you got me | chaennie

five

This morning, when Chaeyoung wakes up, it's not because of the light or because of a sound—it's the way her head hurts and her eyes itch; the way she shivers in the small camp bed. For a second, she's disoriented. Sitting up and swinging her legs over the side, Chaeyoung pulls the blanket up around her shoulders and looks around the small room. There's a window with no curtain, but it's so grey outside that the light barely penetrates. Chaeyoung see's a small lamp on the desk by the bed and flicks the switch near the base.

It doesn't take long for the evening to come rushing back, and when it does, Chaeyoung immediately wishes it hadn't. The memory of Jennie, standing in the rain, turning away from her takes the breath out of Chaeyoung. She has to lean over, put a hand on her own knee, to recover from the force of it.

Her first impetus is to return to the hotel. There has to be a way to fix this. No matter what Jennie said last night, she had been reeling from Lisa's revelation, from Haein's betrayal—maybe today, she'll hear Chaeyoung out.

But what if she won't?

Chaeyoung sits back on the bed, leans against the wall, and pulls the covers tighter. She's replayed yesterday in her head over and over and over again already, but one more time can't hurt. If she'd just gone back to the room with Jennie after the dance lesson, none of this would have happened. And maybe that's not fair, because Lisa still would have told Jennie and Jennie would still be reeling from the fallout.

But Chaeyoung would be there with her.

At least she's figured out the point of no return: when Jennie told her that the most important thing in the world to her was trust and Chaeyoung didn't say anything—letting that moment pass, that's when hurting Jennie became inevitable, no matter how Chaeyoung handled it. Chaeyoung had known it then and she knows it now.

The last thing that Chaeyoung wants to do right now is hurt Jennie more.

Chaeyoung can tell she's getting close to crying again. She pulls her legs back onto the bed and slumps over onto her side, face in the pillow. The thing that she can't get out of her mind is how alone Jennie must be feeling. Chaeyoung would give anything to be there for her, to hold her and navigate this day with her.

The fact that there might not be any part of Jennie that wants Chaeyoung next to her, hurts more than Chaeyoung can describe.

Alice always says that when you're feeling overwhelmed, the best thing to do is find a problem you have that you can solve. Maybe she can't do anything about how she's feeling right now, but Chaeyoung knows that she can't keep Jennie's money. Even if they never talk again, accepting payment for this weekend is no longer an option for her.

Without getting up, Chaeyoung reaches down next to the bed and slips her cell phone out of her bag. She rolls over to free both arms and pulls up the banking app on her phone. It doesn't take long to initiate a transfer from her own account to the account listed on the check Jennie had used. It doesn't make her feel better, necessarily, but it feels right.

One problem down. Fifty-seven thousand to go.

It's nearly eight in the morning now. Chaeyoung squints at her phone, she doesn't have a ton of battery— she should probably plug it in before she looks up the ferry schedule and thinks about changing her flight.

This time, when Chaeyoung sits up, she leaves the blanket on the bed. She pulls her bag closer and starts rooting around in the outer pocket. There's the cable she needs, and the American-pronged plug, but she doesn't see the European adapter. She digs deeper.

Feeling a rising sense of panic, Chaeyoung unzips the main pocket, starts taking out her headphones, her notebook, her pen case. It isn't here. She must have left it in the hotel room last night.