It was terrifying, Seulgi realized, how quickly one’s life could crash down from what looked to be perfect to complete, utter ruins.

One moment everything seemed like they were going up the right path, but the next moment, all of them slipped right through one’s fingers and shatter into pieces.

Watching Joohyun’s life spiraled out of control in just one night – trashing everything she had worked for for years – filled her with that terror as if it was her own mother who was on deathbed and her own dream which was breaking.

They had rushed to the hospital as soon as her father called them, taking a cab and flashing through the moment blurrily like it was some bad nightmares that they couldn’t remember clearly but hoped to wake up from.

But once they arrived at the Emergency Room, looking at the nurses and doctors flocking around Joohyun’s mom’s limp, battered body – and seeing just how red, how real the blood flowing nonstop from her head was – both of them had been shaken to reality.

This was not a nightmare.

This was real.

The realization had struck Seulgi frozen and wordless on her spot, but it had sent Joohyun screaming hysterically as the paramedics took her mom away from her and rushed her bloody body to the operating theatre.

This was not a nightmare.

This was real.

But even as Seulgi stood face to face with her dad, listening to him explain about what had happened, she still had a hard time believing that this was not a bad dream.

That this was real.

“It’s a severe, blunt head injury.” Her father had spoken with an anguished look before he hurried to the operating theatre. “The loan shark seemed to have used something really hard – probably a metal bat – to hit her on the head. The CT scan reveals skull fractures and massive intracerebral hemorrhage. We are not sure how many hours have passed before people found her, but this isn’t looking good.”

He had said some more things – about needing to do open brain surgery to remove the large blood clot – but Seulgi honestly couldn’t remember the details anymore now, 4 hours down the night.

She was just sitting silent and stunned on the plastic chair in the ER, holding Joohyun in her arms as they waited and waited and waited.

Joohyun hadn’t stopped crying since.

She had been crying so much – so, so hard – that Seulgi feared she would stop breathing.

Her body, usually held up strong with pride and determination no matter what obstacle was thrown in her way, now coiled as a small ball in her arms, shaking with deep tremors that seemed to never go away.

Tears seeped through the shoulder part of Seulgi’s coat constantly, where Joohyun had buried her face and clung to her desperately while quivering and sobbing with even more fright the longer the surgery took.

On the fifth hour, her father and the neurosurgery team finally walked out to the ER, and it made Joohyun snap up from her shoulder.

“How is she?” She had run over and gripped her father by arms, fingers curling tightly on his blue scrub and eyes swollen and wild with fright.

Seulgi’s heart dropped to the floor when she looked at her father’s face.

It was a look that reminded her of that time when he had come home devastated after failing to save a child.

It infused her with fear.

“She’s still alive…” Her father said, but his voice was very small and very apologetic. “But she is still in a critical condition. She’s lost too much time…it took too long for her to be found. Her brain is –” He stopped, seemingly agonized, “we don’t know if she will ever wake up. And even if she does, we don’t know if she will make it past a few days. I’m so sorry, Joohyun.”

And that was when Seulgi learned that a terror didn’t have to be her own to make her truly fearful. Because watching Joohyun fall to the cold hospital floor, weeping for her mother – for her fractured life that would never be quite the same again from that night onward – filled her with terror she had never experienced before.

--------------------------------------

Grief could overtake someone even long before the actual loss.

In the following days, Seulgi watched how it took over her best friend, rendering her usual loudness mute and her usual liveliness lifeless.

Joohyun stayed at her mother’s bedside at nearly all hours, refusing to eat, to sleep, or even to nap just a little, in fear that she might lose her mom when she wasn’t by her side.

Even when Seulgi tried to coax her to take turns watching; even when her uncle and aunt finally came to town and talked her to do the same; she refused to leave her mother’s side for even one second.

The skin under her eyes went darker and swollen by days, and her cheeks seemed to sink in with such an alarming rate, Seulgi worried she might fall ill herself if she continued.

It was agonizing to see Joohyun like that. She was always so alive – so full of cheeriness – that it physically ached Seulgi to see her sit on the chair desolately, cradling her mother’s cold hand and staring at her with eyes that never seemed to dry.

She wished she could do something to comfort her, but she knew that nothing would.

Because even after five long days, her mother still hadn’t woken up and only seemed to deteriorate further, getting paler and paler each day. It made Joohyun cry more and more each day too, taking out more of what little energy she had left in herself.

