Dreamlike Universe

“Oh, you look gorgeous.” At the door stands Eunbi, a bouquet of hydrangeas cradled gently in her arms and a plastic bag of fried chicken and plum wine bottles dangling by her fingers. She sports a bright smile contrasted by the poorly lit hallway she stands in, waiting to be welcomed into the house. Immediately off the bat Haseul senses no ill intent behind the statement—she even thinks her friend is being genuine about it despite Haseul feeling like Gangwon roadkill herself—though she does sense a note of patronizing.

“Come in, Eunbi…” Haseul opens the door a bit wider and steps aside to make room. Eunbi hops in and makes for the kitchen counter, setting down her gifts. With her guest’s back turned and her appearance brought to the forefront of her consciousness, Haseul takes the opportunity to check herself in the mirror, finding dark circles under her eyes, a wrinkled shirt that looks like it’d been slept in for four nights straight, and a bedhead that’s sorely out of place for the 6 p.m. atmosphere.

Then again, Eunbi’s cheery demeanor isn’t a good fit for the somber mood of Haseul’s apartment either. She’s too bright, Haseul thinks somberly, as Eunbi just carries on opening the boxes of chicken and popping the cap off one of the bottles of plum wine using one of her sturdier rings. Haseul can only watch as she heads off to the fridge and rummages through, looking for something to mix the liquor with.

“You know,” Haseul finally sighs out, taking her seat in one of the barstools. Eunbi dumps the last pack of Haseul’s Yakult onto the kitchen island as Haseul continues, “you didn’t have to come over. I’m fine.”

In response, Eunbi sighs and tilts her head, shooting a disapproving look at her friend. “Sure, Miss Hasn’t-Showered-Since-Friday,” she teases as she shakes her head. She turns around one last time, and sets two sets of plates, glasses, and chopsticks in front of her and Haseul before sitting down herself. “It isn’t like you to not reply for days and then say you stopped bathing. Think of this as a welfare check—I had to make sure you were still alive.”

"Dead people typically don’t text their friends to say they forgot to take a shower.” Haseul only picks at the chicken, but ultimately gives in to the enticing honey garlic aroma. The sticky sauce meets her lips, and by some mysterious divine decree, she immediately feels marginally better.

Eunbi looks on as her friend finally starts eating. The way she fills her cheeks with big bites of chicken bring a smile to her face, but also an adjacent concern: how long has it been since she ate? “Alright, honey garlic, noted,” she says in a stern but thoughtful tone. She places another piece on Haseul’s plate before taking one for herself, “Could’ve saved me the trouble picking flavors.”

“Is this really necessary?” Haseul hugs her knees, covering herself as best as she can from the curtain covering her from Eunbi on the other side. The showerhead throws warm water over her head generously, soaking her hair and rehydrating her skin.

“Yesh, ish absholuhly nesheshayee,” Eunbi replies, mouth full of toothpaste suds. Haseul hears the bristles drag against her teeth through the shower curtain from inside the bathtub, listening steadily for when she spits and gargles. “You’re brushing your teeth too when you’re done in there.”

“I'm not a child…” Haseul retorts, but fails to muster defiance nor determination in her voice. She tries recalling when she did last brush her teeth, drawing only blanks. She hears the toilet lid shut, followed by a dull thud, and what is unmistakably Eunbi's sigh from the other side of the curtain.

“I know, Seul. Me neither. We have to tough it out, okay?”

“That's not helping. That's just the usual bullshit in a different voice.”

A moment of silence takes the bathroom, making way for the beads of shower water hitting the bathtub in light clunks. The water level tries rising, and Haseul finally gives in and helps it along—she unfolds her legs to let them sink into the collecting water. The initial split second of cold fades just as fast as it comes, and with a harsh shudder Haseul empties her lungs sharply again.

“One last thing,” Eunbi announces as she fluffs her pillow, “I'm right out here. I can hear you, and I'm a light sleeper. Don't try anything, funny or otherwise,” she chides with finality.

“I don't appreciate being talked to like that.” Haseul’s tone is wistful, or thoughtful at the very least. She only leans in the doorway connecting the hall to the living room, and her arms cross by themselves as she unconsciously shields herself from the prodding into her psyche.

