home is with you

⇨ ᎬᏢᏆᏚᎾᎠᎬ 2

it was the middle of the night when you woke up. 

your eyes snapped open at the sudden sound filling your ears, nearly falling off the bed from your body's quick movements to sit upright. for some reason your breaths came and went quickly, your fingers curling around the sheets and your eyes scanning the eerie darkness of the room for whatever it was causing the dread stirring in your stomach. 

a groan slipped through the endless sound in your ears and the hum of the vent, glancing down to find eun-yoo curled towards your body with her phone in her hand. the device vibrated uncontrollably within her grasp, and you almost laughed at the situation. it was just her phone ringing. there was nothing strange happening in the apartment complex. 

you were just being paranoid. 

you gently shook the girl awake, her groans growing louder as her face scrunched up in discomfort by the disturbance. she squinted one eye open to stare at you before directing her attention to the still ringing device, fingers pressing on the screen while lifting it towards her ears. if it weren't for the girl's hums you'd think she'd fallen back asleep, leaving the poor caller to wonder if her answering had been a mistake. but no, eun-yoo was definitely listening to the voice on the other side, for you watched her face carefully during the entire interaction. at first she seemed annoyed, giving you reason to believe it was eun-hyuk calling her. then her expression shifted to that of disinterest, then confusion, before finally returning to that annoyance she so often wore. 

eun-yoo pulled the phone away from her ear and hung up, dropping the device along with her arm. she laid there for a moment, quiet, and you assumed she would fall back asleep only to be proven wrong when she swiftly got up and released a small breath of air into the quiet room. 

"who was it?" you found yourself asking, despite knowing the answer. you couldn't shake away the image of eun-yoo's confused expression. eun-yoo expressed many different emotions when speaking with her brother. annoyance. frustration. sometimes she showed no emotion at all. but she was never confused by his words. if he said something she didn't understand, she tended to ignore him all together. so what had he said to make her react in such a way?

"it was eun-hyuk," she answered, confirming your suspicions. you waited for her to continue, knowing she would, "he said to come down to the lobby."

the lobby? "i thought he left for work?"

eun-yoo shrugged, "he didn't say much. just that it was urgent."

you remained quiet as a response, thinking. eun-hyuk rarely ever missed work. there was a time when the male had been so sick he could barely get out of bed, and yet he had still insisted upon getting ready to leave for his job. there had to have been a good excuse for him to remain at green home well past his clock in time. you felt the dread from earlier return with an intensifying force. 

you and eun-yoo left the apartment after gathering your things, treading through the dark halls and pausing in front of the rustic elevators. you reached forward to push the button leading down, attention switching between the aging doors and eun-yoo who continued to stare at her phone. she didn't appear as worried as you felt, features unbothered as manicured hands aimlessly scrolled through the device. eventually, a groan slipped past her lips as the seconds dragged on without the familiar ding from the elevator. 

"how long is it going to take?" she grumbled, reaching forward to press the button once more. hickory drifted up past the elevator doors, narrowing ever so slightly when the number failed to move up or down, "what the hell?"

you stepped back to observe where her eyes had trailed off to, also taking notice of the same fact. and now that you pondered over it, you couldn't hear the familiar sounds of the elevator creaking as it moved, "it must be broken."