Autumnal Equinox (JinJi)

Seven

The excitement of the evening had wiped out Jisoo's energy, but she couldn't bring herself to fall asleep. She lay on her mattress and stared up at the exposed wooden beams of her house's ceiling, started counting the lines along the wood.

If she'd had two or three shots of espresso, her heart couldn't pound any harder.

Her mind took her back a few hours, back to that moment Jinyoung hit his head and lost consciousness. At first, she was going to chew him out for touching her ass, but then she saw that he was unresponsive, and she couldn't breathe. The stark terror of that moment could have stopped her heart.

Jisoo sat up in bed. She checked the clock on the floor beside her pillow and saw that it was two in the morning.

She guessed that Jinyoung and Minji must have made it back around eleven and probably went straight to bed. Jisoo wondered what the possibility was that Minji had already woken him up and asked him what the date was. A few hours would have passed by now.

Jisoo fell back against her pillow. She's probably already woken him, she thought. He'll be fine, the doctor said it wasn't that bad.

With that thought, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Not two minutes later, she jumped back out of bed, grabbed her phone from its charging station, and then left her bedroom. Jisoo tiptoed down the hall and slid open the door leading to the backyard.

Jinyoung's window was dark, which didn't surprise her. It was nearly 3 am after all. Still, she reached over to the light switch, signaled twice, and then waited.

No response. She unlocked her phone and dialed his number.

Jinyoung was pulled out of the deep recesses of slumber when his phone started vibrating. His eyes flung open and he hurried reached for the device, which was charging on his nightstand. Beside him, Minji was still asleep, and he didn't want to wake her. He was about to ignore the call altogether, but he saw that it was from Jisoo.

He contemplated declining the call for now and calling her back in the morning. But before he could make the more sensible decision, his thumb was already instinctively reaching to answer. He picked up and then swung his legs over the bed to take the call in the corridor outside his room.

"Hello?" he said, his voice groggy.

"Hey," said Jisoo on the other line. Compared to his, her voice sounded clear. "Are you up?"

Jinyoung closed the door to his room, not wanting to disturb Minji. "Well, I am now."

He heard her sigh. With relief?

"I'm sorry," she said. He could hear crickets in the background of her call. "Minji's probably woken you up like a dozen times by now, I was just worried."

Minji hadn't woken him yet, actually. He supposed she was going to do it a little later, but Jisoo's phone call happened to beat her to it.

"Don't be," Jinyoung said, closing his eyes and leaning against the wall. "The doctor said it was wasn't serious."

"Yeah, I know, but..." she paused for a breath. "You...you really scared me back there. Losing consciousness like that."

He did remember the look of panic on her face when he finally started waking again up on the roof. He was still a little too hazy back then to give it much thought, but now he supposed that that must have given her quite a fright. He would have been, too, had the roles been reversed.