down beside Wendy. She threw her arms around Wendy’s shoulder and pulled the unsuspecting girl into a big, happy hug.

 

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Irene mumbled, her lips mashing against the collar of Wendy’s pajama top.

 

She could feel short bursts of air hitting her nape from Wendy’s giggles. Irene could also feel strong hands mindlessly rubbing small circles on her back and she couldn’t have asked for more. “It’s so nice meeting you too.”

 

At the last second before sleep managed to reclaim her once again, Irene managed to mutter out one legible sentence that’d made its way out of the back of her head, “don’t you have to sleep? You have to wake up super early tomorrow, right?”

 

“Irene,” with her head still lying on Wendy’s shoulder, Irene heard her whisper just as clear as if she used her ordinary voice. But her fatigue caused Wendy’s voice to sound like it came from a long, long tunnel. She in the dark, walking towards Wendy who was standing near the blinding exit. Waiting for her to come.

 

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

 

And so we have the whole day together.

 

(On the days to come, Irene still has to pinch her cheek sometimes, when Wendy wasn’t looking, of course, because she couldn’t believe that it really happened. She’d finally met her baker babe.)

 

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A/N: Blesseth be the day. 29.01.2018. The day that our ladies and saviours Red Velvet have rained down their love and grace to this wretched world. 
Not yet checked for grammar lmao im sorry if it's a mess. 
tbh this can serve as a prequel for kitchen encounter LOOOOLOLOL