One-night stands are supposed to be nothing more than just. It shouldn't have involved seeing those two red lines looking back at you weeks later without a name or a contact number linking you back to your mystery man. Nothing more but his face. The...
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Sleep, without a doubt, has become fruitless.
All night, you have been tossing and turning in your bed. Even when you manage to close your eyes and doze off a little, your stepfather's grievance and Taehyung's bereft smile flash through your mind, sending you to an abrupt wake each time.
At the very last time you find yourself being forcefully pulled away from your restless sleep, you glance out the window, its curtains left partly opened, you see the shadows of nightfall slowly shifting. A blush of hue in gradient colours of purple and grey is beginning to emerge amidst the dark, and you can feel it in your skin the awakening of dawn.
Too anxious to remain still on your cold bed, adrenaline and stress still flowing violently through your body, you finally give up trying to rest and tiptoe your way downstairs.
The stillness in the house at night has always been something that you have come so familiar with, but as you walk down the stairs and into the quiet kitchen, the house feels more eerie that it usually does. You can almost hear the creaking sound of the floors and the walls around you, as if they are whispering to you all the things that they have witnessed from the night before.
The air feels unusually cold. You fight the temptation to light up the fireplace once more and huddle up right in front of it, resisting only to avoid waking everyone else up, and then walk into the kitchen in search for another source of warmth.
You are just beginning to make yourself a cup of hot chocolate to warm up when a figure steps into the archway leading towards the hallway. You turn with a jump, realising with relief that it is Alia.
Giving you a hesitant smile, she walks into the kitchen. With her arms wrapped around herself and a thick shawl cloaking her shoulders, you realise that you are not the only one struggling with the cold.
"Can't sleep? Or did you wake up too early?" she asks you with a soft whisper.
"A little bit of both. How about you?"
She stands by the kitchen counter to watch you work. "Tried to sleep, but I kept having nightmares. I was running downstairs to catch up with Dad, and it kept repeating over and over"—she visibly shudders—"and then I woke up with this crappy headache."
You give her a smile and tip your chin at the high stool right by the counter. "Take a seat. I'll make more," you offer her, which she accepts with a smile.
Neither of you says a word for a moment, only breaking the silence once you are done pouring the hot drinks into two separate mugs and handing one to her while whispering, "Here you go," to which she responds with a soft, sleepy murmur, "Thank you."
Taking the seat on one end of the counter with Alia sitting on the other, silence stretches between the two of you once again. There is an awkward tension in the air. You cannot remember when you have ever found yourself alone with Alia like this, deep in the night and with nothing else to do but to talk. Not since those many years ago when you were children.