“Yes, you do. Deny it all you want.” Satisfied, Eunbi falls gently back onto the couch, and then throws her borrowed blanket over her feet and legs. She tugs her sleep mask over her eyes and flashes a smile and a thumbs up in Haseul’s general direction, missing only narrowly and reassuring the light switch beside her instead.

Haseul only watches. Eunbi settles her pillow onto the couch's armrest, and then her head onto the pillow. The smile never leaves her unnie's face, and for the first time this night, Haseul starts to believe it's genuine.

She heads back to her too-big bedroom, gets in her too-fluffy bed, claps twice to turn off her too-fancy light. The glow-in-the-dark moon and shapes stickers on her ceiling swirl in her eyes as if actually in orbit; the circles, squares, triangles, and single crescent all pull her into a meditative trance. She contemplates just what Eunbi means by everything she's said and done, as well as anything she's yet to say and do.

Complimented on her looks even though she's a mess. Scolded for not bathing and made to brush her teeth. Comforted like a child who's scared of the monsters under her bed. She knows Eunbi means well and come from a place of genuine concern, but that doesn't change the fact that Haseul isn't someone to handle like some glass figurine—she’s not fragile, not pretty, and certainly not teetering on the edge. She can’t—

Tears run down her face to the back of her head. They slice a line of cold on her temples as they fall, while she lies there defenseless and gasping for air that can’t seem to make its way into her lungs. Her hands can’t find themselves either: they lay motionless, folded over each other on her stomach, not even able to wrap around one another. Above all else, her blanket feels like spikes and feathers on her skin, millions of pounds of what should only be cotton crushing her under its weight.

Try as she might, Haseul doesn’t have enough sharp fear to build panic with in her chest. It’s only the dumb, soft knockoff kind of fear that she knows rises from something not even real. She should be able to call for help, scream, even just cry properly, but there’s just not enough air, not enough strength in her for it. So, as she lies there motionless, voiceless, helpless, she ponders the situation she finds herself in: one she can only ever think of as absurd.

A beam of light cuts through the suffocating darkness and through Haseul’s wallowing in despair: “Hey, where’s your ramyeon?” All her hope rides on it being Eunbi, of course it’s Eunbi, please god let it be Eunbi—come back, I’m awake, I can’t move—

“Shit.” Heavy footsteps on Haseul's wooden bedroom floor, and Eunbi appears next to her. “What's wrong? Why aren't you talking?” Her leader's intuition serves her well, and she hears Haseul's light, labored breathing through the ambient hum of the humidifier and sees her ice-cold tears amidst the cloudy darkness. Gentle and gentler, she helps Haseul sit up—more like doing the heavy lifting all by herself, but she was never one to complain. Neither of them were.

Haseul can only gasp and sob as her lungs start back up. She mumbles through her hiccups, feeling sorry for herself while Eunbi looks on with a concern that Haseul has only ever found disgusting. It only weighs more on Haseul’s tired shoulders, and once she's calmed down and crying properly, she slumps back against her headboard while Eunbi only stares and waits.

“It's…” Haseul finally chokes out, “It's in the kitchen island,” she wipes her tears away with her sleeve, “t-take as many as you like…” and Haseul finally completely breaks down. Her hand shoots to her pillow and grabs like a bird clenching claws around prey, then bringing it to her face as if about to rip it to shreds.

A wail muffled, and Eunbi knows why.

“A disservice to look away,” Eunbi thinks, “a dishonor to look back.” She tentatively squeezes Haseul’s knee as the latter sobs pathetically into her pillow. She just waits; there’s nothing to be said nor done when this starts other than to ride it out. And it’s all too familiar: the weight of responsibility—and the sudden lack of it—can be crushing.

It’s a good while before Haseul fully settles down. So Eunbi’s attention wanders around her friend’s room: the humidifier humming softly in the corner, the glow-in-the-dark space stickers right above her bed, the window that showcases the best of the Seoul skyline after dark. She recalls the singular time Haseul had ever told her about what it’s like in her house, when the power cut across the entire city, and for the first time ever, in that one split-second you could see the universe in the sky like it was a dream. It was the one time Haseul had ever shared something like that to someone who, in Haseul’s own words, “understands.”

