swxtched. | jhs

SIX, skeleton flower.

IT WAS ALL a dream. For her sanity's sake, it must be.

So Green treats the next two hours as if she was just fantasising a little: imagining that she got caught sleeping in class, went to mandatory yaja, sobbed in public, went into an underground dance studio, then to Hoseok's house, talked to Jung Hoseok's mother, and had an entire conversation with her about herself. All in Hoseok's body.

The thought of it all sounds so ridiculous when she lists each event off one by one that the threatening sense of its realness can very well smush itself.

She finishes her dinner Hoseok— no, her, silly she's still delusional— started to eat in her room, not caring about the "no eating upstairs" household rule. Then she takes a shower. Does skincare. Complains how difficult it is to pluck her eyebrows with her left hand. Rants out loud about the impossible Korean beauty standard.

Despite herself, Green goes to her room in a sheet mask.

On her desk lies her laptop, some mason jars full of pens and pencils and highlighters, and a bunch of stickers placed messily at random on the surface, which her mother would disdainfully comment on every time she goes into her room. Green sits on her chair, spinning herself around and getting queasy.

"Hahahahahahaha," she laughs sing-songy, completely by force, as if she's trying to forget something by yelling as a distraction.

It's not working.

Then she opens her English textbook, stares at words, and remembers lifting her head from another person's desk and—

"No no no— stop it, stop it, stop it." Green violently smacks her forehead down the textbook on her desk, gazing down blankly at her lap.

She feels insane. Like skin-crawling, brain-splitting insane.

She grabs her phone and it dawns on her. This isn't my phone...

She shakes her head violently.

Hesitantly, she calls her own number.

Ring diggy ding diggy ding ding ding.

"Hello?"

His voice freezes her up for a few seconds. Green considers chucking the phone across the room. In fact, there are a lot of thoughts that cross her mind in three seconds.

One— Somehow, Hoseok has my phone and I have his. How can anyone explain this?

Two— maybe I'm still dreaming. Maybe I'm still in a coma. Maybe this prosthetic arm is what I'll wake up to, and what I know I'll have to wake up to after the surgery and stuff, and the therapy and school and Hoseok and that whole thing was all a figment of my imaginative brain in this anaesthesia-induced coma. 

Three— Maybe I'm just losing my sanity.

She ends the call.

Did I just hang up?

Green smacks her forehead, staring at her ended call, the contact right there. That's her. Her number is on Hoseok's contact list.

She pinches her arm and nods pitifully to herself. Taking a deep breath, she taps on her contact and pulls up the message history. 

ME
your house is too QUIET