Chapter Text
Sure, she might’ve stumbled on her way over to the kitchen. Sure, her eyelids droop like she hasn’t had the notion of sleep. Since like, she was sixteen. Sure, she might’ve ditched her friend group in the pub last night just to creep into the very public bathroom for a quick lay. Full of intoxicated giggles and a terrifying sense of misadventure.
Sure, she might’ve—oh, who the fuck gives a shit ?
Joohyun isn’t an entertainer. She is an alcoholic. On the weekends. Sometimes also during breakfast. Cheap wine and—goddammit, there’s nothing else in the fridge other than eggs and toast.
And an unopened bottle of red wine, nestled away in the corner.
She snatches it for herself, pilfering through the drawers for a corkscrew. Her friends aren’t the type to get drunk the day before their flight back home. And she’s not one to let—she turns it over to read the label: Château Mani Dry Red—fancy arse wines like this rot in the fridge.
Okay, you have to be a certain type of sociopath to not stock your Airbnb with corkscrews before letting it out. How are teenagers and inept thirty-somethings like herself supposed to get drunk? On what, soju and beer?
She’s put it on the counter in frustration, opening cabinets when she catches sight of Taeyeon pad inside the kitchen.
Taeyeon sighs, which Joohyun realises her friends tend to do a lot more in her presence lately, and takes a seat at the kitchen counter.
“Have you seen the corkscrew?” Joohyun asks, pretty casually, not at all whiney or desperate. She’s good at that, appearing casual and indifferent. “I’ve looked in the drawers, cabinets, and even the fridge. Twice—don’t ask me why.”
“Er, I don’t think so. I could make you some breakfast?”
“No, gag. I’d probably vomit at the sight of food right now,” she says, trying but spectacularly failing not to slam the last cabinet shut like she’s one of those dramatic divas on reality television. “It’s just that my friend is getting a little impatient. And by friend, I mean the bottle sitting oh so lonely at the counter.”
She even looks in the microwave.
“You’ve done this every day since we got here.” By the time Joohyun turns around to reply, Taeyeon’s already holding onto the neck of the bottle. “Don’t you think you should give yourself a break?”
“I plan to.” Joohyun grips the edge of the counter. “Once I’ve finished with this bottle and resolved all of my emotional trauma. Might take a couple of months, years—maybe.”
It’s unfair Taeyeon thinks she should give herself a break from wine when she hasn’t had a single glass this entire trip. Totally and irrecoverably unfair. What she is taking a break from is copious amounts of tequila, vodka, and beer. Only because she didn’t care for the nauseated look on her face after a hookup, in the crusty bathroom mirror.
Not that she cared for the retching in the damn toilet, either. With no one to keep her hair away from her face.
“Yeah, well,” Taeyeon says. Uncorking the bottle with a pop!—with the corkscrew she pulled out of fucking nowhere, this witch. How dare she not tell Joohyun she could perform these tricks. “Until then, I’m cutting off your supply.”
She proceeds to dump the entire bottle in the kitchen sink. She proceeds to—what? As Joohyun makes sense of this madness, she’s caught up the space between them in a couple of strides to snatch the bottle away from Taeyeon’s grasp. “Great, this wine was clearly the problem. You’ve fixed me. How much do I owe you?”
“You’re right—it wasn’t. Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe you are the problem?”
Joohyun schools her face into a perfect approximation of apathy, like it didn’t sting. Unwilling to give into the childish hurt curling around her throat. Mind your damn business, Mary. She’s nearing her mid-thirties and she will not let the fact that her friend just wasted an entire bottle of wine down the drain. The problem is not in the room with them. Irritation leeches in and Joohyun launches the empty bottle at the floor, noticing the way Taeyeon flinches at the crash. “Fine, you’ve made your point. I’ll just leave.”
The glass is spilt on the floor like glittered pearls, unstrung from their necklace after a much scandalous pull. Taeyeon steps back, expression screwed up and tight. “I understand what you’re going through, Joohyun-ah. But sometimes you make it really hard to be your friend.”
“Excuse you, I’m a delight,” Joohyun says. “I’m just a little bit of a cunt towards people who ruin my plans.”
Taeyeon squats down to pick up the bigger pieces of glass which didn’t completely shatter. Guilt tumbles in Joohyun’s stomach, she sets her jaw against the onslaught of nausea. Cunt, bitch, fucking whore—she’s heard many a variation, and yes—she’s an absolute cunt. At least she’s self aware. A self aware alcoholic, how fucking ironic. She could help. Should help…
“Y’know, it’s easy to play the victim. Except… I can’t help but wonder if you drove him to that point.”
