There was an intruder in my house. More specifically, someone I did not know was in my bedroom!

I thought my mom had only been exaggerating when she had warned me about the dangers of young women living on their own in the city. There was the occasional news headline regarding some perverted thief, or in worse—though thankfully rarer—cases, even rape and murder. However, those stories were about people who had nothing to do with me. Their unfortunate circumstances might have infused fear, but it was short-lived because, surely, I would never end up like them. I was just a normal college student, after all. A normal girl with normal early twenties problems.

I didn’t want to die. As cliché as it sounded, I was too young to die!

I stood frozen at the front door. The intruder must have not heard me entering the passcode for the apartment and stepping inside. That was good at least. I had an advantage here.

It would have been more rational to make a break for it while I could—if it wasn’t for just one thing. I could have sworn I heard Elsie’s voice coming from the bedroom along with the intruder’s. She was groaning like she was in pain. Now that I checked, her shoes were at the door. She was definitely home.

As much as I disliked her, I wasn’t heartless. She was still my roommate, and I didn’t want to ever bear the weight of knowing something bad happened to her that could’ve been prevented with my help.

I slowly lowered my backpack to the floor without a sound and tiptoed to the kitchen area of the apartment’s biggest room. Though my hands were shaking like crazy, I grabbed a knife from the drying rack above the sink. It was plastic, but it was either that or the ladle, and I needed to look threatening. I regretted not having invested in better weaponry…

On second thought, maybe I should have also taken that ladle as a precaution. But it was too late for that now. I was already in front of my bedroom door. My breath was getting harder to control as I tightened the grip on my knife. Although it wasn’t sharp enough for me to actually be able to stab someone, it still could do considerable damage to the skin if I put some force into my swings. I didn’t want to kill anyone anyway, just scare them off. Best-case scenario, the intruder would run away and never come back.

My entire body stiffened when the unfamiliar voice came from inside the room again. It was much clearer this time. Female. She let out a sigh of…

Satisfaction?

What kind of sick deed had that woman done to Elsie to be so satisfied?!

I was wasting time. I had to get in there and do something before it was too late. I took one deep breath. Or two. Or three…

It was now or never.

I turned the doorknob and thrust the door open with all my strength. It crashed into the wall with a loud Bang! almost giving me a heart attack. A shockwave ran throughout my body, starting at my curled toes and ending at my face with widened eyes and mouth involuntarily hanging open.

The second hand on the wall clock seemed to freeze as nothing fully registered in the minds of all three of us. Me standing here with a plastic knife in my hand. The naked female who’d been moaning with pleasure. Elsie on top—also naked—with a finger inside of her.

I had never seen something so provocative before in my life. A huge part of my innocence had been stripped away. I could never get it back.

A once morbid curiosity had been unwillingly fulfilled. So, this was how girls did it. This was what two females making love was like. The two of them wrapped around each other with no shame as to exactly where they were trespassing.

My bedroom. My bed.

I was traumatized.

Time started ticking normally again.

“Fuck, Yura!” Elsie screamed, quickly covering both her and the other girl’s body with a blanket. My blanket. “I thought you got off work at ten!”

Then this was ultimately my fault. I had been so happy to be let off work an hour earlier tonight, but at what cost? Elsie had truly crossed the line this time. Whatever little hope had been left in me to try getting closer to her was now gone. She had this similar-looking Korean girl beneath her already. She could be friends with her for all I cared. She didn’t need me. And I most certainly didn’t need her.

I dropped the knife in my hand and made a sharp turn for the door. I ran out of the apartment, not knowing where to go, but it’d been fine as long as I was far away from that crazy British girl.

I needed to process everything that had just happened in my bedroom little by little, dividing those short few seconds into even smaller, digestible pieces to be recognized and hopefully forgotten. For some reason, the first step to this process was crying. I couldn’t stop.

I truly was traumatized. And it was all because of this one lesbian.