Touch || Lee Jeno

thirty-five.

Ru wished she was the type of person who could come home after a long day and fall straight to bed— Donghyuck wasted no time dropping face first onto the hard mattress, dangling his legs with his shoes still on. Jeno and Jaemin were the same, but at least they had half a mind to pull off their shoes before jumping mindlessly into bed next to each other. No one spoke a word, too tired to even string the words 'good night'.

On the other hand, Ru dragged herself mindlessly into the bathroom to wash up. Her eyes were heavy, but old habits die hard. She stripped herself and entered the shower. At least they're good habits, she thought.

The backpack she had been lugging all day sat on top of the closed toilet. It was stupid, she knew, stashing all of her clothes in there when she could've just lessened her load at the hotel while they went out today. It's okay, though, because she'd rather that than risk the boys seeing undergarments or anything that she wouldn't want them to see.

It might've been the quickest shower she has ever had, but she dried herself as well as she could with the only (hand) towel that was available. She stepped out of the bathtub and reached into her backpack. Yeah, not stupid at all, she reassured herself.

Her arm had been elbow deep into the backpack for nearly a minute now, but she still couldn't find it. Undergarments are there, her dirty clothes in the plastic bag, but where were her pyjama—

Her eyebrows furrowed as she felt a strange fabric. Why did it feel so satin-like? She pulled the fabric out, but was perplexed to realise that she still had no idea what it was. She held it up with both hands, a subtle frown forming on her face.

Two spaghetti straps dangled from her fingers, connected to a skimpy maroon nightgown. The lace on the bralette looked unreliable— almost mesh, really. It was short, but maybe it was designed that way. She lifted it closer to her. She'd imagine she knew the purpose of the controversial length of the material.

Safe to say, this did not belong to her. She peeked into her backpack, scanning her items hastily to finally come to the conclusion that no, her pyjamas were not in her backpack.

What? How was this possible? She swore that she had it in here this morning before she left, so there was no way she had misplaced it somewhere in the hotel... Quite honestly, that was the least of her problems. What was this lingerie-like thing doing in her backpack? Did someone put this in her backpack? Who could possibly have access—

Just like that, her brain connected the dots. Stupid. She groaned audibly. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This must belong to Renjun's mom. She stared at the scarce piece of fabric, glancing between that and the dirty pile of clothes she had discarded on the floor when she showered. Does this mean her pyjamas were in the pile she gave to Renjun? Did this piece of fabric somehow fall out of the pile?

Ru shook her head in dismissal— these questions didn't matter anymore, no. The one question that did matter was: what does she wear now?

Her mouth was agape; she stared at the fairly inappropriate fabric in front of her, before glancing at the pile of clothes on the floor.

She definitely couldn't wear those now. Maybe (and that was a big, desperate and ugly maybe) before she threw them carelessly on the floor to get soaked, but not now.

But then she took one look at the fabric and no— how was she supposed to wear this? What kind of sleep was she expected to get while wearing this? Now she was just trying her hardest not to picture Renjun's mom in them.

A quick shiver ran through her back and she was reminded that she still had nothing on. She bit her lower lip, scrunching her nose as a way to suppress whatever ick was bubbling in the pits of her stomach.