Chapter 28

I feel very warm when I wake up, and my mouth is unusually dry. Did I drink last night? I groan as I stretch out my heavy limbs. There's a weight on my chest, probably Podo since he likes to sleep on me when he grows tired of Zen. I move my hand down to pet him, but then I notice another weight on my legs, which stirs a bit. I hear a meow coming from the direction of my feet and pause my hand over what I'm petting. When I open my eyes, I see Podo licking his paw while on my legs, and a different furry creature sleeping with his head on my chest and arms around my waist. "Jae—Jaewook?" I ask, not remembering how I got home but only that he said I could drink at the karaoke bar. He groans and holds me tighter with a cute smile. "Jaewook—" My train of thought is halted when I notice that his shoulders are bare. With my heart beating wildly, I lift up the sheets to not only see him bare-chested but bare-legged too. "JAEWOOK!" I shout so loud that Podo plunges off the bed with a panicked meow and runs out the room. "Noona?" He looks up at me curiously. "WHY AREN'T YOU WEARING PANTS?!" I feel my own self to make sure I'm still clothed. His dark eyes round with nervousness, so big now that they cover his eye creases. "You wanted me to sleep with you," he cautiously says. "Without clothes on?!" "I told you I had no sleep clothes and you said it was okay." "And you didn't think to go to your room which is literally right there," I slam my hand against the wall, "to get pyjamas?!" His Adam's apple bobs. "Uh—" "You little player." I'm about to deliver some punches to his bare chest when he turns away. "Look," he grabs his phone from the nightstand and plays a dark video of a drunk me begging him to cuddle me. "Oh my god." I've never actually seen myself drunk before, I've only heard about it from others. The slowly blinking eyes and the stupidly cute smile on my face make me want to crawl under my covers. Not to mention my voice, which is a few octaves high and slurring words together. "Get that away from me, delete it," I scold. "Why," he smiles at the video. "Noona is so cute when she's drunk." I groan and hit my head back down on the pillow. "I shouldn't have drank," I mumble in despair. "It's okay, I took care of you." Jaewook puts his phone back and grabs something else. He moves onto his stomach to look down at my face. With a charming little grin, he leans down and kisses me. Then I realize what he took, as a mint enters my mouth with his tongue. "Jaewoo—" "Mm," he vibrates into my mouth as he smiles again against my lips. Then his leg comes over me, along with a hand as he positions himself above me. "Jaewook, get off. You don't have pants on. I don't want what happened last time to happen again." He moves down so his bare body leans on mine, which is making my already hot body even warmer. "Why not? Maybe this time you can help me." "I hate you," I laugh as he giggles above me. "No, you like me. You said so last night." His voice changes as he mocks me, "I like my Jaewookie very very much," he says with his lips pouted and head bobbing with each syllable. "Shut up," I grumble. He's laughing again when a loud bang sounds from the front door. Both of us turn our attention away, minds still too laden with sleep to comprehend if the sound was real. Why would someone knock and not ring the buzzer? The knocking continues and my brother can be heard stumbling down the hall with a groan. The door opens and muffled voice can be heard. Jaewook's eyes widen and he swiftly gets off of me. He grabs the pants on the floor and pulls them up his legs. Then my bedroom door is pushed open, Jaewook's mother appearing in the door frame bundled in layers of clothes and sporting a nasty grimace. "Jaewook, get your butt back home right now," she says through harshly gritted teeth as she watches him frantically put his shirt on. I cower under my covers in fear. How did she know? I notice her staring at the wall, and then I put two and two together. She must have heard me hit the wall and came into his room only to see him missing; maybe she heard us laughing through his wall. Or maybe she just had a lucky guess, it's not like it's a secret that he's here all the time. Now her eyes pierce through me like daggers. "You good for nothing slut," she spits at me. "Mom!" Jaewook yells at her and pushes her out of my room. He turns back to look at me for a second, his eyes round and eyebrows turned up in worry. I can feel my heart break as soon as he's gone. Then the front door slams shut. "Dee, who the hell was that?" Zen asks as he walks into my room. "His mom." "That's his mom? Why did she look like she was gonna murder somebody?" I pause as I stare at the jacket Jaewook left behind on my desk. "She doesn't like me very much." That's all I say before collapsing back down into the bed, my giddy mood now crumbled like a piece of paper being nonchalantly thrown into the trash. My hungover symptoms only intensify now that he's gone, resulting in a slowly growing headache and dull ache in my stomach. After a while, I sit up and place my ear against the wall, waiting for any noise. All I can make out is muffled shouting. Then a door slams and various noises sound from his room. "Noona." I gasp when I hear his voice now so close to me. "Baby boy, are you okay?" I ask, letting out the breath I didn't know I was holding. "I'm fine, don't worry." My hand moves to lay against the wall, wishing it could push through the atoms that separate us now. "I'm not allowed to leave the house all weekend," he says solemnly. "It—it's okay, just be careful okay?" I want to say more, but it seems like the wrong time to let those words out. His mother's voice rings into the room and I can hear Jaewook abruptly leave the wall. She knows he can talk to me through here; she knows now. I don't know why, but all of sudden I feel uneasy—worried about the stability of our relationship. Now more than ever—as much as I don't want to think this way—I wish Jaewook was older, independent so that we didn't have to have this dubious boundary between us. A boundary that seems to be growing stronger by the moment and threatening to strain the tight ropes entangling us together, tugging until they snap.