“I’m so tired…” Haseul confesses wearily. She retreats her pillow off to the side, though her sobs still punctuate her speech. Eunbi wraps an arm around her shoulders, and Haseul slumps onto hers in turn. Eunbi makes to wipe every tear that forms at the corners of her friend’s eyes, long before Haseul musters the will to do so herself. It’s a burden to carry, something the both of them know all too well.

“It’s okay,” consoles Eunbi as her shoulder continues to grow wetter, “Lean on me.”

“That’s really corny,” Haseul retorts with as much of a chuckle as she can muster, “even for you.”

And Eunbi can only keep wiping away her tears, can only let her lean; she can’t take away the source of her tears or her weakness. She could never admit it, but Haseul already knows: it tears at Eunbi’s heart too.

“I’m really sorry… I know this is hard.” Haseul finally rights herself off of Eunbi’s shoulder. Eunbi can only scoff at the thought, wishing for this to be the “hard” she had to go through again, what she would give for this to be the weight she bore every day like before.

“You don’t have to apologize. It isn’t easy for you either,” she comforts, “you called me here because I understood, right?”

It stops Haseul in her tracks. “Was I always that easy to read—No, where the hell did Eunbi get that idea—How dare she come into my home uninvited and—”

“Could you tell me about it? What it’s like still having chicks in your nest?” She never feels Eunbi’s eyes on her; the faint reflection on her bedroom window only shows her friend gazing out at nothing of importance. She can see the flat, almost bored expression in her face as she asks a question much more loaded than probably even Eunbi could have ever expected to ask.

She meets her eyes through the makeshift mirror instead, looking past the skyscrapers and headlights and into the heart of the friend who understands. “I caught you. It hurts too.” Haseul says it with more surprise than anything else, finding something in herself she didn’t know was still there.

She feels the mattress bounce ever so slightly, sees Eunbi drop her head and chuckle at the accusation. “I can’t be the one who understands forever, you know? We grow up all the same, things change. We of all people should know that.”

“Your nest isn’t empty, is it? They still look up to you for support and guidance.”

“Yeah,” Eunbi concedes, “but it isn’t the same. They write their own songs now, have their own members to look after, follow rules that don’t also apply to me. I can pretend all I want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not their leader anymore.”

They sit in silence, sharing a view that reveals different things. Haseul looks out to the night sky, the stars hiding behind the blinding lights of Seoul. She grows wistful herself, recalling but not mourning a past that’s been both too long ago yet not long enough.

“Jiwoo calls,” Haseul sighs. “She calls a lot more often now. I remember when she played with the other members, and would try to turn and hide when the tears came. And Hyunjin—bless her heart—she complains about her members. Kahei laughs at her because she says she’s turning into me.”

Eunbi chuckles back, “Is that good? Turning into you?”

Haseul takes a moment to really, really think: “What does it mean to be turning into me?” She notes how her members would poke her cheek awake when they needed something, when she had to do the same when their schedules called for too-early mornings. She always ate last, but never least—her members made sure of that. She was a shoulder to cry on more often than not, and she’d told herself so many times that she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s… good. It’s like a dream, being theirs to have and…” Haseul’s voice lowers much more than she meant it to, finding comfort in the responsibility instead of burden, “and bother.”

Eunbi tilts her head, seeing past the intrusive lights of the world below. Her hair falls over her shoulder, and a smile buds across her face. “That’s all that really matters at the end of the day, right?”

“You gave me too much credit, by the way.” Haseul gives her friend a gentle shove, and Eunbi can only smile and breathe out in response. “You’re putting words in my mouth, ‘because you understood,’ I’m not that smart.”

“That’s not for me to decide, Seul. It’s for you, and it seems like you made a good decision.” She finally meets her eyes—properly this time—and Eunbi pats her head. It’s not comforting, not patronizing, certainly not grandstanding. It was simply recalling something Eunbi had lost herself.

Haseul can do nothing to hold back the question, intrusive or disrespectful it may be. “Eunbi, does it get any easier?” Most of her wishes she could take it back, but part of her thinks Eunbi can’t answer quick enough. She waits with a hope she can’t understand, one between anticipation and despair, for an answer she couldn’t possibly prepare for.

It takes Eunbi a few moments, the gears quietly turning in her head as if they hadn’t turned in ages, “Yeah, it does. It gets so easy that it gets hard again. You start to miss the feeling of missing rather than just missing the thing itself.”