When Two Unlikely Worlds Meet, Seokjin x Normani

Chapter Twenty Three

It was a bright and sunny morning, with plenty of sunlight after three days of non-stop snow. Normani woke up feeling awful, nausea was building in her throat and she made to quickly get out of bed to run to the bathroom, that was when the dizziness started out of the blue. Wishing Jin was there at that moment to assist her, she rolled gingerly to the edge of the bed before getting down on the floor on all fours to crawl into the bathroom. There, she emptied her entire gastric contents from the night before it felt like, into the toilet bowl. She mentally went over everything she had consumed the previous day, not finding anything out of the ordinary on the list. Maybe she was catching cold as she was also feeling feverish, of all times her body would choose to be sick, it had to be on her first winter vacation in Seoul, and she had only been there for eleven days so far. Feeling some relief after that, she rose to wash her face and get cleaned up using fixed attachments in the bathroom to anchor herself for support. After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she felt too exhausted to do any more and slowly walked to the room to slide back to bed. "Maybe I'll feel better after I sleep some more, it's just seven in the morning," she told herself while looking at the time on her phone. Lying back in bed, Normani drifted into an exhausted sleep, wondering again as to why she was getting sick now.

Everyone had sat down for breakfast except for Normani, Jin's father turned to ask Jin if he had seen Normani. Jin having just woken up not too long ago himself and headed to the table from the guest room replied he hadn't but would go upstairs to check in on her. Jin's mother told him not to worry, she would go upstairs to see what had happened to her, she added that maybe she had overslept because she was normally the first one to the kitchen to start breakfast for the family. Walking into Jin's room, Jin's mother found her sleeping curled up into a ball close to the edge of the bed. Worried that if she moved any further, she would certainly find herself falling off the bed, she walked in to move her closer to the center of the bed. As she started to turn her, Normani opened her eyes, looking startled from sleep, her expression quickly turned into that of a person ready to hurl out the contents of their stomach, holding a hand over her mouth, she gestured towards the bathroom while getting out of bed. The dizziness hitting her with the sudden movement, she falls to the ground bottom first, turning to crawl to the bathroom, making it just on time to begin heaving into the toilet bowl, this being her third trip there that morning. Normani doubted there was much else she could eject from her stomach, pretty soon it would be her bile she was certain. Concerned for her, her mother in law had followed her to the bathroom to see if she could help and was holding back her hair while patting her back gently.

When the heaving had subsided, her mother in law helped her get cleaned up and walked her back to bed. Once lying down in bed, she felt some relief and turned to her mother in law to say, "Si-eomoni, I think I'm sick, maybe I have a really bad cold, I just feel so tired." Looking at her exhausted face, her mother in law told her she would go bring her something to help with it. Tucking her under the covers, Jin's mother walked out the door, closing it softly behind her, thinking back to the nagging concern in the recess of her mind about the soiled laundry she had taken from Jin's bathroom close to two weeks past with stained bed linen. She had not wanted to ask or say anything to either Jin nor Normani thinking it may cause some embarrassment to Normani, had it been a slight incident with her monthly flow. Now, she was wondering if Normani was indeed ill or something else altogether was happening. She recalled how the morning sickness she had had when she was pregnant with Jin had almost caused her an admission to the hospital on two occasions for dehydration treatment. A plan slowly formed in her mind, she would bring Normani some cold medicine but also bring some saltine crackers and a ginger drink. First, she would use the guise of running out of cold medicine to get to the pharmacy close to the house and purchase a test kit or better yet look for one in her other daughter in law's room.