EGOIST (Sang Woo x Fem!OC) [COMPLETED]

6

"Hae Young! My goodness, where on earth have you been?"

Mrs. Kang, the landlady, rushes to Hae Young who appears out of the blue. It's around 4 in the morning, or so she thinks. The sun isn't even out yet, so it's a surprise to see Mrs. Kang up and out the apartment complex.

"I've just been out." Hae Young tells the older lady, though she did not seem convinced. Maybe it was the bits of dried blood in her face that did not get washed off so easily, or the clear distraught she radiated that invoked this distrust. Either way, Mrs. Kang looked rightfully concerned.

"Your father called and I didn't know what to tell him." She says. "I told him that maybe you were on a trip or something. You've been gone for two days!"

"Two days?" Her brows knit together, immediately fishing for the phone in her pocket, then she remembers that it's been dead the whole time. She murmurs a curse.

Mrs. Kang looks at her, bewildered.

"Right." Hae Young recollects herself. "Two days. I've just been busy. I'm still trying to look for a job."

Mrs. Kang's face softens, patting the younger woman by the arm.

"Well, you'll get there. You've been working so hard, you're probably tired?"

Hae Young just nods.

"Right, then I'll leave you to rest."

"Thank you, Mrs. Kang."

"And be sure to give your father a call, alright?"

"I will." Hae Young tells her.

"Oh, and about the rent..." Hae Young adds sheepishly. "I promise to get a job soon, but right now I don't really have much and--"

"--Oh, Hae Young." Mrs. Kang gently takes her by the arm. "We can discuss this later. For now, you need to rest and give your father a call, okay?"

She sighs, though her words did little to ease her anxiety. She just gives her a nod.

Mrs. Kang gives her a half-hearted smile and finally lets her go, approaching the narrow corridor that leads to her apartment.

"Oh, and Hae Young?"

She stops on her tracks, turning back to the still worrisome Mrs. Kang.

"Is...is everything alright with you?"

Hae Young presses her lip into a tight line, forcing a smile. She nods at the older lady.

"I'm fine." she said. "Thank you for being so thoughtful." She bows deeply, and scurries further down into the hallway before Mrs. Kang could even say anything else.

The moment her phone had turned back on, all the notifications popped up. About twenty missed calls from her father, six from Mrs. Kang, and all the rest were from loan sharks. Her front door was piled with mail; mostly junk mail and overdue bills that just fell onto the rest of the pile on her coffee table. It does not feel good to be back.

Her thumb hovers over the green call button on the screen of her phone. She wonders whether or not her father is still awake at this hour, or perhaps he had fallen asleep worrying about her. Either way, she does not know what she will tell him once she makes the call. Too soon, it feels like telling her father everything; or maybe it felt too late. She's been holding the truth back for so long that telling now seemed more frightening and unnecessary. Maybe disappearing into thin air was a better choice after all.

She turns the screen off, climbs onto the bed, but nothing really works. She couldn't sleep.

Blood, the bodies that piled on on that doorway in the field, her father, a lot of things were keeping her up, and the eventual break of dawn did not succumb her to sleep anymore. No matter how spent she was, her brain could not shut off. Breaking down her thoughts little by little, she keeps finding herself in this dead end of a thought, though what else could she expect? When she is thrown in a place that provides little explanation, then she'll get little to no answers. This was the hell that would stay with her from that place; no matter how much she twisted and turned in her own creaking bed. She faces the ceiling. There is a spot up there stained with water. The pipes upstairs must be broken. That, and her creaky door, her broken heater, everything in her home that seems to be falling apart.