friendships are tenuous.
if she says one wrong thing, breathes the wrong way, the house of cards all comes crumbling down. jaeyi's self-diagnosed with chronic foot-in-mouthitis, because it seems near impossible for her to make any friends as an adult. not that her teenage years were all that much better, but there's something that makes it so much fucking harder to make friends at 21 than 12. whatever happened to just telling someone on the playground that you wanted to be friends?
surface-level acquaintanceships are really all she has these days, and one of them, she finds kneeling in the dirt in the silver line communal gardens. jaeyi plucks mint leaves in exchange for ciders from the vending machines, and they sometimes spend a few minutes sitting on the swing. gyuri tells her about fertilisers and jaeyi nods along without the slightest clue of what she's on about. it's rare that the aeternal's not the one going on and on, which is probably why the budding (ha!) friendship's lasted as long as it has.
tonight, gyuri says the wrong thing.
they're (read: gyuri) gardening, when there's a bang and everything goes dark. jaeyi freezes, eyes darting around like they're looking for answers. the sun's already dipping below the horizon, and if the backup power doesn't kick in soon, they'll be left in darkness. jaeyi knows it's probably something getting caught in the crossfires of an aeternal and supervillain fight, but look, she's terrified of whatever the hell is going bump in the night.
then, a scream that sends shivers down jaeyi's spine. gyuri's alarmed gaze meets her own, and the other woman says the one thing she was hoping she wouldn't.
"for fuck's- yeah." it's half exasperated sigh, half scoff, like jaeyi can't quite believe gyuri actually said it. the mask slips, and jaeyi's too tired to put it back on. "okay, yeah, i did." would it have been worse or better if it was in her head? if gyuri hadn't said it out loud, would it have made it less real? "don't tell me you wanna go check it out, because when i tell you, you'd be the first to die in a horror movie."
"did you hear that?" with β‘, for @contoursilver's gyuri
