Humans Are Clumsy
Humans are clumsy.
If it isn't something you do every day, it never quite settles into the body, and no matter the field, there's always some clumsy, unskilled edge to it. There's no such thing as a person who's good from the start. Everyone comes with that first-time clumsiness and sloppiness; the only real difference is who gets used to it a little faster, who starts looking natural a little sooner.
Maybe that's stating the obvious. If the world were full of people who could do everything perfectly from the beginning, there wouldn't have been any room left in that flawless landscape for a guy like me.
Which is to say.
"I really don't think you're supposed to just stab it in like that, no matter how I look at it."
"Ah, come on. I've never done this either, so I don't know."
What I'm asking is that you understand a simple fact about people: the first time at anything is bound to be clumsy.
"Eheh... this is wrecked. Oppa, is this really the best you've got?"
"Hey, if it pisses you off that much, you do it."
The miserably shredded carcass of the fish lay pitifully sprawled across the cutting board. From that hollow, detached eyeball sitting off to the side, it almost looked like a tear had fallen.
"But I've never done it either, you know?"
"Then shut up."
"Hey hey hey. Pretty words for your girlfriend."
"So what. I'm gonna eat the whole thing myself, so get lost."
Still, I couldn't deny that this really was the best I could do. As someone who'd never gutted a fish in his life, the tattered-rag edition of flounder sashimi wasn't that bad, right? Fuck, I don't even know. This was all that weird-looking thing's fault.
How long had it been? A little over two months? Not quite two?
"Oppa, oppa."
"You little pig."
Honestly, I wasn't sure. I'd spent that stretch in a daze, half of it with my mind well and truly gone, so I just figured it was around then.
"No. All I said was oppa...?"
"It's obvious. Besides asking if you can eat now, what else would you even say."
"Hmm, you know me too well, oppa. So I can eat now, right?"
"Eat."
I couldn't deny even the smallest of it anymore. Whatever this thing called a heart was had grown and grown, little by little, until it had swollen so huge I wasn't even sure it still belonged to me. After the Orphanage Director, I never once imagined there'd be another person I'd end up handing a chunk of heart this enormous.
"Nom nom nom.... Ah, this is so good."
"I'm not gonna steal it, so eat a little slower."
I just quietly watched Harin diligently picking up pieces of sashimi and stuffing them in.
"Waam... eh? Oppa, aren't you eatin'?"
"With that filthy greed packing your whole mouth, you think I'd eat just because you offered? You little pig."
Would she even know that after all this had been taken from me, after I'd been left alone, I'd spent the entire time thinking how much I missed this very scene?
She wouldn't.
"Waap, nom nom.... S'delicious."
"Yeah, it's written all over your face. Eat plenty."
Yeah. Looking at her with her eyes rolled back, inhaling the stuff, there was no way she'd know. I was just grateful she wasn't putting on one of those freak-show performances. That alone was a blessing. It was a real relief that she'd kicked that vicious habit during her luxury life in the bunker.
But still.
"Harin."
"Mph?"
"Did they starve you in the bunker, by any chance?"
At this rate, fuck, it looked like they'd starved the kid half to death in there. Looking closer, she even seemed to have lost some weight.
Anyway. Tonight was going to be warm for the first time in a long while. I turned on the electric blanket and the heater I hadn't properly used since I'd been left alone, and washed off the grimy state I'd been in after days on the road. Once I'd dried my body and hair until they were fluffy-soft and crawled under the covers to rest, Harin naturally slipped into the blanket too.
"Ah, it smells like oppa."
"You sound like a pervert, seriously."
"Mm, don't care."
Grinning, she burrowed in and burrowed in again, mashed her nose into the blanket, went huff— sucking in a breath, and then for some reason her face went hazy and she just hung there, slack and blissed out. How do I even put this.
"No, your face looks exactly like someone who just downed a bowl of narcotics."
"Mm. Bad words."
It'd be rude to say she looked like the junkies I'd run into at the Cultists' hideout, but that's genuinely what it looked like, so what was I supposed to do. Thinking that, I stared blankly at Harin as she kept mashing her nose into the blanket and going huff— over and over. She shivered. She made a sound like hwaaah—
"...Whoa."
"Ah, what."
She genuinely, sincerely looked like a complete fucking pervert. If a guy were doing this shit, he'd get reported to the cops first thing, and the fact that it just ended at "complete fucking pervert" because she was a pretty girl was honestly infuriating. I watched the series of acts Harin was putting on with something like disgust, then quietly dropped my gaze a little lower.
