The jasmine comes first. Then the silence. Then everything else.
Wonyoung's POV
She was too hot.
That was it. Just heat, sitting on her skin like a second blanket, thick and close and irritating. Summer had been doing this for two weeks and she'd complained about it every single day and Gaeul had listened to every single complaint with the patience of someone who loved her and also wanted her to stop talking about the weather.
She shifted onto her back. Stared at the ceiling.
The ceiling fan wasn't moving.
She looked at it for a moment. Then she reached right without looking, palm flat against the sheet.
Cool. Not just-gotten-up cool. The kind of cool that came from a surface that hadn't been warm in a while.
Kitchen. She went to get water.
She reached for her phone. Pressed the button. Nothing. Held it down. Still nothing. She set it back on the nightstand and looked at the AC unit display in the corner. Dark. Looked at the power strip by the wall. Every indicator light off.
Outage. Whole building.
She sat up.
Her feet found the floor.
Cold.
She sat on the edge of the bed with both feet flat on the floor and didn't move. Summer. It was summer. Three days ago she'd stood in this exact spot and complained to Gaeul for a full two minutes about how the floor was warm even at midnight and now it was— she pressed down harder.
Cold. Definitely, completely cold.
Weird.
She stood up.
But okay.
The smell reached her before she'd taken a step. Jasmine. Soft and sweet, drifting through the room like something carried on a breeze. She almost smiled.
Liz's new diffuser.
She'd been talking about buying it forever.
She breathed in again.
Gone.
Between one inhale and the next, just— gone. Not fading. Removed. She stood in air that smelled like nothing and breathed in one more time to check.
Nothing.
She crossed to the light switch by the door. Flicked it up.
Dark.
Down, up. Down, up. Click, click, click. She dropped her hand.
Fine. Power outage. Whatever.
She grabbed the door handle and pulled it open.
The light came on behind her.
Her own room.
The one where the switch hadn't worked. The one she'd clicked up and down and given up on. Flooding with light now, at her back, the moment she stepped away from it and she spun to look—
Dark.
Already dark. Switch in the same position. The room exactly as she'd left it, sitting in the same powerless dark it had been sitting in this whole time, like the light had never happened, like she hadn't just seen it with her own eyes, like—
She stood in the doorway between two dark rooms.
She shrieked.
Not loud. It came out strangled, cut off by her own hand flying up to cover her mouth and she stood in the doorway with her heart going insane and her eyes going between the switch and the dark hallway and the switch again.
"Gaeul unnie." Muffled against her palm. She took her hand away. "Gaeul unnie—"
Nothing answered.
She stood there for a moment.
I'm just tired. She pressed both hands against her face and held them there.
Power outages do weird things. The wiring gets weird. I'm half asleep and I scared myself and that's all this is.
She dropped her hands.
She stepped forward.
Stopped.
One foot in the hallway, one foot still on the bedroom side of the threshold, and she stood there with the dark ahead of her and the dark behind her and neither of them felt safe. She pulled her foot back. Stood fully in the room again.
Okay. That was stupid. There's nothing in the hallway.
She stepped forward again. Both feet over the line this time.
See.