It was past midnight already, and Yoohyeon was patiently reading a book while resting against the headboard, Minji with her head comfortably on her lap, fast asleep. It was Halloween, but none of them felt like making a big fuss out of it, so what they decided to do was just stay at home and watch a movie. 

Bora and Siyeon had invited them to a party, to which Dong, Gahyeon and Yubin also insisted (or more like spammed in the group chat) for them to go, but they refused. Simply, none of them felt in a party spirit. The weather had been terrible these last few days, filled with fog and rain and honestly, Yoohyeon wasn’t feeling like walking back home (most probably drunk out of her mind) like that. The chances of getting lost were way too high. She could always rely on Minji, but the redhead was a totally different person when drunk, definitely not nearly as sharp as she was when sober.

Said woman was, ironically, dead tired from working a double shift to have this day free for themselves. Yoohyeon didn’t have that problem, but if her girlfriend wasn’t going, she didn’t feel like going either.

As the blonde meddled her hand through red tresses, she was getting sleepy. The movie had ended about half an hour ago, and the redhead said she was going to wash up and doze off, and that was exactly what she did. Yoohyeon hadn’t felt like going to sleep back then, her mind too caught up with the events of the film that creeped her out. But, right now, her eyelids were truly getting heavy.

She took her glasses off, and put them along with the book on the nightstand. Then she softly moved Minji’s head so she could stand up and follow her girlfriend’s footsteps. When she came back to the bed, she snuggled her body against the redhead’s back and not long after she fell asleep as well.

When Yoohyeon woke up, the moon was still up in the sky. She groaned, squinting her eyes at the digital clock, which displayed four in the morning. What the hell.

She looked towards Minji, who was still fast asleep, not moving a single muscle. If she had to be honest, Yoohyeon was the kind of person that tended to sleep like that too, almost looking dead, so whatever woke her up must’ve been a noise or something, or maybe she was just uncomfortable since they ended up sleeping across the bed instead of straight on it. Still, everything seemed fine, so after making sure the window to their room was closed, she shrugged it off and went back to sleep.

✦

This time she woke up barely twenty minutes after, judging by the clock of her phone, and it was starting to piss her off. She wasn’t one to get mad easily, but her sleep was sacred, so this time Yoohyeon carefully detached herself from her girlfriend’s body to check what the hell kept waking her up. 

She checked the window once again, and just as she had previously left it, it was still closed. However, when she looked down (a task that took her great effort, the fog wasn’t allowing her to see much past their side of the sidewalk and it’s not like she could see much further without specs), she realized that their whole block was dark. Not a single soul or sound on the street, and not a single sound inside the house because, obviously, everything was turned off.

Just to be sure, she tried to turn on the tv once again, but there was no sign of electricity. A part of her was still calm because she had Minji with her and that woman was her safe space, but waking up in the middle of the night without power wasn’t funny. Since there was no wifi, she her mobile data to check on the group chat, and the last text (among five hundred pictures) was Gahyeon asking if someone else was out of light too.

Funny, because the younger girl lived further down this same street, and that text was sent around two in the morning, which meant that they had been more than two hours without light and Yoohyeon hadn’t noticed at all. Nice.

Wait, rewind. At two in the morning she was still awake. She double checked the hour of the text, and realized that it was probably sent a few minutes after she went to sleep. And when she woke up earlier the clock was still working, so maybe it was one of those intermittent failures. Surely no one was checking if the street lights were working properly at this hour, or they were trying to fix it and that’s why the power kept going on and off.

She was scrolling through the pictures on the chat, and chuckling at a good number of them. Suddenly, there was a very loud bang on the first floor which made her scream and jump on her spot. She turned around, pretty much trembling, and she didn’t know what she was expecting to find, but what greeted her was just Minji’s moving figure and a groggy voice.

“Yoohyeonie…?” Minji probed around, and Yoohyeon wasn’t sure if she was actually looking for her or just talking in her sleep. “Where are you? What was that?”

Oh, so she’s awake now.

“Ji, I’m here,” the blonde moved back to the bed, tapping the redhead’s shoulder to try and look her in the eyes among the darkness of the room. “We’re out of light.”

The older woman groaned. “Since when? Weren’t you reading? What hour are we living in?” She rambled.

“That was like two hours ago,” Yoohyeon chuckled. “Both things. I saw Gahyeon asking on the group chat if someone else was out of light so I guess it’s a general glitch or something. It’s past four.”

Minji sat back up, illuminating the blonde’s face with the screen of her phone. “And the noise?”

Good question. She forgot about that —stupidly in love was a description that certainly fit her—. “I don’t know. I don’t want to check alone either, come with me?” She pouted.

