heaven's demon | purinz

- 4

As it turned out, a warm cup of tea was absolutely fucking useless when it came to calming Yunjin's nerves.

Nor were the excruciatingly slow two days that followed. Two days spent pacing in endless loops around every spare inch of her cramped third story apartment, Yunjin only breaking her treads for a few nibbles of food or fruitless attempts at fitful sleep.

Every few hours she found herself twitching aside the curtains of her window just far enough to let her gaze dart up and down the street, a small and entirely unreasonable part of her half expecting to see a slew of dark creatures lurking from the recesses of blind shadows. Those moments were ultimately followed by a thorough mental slap to her senses, Yunjin reminding herself the chances that Chaewon would give up her facade just to terrorize her were more than unlikely.

So she'd force herself to sit again. To calmly and rationally reason out whatever she had seen, to explain and explain again to herself the likelihood that she was in immediate danger was slim to possibly none, Chaewon having obviously gone to great lengths to conceal... whatever her condition was.

Yunjin barely allowed herself to definitively consider what exactly that condition could be, a person's medical illnesses weren't her business and the hastily exited google search doing nothing more than making her feel like an idiot. Because the more she thought of possible answers, the tighter her stomach coiled into winding knots, the anxiety rising within her until she'd break and start pacing all over again.

The entire weekend had been exhausting, Yunjin feeling the ache of it in her bones as she settled at her desk Monday morning. The office was still quiet, a low hum of chatter filtering across the room from the few other employees who had found themselves early to work. After another sleepless evening, filled with tossing and turning through sex and terror-soaked dreams, Yunjin had finally given up on actually getting any rest and decided to face the day.

Roughly a pound and a half of concealer to cover the lovely bags under her eyes later, she bit her lip and made the short trek to work. As tired as Yunjin felt, her body still thrummed with a low simmering anxiety; a jittery dread racing through her at what she'd be facing.

Not that the three cups of coffee she'd practically mainlined before heading out was exactly helping.

Determined to pretend as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Yunjin breathed a centering breath and signed into her computer.

She could do this.

Everything would be fine.

It was just a normal day.

"You dick."

Jumping with an embarrassingly inelegant shriek, Yunjin whipped around in her chair, arms flailing outward in a bizarre knee-jerk reaction.

"Jesus, girl, are you alright?" Sakura asked with a deep frown, lurching forward to grab a sliding stack of files Yunjin's elbow had smacked into before they could cascade to the floor.

Yunjin clutched a hand over the hammering in her chest, eyes wide and wild as she recovered from the shock.

"I- Yeah. You surprised me. I didn't think you'd be in this early," she said, shaking her head at herself.

Get it together, Yunjin.

"Well I wanted to get here early enough to bitch you out off the clock," Sakura said, heavily setting her bag and jacket down on her desk with a thump. "Because not only did you not call me this weekend, you ignored every single one of my texts and calls too. What the fuck, girl?"