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“What the fuck.”
There are clothes on the floor. A plastic plant lying sadly near the doorway. Heejin is frozen on the other side of the room, holding on to an equally horrified pale faced Chaewon. All remnants of war.
Jungeun is hiding behind one of the beds with her sleeves rolled up, glaring at the culprit.
“Don’t come any closer. It’s out to get us,” Jungeun says, dead serious.
The culprit: the cockroach standing in the middle of the room.
Something clicks inside Sooyoung, akin to unbridled rage. She crouches next to Jungeun.
“How dare they infiltrate my turf,” Sooyoung whisper-screams.
“This one is a tough one. It’s been dodging all of my attacks.” That was a lie. Jungeun has been hitting nothing but the air for the past thirty minutes.
“Let me.” Sooyoung reaches for the insect spray, eyes never leaving the roach.
“Are you sure,” Jungeun asks, concern and panic written all over her face. Sooyoung nods.
Sooyoung shrieks before charging towards the roach, bracing herself before she aims and shoots. A battle cry.
The insect spray clangs on the floor. Silence.
“Jungeun. I’m out of ammo.”
Jungeun’s head peeks out from the bedframe just as the roach spreads its wings to land on Sooyoung’s chest.
“Unnie.”
“Take him out. Even if it means that you have to take me out too.”
“It does not have to end this way,” Jungeun says, hands clutching her weapon of choice harder. Heejin’s bunny flip flop.
“You have to,” Sooyoung meets her eyes in earnest. “There are people we must protect.”
Jungeun makes a run for it, yelling a string of apologies before swinging her weapon with an impressive amount of force. Heejin and Chaewon turn their eyes away from the scene when the sound of the impact echoes across the room.
The roach runs free.
Sooyoung only gives her a look of betrayal and disbelief, the side of her face slowly turning a shade of red in the shape of a flip flop.
-
They buy a dozen cans of insect spray the next day. The same day Jungeun has a stand-off with another cockroach, wielding a finally functional weapon.
But even she knows that that does not necessarily equate to her ability to actually fight any insect that can fly. Her solution: Sooyoung.
This time, it stands its ground directly before the doorframe, blocking Jungeun’s initial trajectory of sprinting out the door to escape and ask Sooyoung for help in the next room.
So Jungeun does what she does best and hope the sound waves of her incessant screaming would be enough to make the roach implode to its death anyway, which doesn’t happen. It does catch the attention of Sooyoung though. And probably the entirety of Korea.
So her plan half worked. Yay her.
Sooyoung walks into the room in all her disheveled glory, barely missing the wall, armed with her own insect spray. Her hero.
The collar of her shirt is askew and Jungeun thinks of how absurdly cute she is. She almost forgets about the insect terrorizing their dorm.
“Where is it,” she asks, squinting so hard that she doesn’t even notice that the spray is aimed at herself.
-
It goes on for a while. Jungeun couldn’t tell if they were trying to kill the same roach from the first night or not.
Room #1’s pest control consists of Hyunjin, Jiwoo, occasionally Yerim, but never Jinsol. It only makes sense that they cause the least property damage.
The same could not be said for the rest of them, however. For reasons unknown to Jungeun, they all unanimously agreed to crown her and Sooyoung as their designated roach killers which calls for nothing but an abysmal disaster.
“Unnie.”
Sooyoung grunts. Jungeun pokes at her sides.
“Help.”
Sooyoung stretches out an arm like she’s searching for something, stops when her hand lands on Jungeun’s arm and tugs at it. Jungeun lets herself fall on the mattress. This is nice.
“Unnie. The bug,” she protests, eyelids heavy. Sooyoung responds by throwing an arm over her waist.
They’ll be fine, Jungeun thinks.
Sooyoung is warm and comfortable and spooning her and that’s all it takes for Jungeun to give in.
