Humans Are Clumsy
The truth of it was this: I never much liked drinking.
The thick, cloying bloom of alcohol across my tongue had always been a thoroughly disgusting, harsh taste and smell. I was pushing thirty, and I still had no idea what adults meant when they talked about the true flavor of liquor — its sweetness, its depth. I was too broke to be picky, so I'd gulp down whatever was poured for me, drink after drink. That didn't mean I'd ever grown to like it.
"Khh~"
"…"
If I'd liked company dinners and hated them in equal measure, it was fair to say the reason was the feast I could eat without spending a single won of my own — and the drinks I had no choice but to keep accepting in between. To be honest, it wasn't the alcohol I liked. It was whatever came alongside it. Pork belly and soju? That meant I liked the pork belly, not the soju. Fried chicken and beer? That meant I liked the chicken, not the beer.
Which is to say:
"Ahh~ I haven't had a beer in so long."
"It's been over half a year. Of course you haven't."
"Pffthhi… well, that's true too~!"
If I were to say I was enjoying the fizzy, godawful-tasting liquid currently sliding down my throat, that wouldn't have been about the beer. That would have been about Harin.
She'd said she'd only have one can. I'd only just finished mine, and she was already pouring her third straight down her throat.
"You okay?"
"Yeees? What is iiit~?"
Her voice was already plenty drunk. The way she clung to me, grinning even more dopily than usual, made that pretty obvious.
"I'm saying you might've had too much. Your voice is already shot."
"Ahhh~ beer! I'm fine, I'm fiiine~"
On the excuse that she'd eaten a solid dinner, she'd been knocking them back with no snacks at all, running on nothing but nerve. Three cans gone, and the next one was already in her hand.
"You. You never planned on stopping at one, did you. No, wait — why do these cans keep coming out?"
"Ehehehe… I thawed eight of them~"
"…Bullshit."
Crack. Fsssss—
Even as she said it, she was already popping the tab like it was the most natural thing in the world, tipping the can back and gulping it down.
"Haaaah…"
"If you start whining tomorrow that your head's splitting, I'm still not letting you skip scavenging."
"Ehh~ I'm still youuung! I don't get hangovers…?"
"Must be nice, being young."
The tails of her words stretched out long and loose. Her eyes had gone softer than usual, unfocused and smiling. All those expressions I'd had no choice but to see whenever I drank with other people were blooming, one after another, across Harin's face.
She was already gone.
"Hehe. Back in the day… after my convenience store shift, I'd go home and drink a canned highball before bed."
"…"
And people, as a rule, started quietly pulling out stories from the past the moment the alcohol loosened their heads.
"My shift ended at ten, sooo… every night on the way home I'd grab a highball can, take it back, and drink it…. I miss thaaat~"
"…"
Usually they remembered the past and missed it. Everyone said those were the good days, and they unpacked their histories for each other. Alcohol was a perfect excuse — pleasant to look at, pleasant to listen to — a vehicle for polishing old memories until they shone.
"But when I think about it, I feel like now might be a little better, actuallyyy… hehe~"
"…"
I, of course, was not that kind of person. Even by my own estimation I had no gift for talking, so I always just sat there and listened to everyone else. A long time ago — nearly ten years back, now — at the first company dinner after I'd become an adult and landed a job, I'd tried bringing up my own past too. But the moment anyone heard my stories, their faces would sober up like the alcohol had burned right off, and they'd change the subject and quietly shove me out of their landscape.
So I did what I always did, and sat still, and listened to her. Harin looked at me for a long moment. Then she knocked back the rest of her beer, reached out, and took my face in both hands.
"So, likeee…"
"…"
"I hate this expression. Why do you always — why are you always apologizing, oppa…"
Well. That was obvious, wasn't it.
I might well have been the one who'd smashed every last fragment of the past that other people cherished, until nothing remained. The one who couldn't be satisfied with what had been, and so wrecked the present and reality along with it — the sinner who made someone's family, someone's lover, vanish entirely. I thought about it every night.
I do.
Just like those words said. It was far too late.
Smack.
I was staring at the screen where those phrases kept floating up when Harin gave my cheek a light slap.
"Oppa. Stop looking at that worthless phone screen and look at me."
"…"
Just like everyone else who'd ever heard my stories, she was looking at me with a face that had sobered right up.
"Do you like me?"
"Yeah."
A question. An answer.
"Do you regret ending up with me?"
"No."
Unlike a moment ago, I told her I didn't regret it.
"Then don't think about anything else. You don't have to dump out whatever you're chewing on in there, either."
"…"
She always pretended not to notice, and she always noticed anyway — reading me in an instant, then picking out exactly the words I'd wanted to hear and saying them out loud.
"Just look at me."
"Yeah."
The things that had been sitting wrong and restless in my chest went slipping quietly away.
"Just think about me."
"Alright."
Having a woman hold your face and say that from an inch away was, I supposed, generally that kind of feeling.
And then.
"Eugh…. This isn't why I drank the beer…"
"…?"
I'd only been looking at her. Harin got embarrassed first, blinking, fidgeting, working her way up to it.
"Oppa."
"What."
"Um… I. So, like…. Hoo."
I had a pretty good idea. The smell of alcohol on her breath whispered it right into my ear, tipping me off to what she was about to say.
"I want to make a wish."
"…"
If you had even a shred of social awareness, you didn't ask what that meant. You just nodded. You gave a short, simple yeah and left it there. My own ear said as much, over and over, in a pointed little hiss.