On the 6th day – after her mother nearly died from a respiratory failure and the nurses had to hook her to a ventilator – Joohyun, with her eyes bloodshot and voice hoarse from too much crying, finally only fell limply on her chair and put her tear-washed face in her palms quietly, finally accepting the truth.

Her mother would never wake up again, no matter how many hours she spent waiting for her on the bedside.

“I never got around to say sorry to her, you know.” She whispered, her voice wet with tears as she stared at her mother’s motionless form one night.

Seulgi was waiting on the chair beside hers, holding her hand through the long night. She didn’t want Joohyun to be alone, even though her own brain could barely stay conscious.

“For fighting her about your dreams?”

“Yeah.” Joohyun tried to in a breath, but even that seemed difficult for her to do with the thick tears coating her airway.

“I said a lot of cruel things to her…I think I hated her at some points – when our arguments became too much – and I just wanted to hurt her. It was – I shouldn’t have done it. She was just looking out for me. She was just worrying about me. What will I do when she isn’t around to watch over me anymore, Seulgi?”

Her voice cracked. “I don’t – I don’t know what to do alone. What will I do alone? She has always been with me. It was always the two of us, since I was little. She is the only family I have. I don’t – I don’t know what I will do alone – I can’t –"

And with that she broke down again, sobbing into her palms and shaking. “What if this is partly my fault? If only I have listened to her, if only I have chipped in more to help her pay the debt instead of going after all those acting classes and auditions, maybe she wouldn’t have –”

“Joohyun, no.” Seulgi caught her hands and pulled them away from her tearstained face, cradling her cheek and lifting her face to look at her right in the eyes.

“You can’t think that way. You know that it isn’t true. You have helped her a lot. And even if you were to help some more, you know that the unreasonable amount demanded by the loan shark was just way bigger than what you had. It was an impossible demand.”

“Not impossible to everyone.” Joohyun’s small, weak voice cracked. “Not impossible to someone like you, at least.”

And that was when Seulgi felt her heart crack too. Because she finally understood why Joohyun hadn’t told her about the entire issue in the first place.

Their difference in wealth had apparently made her friend feel embarrassed enough to hide the whole debt story, even though she had never hidden anything from Seulgi before.

Anything but this.

“Joohyun, you know that I can always help if you just –”

“Don’t.” Joohyun pulled away from her, turning away. “Don’t say it. Saying it will only make me feel worse, both of shame for having to ask in the first place and of regret for not asking. Because maybe if I had been shameless and asked for help, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Seulgi’s heart ached for everything she said. “Joohyun, you don’t need to be ashamed at all. I’m your best friend. Money is nothing compared to you –”

“This is why I didn’t ask you, Seulgi.” Joohyun turned to face her again, eyes teary and voice fiery. “Money is not nothing, okay? Don’t say it like that. If it was nothing, my mom would still be fine. She wouldn’t be lying here, cold and dying, all because she didn’t have enough money. Money is only nothing to people who have a lot of it.”

Someone like you hung unsaid on the air. Seulgi stopped speaking, air punched out of her lungs and heart squeezing. Joohyun might as well have spelled it out for her.

“I just – I hate this, okay? I hate being helpless. I hate having to depend and beg for other people’s help. I hate scrambling day by day for some stupid paper bills that aren’t even enough to afford me a decent life. I’m sick of it, and now I feel even sicker because I’m about to lose my mom because of it. This is so, so ing stupid. I’m going to lose her forever because of money. This is so –”

Her rising voice and breath caught in , twisted by a bubbling fury and anguish. Her eyes teared up again, and this time, it wasn’t only filled with sadness but also anger.

Anger at the situation. Anger at losing her mom for something other wealthier people like Seulgi could have easily afforded without begging. And anger at herself too, perhaps, for not choosing to be shameless and thick-faced enough to go out and get what she wanted from other people.

And this anger – this regret for not grabbing whatever she needed from the world without being ashamed of it – was what would change her forever.

Seulgi could feel it in her bones; a faint worry crawling underneath her skin like a foreboding, hair-line crack just below the surface, that she knew would one day widen so much, it would shatter everything she thought she knew about Joohyun.

---------------------------------------

It went without saying that Joohyun had to let go of her first ever movie role because of this.

She didn’t talk about it to Seulgi, and Seulgi knew better than to ask her about it, but she did overhear when Joohyun stepped out of the hospital room to make a call to Taeyeon.

