"I'm sorry if you felt awkward tonight." Soobin said once the two girls were outside. "I know it was a dinner to congratulate me, but we didn't even get to talk with you." She fiddled with her fingers. Unsure how to continue, she still didn't know Ophely well.
"It's okay, it was only supposed to be your family tonight, I didn't want to interfere in that."
"No, I'm sorry." The girl apologised again. "You were with us so I should have made an effort to include you. I am sorry for excluding you." The two girls continued to walk quietly along the pathway, there wasn't any car in sight this late at night in the neighbourhood.
"I excluded myself from the discussions." Ophely whispered, enjoying the quietness that surrounded them. The only sounds were their breaths and the crunching of the snow beneath their shoes. "This, from what I understood from Jeonghan, is very important. The fact that he prepared to come here with the busy schedule he has shows how much he treasures you. And I don't want to stand in the middle of that." She smiled up to the older girl and continued walking quietly.
Neither girl said anything on that subject anymore, knowing that there was nothing to be said. Soobin would feel sorry, and Ophely would say that she shouldn't be sorry. They understood the point from the other, but nothing could be done about the past.
"How do you deal with being in Jeonghan's body?" She finally asked. "Like, don't you have school too?"
"I guess I just deal with it." Ophely crouched down and played with the clear snow on the ground. "We swap at any moment, though it has been less and less this last week." Standing back up, the girl put her perfect snowball on the little wall beside them. She caught up with Soobin a few feet in front of her. "I study, work at school, during the morning and when we swap back near noon I usually have made lunch for all of the boys and then we would all go practice. Because, this has happened, if we swap while he is in front of cameras I can't just stand like a fish and do nothing."
"So he's studying French too?"
"God no." Ophely laughed, "I tried but he is triple shit at it. We'll stick with English for now. His job is more important than him learning French. I am the one in this country right now, he isn't in France anymore." It felt weird for the girl to say all of that outloud. Feelings that she couldn't just express in front of the boys.
"So you only do school for the morning?"
"Yeah. I've been receiving my lessons from my teachers back from my old high school until they complete my 'home schooling' thing out. In the afternoons I work on my Korean with the boys, as well as learn the choreographies when they practise."
"Not the lyrics? My brother is a singer after all."
Ophely laughed, remembering the boys' faces from that day. They had tried to politely break the news out to her that she was dreadful. "I'm a lost cause, they told me I was probably tone deaf by how terrible I was." Sppbin tried to smile at that.
"It's good because you don't have to memorise that too, but I really wish that you don't swap bodies while he's on stage."
"Don't wish to either." Ophely turned towards the girl with a small smile. "With all of the cameras on me. It's very stressful."
"Do you even have free time?" Soobin joked slightly, knowing that might have missed the mark the moment she uttered the words.
"Depends on the day. It's often in the evenings that I can do my own stuff." Ophely thought back to the moments where she was on her own in the bedroom, when she could draw without being mindful of being swapped or observed. And that was around dinner time, often after, when the boys would talk together and separate themselves into doing what they preferred to destress. "I like to draw, what about you?"
"예술과 공예" Soobin turned to the younger girl, seeing her racking her brain, overall she seemed confused. "Do you know what that means?" Ophely shook her head no. "It's like Art," Ophely knew that word, "And DIY." ("Arts and crafts.")
"Like arts and crafts?" Ophely asked with the English term, hoping that she had the right one.
"Yes."
"I like that too." The two girls smiled, happy to learn about the other. "I often used salt dough to make ornaments with my younger cousins when we waited for my granny to make dinner. She would put them all on her Christmas tree when we would come."
However, in contrast to the cold air from outside, where she had been walking with Soobin, Ophely suddenly felt very warm. As if she was on fire. Her muscles felt heavy and ached as she sat on the couch beside Joenghan's parents. She let out a quiet sigh, impressed by the man's perseverance. But he currently was sick, with probably a fever, and trying to stay up to catch up with his parents as if nothing was wrong wasn't going to make him any better. His mother turned towards her son.
"I'll be going to bed." She told the old woman, standing up and gently embracing the woman before making his way to the bathroom. "Good night." Ophely said out loud while she walked up the stairs, his parents answered her in a chorus.
Just when she knew they wouldn't see her, Ophely let her face contort in pain. How they hadn't seen their son acting well in front of them surprised her. Because she had had a hard time holding on that soft smile he often had around them.
"Dummy." She said when she entered the bathroom with his toothbrush in hand. He took the tube of toothpaste as used it, followed by her very languidly brushing his teeth.
She changed into his warm pyjamas and went to bed, making sure to be well enclosed in the blanket and have water close by for him. And then Ophely fell into an uneasy sleep.
Filled with fever dreams and spinning rooms.
-
When Ophely woke up, she was in a much better condition. Which was quickly debunked as Joenghan was holding onto her. And she was very much herself in a body that wasn't sick.
"Jeonghan..." Ophely mumbled under her breath as she felt the other body stuck to her back. She only got incoherent mumbles as an answer. "Your hands are too close up." She said, trying to pry the hands off from her ribcage, but that only made the male hug her tighter, and press his head against her shoulders. That's when she realised that he hadn't recovered much from the previous night. His head was boiling hot, that much she could feel with what was touching her skin where her t-shirt had fallen.
This time, Ophely gently pried the hands off from her body and quietly stood up, so she could leave the room and prepare him something that would make him feel better.
Though Ophely had forgotten that she wasn't at the dorm anymore. She noticed only when she was out of the room in her oversized shirt and pants as PJs and with her hair pulled back into a low bun. And she crossed paths with his mother, who was more than well dressed for it to be half past six in the morning.
"Good morning." Ophely said quietly before making her way over to the kitchen. But she was stopped before she could even take a step into that room.
"Good morning Ophely," The older woman stopped what she was doing to fret over the young girl, cleaning up the loose strands of hair and putting her top back in place. "What has you in a hurry like this?" The young hadn't been ready for Korean right from the moment she woke, and her mind might as well have been a jumble of random words as she tried to explain that Jeonghan might have a fever. What she ended up saying was much less clear.
"Jeonghan is sick, his head hurts and is very warm." Ophely knew she could do better with her Korean, but currently nothing was working. But his mother's face told her that she understood.
"And you would think that at twenty-two he would know better how to care for himself..." Ophely heard the woman saying as she busied herself in the kitchen. "Sleeping off a fever isn't enough. That boy..."