Chapter 1: Broken Glass at 3:47 AM
The sound was wet and wrenching, a raw scraping that cut through the pre-dawn silence of the apartment. Jihyo was awake before her eyes opened, the nurse in her already cataloguing the source: the bathroom, hollow retches followed by thick, ragged breathing.
She found her like that, a small crumpled form in the thin grey light bleeding through the window. Nayeon was on her knees, forehead pressed against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl, one arm slung over the rim. Her entire body was trembling, a fine, constant vibration.
“Nayeon.” Jihyo’s voice was a sleep-rough whisper.
No answer. Just another shuddering breath.
Jihyo knelt, the tiles cold through her pajama pants. She reached out, her hand aiming for her sister’s back, but her gaze caught the pale skin of Nayeon’s thighs, exposed by her rumpled shorts. In the dim light, the marks were stark: raised, angry lines, some fresh and red, others fading into bruises. Parallel tracks. Belt marks.
Her breath hitched. “Nay.”
She touched her shoulder. Nayeon flinched so violently it was a convulsion. Her elbow jerked back, catching the open bottle of peroxide on the edge of the sink. It toppled, hitting the floor with a plastic crack. The clear liquid gushed out, spreading in a swift, bubbling pool around the shards of a broken drinking glass Jihyo hadn’t noticed before. It looked eerily beautiful, the liquid catching the faint light like spreading liquid moonlight.
And in the center of that spreading pool, drops of dark red fell from Nayeon’s dangling hand. They hit the peroxide and fizzed, a violent, silent reaction. Her knuckles were split open, the skin ragged.
“Look at me.” Jihyo’s voice was firmer now, a command layered over a foundation of pure fear. She maneuvered around the spill, gripping Nayeon’s chin, gently forcing her head up.
Nayeon’s eyes were hollow. Large, dark, and utterly vacant. The emptiness in them was a physical blow. A streak of something pale—vomit or toothpaste—was smeared across her cheek. She smelled of sweat, antiseptic, and stale alcohol.
“What did you do?” Jihyo asked, her thumbs stroking the too-sharp line of Nayeon’s jaw.A shrug. A tiny, worthless movement. “Fell.”
“You didn’t fall on a belt. You didn’t fall on your knuckles.” Jihyo’s heart was a frantic bird in her chest. “Was it that guy from the bar? The one with the motorcycle? Did he—”
“No.” Nayeon’s voice was a rusted hinge. She pulled her face away, her gaze drifting to the fizzing blood in the peroxide. “It was me. Just me.”
The confession hung there, worse than any story of an attack. Jihyo felt the familiar, desperate helplessness rise in her throat, bitter and choking. She stood, moving on auto-pilot, grabbing a towel to throw over the chemical and glass, then another to run under cold water.
“Here.” She knelt again, taking Nayeon’s wounded hand. The contact was stiff. Nayeon let her hand be manipulated, a doll with sawdust for bones. Jihyo wiped the blood, the touch clinical, her nurse’s mind assessing the damage: superficial, needs cleaning, might need a steri-strip. Her sister’s mind? A locked room she couldn’t force open.
“Why?” The word escaped, pathetically small.
Nayeon’s lips, chapped and pale, twisted into something that wasn’t a smile. “Felt like screaming. But I didn’t want to wake you. This is quieter.”
“Quieter,” Jihyo echoed, dabbing at the broken skin. She wanted to shake her. She wanted to wrap her up and never let go. “This isn’t quiet, Nay. This is a five-alarm fire. I just don’t know the code to turn it off.”
“There isn’t one.” Nayeon looked at her then, and for a second, the emptiness shifted, revealing a bedrock of such profound exhaustion it was staggering. “It’s just the noise. All the time. And sometimes… the pain outside matches the noise inside.For a minute. Then it just becomes more noise.”
Jihyo finished cleaning the hand, pressing a clean cloth to it. “We’re calling Dr.Kim. Today.”
“Waste of time.”
“It’s not.”
“I’ll tell her I’m fine. I’ll tell her the sleep meds are working. I’ll smile. What’s she going to do?”
“I’ll tell her the truth,” Jihyo said, her voice breaking.
“Then you’re a snitch.” Nayeon tried to pull her hand back, but Jihyo held firm, applying pressure. The struggle was minimal. It was the lack of fight that was most terrifying.
They sat in silence for a long moment, the only sound their breathing and the distant hum of the city waking up. The room smelled sharply of cleaning fluid and copper.
“I’m so tired, unnie,” Nayeon whispered, the childish honorific a sudden, sharp knife in Jihyo’s chest. She hadn’t used it in years.
“I know.” Jihyo’s tears came then, hot and silent, tracking down her own face. “I know you are. Let me be tired for you. Just for a little while. Let me carry it.”
Nayeon didn’t answer. She just let her head fall forward onto Jihyo’s shoulder, a dead weight. She was cold. Jihyo held her, rocking slightly on the hard floor, surrounded by the evidence of the war her sister was losing inside her own skin.
From the bedroom, Jihyo’s phone began to buzz on the nightstand. Then it stopped. A second later, Nayeon’s phone, discarded on the bath mat, lit up. The screen showed a single name: Jeongyeon. A photo flashed—Jeongyeon, grinning, her arm around a sullen but softer-looking Nayeon from what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Nayeon lifted her head, saw the screen, and her numb expression fractured. A flicker of pure, unguarded pain. Then she shut her eyes tight.
“Don’t answer it,” she breathed.
“She cares about you,” Jihyo said, the buzzing a tangible third presence in the ruined room.
“That’s the problem.” Nayeon opened her eyes, the moment of vulnerability sealed back over. “She shouldn’t.”
The phone went to voicemail. The screen went dark. The silence it left behind felt heavier, charged with everything unsaid, everything bleeding under the surface. Jihyo held her sister, staring at the dark phone, knowing the call back would have to be made, knowing the fragile, terrifying peace of this bathroom floor was already ending. The next beat was coming, and they would have to move toward it.