It’s like a quiet sucker punch to the gut, amidst the sound of glass being scrapped off the floor. It’s rather banal, honey. So fucking banal she thinks she’d throw up. “Enjoy playing the maid.”
Joohyun goes straight towards her designated room but finds herself stopping, hearing Taeyeon calling after her. She rolls her lips into her mouth, steeling herself for the inevitable apology. She looks back, feigning curiosity. “I’d actually come to see if you’d want to join us—we’re going on a tour of the island in a bit,” she says, eyes downcast and irreverently at the floor. “Seeing as all we’ve done so far is party and you… well.” Taeyeon leaves the sentence there, letting Joohyun fill it in with her memories. Not that there are many—just of alcohol and the shape of someone else’s body against her own, of lethargic loneliness.
She’s not proud of them but hey, whatever gets those two brain cells in her mind to shut the fuck up.
They’d met at work, at one of those serious one-on-one meetings about some major project Taeyeon needed her help for, but it had morphed into, well. Morphed into them giggling incessantly over everything other than said project. Those were the days, Mary. Now she’s just an old cunt. It was like their friendship was inevitable, with how easily they’d slotted into each other's lives. Trading various jokes and gossip over Slack, then on their personal numbers. Going out to office parties, then sneaking out early to head to pubs.
How easy it was for them to fall into this rhythm, despite the other girlies from HR and CS falling into their little duo, making it a group. It was always known you could never see Joohyun without Taeyeon, or vice versa—clung to each other like those old hags who were friendless throughout their lives, yet finally found each other, eventually.
No, it’s not sad. Joohyun would’ve said it was poetic.
How Taeyeon had planned this entire trip for her. How she absolutely fucking destroyed it. How everyone in this deranged little office friend group had saved up their vacations for her. She swallows audibly before saying, “I’ll pass. I’ve seen enough of this place already.”
By the time she’s back in her room, she feels her throat well up with a long dormant emotion. She snorts, and rubs at her face with the gravitas of a retired showgirl. Where else is she supposed to stuff these emotions if all they’re doing now is spilling out like dark ink over your favourite shirt—forever creating an imprint, ever present, even after washed. She’s not really a “touristy” gal, not really. Had spent the majority of the first “tour”—it wasn’t official, just a haphazard list of famous landmarks compiled by Taeyeon—utterly drunk out of her mind. Like most sane and rational people. Especially at a place like Love Land.
She thinks of the guy she met there, who was equal parts mortified and mystified at the sculptures, who’d slipped in his IG handle in her notes app, somehow. She doesn’t fucking remember, Mary, so stop asking. What she does remember is someone from his friend group suggesting they go and hit up the pubs at some famous district.
And, well. The rest is herstory, henny.
He wasn’t fascinating. He clearly thought missionary was the word of god and what have you, and if she weren’t so bored and inebriated, she could’ve shown him the fine art of blasphemy.
She copies the handle and opens IG, and whether it’s out of habit, or curiosity, she flips through the updates.
Most of the posts and stories are from her work friends, who are in Jeju with her. Most, if not all, of their group pictures include Joohyun flung over Taeyeon’s side, sunglasses teetering off of her nose and lips curved in that perpetually drunk lopsided smirk. So cringe, oh my god. She’s quite sure in one of these deplorable photos she’d accidentally had poppers before the flash fluttered.
She needs to get Taeyeon to take at least some of these down. How could they not ask her before posting these—
Oh.
Somehow, she’d seen all of her friends’ posts and found herself looking at the face of the one person she did not want to see. She stalls, frozen, dumbstruck and positively stupid. Unable to move it away.
He looks… happy. Sunlight skin soaked— Christ, Mary. He looks like one of those models whose pecs are so overworked they’ve started to resemble tits. He looks happy, so fucking happy.
He never worked out those pecs when she’d had the pleasure of actually touching them. Fine, you whore. Hope you get chlamydia and die.
Joohyun throws her phone at the pillows, after a split second decision of not aiming it at the floor. Despite the anger she feels, her phone is worth more than his goddamn mug. And sure, she’d cracked the screen protector earlier but that doesn’t matter. That also happened during another intense fit of rage, just don’t tell anyone.
It’s rather insidious, the way those memories are wrenched out from where she’d padlocked them, armed with a fully grown dragon—which was fucking useless, by the way—presented ot her like soiled tributes. Why didn’t she block him already?
She can’t stay here for a second longer.
Getting up, she shrugs on her striped, oversized yellow polo over yesterday’s white shirt and yellow shorts. Spritzing a godawful amount of perfume because she probably reeks of cheap vodka. Grabs her phone and wanders out into silence.
It drenches her like cold water, this emptiness. Others already gone by now on their stupid tour. She snatches the spare key from the key holder and slips on her Vans.
She’ll make something out of this damn day yet.