Wendy's had less awkward rides up elevators, and she feels as if she's made the situation a tad more so when she stepped aside, gestured out the opening scratch-covered metal doors and said "After you," a little too urbanely. Joohyun takes a moment to regard her with heavy eyelids and a forced weak smile before turning and ambling away, luggage in tow.

"Okay..." Wendy breathes. 

She scrambles out of the elevator to lead Joohyun to what appears to be the only freshly repainted door in the hallway. 

The warm spring green juxtaposed against a stretch of dirty blues and greys would be enough to wipe the glaze from anybody's eyes (crude artistic statements like this could only really be tolerated in a district like Sawol). Chipped and cracking brown and beige paint threatens to fall and fragment to monochrome, and ruin the childish illustration of a bear cub and a squirrel framing the panels of the door. 

A swoosh in black (the same teddy bear signature Wendy's been nagging at Seulgi to alter), as tiny as it may be, hasn't been fortunate enough to escape Joohyun's scrutiny.

As Joohyun's eyes widen ever so slightly, she her head to the side then swiftly turns to face Wendy, spitting through tight lips: "Didn't tell me you were living with your...friend." She rights her posture and Wendy can feel her skin flush under Joohyun's icy glare. 

"Ah-uh...I-Well, I am in fact, living with my friend, good friend - we're just friends - um, roommate Seulgi. Yeah." 

Wendy slowly raises her box of ramen as if it'll eventually prevent her from noticing how Joohyun clenches her jaw, or how the muscles in Joohyun's forearms seem to twitch.

"Sure."

After hopelessly darting her eyes between the woman and the front door, Wendy's hand dives into her pocket for the keys again as she attempts to divert the topic: "I know right, I didn't know two-person apartments for singles... um, existed anymore until I got to this... class..." 

The door to her apartment opens without too much of a struggle in spite of Wendy's fumbling hands, and she clears at the sight of her roommate laying on their couch spread-eagled, her headset still obscuring the majority of her small face (and for some reason still plugged into the mains). 

“Seulgi-ya, we have company!" 

"W-w-what? Wendy, is that you?" Seulgi snaps up and flops forward, bumbling arms reaching out for some semblance of another's presence. 

"Idiot, who else could it be?" Wendy sighs, dropping the box off on what little empty floor space they have left in their pocket-sized living room. 

"Give me a moment?”

Wendy flashes a smile Joohyun’s way before scurrying over to a wildly disoriented Seulgi, prying the headset off her clammy forehead and yanking her into the latter’s bedroom. After shutting her door with all the composure she can muster, Wendy loosens her grip on Seulgi’s wrist, rubs her thumb across the lightened skin for a second or two and proceeds to momentarily freak out. Seulgi takes a step closer to Wendy and pats her gently on her back a few times before placing her hand on her arm. She gives it a squeeze. 

“Wendy, what’s going on?” 

“I-It’s complicated. I-I just… I’ll tell you everything later, alright?”

Wendy heaves and lets go of Seulgi’s wrist to bring her hands up to her heated cheeks. Not even the vibrancy of the orange of Seulgi’s room can calm her down as she presses her fingers against her temples, massaging them. She then eyes Seulgi’s beaten up sneakers and her own white ones and slowly her feet feel a little more rooted in the ground. Wendy lets out a sigh as Seulgi’s fingers slip off her arm to gently fix her messed up bangs. 

As clumsy as the girl oftentimes is, these little acts always feel so elegant, so soft and therapeutic. 

“Oh… well, okay… but, why did you do the whole take-me-by-the-arm-into-my-room thing? You have virtually no muscle mass… but it was still kind of an ouchie, y’know?” 

Though slightly hidden behind now-straightened bangs, it’s obvious Wendy’s now widened her eyes, bemused. “Sorry for hurting your arm but… First off, you look like a mess,” Wendy says, whipping her head back up with the hint of a cheeky smile creeping on her hesitant lips. Wendy takes Seulgi’s hand from her bangs and playfully flings her arm down. Seulgi can’t help but beam at her cheering up a little. 

Wendy’s eyes soften as they greet Seulgi’s again, questioning: “Secondly, why were you even plugged in when there's nothing to be plugged in to? Like… we’re in a plague?”

"I feel without it, though?”

Wendy would roll her eyes in any other case, but sensing some sad truth in her statement, she opts for a shake of the head instead. Then, Seulgi suddenly perks up as if she’s just remembered something, raises a finger and angles her head towards the door with an uncertain smile. 

“Also… Why is that one model from the VE commercials here? Erin, right? Irene? Erin? I think her name is Erin - heard it in that one show about… home decor?”

There it is. The simple utterance of a simple name and a slight grimace appears on Wendy’s face. She tries to find something to stare at in the room rather than look back into Seulgi’s inquisitive eyes but the girl’s room has always been bare-bones.

