Amber and Miri arrived in South Korea on Thursday night via a business class flight. The exorbitant price had sent Amber reeling and practically on her knees, desperate to persuade her best friend that a broke girl like her should not be worthy of such luxuries. Especially since she could scarcely afford to reimburse Miri for all that she would be forking out for her.
Her bestie had declined with excuses like: 'There's no way you can get a cheap budget airline at this time!'—Very true— and 'Did you think that I would buy you tickets to a foreign concert without providing accommodation or transport? I'm not that fucking stupid or wicked!'
Trust Miri to treat Amber's refusals as an insult to her very person.
The flight had been amazing.
Amber gorged herself silly on the buffet spread displayed at the lounge before she had even stepped onto the aircraft. Amber called it stress eating. Miri called it Amber-trying-to-eat-out-the-whole-cost-of-the-flight.
Like the cheapo she was. Amber had hoarded all the freebies into her bag. She devoured every single food item that they could offer to her fat ass. Even opting for a few glasses of champagne and as much apple juice as she could swallow.
She was pretty sure that the steak they had served her for lunch had been one of the best she'd ever eaten in her economy-class life. It screwed with her mind that taste buds were supposed to be duller while in the air. It got her wondering exactly how good that steak would taste on land.
After drinking (possibly) a thousand cups of apple juice, and taking a dump (a good five times) in flight just to relieve herself of the excess carbs, they finally touched down in the airport at midnight.
The minute they exited the airport, they sped off to their hotel in a black Porsche. Said car was driven by a burly Korean chauffeur with a neck thicker than both her thighs and biceps that were twice the span of her waist. She was pretty damn sure he could snap off her neck with just his fingers.
Miri had flippantly explained that the car was one of Deok-Su's and the driver was there because Deok-Su did not trust her driving skills. The girl had scowled after that remark, sighing with a loud huff of annoyance, grumbling about her paranoid husband-to-be.
Amber had never doubted Deok-Su's fame as a music producer. But right now, with the obvious flaunting of wealth, it was safe to say that he was richer than what she had anticipated. So it was really no surprise that the place of their stay was a five-star hotel with a Michelin-starred restaurant. A commonplace of stay for Deok-Su during his business trips to the area.
At that point, Amber could vomit from the amount of money that they were spending with just this trip. Not that she wanted to know exactly how much they had blown. Ignorance was bliss and Miri was an angel. That and she was overflowing with apple juice. Her bladder bursting with too much pee.
So the minute they stepped into the lobby, she was hurtling down the hallway towards the toilets—way too preoccupied with thoughts of pee to even stop at the counter to check the bill with Miri. Amber had no doubt that seeing the number would have definitely sent urine flowing down her legs and onto the pristine white rugs of a hotel that was not meant for a person of her calibre.
So instead of giving herself a damn heart attack, she decided to do the Olympic sprint to the restrooms. As if a massive T-Rex were after her ass and she was in some sort of crappy B-rated dinosaur action film. She would have awakened the entire hotel with the sounds of her loud flailing stomps if it were not for the thick carpeted rugs.
Much to her horror, the female toilet was shut with the 'cleaning-in-progress' stand blocking her path to her salvation. At three in the morning, she really didn't blame the staff, but seriously? Out of all days, or all times, now? It seemed that Amber might be taking a piss on their carpeted floor.
She tried to enter. She peeked into the cubicles in hopes that the signboard was just a lie to scare away guests. Perhaps, it was how they kept the toilets in expensive places spotless. After all, it was the customers that dirtied the washrooms. Hence if one required clean, sanitary toilets. One should just get rid of the main problem, right?
Of course, it was not a lie, and the toilet bowls were coated with bleach and sprayed with thick layers of lime-green liquid. If she didn't want to risk skin tissue damage she was better off not using those toilet bowls especially with the IDOL concert coming up.
If she had to miss the concert just because she sat in bleach she would literally kill herself. Honestly, that was just a figure of speech but Amber was better off not risking it. She wasn't sure what she was capable of doing in her moments of insanity.
She bounced outside the toilet, prancing about in a weird pee dance for a few seconds, deep in contemplation as the other stickman symbol on the forbidden door stared at her with obvious judgement.
The little stickman glowered down at her ominously. He was kind of like the clock in the exam room. Or at least, the clock when there were only five seconds left and she was starting to scribble unreadable lines across the paper. Panic flooded her system as her eyes darted back and forth from her paper to the time.
Fuck!
Amber wanted to scream in frustration. But it was three in the damn morning and she was in one of the most expensive hotels she'd ever stepped into. She did not want to risk waking up the entire establishment with her exasperation.
She didn't want to end up facing a lawsuit from one of the ridiculously rich patrons of the hotel. Her bank account could not handle the threat of dipping into negative numbers.
Amber was more of a 'cheap deals' kind of girl. Her usual go-tos were dingy little motels with rugs caked in thick layers of dust and pillows crusted with unknown liquids. She was used to bad smells, to walls crawling with mould and gaudy décor that made it look as if she were in the '80s.
With no other option and her pee slowly dripping out of her, a glance into the non-existent eyes of the familiar stickman symbol sent Amber sliding into the men's toilet. She dashed into an empty cubicle and slammed the door, counting down seconds as relief was finally achieved, and her bladder sighed in sheer happiness.
Freedom, said the pee. When you've got to go, you've got to go. It was either this or the shiny waxed floors of the hotel. Amber nodded vigorously to herself. When in the face of two great evils, pick the lesser evil.
That was her new motto of the day.
As she wiped herself down, ready to leave, a sharp noisy screech of flip-flops on the marbled tiles echoed across the toilet. She distinctly heard the toilet door being flung open, resulting in a moment of ambient hotel noise before it closed with a soft bang. The toilet was once again an enclosure of little happy piano tunes. The previously soothing music was suddenly extremely foreboding to her ears.
Oh, shit.
Amber froze. Her breath hitching in her throat. She pressed her lips together in anticipation as the footsteps trailed to the cubicle beside hers. The steps were light and soft but whoever it was, he was wearing cheap plastic on his feet and it made a horrendous squeal across the waxed floors. A sound that could rival that of a dying pig.
The sound bounced and reverberated around her, resonating with the soft piano keys that played from the speakers in the toilet. It was almost in time to the sound of her racing heart.
Shit.