“Jupalll!!!”

Upon hearing her (other) name, Jooyeon shot her head up at the direction where she heard the voice.  Here she comes- she thought laughingly, but her heart was thumping in her chest nonetheless.

The dorm of After School was not a puzzle to Jooyeon.  She knew where she could slip in to hide but still be aware of her surroundings.  So, she stealthily walked towards her temporary hiding place.  Once Raina has passed through, she would slide out and hurry to the door, to the safety of her car and finally, to the safety of her house.

That was the way things were supposed to go since the thought of pulling a prank on Raina came to Jooyeon’s mind.  Where Jooyeon went wrong was the possibility of an exogenous variable (or variables) messing up her equation.  And this variable was in the form of Lizzy who, for a reason, was feeling so hot that she decided to lie down on the floor beside a table and laze there.

And so, when Jooyeon heard Raina’s footsteps go fainter, she ran out of the narrow space and darted towards the living room.  She could see the front door and she marked it as her target.  She could also hear Raina’s voice and knew without looking back that the younger girl was chasing her.  Jooyeon’s mind was so set on fleeing and laughing that she forgot to take note of her environment.  But Raina, who was a little behind, was aware of things unknown to her unnie, and with a thundering voice called out, “Lizzy ah!  Stop her!”  Confused, Lizzy sat up to see what was happening.

BAM!

It was too late when Jooyeon saw Lizzy.  The table blocked the girl’s figure and so Jooyeon only saw her when she has sat up already.  But Jooyeon was already there and her foot got caught by one of Lizzy’s shoulder and she tripped over the poor girl.  Thankfully, that was it and no parts of their bodies were broken, although there would certainly be some bruises.

The two figures on the ground were grunting, with the younger one shedding some tears and the older one gathering her wits and bearing as she struggled to stand up.  It took her some time but she got to her feet.  When she was about to limp her way to the door, she felt a hand on her shoulder.  Instinctively, she turned and lo and behold, it was the girl she least wanted to catch her: the other exogenous variable.

“Yah Lee Jooyeon!”

“A- Appa!  You’re here!  What are you doing here?  How’ve you been?”  Jooyeon tried to sound as innocently surprised as possible.  Every move she was to make must be calculated so as not to risk the havoc of their appa whom they rarely saw these days and she them.

“Oh!  Don’t give me that crap!  Look at what you did to my hair!”  And look she did.  It was dripping wet with water and something else, something Jooyeon knew exactly: oil.  “Aheheheh~” she could only laugh for there was nothing she could really say.  Even her ‘sorry’ would not give her the least bit of mercy.  She would suffer everything fully all the same, so why not just have fun as she always did?  And suffer she did.

After Gahee has done her fill (but really it was because of Jungah’s arrival to the dorm), she left for the bathroom again to fix her hair with the help of some of After School’s members.  Jooyeon, seeing no point to hurry home anymore, sat on the couch and tended to her wound (the one she got from falling over Lizzy).  Apparently, she scraped her knee and it was bleeding, not profusely, but it still hurt.  “Aish!  Why did that kid have to sleep on the floor?”

“Lizzy feels hot easily, unnie.”

“Oh!  Kkamjakiya!”  Jooyeon threw her arms in the air when she suddenly heard someone speak.  It did not even occur to her who it belonged to until she looked up to see.  Raina chuckled at the dorkiness of her unnie.

“She always lies down on the floor… or takes her clothes off.  But we’re used to it now.”  Raina sat next to Jooyeon and laid the kit she was holding on the table.  She then took out the cotton, took some and dabbed disinfectant on it.

“So that’s why-

Raina was about to clean Jooyeon’s wound when the latter took her hand, “I’ll do it.”  Jooyeon smiled sheepishly but Raina only raised her brow on her.  “Yeah right… like you could, unnie.”  And Raina pressed the cotton with disinfectant on the scraped knee of Jooyeon – who hissed upon the contact.

“Gently, please!”

“It barely touched your skin, you big baby.”  And Raina, for wanting some revenge and a bit of fun, hard-pressed the cotton on the wound making her unnie cry out in pain.

“YAH!!!”  But Raina only laughed hysterically at Jooyeon.  “That’s what you get for trolling all day long.”  She stuck her tongue out and before Jooyeon could even grab her, she pressed the cotton again on the wound.

“Ow!  Stop!  Stop it!  Alright, I get it.  Put the damn thing away, please.”  Jooyeon said as she pushed the hand of Raina which was holding the disinfectant-soaked cotton.  But, as if their souls had been switched, Raina threatened her unnie with the cotton again and Jooyeon gave a short shriek of horror.  Just then, the front door burst open and in came a tall girl who was hurrying towards the sound she heard outside of the dorm.

“Unnie?  Jooyeon unnie, what’s wrong?  Omo!”  Nana knelt in front of Jooyeon and examined the wound on the latter’s knee, her face full of worry.  “Omo!  Does it hurt badly unnie?  What happened?  Did someone do this to you?”  But before Nana could utter another word, Jooyeon placed a finger over her lips.  “Hush… I’m gonna be fine.  It’s just a scratch.”

“Are you really, really sure?”  This time, Nana took the free seat next to Jooyeon and s her hands around her unnie’s waist.

And that was Raina’s cue.

But Jooyeon has not yet said thank you for what she did.  So she stood up, walked towards the room, opened the door, and there she saw Raina sitting on the edge of her bed.  She smiled; said ‘thank you’ and left satisfied, for all she saw was the smile plastered on the younger girl’s face and not what she did when the door opened, nor her watery eyes when the door closed.