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she thinks it's the quarantine. there's no way they would have got this far otherwise.
.
she likes her family. very much. they love and care for her, they listen to her and they always give her hugs. but she doesn't see them alot. seunghee and hui go to secondary school together in the morning, and eunbin has school in the afternoon. mom works a lot in different places so she leaves early and comes back home late, but she always makes sure to pick her up from school when she can and takes eunbin to work with her. dad is the one that she sees the most: he works in the morning but comes home to have lunch with her and pick her up for school.
she really likes her family, but she wishes her siblings spend more time with her.
.
the quarantine just started a month ago and it feels fucking tiring. online school is wasting her away and every day eunbin feels worse. no one seems to notice tho, amidst dad wanting to start a small business and everyone having to work from home.
she's tired. and she just wants to stop.
but one day, seunghee talks to her. asks her "how are you feeling?", gives her a hug and tells her that she loves her very much.
eunbin may or may have not cried in her room that night.
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it's not that they don't love her, they really do! it's just that she's a little bit rowdy and sometimes does stuff she cannot put back together alone. and so she asks for help to her unnie but she says she's very busy and to not bother her. so she goes to her oppa and he curses out before helping her with a grumpy face. eunbin feels really guilty for disturbing them now.
mom says that they're teens, so that's why they sometimes don't say things nicely and so such.
she gets it. she wishes to be a teen quickly so that her siblings won't get mad at her often
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they watch movies together one night, and eunbin got to choose the movie. she was really nervous, it's not a normal thing to choose a movie she has only seen and have the opportunity to show it to her family.
she's really nervous.
they leave one by one. mom goes to sleep because she says the movie's boring (eunbin knows she doesn't really like this type of films, but it stills hurt a little). dad goes to because he has working the morning (eunbin also has online classes in the morning, but she understands. tries to). hui oppa leaves silently, like he always do (that one hurted, he's the one who showed eunbin that movie in the first place). but seunghee stays. she stays and they finish the movie together. they cry, scream, and laugh together at the scenes. and when the movie finishes, she thanks eunbin for showing her that movie, tells her she really liked it.
eunbin goes to sleep smiling, feeling glad she got to share her tastes with someone.
.
it's her birthday today! mom told her she could invite all her friends over and she would cook for them and they could all hang out in the yard. eunbin was so excited, she even asked her dad to make invitations with a map to their house so they wouldn't get lost.
when the hour of the party arrives, all of her family starts to come and she welcomes them with a smile on her face, thanking them for the gifts and the greetings.
her friends start to come, but they come slowly, and some very late. at one point, dad leaves in the car and returns with several of her friends. she's happy that they were able to come, but they're not even half of them. the party starts anyway and she has loads of fun, but eventually she feels like it's no longer her party. her friends split up and start to talk between them about things eunbin doesn't know about, and when she tries to join the conversation, they tell her it's a secret and she can't know.
she feels sad.
eunbin wonders when will she be able to have friends as nice as her unnie's
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seunghee and her started a rutine. they both have classes all day, so at dinner time, they will eat together while watching a series or a movie.
it's one of the best moments of quarantine she thinks. they're able to share a moment together, while also doing something they both like. and it's sort of a safe place for both (or at least eunbin feels like it is). seunghee doesn't judge her for laughing too loud, or crying very easily, or even having misplaced reactions. and eunbin doesn't judge her when she tells her she's tired or that she doesn't feel like watching something tonight.
it's good. it feels nice. it feels safe.
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her unnie's room is like a sacred place. she's very wary of it and doesn't like anybody coming in without permission and touching her stuff. eunbin learned it the hard way.
she doesn't let eunbin in very often, and she does, she tells her to not touch anything without asking first, and eunbin follows through. unnie let's her play in her room as long as she doesn't break that rule. sometimes she'll even play with her, these are the best days.
she really likes her unnie's room, but she doesn't go in often.
.
it has been over a year since the pandemic started and the tiredness of the beginning only seems to grow more and more rooted inside eunbin.
today didn't help. she had to get up early to have one class, do some late homework (it's only the third week of school and she already has late work. she's almost disgusted with herself), help with cooking, have french with a shitty professor that gave her a headache, then a math class that she couldn't understand (since the lack of sleep and headache had been starting to mark their presence) and when she had biology, she almost hit her head with her desk because it was too heavy for her neck to hold. she tried to sleep a little nap but mom was screaming in a meeting and she couldn't not listen to her; and when she managed to fall asleep for a bit, her dad woke her up because it was "supposedly late for nap"
so yeah, fun times
but then something strange happened.
when eunbin got out of her room, seunghee came to greet her with a hug (it had become a thing between the two) and asked her how she was feeling. when she finished recalling her day to her sister, the older asked her if she wanted to hang out in her room while she studied. eunbin was stunted, to say the least, but she didn't let it show and agreed immediately to her proposal.
seunghee told her she could lay in the bed while she was at the desk. when they were both accommodated and comfortable, seunghee played music in her laptop so that the both of them could hear it.
laying there, in the company of her sister, in her room, made her feel good. made her forget all the bad things that had happened. made her feel light, like it was only the two if them in the universe, nothing to bother them.
eunbin is glad that they're able to be like this, glad that the quarantine brought something nice to her, something that she never knew she was missing until now: her unnie.