“Why aren’t we cuddling?”

Yeri rolled her eyes as she coughed, covering out of courtesy despite wearing a face mask. This had to have been the millionth time Joy asked that very question even though the answer should have been obvious. “Because I’m sick,” she replied dryly, inwardly wincing at how horrible her voice sounded. She sounded like an old man who had been smoking since he was twelve. Her new voice, while amusing at first, was something she quickly grew tired of.

It wasn’t like Yeri hated cuddling. She loved it, especially when it was with Joy, but doing so while sick would only lead to disaster, even more so since they were in the middle of promoting their new album. 

“So? I still want to cuddle,” Joy responded nonchalantly with a blank look, clearly not caring about what would happen if they did indeed cuddle.

Did she not hear what I just said?

Yeri felt like grabbing the brunette by the shoulders and shaking her back and forth out of frustration, even though doing so wouldn’t spontaneously cause any semblance of sense to develop within her. If she was operating at one hundred percent capacity, she would have. 

She supposed she should have expected that reaction. The older girl was a touchy feel-y type of person and was very adamant about cuddling, even when the circumstances weren’t always ideal. But at this point, Joy was just being plain stubborn and it was starting to get on Yeri’s nerves. 

The blonde was trying her best to look out for Joy’s health by trying to dissuade her from doing something she’d surely regret, and yet....Joy still insisted that they cuddle.

While it was flattering in a way to know that the other girl wanted to cuddle with her so much despite being sick and feeling like crap, it was still frustrating.

What made things worse was that Joy was currently in her room and, judging from the determined look in her eyes, wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon.

It would be a lie to say that Yeri didn’t have any blame for creating the situation in first place. Joy didn’t dramatically whip out a wand out of nowhere, chant “zimzalabim!” and magically unlock the door to Yeri’s room. Nor did she kick the door down by using sheer brute force like the police did in all those dramas Yeri watched (although she had to admit that it would have been entertaining to see Joy attempt to do that.)

The truth was much simpler.

Yeri let her in.

That was a BIG mistake. Almost as bad as the time she was at the beach in Thailand, posing for an Instagram worthy photo while Seulgi was trying her best at being an amateur  photographer, and accidentally swallowed a fly while yawning in between shots. Thankfully she survived and the Level Up production team used their magical editing skills to seamlessly cut that specific scene out. But even though the footage never officially aired on TV, it still haunted her.

Yeri should’ve listened to the little voice in her head; the one that told her to keep the door locked. The same voice that told her to ignore all the knocks on the door along with the whining, crying, and multiple attempts of bribery with food. She should have listened but, like many other times in life, she didn’t. She caved like the poor, helpless gay that she was.

Idiot. 

The sick girl felt like smacking herself. The whole situation could have been avoided if she wasn’t so weak and just kept the door shut, but nooooo. She did the exact opposite of what should have been done. 

Screw the heart. The self-proclaimed devil should have listened to her head for once. 

It had to have been because of that gross medicine I took earlier. Yeah. That’s why I did something that stupid.

Or so she told herself. 

It was easier to blame the medication Yeri took a few minutes earlier for her lapse in judgement rather than admit that she was a little lonely after voluntarily placing herself in quarantine. So she did just that.

Putting the obvious denial of her feelings aside, Yeri believed that physically isolating herself from the rest of the group was for the better. It was one thing for her to be sick, but to bring everyone else down with her? There was no reason to allow that to happen. The girls all had their own schedules to attend and there was no way they were going to make money staying at home in bed. It’d be different if they were acting in some sort of commercial for some brand name medication, but that wasn’t the case.

It was bad enough she had to miss their last live performance due to feeling under the weather. Yeri tried to tough it out, trying to keep up with the other girls (even chugging an energy drink that was supposedly grape flavored but tasted absolutely vile.) But after almost fainting during rehearsal and receiving a firm scolding from Irene, she was forced to sit out and was driven home by their manager. 

In hindsight, Yeri supposed she should have mentioned something about how she really felt earlier that day before letting the situation get to that point, or possibly even developing into something more severe, but she didn’t want to let the other members and the fans down. They probably endured a lot of hardships just to make it to their performance. Heck, some fans might have even flown in from out of the area, or even from the other side of the world, just to see Red Velvet in person. The least she could do was show up, give them the best performance she possibly could and help make everlasting memories they could cherish forever.

But she just had to get sick. As for how, Yeri had no idea but there was no point in wasting time thinking about that. She just had to deal with it with patience, sleep, and medicine that  made her feel like gagging. Whoever thought making medicine cherry flavored was a good idea deserved to be slapped in her opinion.

Normally she would have been grateful for the unexpected “rest” she got from work, but one can only scroll through Twitter and Instagram so much before getting bored out of their mind. There wasn’t much she could do at home anyways since she had to avoid coming into contact with the other members. 

It was torture. 

What made things worse was that most of her physical strength was drained. Just doing everyday things like walking made her feel tired. She didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she tried to lift anything heavy. Her arms would probably fall off.

Not only that, her mind was foggy. Earlier that day, she almost put deodorant on her toothbrush instead of the usual toothpaste she used. The only reason she didn’t end up with a mouth full of deodorant was because when she tried squeezing the “tube,” she realized that the battle to get the toothpaste out suddenly became a hundred times more difficult than usual. It was then that Yeri took a moment to examine the object in her hand that she immediately realized her mix up.

That was a fail she was going to take with her to the grave. Nobody else needed to know about it.

Being sick .

And right before Yeri was going to take a nap, Joy suddenly decided to make her grand appearance for some reason. She was the reason why Yeri wasn’t asleep like she originally intended on doing.

Yeri sighed as she shook her head, wiping some sweat off her forehead. “We can’t cuddle.”

But Joy wasn’t having it. “Yes. We. Can!” 

Yeri wasn’t sure if it was the fever or if she was going crazy, but she could have sworn Joy said that in the same way Obama did when he was running for President. (As for why that popped in her head, she had no idea. She didn’t even pay attention to politics. Maybe she saw it in a meme.)

Nevertheless, there was no time to get distracted. She needed to find a way to get Joy to leave the room as soon as possible, preferably without too much effort. Otherwise....bad things would happen.

“No. It’d be bad if you got sick.”

Yeri felt like laughing at the irony of the situation. One would think that Joy, being the elder out of the two, would have acted more mature in this situation but no. Yeri was years younger than Joy, talking to her like a parent would to their unruly child who was acting out. Never in her life did she think she’d be the responsible one; that title belonged to the leader of the group.

“No it wouldn’t because then I’d get to spend time with you,” she replied earnestly, taking a few steps closer towards Yeri, who backed away slowly in response. “I miss you.”

It’d be a lie if Yeri said those disgustingly sweet words that spilled from Joy’s mouth didn’t make her face feel warmer than it already was due to the fever. It took every shred of willpower in her to keep her facial expression from softening. 

She took a few more cautious steps backwards before being forced to stop, feeling the back of her legs bump into the bed frame.

Crap.

There was no place left for her to go. She couldn’t hide under her bed even if she wanted to. There were too many shoe boxes under it that took up mos