They were not fine, it turns out. Sooyoung and Jungeun wake up to Heejin, Chaewon, Yeojin, and surprisingly Vivi camped out on the couch and the coffee table in the living room missing a leg. There is also a massive stain of what looks like peanut butter on the wall. Jungeun has given up on trying to figure out how it got there.
(“Where is it,” Jungeun asks, to which Heejin replies, proudly:
“We locked it in our room.”)
But Jungeun also wakes up next to Sooyoung struggling to open her eyes with strands of hair in her mouth when Hyejoo shakes the both of them awake, and maybe she’s a little in love with sleepy Sooyoung. Maybe all the other Sooyoung’s too.
It’s not entirely a loss on her end.
-
Jungeun finds her reprieve from the merciless summer heat in the cold floor of their living room. Sooyoung finds her exactly there, limbs spread out like a flattened spider.
Sooyoung pokes the back of her neck with her water bottle.
“Hey!”
Sooyoung breathes out a laugh before joining her on the floor.
“This is unexpectedly nice.”
Jungeun lifts her head to check if the testament of her remarkably bad aim is still there (it’s not) and promptly gets distracted by the bead of sweat trailing down the base of her throat to the dip of her collarbones.
Sooyoung seems to notice, shifting an inch closer before beaming at her. Was the room getting hotter?
Jungeun clears her throat.
“Sorry about that,” she says, pointing at her cheek.
“Your aim is terrible.”
“At least we were spared from the horrifying image of a crushed insect stuck to your body.”
Sooyoung laughs. “Point taken.”
Jungeun thinks of kissing her, but the kiss remains a thought when a loud crash is heard in one of the rooms, followed by an anguished “Sooyoung unnie!”
“Duty calls.” Sooyoung sighs.
“I’ll get the insecticide.”
-
It takes two more nights of the girls scaring the living daylights out of Jungeun and waking her up way past her bedtime before she snaps. Sleep is something she takes very personally.
She storms out of the room with the intent to kill and Sooyoung is already there, ready to pounce on the target.
Sooyoung softens visibly when she sees her.
“Oh hey, you’re awake.”
“Unfortunately.”
“It’s okay. You can go back to bed. I can do this on my own,” Sooyoung says, smiling at her sweetly like she wasn’t brimming with murderous intent seconds ago.
“Sounds tempting. But I doubt this thing will die anytime soon.”
“You’re right. Please help me,” Sooyoung admits. Jungeun wants to kiss the pout off her face. She holds on to her last bits of self-control and focuses on the task at hand.
Jungeun tiptoes to the shoe rack, grabbing the nearest footwear she can get her hands on. Sooyoung takes this as her cue to advance, steps slow and calculated.
The roach sits near the wall of the corridor, unmoving. Jungeun desperately hopes it stays that way.
Then Sooyoung crosses the distance before showering the roach with insecticide, its legs and wings twitching. Jungeun rushes over to beat it to death. Repeatedly.
Someone claps and Jungeun’s heart leaps to her throat in surprise, unaware of another person’s presence in the room. It’s Hyunjin and she’s grinning at her like she won the lottery.
“Will you stop that,” she says. “How long have you been there?”
“Since you started taking out your anger on the cockroach. Congrats by the way.”
“Thanks.” Jungeun yawns. Hyunjin gives her a pat on the back before retreating back to their room.
“You should go to bed. I already cleaned up,” Sooyoung says, leaning against the wall. Jungeun no longer resists the urge to kiss her square on the mouth, feels Sooyoung’s hands on her waist.
“Good night,” Jungeun says when they pull away, mirroring Sooyoung’s dopey smile.
“Good night.”
They both linger in front of their doors for a while, not really wanting to say goodbye for the night. Jungeun tries to turn the doorknob but fails, tries again until she realizes it’s locked. Damn it.
But leave it to Sooyoung to solve everything before a meltdown happens.
“Guest room?” The question is innocent, but Jungeun knows better judging by the look on Sooyoung’s face.
Jungeun gets a cardiac arrest at the implications.
And many more in the guest room.
(This time, it’s not because of the damn pests.)