Yerin’s POV

With a start I woke up and found myself sitting upright in my bed. The room was almost in complete darkness, but from the streetlights through the curtains came enough light to make out some silhouettes.

I yawned and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, trying to remember what had woken me up. What was it that had disrupted my fully deserved rest? I scratched my head and squinted, trying to see if Sojung-unnie was awake as well, but I failed to spot the familiar lump under her blankets.

“Unnie?” I whispered. Maybe it were just the lack of glasses that made me blind to her figure. “Unnie, are you awake?”

Silence.

Frowning, I finally reached for my glasses and put them on before looking towards my unnie’s bed again. There was no doubt. I had not been blinded by my poor eyesight. Sojung was gone.

That was not something too unusual. There were a dozen reasons why Sojung had left the room in the middle of the night. What was not normal, though, was the weird, sinking feeling in my stomach. My hands were starting to sweat and the tiny hairs of my neck stood up straight as a shiver ran down my spine. Something was wrong. I did not know what it was, but something was definitely not right.

Without wasting any further time, I jumped out of bed and hurried towards the door. In the hallway my eyes immediately sought the bathroom closest to our shared bedroom, but there was no light shining through. The dorm was deadly silent. The living room was empty, as was the kitchen and the dressing room. No one was in the other bathroom either.

The frown on my face deepened. Where was Sojung-unnie? Did she go into another bedroom? Was she with the younger ones? Did any of them have a bad dream or was anyone sick?

I was just about to check the other rooms as I heard faint voices from the hallway outside the apartment. Puzzled, I turned towards the entrance door. Why would Sojung go outside in the middle of the night when she had no schedule? Or did she have one and forgot to tell us?

Unable to fight my curiosity, I walked towards the door and looked through the peephole. I could not be responsible for letting in a murderer in the middle of the night now, could I? Our parents would never forgive me.

But on the other side was no murderer. No, the only people, looking as if they were in some sort of argument, were Sojung-unnie and our manager-unnie. Completely confused, I opened the door a little bit.

“– cannot keep me from leaving! I am not going to wait until tomorrow and I will not sit here while...”

A sob interrupted my unnie from continuing and I saw manager-unnie looking more helpless than I have ever seen her before. The amount of pain, anger, and sadness in Sojung’s voice stunned me. What had happened?

“Of course you have a right to go, I’m not stopping you, Sojung-ah. I only said that I don’t want you to drive by yourself. Not in your state,” manager-unnie said as gently as I had only seldomly heard her before. She hesitated before laying a hand on Sojung’s arm. “You know it wouldn’t be safe for you to drive. The last thing anyone needs, the last thing your eomeonim needs right now is you having an accident that could have been easily prevented.”

“Fine, then I’ll call a cab!”

I winced at how shrill Sojung sounded. Whatever this was about, it had to be major. I had never seen her in a state like this.

Manager-unnie sighed deeply and shook her head. “I’ll drive you. Where is your bag?”

“My…” Sojung trailed off. “I forgot… I… the phone rang and… my bag… I forgot, I just...”

“It’s okay, we can go and pack some things right now and then I’ll drive you home, okay?”

Unnie shook her head. “No, I don’t have time, we already lost so much time, I need to go. Yerin is sleeping, I don’t want to wake her up. I need to go.”

“Sojung-ah… you need to pack a bag for at least a couple of days.”

A couple of days? I raised my eyebrows. We couldn’t just leave for a couple days like this. We were not on holiday. Whatever had happened was really, really bad.

I stopped my eavesdropping and tried not to look as guilty as I felt as I opened the door fully and stepped outside. The second my eyes met Sojung’s, all the worry of getting scolded was replaced by my worry for my unnie. Her eyes were b with tears and the pain that had been so evident in her voice, was increased tenfold in her eyes.

“Unnie? What’s wrong?”

I hated that I sounded like a child, but seeing Sojung-unnie – normally so composed and strong – so hurt and small, made my own confidence crumble in a matter of seconds.

Manager-unnie sighed again. “Go back in. You can’t be outside in your sleeping attire like this, Yerin-ah. You know that.”

But I ignored her and set my whole focus on my unnie and leader. I didn’t care that I would get scolded by our manager later, not as long as I didn’t know for sure that my unnie was okay. “Unnie?”

Sojung put a hand over to stifle another sob and turned her head away, breaking our eye contact. I didn’t know what hurt more – seeing her in this indescribable pain or being unable to help while she tried to deal with it herself.

“Inside, Yerin-ah. Now.”

Manager-unnie’s voice had taken on a commanding tone. It was the last warning I would receive before a punishment would be handed to me. I took a deep breath and straightened my back. It would not be the first time that I was punished, I could deal with it. My eyes remained on Sojung. This was more important.

“Unnie?” I asked again, trying to ignore the glare that manager-unnie was sending my way. I was on very thin ice.

“Jung Yerin! That’s enough!”

“Please don’t,” I heard Sojung whisper to our manager-unnie and to my utter surprise, she stopped scolding me before she even started. Her glare, however, told me that this was far from over. “Yerin-ah, could you please go to our room? I’ll follow you shortly. And could you start packing a suitcase for me? With clothes that last for a few days? I’ll explain later.”

I furrowed my brow as I nodded. The quiver in Sojung’s voice was obvious and yet she tried to be strong in front of me. Whatever had happened, I knew now that it was indeed something really serious. “Of course, Unnie.”

My stomach churned as I walked back to our shared room and my mind replayed the scene I had witnessed. I had a slight suspicion on what might have brought Sojung to the verge of hysteria and to this pain. There were only very few times I had seen her anywhere near this state of mind. And all for the same reason.

I hoped I was wrong. I hoped my suspicions were over the top, fueled by my sleepiness. God, how I hoped I was wrong.