"Hmm...."
The fish she'd eaten tonight: two flounder and one and a half sole. Harin had absorbed the first two flounder I'd prepped like a woman possessed, then smacked her lips and looked at me, and I'd prepped the remaining two sole like it was the most natural thing in the world. Following her as she nom-nommed away saying how good it was, I'd picked up pieces myself, and when I asked again if she'd come here starving, Harin said it was half true. She'd tried to eat the way she did when she was here, she said, but they'd gone on about table manners and weight management and restricted how much she could have.
But honestly, if she ate like this, I'd probably restrict her too.
I absolutely cannot say that out loud.
Anyway. To get to the point: her belly, storing two and a half fish plus a pile of wrap greens, looked slightly rounded, so I quietly reached out and grabbed Harin's belly fat.
"Oh."
"...Oppa."
The slight roundness must have been a mirage. Barely any belly fat to grab. I'd figured it'd be soft after all that eating, but it was surprisingly firm, which caught me a little off guard.
"Where the hell did all that food even go?"
"That's incredibly rude, you know that?"
I looked at her with genuine wonder, and Harin was squinting at me with an expression of sheer disbelief.
"And what you do isn't rude?"
"We've always done this."
"Oh... so you don't think of it as always having been rude. Different perspective. Impressive."
If you really wanted to split hairs, it was just mutual rudeness. The fact that we both knew we were being rude to each other and still didn't stop was very much that kind of thing.
"Aish, stop touching my stomach. Touch my chest instead, if you're going to."
"Mm, that's a bit..."
At those words I naturally took my hand away and closed my eyes.
"What's 'a bit.' You grab my stomach like it's nothing."
"But that's embarrassing."
"Bullshit, seriously."
Don't know, don't care. Let's just sleep.
I opened my eyes.
The scenery filling my vision was always dark, but the steadily repeating rhythm of my body and the stacked-up data of daily life made me certain it was dawn. Still hazy, I flailed both arms around and confirmed the person in my arms.
"Mm... oppaa..."
"..."
It wasn't a dream. The way she clung to my waist and still reached for me in her sleep wasn't an illusion, so the fact that my left arm, forced into service as a neck pillow, had gone numb quietly arrived as something real. It was a relief. The anxiety that this might be a hallucination or a delusion scattered as I lifted my right arm and touched her face, and touched it again.
"Oppaa...?"
"It's nothing. Go back to sleep."
"Mmngh..."
She was beautiful. Honestly, the only times Harin could be called well-behaved were when she was asleep and when she was still half-asleep, so this was the moment she looked the prettiest. If I said that out loud I'd get a shot to the ribs, but I couldn't deny it was a plain, unvarnished fact. Thinking that, I naturally pressed my lips to hers.
"Hehe.... What're you doiiing..."
"Dunno."
A light kiss that didn't involve clumsily, awkwardly clacking our front teeth together the way we used to. It was still an awkward, clumsy kiss, that much was true, but in the two months we'd been apart I'd often thought back on those times and figured out what the problem had been.
Peck—
The problem had probably been that my heart got way too far ahead of me, and I'd shoved in in a rush, insisting we had to get our lips together somehow.
"Hah, I'm so happy..."
"..."
But it was a little embarrassing. Once all the emotions that had sprung from that anxiety had settled down, I tended to get swallowed by feelings like this. Trying to do this kind of cringey shit I'd never done in my entire life made my hands and feet curl up, and a ticklish feeling ran through my whole body. This sensation of my insides wanting to flip over was still a bit too much.
So.
"Hoo..."
"Oppa...?"
I wanted to start the day with some complete bullshit that would naturally bury this awkwardness and embarrassment.
"KNIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EARLY BIRD KNIIIIIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LAI LAI CHA CHA CHAAAAK!!! HEY PAPARIPAAAAAAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Hgyak...! Ah, oppa, seriously! Are you insane?!"
A fresh, tender morning still didn't suit me as well as a morning of complete unhinged chaos.
Smack—
"Kniii... urk...!"
"It was actually nice! Why do you keep! Ruining the mood?!"
"That hurts! Fuck, that hurts! Aagh... I was wrong...! No, my ribs...!"
"Augh!"
It fucking hurt. A palm swung with every ounce of strength behind it is viciously stingy, regardless of gender or age.
Still.
The nightmares I'd been having every night would start to taper off a little now, I figured.