Chapter Text
“My feet are sticking to the floor,” Hyeongjun says without looking up, eyes locked onto where she’s trying to pry her boot free from beer-and-god-knows-what-else stained hardwood. “They’re sticking to the floor, dude.”
Jiseok, her companion for this godforsaken quest, turns away from where she had been trying to convince some spray-tanned valley girl that market price for percocets is greater than seven hundred dollars, and looks up at Hyeongjun with an expression that she herself would like to generously call fond exasperation.
“This is a party,” Jiseok informs her, reaching to put her hands on the sides of her face as if Hyeongjun is five years old. “Yes, the floor is sticky. You’re wearing boots made for trench warfare. You’ll survive.”
She turns back to the fray, and Hyeongjun turns back to her shoe.
Her boots are massive, and also probably made for trench warfare. It would be a testament to their sturdiness, but instead it begs the question: will she get trench foot from wading through suspicious party fluids? It’s likely, and it’s reason enough for her to want to split from the party entirely; just so her shoes will function as usual— but, alas, Jiseok is too afraid of rich-boy cooties to attend a rager alone, and although Hyeongjun would rather be at home, she has a duty to play bodyguard to her friend and meet her biologically required social interaction quota.
Speaking of dying— there’s a burly Chad Michael Murray-type stalking toward their cove under the marble staircase with a dazed countenance and a thousand-yard stare that means either Jiseok over-charged him too noticeably or he’s high and just looking for trouble. Either way, Jiseok is about to pull out a knife, and Hyeongjun wants to be far away from that entire situation.
“Hey,” she mumbles aside to get Jiseok’s attention, “On your two.”
Jiseok narrows her eyes at the approaching threat, then reaches into her back pocket. This is Hyeongjun’s queue to split, so she takes one big step backwards out of the way, and then faces the sea of bodies that were once behind her.
She twists her ring around her finger, and then shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket; the denim of which is her greatest defense from sweat and booze and football players too sloshed to notice her trying to get by. A hand emerges from the fray, and nearly spills an entire cup of liquor onto her shoulder. She dodges narrowly, trudges up the unnecessarily massive staircase, and then finally, her respite is on the horizon. The second floor bathroom is somehow not crowded at all, with only a small scattering of girls on the floor leaning heavily against each other and the wall.
One of them stumbles and leans over her as she approaches the door, dressed in a loose white off-the-shoulder that wraps around her waist and ties in the front. In this drowsy yellow, half-strobed hallway lighting, it almost cascades down like a Jedi’s robe. She raises her hands to Hyeongjun’s cheeks, holding her there. The sharp tips of her nails slightly dig into Hyeongjun’s cheekbones, and Hyeongjun blushes, as anyone would.
“Thou shalt surely die,” the girl whispers, barely audible over the thumping bass, pats her on the cheek once and then crumbles to the floor to sleep on someone. Hyeongjun watches her scooch down to lay her head onto their collarbone, wide-eyed and mystified, until she shakes herself out of her reverie and pulls open the door.
Hyeongjun shuts the door behind her as fast as she can, turning around to press her forehead into the cool, flat metal of the door. The chill seeps through her palms, through her head, taking her away from the disorienting swath of smells, bodies, and bad music; boxing her in with cold tile and sterile white lights. The music still rings out from under the door, but it's not as bad as it was, when she was in the heart of it. Now, reduced to an undercurrent thrum of synth and bass, she feels her heartrate slow to match its tempo.
Inhale: sucking in the lingering scent of bleach and Pine Sol. Exhale: feeling her breath fan back against the door.
Scrubbing her eyes, she turns around to finally look at the room she's found herself in, and chokes on her intake of breath at the sound of a stifled gag and then the wretched noise of someone emptying their guts.
She spins around, already half-panicking, to see who’s there.
Bent in half, head buried in the toilet bowl, is a girl wearing a gaudy silver tank-top and dark jeans so low that the hot pink lace of her thong is unmistakably exposed. Her Jimmy Choo's scrape against the tile floor, her massive hoop earrings clink against porcelain when she coughs out more bile, and Hyeongjun thinks she might just turn around and leave.
That is, until she hears her crying.
People cry when they throw up all the time, she reminds herself, reaching behind for the doorknob. It's just- Do they usually sound like this?
She's witnessed many of Jiseok's drunk shenanigans, most of which end in a situation similar to this one, but when Jiseok cries the tears are shallow, from the constricting pain of her stomach, the ache in her hunched back; they build in the corners of her eyes and then fall unnoticed, unintentionally. She doesn't even realize they're there.
Hyeongjun feels this girl's tears as if they were dripping down the walls, flooding the room.
She gasps for air, and then chokes on another rough sob, one hand sliding off the edge of the bowl to dig its nails into her knee. Now that she's done throwing up, she's collapsed onto the toilet, with her head laying on the edge and all of her weight slung against it.