She had tried to keep her voice neutral and strong when she told the casting director that she had to draw back from the movie, but Seulgi knew by now that Joohyun was a very good liar to everybody else aside from her.

Just because she wasn’t breaking down on the call, and just because she wasn’t sobbing her heart out explicitly over the loss of something she had wanted so, so much, it didn’t mean that her heart wasn’t in ruins about it.

There was no such thing as being unable to grieve about another thing when you were already grieving about something else that was much bigger. You would just end up grieving and hurting about all things at the same time.

And in the end, you would probably feel numb about it, because it was just too much.

Seulgi learned all of these while staying with Joohyun, watching how her cries gradually morphed to silence and how her eyes gradually transformed from tearful redness to dry, dark void.

She hated that Joohyun had to let go of something she had worked so hard for, but in the end, she thought that maybe, it was for the best that she hadn’t gone to Seoul.

Because on the 14th day after the accident, her mother passed away and Seulgi didn’t know how Joohyun would have ever forgiven herself if she wasn’t there by her mother’s side when she took her last breath.

It had happened so quickly.

One night, they were sitting by her mother’s bed like usual and she just suddenly stopped breathing. Her heartbeats slowed down too and eventually came to a halt, as if it had tried to keep going but was simply too tired.

There were no last words.

No words of affirmation or comfort said in the last moments like those in movies.

She was simply gone, taken away in silence just like that.

After calling the nurses and watching them try to resuscitate her to no avail, Joohyun had not screamed hysterically begging for her to come back like in movies too.

She had simply stood there, with arms wrapped around herself and tear-washed face held in one hand, crying quietly because she knew that she was gone.

Her mother, the courageous woman who had tirelessly done everything in her power to take care of her alone since she was little, would never come back no matter how raw she tore out weeping. 

And so, when the funeral happened, Joohyun didn’t bawl her eyes out too.

She merely stood there, beside the gaping hole in the ground, watching the lowered coffin with silent tears.

It wasn’t until after the funeral was over – until every townsfolk who had come to pay respect had gone home and until Joohyun herself had been escorted back by her uncle and Seulgi to her now much emptier house – did she start breaking down again.

Only there, in the middle of her living room surrounded by the photos, the smell, and the memories of her mother, did she allow herself to truly break and weep all her heart out.

Seulgi wrapped her arms around her and her head, kissing her temple over and over again in hope of soothing her, but knowing that it wasn’t enough.

In fact, nothing would be enough to make her truly whole again, because in a way, a part of her heart was buried along with her mother on that day.

-------------------------------------------

“You should go home.” Joohyun muttered against the collar of her shirt, voice small and barely audible even in the dead of the silent night.

They were huddled together on her bed in complete darkness, Joohyun’s head tucked securely underneath her chin and her body wrapped tightly in her arms.

Her fingers were still clenching the front of Seulgi’s shirt despite her saying that she should go home, and Seulgi knew that what she wanted was the opposite.

Joohyun didn’t want her to go home.

She didn’t want to be left alone in her house, surrounded by her mom’s memories but not by the woman herself.

Seulgi pulled the blanket over the two of them more securely, scooting into Joohyun even more to let her know that she wasn’t going anywhere and that staying with her wasn’t a burden.

With the free hand of her arm that was pillowed beneath Joohyun’s head, she the soft hair just beside her temple. “I’m not going home.” She whispered, patting Joohyun’s waist with her other hand in a gentle way that she knew would comfort her. “I’ve told my parents that I will be staying over for a few more days.”

“You have stayed over for nearly two weeks. I think that’s enough.”

Seulgi noted that the fingers on her shirt were still curled tightly instead of letting go. She arranged her next words very carefully. “I don’t want you to be alone. I’m doing this for myself because I won’t be able to sleep well at home knowing that you are alone. You don’t have to feel bad about it because I want to do it.”

Joohyun took in a shaky breath and buried her face deeper in her shirt as if she wanted to just disappear. When she spoke again, Seulgi could feel the movement of her lips against her shirt and her blooming tears.

“I will have to be okay alone sooner or later anyway. You can’t always be here with me all the time. You have your own life. Soon, once the holiday break is over and school is starting again, you will have to go home.”

“One day at a time.” Seulgi said, pressing her lips against the top of Joohyun’s head, just on her soft hairline. “You shouldn’t thi