ENTHRALL° s.th

024

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DAEGU
EVENING
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✧──────✦ jaehwa kicks off her shoes as she enters the house, a sparkling, shining aura contaminating the air around her. as if she just KNEW that jaehwa was in a good mood, mina stops her in the shared hallway of their rooms. not in the living room, or sitting at the dining table, just standing in the middle of the hallway surrounded by dim lights for nighttime.

"can we talk?" mina seems hopeful. so hopeful that she truly believes that just because jaehwa has been in such a good mood lately, she'll let the drama and fuss between them simmer into nothing more than a silly sister quarrel. but that was always the part of mina that jaehwa disliked the most. she was cocky and thought that just because their parents devoted themselves to her, so would her sister.

"shhh," jaehwa puts her fingers to her lips, "grandma is probably sleeping already."

she pushes past mina and enters her room. she falls onto the bed and sort of kicks her legs as she smiles into her pillow. jaehwa takes a deep breathe with her eyes closed as she sits up with uncharacteristically good posture. after a quick exhale, she gets up and starts packing her school bag for tomorrow, smug from the events of today.

she clicks her tongue as she stands in the mirror, what's not to like! she's pretty and fun and... a lot of other things that she doesn't want to list, because narcissistic isn't one of them! her mind races a mile a minute and jaehwa still can't believe the girls were right about taehoon being into her in more than just a friend kind of way. wow, expect the unexpected.

as jaehwa tucks herself into bed, retainer in and curtains blowing with the nighttime breeze, she wonders what taehoon is doing. she hopes he's just as giddy as she is and is at an arcade some place bragging about his hot date.

just on cue, she gets a text from the group chat with all the girls in it. 'CONGRATS!' wow, that was quick.

even if finals were done, everyone still had to go back for the closing ceremony and tearful goodbyes and blah, blah, blah. jaehwa puts her phone down on the nightstand, blissfully ignorant of the disappearing and reappearing text bubble from taehoon.

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good morning! jaehwa wakes up before her alarm to the sound of birds chirping. like a princess, she sits up and yawns while stretching her arms high into the air. after each vertebrae seems to pop and crack, she kicks the blankets off to get dressed and ready before she heads to the kitchen for breakfast.

her grandma is surprised to see her up so early and is still busy making breakfast, "oh, good... morning..."

jaehwa leans down to put her chin on her grandma's shoulder, "good morning, happy last day of school!"

her grandmother laughs and feeds her a piece of steaming egg, "shouldn't i be saying that to you?"

jaehwa shrugs and helps set the table for the three of them. about half an hour passes and they all eat breakfast in a comfortable silence in between the scraping of spoons against the bottom of bowls.

after breakfast and putting the dishes away, mina very meticulously bloodhound tracks jaehwa's scent from ten feet away and asks her to talk again. she's beating around the bush and keeps looking down at the floor. "well...?" jaehwa breathes out.

"i know we've had a rough couple of weeks and we've been fighting a lot after mom visited..." mina is going through the motions of kicking rocks without actually having a rock to kick, so it all just looks very weird. "and i just wanted to let you know that i thought everything over."