From Day One | JENSOO

Chapter 25

I'm not crazy (yet).

Sooyoung held her key next to the lock, her muscles frozen in perfect stillness any street performer could admire. Her ears were trained on every sound beyond her dorm's door, listening for either music or speech.

When she was about to give up she heard the gentle rise of a voice, building up volume with each word. Sooyoung didn't know the song yet, but if the singing went on, she'd be able to figure it out.

"...take good care of my baby, please don't ever make her bluuuue..."

The voice cracked at the end of the note, sounding completely despondent as if the lyrics weren't depressing enough already. Sooyoung banged her head against the door and finally opened it.

Rosé kept on singing and now that she had a few line's practice, she sounded impeccable. Tragically beautiful if it were possible.

"Rosie, come on, stop this. Go out in the daylight. All you've been doing is singing the Beatles for the past four hours and not the happy songs."

"Would you like All You Need Is Love? But we both know what a load of bullshit that is." Rosé burrowed under her covers when Sooyoung sat on her bed.

"You're freaking me out. Can't you just tell me what it is?"

Sometimes Rosé had her bad days and belted out some old tunes to get by but Sooyoung had never seen it go on for four hours straight. Despite her blunt personality, Rosé was bubbly and seeing her like this was cause for worry. Not only that, Sooyoung had heard Rosé come back home when she awoke to go to class, which started at nine. Rosé had never stayed out that late.

"But it's so much more fun when you guess," Rosé replied sardonically.

Sooyoungs sighed like she was the one with the problem and went to the grocery bag from the convenience store she just returned from. She was planning on using the contents to lure Rosé out. It had always worked before.

The rustling was enough to make Rosé peep through a hole in her bunched covers. She emerged from hiding completely when she saw the bars of chocolate spread out like a fan in Sooyoung's hand.

"I am not below bribery," Sooyoung told her before throwing one bar to Rosé. The girl took a scornful bite of the chocolate and chewed. Her face went through a range of expressions, going from revulsion to contempt and ending at misery.

"It tastes horrible, Sooyoung."

Sooyoung thought it was the candy and she ate a piece but found nothing wrong with it. The chocolate was fine; it was Rosé that was the problem.

"Just tell me what I can do to make it better."

Better. Rosé rolled the word on her tongue, swashed with the fading taste of chocolate. Better was possible, it existed, but Rosé was nowhere near better right now and the concept was foreign to her.

"I'm fine. I think it's the research mice we've been using. They're all antisocial and get bitter when the team would rather hang out with the cool mice."

Sooyoung knew better than to believe Rosé, even if she looked completely serious.

"You're crazy."

"Yea, I know," Rosé said, collapsing back onto the bed. She turned to face the wall and took out her phone. It wasn't five minutes that she lost to sleep with the phone opened and close to her.

Sooyoung put the chocolate in their mini fridge and threw the plastic bag in the trash, discretely listening for Rosé's breathing to smooth and deepen. When it was safe she sat on the edge of the bed and pried the phone out of Rosé's loosened grip. The display was dark but by pressing a random button it illuminated with a picture of Jisoo, asleep. The image was horizontal and Rosé probably took it when she was on the bed herself, lying right next to Jisoo.