"Seul, I love you but-“ Wendy apprehensively focuses on a stack of letters placed neatly (the only thing organised in a room with knick-knacks, art materials, and washed and unwashed socks) on a corner of Seulgi’s surface mat, and winces a bit. “That’s Joohyun, okay? Yeah… that Joohyun. And-uh-well, I can tell you right now that Joohyun will be staying with us till she can leave on Monday, okay? Please?" 

Seulgi’s arm flops to her side for a moment, then she grabs Wendy’s upper arms and shakes her a little, a mix of excitement and alarm clearly bubbling in her. "Joohyun!?" "That's Joohyun!? Your Joohyun is…”

“Erin?” Seulgi whispers, for no reason really. 

Now, tearing her eyes away from the twenty, thirty-odd letters, Wendy can’t stop her eyes from rolling and she pries Seulgi’s claws away from her. Wendy raises a hand, almost as if she wanted to gesture something Seulgi’s way, but chooses not to, and heads towards the door. 

“Like I said, I’ll explain all of this later. Okay?” to which Seulgi can only rest her tensed shoulders and nod as Wendy twists the doorknob and leaves without saying another word. 

Wendy finds Irene standing statuesque in the middle of the living room though glancing around it, from old couch to the two fold-away chairs framing a makeshift dining table to even the polish-stripped wood floor itself, her lips slightly parted as if both in concern and bewilderment. 

For some reason, she feels each step she takes closer to Joohyun far more than she had before. Maybe it’s because of the silence afforded by this in-between moment, or by the fact that Joohyun, despite all logic and all realms of possibility, is now looking straight at her, existing before her, existing and looking and standing here in her own home. 

The two of them wait on a thought to arise, one that would clear the blinding haze of processing a scenario that has long disappeared into the cabinets of memory, locked half a decade ago. 

Joohyun is at Wendy’s place.

And not much has changed. 

Sure, the addition of Seulgi to the picture doesn’t go unfelt by Joohyun and her burning gaze. Sure, the freshly twenty-year-old Wendy’s beaming youthfulness, primed with relentless optimism, has since melded with the helpless realism that comes with advancing adulthood (which is similarly, although perhaps more acutely, noted by Joohyun), a deeper hollowness in her cheeks than even the last time she’d seen her.

Sure, Joohyun and the aura she carries has… changed. But how couldn’t she? And how couldn’t it?

Nonetheless, not much of anything else has changed. Certainly not the disarray of their surroundings, and not the inescapably shoddy state of their furnishings. Certainly not the unease of holding onto words that should but cannot be said amassing in them. Certainly not the presence of a small window letting in not only the ugly drip-drop of messy showers flood into their soundscape, but also the ugly, murky light passing through overcast skies, dimming and dulling Joohyun’s entirety. 

There’s a reason why they’d never use lighting like this on models, Wendy thinks, not even Joohyun, chewing on her inner cheek as she looks down. "So, um..." Wendy tugs up her jeans, coughs, then faces Joohyun again, saying with a little smile: "You'll be sleeping in my room. Yes." 

Not that Joohyun would ever need to find out, but Wendy’s always prided herself in having the cleaner of the two bedrooms. 

“Bed, mains, useless tech, Surface. And, oh- our bathroom's next to Seulgi's room; you can't miss it. Just ask me if you need anything else.” 

But in spite of that, and in spite of the painful nostalgia of bringing Joohyun to her room, her most private of private spaces, Wendy feels discomfort as she holds her bedroom door open for her. 

Discomfort and inadequacy. Showing themselves in Joohyun’s branded baggage, embossed or rare metal-studded logos and all, enveloped in an air of modesty and simplicity founded by the all-wooden furniture and mid-to-low-range tech. Wendy wonders if Joohyun can tell that her Surface set isn’t from Virtuplex or Samsung or M-Cubed or Apple, but from a little-known electronics manufacturer she’d found somewhere in the recesses of a discount shopping site. 

Wendy shoves a hand down her pocket and uses the other to rub away the self-consciousness that’s making hairs stand on her neck. “I hope it's not too messy for you. I know how you get when things are out of place but-uh you can rearrange my things if you want, I won't mind. I really won’t.” 

Joohyun tilts her head a bit, mutters a "Thanks." 

Resounding clangs shoot through the open door, and Joohyun scowls, unimpressed (which Wendy does notice, and does wonder now, how expressions as unattractive as a scowl could look so poised on a person), and whips her head around. 

Wendy throws her head back and shuts her eyes. “I-I think my roommate's trying to cook,” she says, now re-opening them and slowly pointing her feet towards the kitchen. Joohyun darts her sight back to Wendy, catching her mid-pleading look towards wherever Seulgi presumably is, and the act alone sends a chill up Wendy’s spine. 

She thinks quickly - “You haven't eaten, right? I’ve food that’s not ramen, and I ca-"

Joohyun punctuates her suggestion with a curt "No