the devil skates on thin ice ∙ myg ✓

5 ↝ the calamity

To say you do not remember a single thing about last night is greater than an understatement.

It feels, quite literally, as though a spell of amnesia has been cast over the past multitude of hours, wearing off at about six in the evening when your first Caipiroska was poured by Minah. Everything between then and now rests beneath a thick fog of uncertainty—you could have met the bloody Queen of England, for all you knew. The scattered memories are all the more difficult to grasp as a result of the throbbing headache that pounds fiercely between your temples, encouraging you to keep your eyes tightly closed so as not to allow even a sliver of sunlight through.

A thick film coats your tongue, tasting of stale alcohol and, oh god, probably vomit. When you part your lips, your voice creaks like an old door that has been closed for years. The rusty hinges croak in a groan directed at Past You for not taking Future You, which is now officially Present You, into consideration when the soju bombs were handed out in fives.

"Fuck you, ___," you grumble into your pillow, shoving your face deeper into the feathery plush as though you can bury your migraine in the fabric. "You insensitive, alcohol-mixing bitch. Never drink vodka and beer in the same hour. How could you forget that? It's the golden fucking rule. Stupid girl. Silly bloody idiot."

In the midst of aspersing yourself, there is a raucous clatter from outside of the bedroom, sounding like a lightning strike within the apartment as it shatters through the walls. More so, it is the familiar sound of heavy cutlery clanging against pots and pans within a stainless steel sink, metal-on-metal that slams straight through your skull and pierces the centre-point of your headache with a swift blow. The clanging continues in a cacophonous symphony that appears to be boundless in its protraction.

So, burying yourself into the nest of sheets with a whine, as if the thin cotton can even manage to smother the noise in the slightest, you curl your fingers into the mattress. Bracing yourself against the torture with taut shoulders, and barely withholding a distressed sob while you wallow in your agony.

You wonder what delusional, potentially still drunken state Minah must currently be in to be unleashing such torturous hell on a Saturday morning. Or why she is even awake before midday after a night out, for that matter. On any other occasion, Minah is a corpse until the late afternoon, and only when the sun is nearly perched upon the horizon to make way for the moon is she rising from the dead to inhale two litres of water and a microwave meal before she returns to her grave until practice begins at seven the next morning.

There is a vicious shout of, "Shut the fuck up, would you!" and the disturbance ceases to absolute silence. But the peace remains for the scarcest of moments until another voice is roaring back with hardly suppressed outrage, spitting, "It's not my fault you haven't done the fucking dishes in a week, you selfish prick! Some people like to eat, Yoongi!" followed by a punctuating, singular clang. Then, the quiet returns.

The sudden tranquillity is a soothing balm on your raging temples. You release the breath you were holding tight in your lungs while you had braced yourself against the vociferation. The exhalation gently lulls your tired limbs into a state of–

What.

When your eyes snap open, the sunlight is immediately striking; a searing burn on the sensitive film that coats your bloodshot gaze. You hardly need to adjust your focus in order to know the sole fact that settles in a heavy stone of dread within the pit of your stomach.

This is not your room.

The space is minimal, though the floor is filthy; littered with laundry and hockey gear and discarded balls of paper. A broad desk that is surprisingly neat and paired with a sleek, black swivel chair is pushed in the corner opposite to the bed, which is positioned under the window where the blinds are marginally open above you, allowing slats of sunlight to filter through and torment your throbbing headache. Next to the double doors of the closet is a free-standing mirror, and your reflection is unseen from the angle that you lay startled within. The top half is draped in a terribly familiar jersey of red and black.