The redhead chuckled, but grabbed her hand and like that they started making their way downstairs, illuminating their path with the flashlight of Minji’s phone. 

Damn walking down the stairs without light was hard. 

The older woman pointed everywhere from the living room to the entrance of the house, and there was nothing. They were about to turn around until the flashlight hit a certain spot in the kitchen. 

There, on the floor near the window, laid what used to be their toaster, and Pie, their pomeranian dog, was sitting very guiltily beside it.

Yoohyeon sighed. She didn’t know if it was from relief or annoyment. The blonde let go of her girlfriend’s hand to go towards the scene of the crime. “Pieeeee, I bought this like… Two days ago…” She scolded. 

Pie dipped her head down and cried a little, her little ears tucked down as the blonde glared at her and picked up the pieces of the toaster.

“Ow, poor thing,” Minji cooed, somehow managing to still give her light despite pampering their dog. “I’m wondering how she threw it down though? She can’t get on the counter.”

Yoohyeon abruptly stopped her movements. “That’s true.”

She looked around, from the place where the toaster died, towards the spot of the counter where it used to be. It was definitely far from the ground, and there was no way Pie could reach that high without jumping on something first. She asked Minji to point her phone towards the counter, and maybe it was because she didn’t have her specs on, but she couldn’t see any trace of paw marks on the counter.

“Eh… I don’t wanna be that person, but you know, there’s no paw marks in here,” Yoohyeon scratched her neck nervously. “And she can’t reach this high without stepping on something else first.”

“What are you suggesting, then?” Minji came up behind her, resting her chin on her shoulder.

“Someone tried to break in…?” She shyly said. She knew she was being ridiculous, no way someone would try to break in, even less at this hour. It was pointless without a key, their house was safe.

The redhead chuckled. “And trick Pie into breaking the toaster? Hyeonie, I think the movie got to your head.”

Maybe she was a little paranoid after watching it, yes. “You were the one getting scared because of it,” she countered nonetheless, going back to her task of picking up the pieces of the machine. 

“But I slept immediately after.”

From the corner of her eye she could see Minji giving her that cheeky smile she both loved and hated, and the only answer she gave was another groan. The older woman laughed a little, but after that she started to pick up the pieces too. 

Once they were done, Pie went back to lay on her own bed but stayed alert, which only fueled Yoohyeon’s paranoia. 

Still, they checked as far as they could and nothing was out of place, at least not in the kitchen. Yoohyeon came near the window and tried to gaze through it, but it was futile. The fog didn’t allow her. I wasn’t until she was near enough that she noticed it was unlocked.

“Ji,” the blonde whispered, now genuinely scared.

“Hmm?” The redhead followed her once more, illuminating her face with the phone.

“The lock,” Yoohyeon raised a trembling finger towards said piece.

Minji followed her line of sight until her eyes fixed there, and she frowned. “Ah, I must’ve forgotten to lock it when we went upstairs,” she calmly dismissed, pushing the lock closed.

“Are you sure…?”

The other woman worriedly turned at her. “Hyeonie, it’s all fine. I told you we shouldn’t have watched that movie…”

Yoohyeon scratched her nape, thinking it over. Maybe Minji was right and she was just being a scaredy cat. The movie did leave her nerves a bit on edge and it was Halloween, after all.

After throwing the rest of the toaster to the trash can, Minji handed her the phone and kissed her temple.

“I’m going to the bathroom. Wait for me.”

“Sure.”

The blonde was left alone to fiddle with her own foot while waiting outside the bathroom. It was just around the corner of the kitchen’s wall. Something about the whole thing with Pie and the toaster really didn’t convince her, but she dismissed it. If there was truly someone trying to break in, the dog would’ve barked. 

Serial killers during halloween aren’t real, Yoohyeon, keep your together, she thought to herself. Pie then started barking, and the blonde sighed, already done with their dog even though she loved her very much.

“Pie, what’s your pro—”

The blonde went silent, before releasing a fully panicked scream. There, on the window of the kitchen, among the fog that almost entirely covered it, stood a silhouette with both hands placed on the glass. 

Yoohyeon picked up a still barking Pie and ran back to the bathroom. “MINJI, MINJI, KIM MINJIU MINJ—”

Minji came out of the place with her eyes wide like saucers, and frowned once she saw a distressed Pie on her arms. “What’s going on?”

“THERE’S SOMEONE ON THE WINDOW OF THE KITCHEN!”

“What?” The redhead frowned, but put them behind her body and grabbed the phone again to illuminate said place.

Minji popped her head around the wall to look at the window, while Yoohyeon waited anxiously behind her, with their dog who still wanted to run out of her arms. Then the redhead turned back towards her. 

“Yoohyeonie, are you sure it wasn’t just a shadow? There’s no one there,” she worriedly said.

Yoohyeon wanted to cry. No way this is happening TO ME. She buried her face against Minji’s neck, “I swear there was someone there just seconds ago. That’s why Pie was barking, you have to believe me.”

Minji pulled her face away from her neck to lock eyes, and something in her stare must’ve looked truly distressed because the redhead’s expression shifted. “Ok, I’m calling the cops then. Give me a sec,” she reassured her, caressing her cheek.

The blonde nodded and glued herself and the dog against her girlfriend’s side, feeling like anywhere far from her was a dangerous place. She kept glancing around, her hearing suddenly working at one hundred percent, and if her ears weren’t failing her, there was a thud on the side of the house.

“Hyeonie,” Minji started.

“What?!” Yoohyeon retorted, sounding more on edge than she intended to.

“My phone’s out of signal…”

“No no no no,” the blonde grabbed the device and checked that indeed it was out of signal. “!”

There was a loud knock on the door and she could swear that she felt the way her blood ran cold, as if she was washed with a bucket of ice cold water. Pie barked again and slipped out of her arms, going towards the main door.

Yoohyeon was about to run after the dog until Minji grabbed her hand. “Ok I fully believe you know, let’s go upstairs and see if your phone has signal. I need something to hit with.”

“But Pi—”

“Pie is fine. Upstairs.”

She was left with no other choice but to follow because Minji pretty much dragged her out of there. Once they reached their bedroom again, Yoohyeon stumbled over her phone to check if it was working properly, and her soul dropped to her feet when she saw that it was out of signal too.

“I don’t have signal either…” She trailed off, genuinely about to cry.

“Alright. Whoever that is, the moment they step foot in here they’re getting a bat to their heads,” Minji said as she picked up the baseball bat she had on the side of their room.

The redhead didn’t even practice baseball, the only reason that thing was there was because they found it in the streets years ago and Minji said she wanted to keep it. Random, but right now Yoohyeon was very thankful for letting her get away with it. 

They made their way downstairs again, where Pie was still barking at the door.

“Gahyeon wrote in the group chat two hours ago you said… Maybe she’s still awake? We can try going to her house,” Minji suggested.

Yoohyeon shook her head. “What if it’s more than one person? We can’t go out just like that,” she answered in a whisper. 

“We can’t just stay here eit—”

Suddenly, the door was being forced open. The blonde’s eyes went wide and she pulled from Minji’s arm. To her utmost terror, it seemed like the assassin was succeeding, because suddenly there was a click and before she could stop her, Minji ran to the door with the bat ready to swing that person’s head off. Before she could reach her destination though, someone yelled.

“WAIT, STOP, IT’S ME!” Bora crouched down and covered her head with her arms.

Pie stopped barking and stayed quiet and Minji froze in a funny pose. “Did you do this on purpose?”

The ice tone on Minji’s voice gave Yoohyeon more chills than the entire previous situation.

“Maybe…” The brunette trailed off, clearly praying for her .

Yoohyeon surged forward from behind the wall. “YOU ALMOST GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK, WHAT THE IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”

“Ah so much yelling,” Siyeon suddenly appeared from behind the door, putting her hands under Bora’s arms to pick her up, glancing between Minji and her. “See? This is why I told you it was a bad idea. It was just a prank, you two.”

Minji’s head visibly twitched. “Just a prank? It’s almost five in the morning! And I almost called the ing cops!”

Needless to say, both Siyeon and Bora got their heads and asses smacked after that, and Siyeon had to save Bora from getting actually decapitated by Minji’s bat after she committed the great mistake of admitting it was her idea.

✦

A week later, the five of them were reunited on Gahyeon’s house. It was one of those rare weekends where most of them were free, and currently they were sprawled on different parts of the living room. Yubin and Dong had work, so they couldn’t accompany them.

“There’s still something I don’t understand,” Minji started, recalling the events of halloween. “How did you manage to block our signal as well?”

“That wasn’t us. We ran out of signal too, the only thing we messed up were the lights,” Siyeon explained.

“The lights? So that was you?!” Gahyeon yelled, disbelief written all over her face.

“Yeah, I got a little passionate about the transformer… I didn’t intend to leave the whole block without power,” Bora apologetically grinned.

Yoohyeon was baffled. “You’re insane,” she deadpanned.

“And you owe us a toaster.” Minji added.

“What toaster?" Siyeon and Bora asked at the same time.