"I can, right?"
"Yeah."
So that was all I did.
An awkward silence settled in.
"Ah — you can't open your eyes yet…. And don't turn around either…"
"…Okay."
Rustling. Grunting. The sounds kept repeating.
"Wh-why won't this go on…. Nngh…"
"…"
The drunk act hadn't been an act, so those little complaints kept drifting into my ear. Maybe it was the sound of plastic wrapping being torn. Maybe it was the soft rasp of something sliding, and sliding again.
"Ah, got iiit…"
"I'm opening my eyes."
"W-wait… no…?"
"Ah. Then what am I supposed to do."
I thought this every time she showered: making someone listen to the sounds and nothing else was a pretty vicious form of torture.
"One minute. Just one more minute, then you can look…"
"What's there to even see."
"That's a mean thing to say…"
I had a rough idea. I'd told her I liked black stockings, so she'd put those on, and then she'd agonized over how much — or how little — to wear on top of them.
I waited for the minute to pass.
"I'm really opening them now."
"…Fiiine."
The answer came out small, buried in the blankets. I opened my eyes and turned around, and sure enough, she was a silkworm cocoon.
"You really do the most, you know that."
"But it's… embarrassing…"
If it was going to be embarrassing, maybe she shouldn't have manufactured this whole situation on the flimsy pretext of a wish.
"Blanket's coming off."
"Th-that's a little…!"
"Yeah, too bad."
I unwrapped the cocoon on the spot. Under the thick blanket, Harin was packed in tight — and then she wasn't.
"Ah, nooo…. Don't look…"
"You. No, that's. This is, uh. Hm."
She was wearing a black sheer slip — lingerie I'd never seen before in my life. Black stockings, of course. And cat ears on her head.
"Sooo… I grabbed it from the bunker storage…"
"…"
My mind went blank as paper.
When I thought about it, I had nothing you could call experience. I'd never been to one of those hostess bars people talked about, never set foot in a red-light district. I was nearly thirty and still a guy who only knew women from videos.
So.
"…"
"…"
I had no idea where to even start. The moment had actually arrived, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do, so I just sat there flexing my hands.
"Oppa…?"
"Ah. Yeah."
Harin was still lying there with her hands over her face. She peeked at me through her fingers — and then she was the one who spread her arms.
"I'm a little cold…"
"Ah."
I was sitting there frozen like an idiot, so she went and put up a signpost for me again. I moved toward her like it was the most natural thing in the world. I climbed over the body already lying there, settled into the open circle of her arms, pulled her against me, and drew the blanket up over both of us.
"Nnh…"
Soft. Her flesh was yielding, her skin as fine as running a hand over silk. There was something about it that was blatantly, fundamentally different from a man's body, right down to the grain.
Even in the dark under the blanket her eyes were shining, and her lips were parted in a small, hungry heh — so I leaned in like it was obvious and found her mouth with mine.
A wet sound. A lewd sound. The air had gone a little hotter.
There was none of the careful, hesitant hovering from before; it felt like we were moving with the mood. Harin's tongue pushed in first, sweeping through my mouth.
"Haah, nnh…"
The eyes looking at me curved. Neither of us knew how to close our eyes during a kiss the way people did in dramas, so we just stared at each other, unblinking, while we concentrated on mixing and rubbing our tongues together.
And through all of that, my hands were still lost, wandering with nowhere to go. Harin shot me a look, then snatched one of them out of the air.
"Heh… nnh. Nngh…! Just touch me already, would you."
She planted my hand squarely on her chest.
"No, that's, um… oh…"
They were big. To put it a little crudely: even through the lingerie, the size and the shape of them were generous enough that a baby would never starve. And they were so much softer, so much more yielding than the rest of her that a sound of genuine wonder slipped out of me before I could stop it. Harin gave me a look of pure disbelief, then kissed me again.
So.
I think we went on like that, mindlessly, for quite a while.
"Haah, hhk…. O-oppa. W-wait…"
Caught up in the rush of it being the first time, lost in the fact of doing that kind of thing, I didn't even hear her telling me to stop. I just kept kissing her, kept kneading her chest, pinching her nipples.
"O-oppa…! Wait, stop, nnh…!"
At some point one hand had gone lower without her permission, slipping between her thighs to find a place like a valley that was already wet, stroking it, stirring it — there was something slightly raised there, so I pressed it, flicked it.
"Hiiik…! Hhk, hah…! O-oppaa…! Sto, stooop…"
I kept going — stroking, stirring, kneading, pinching, pressing, flicking — all the way through the moment she clutched my body tight and started shuddering, and I only opened my eyes when I felt her nails digging into my back.
"Nngh… I told you to sto… stop…. Hhk, ahhh…"
"Ah."
Only.
The sight of her, wrecked in a way that wasn't like her at all, was even more of a problem once I'd actually come back to myself and looked. Her crotch was soaked with her own wetness, the blanket soaked through with it; her eyes were rolled back, her tongue hanging out past her lips as she panted. And in the middle of all that, her body kept giving those small, convulsive shudders — and rather than worry, what it pulled up out of me was lust.
I stripped off everything I was wearing, clothes and underwear both, and moved back in on Harin, who still hadn't come back to herself.
"Heh… ahhah…"
I caught the edge of the underwear beneath the lingerie and tried to pull it down, but her hips were on the floor, and tugging didn't get it off properly.
"Harin."
"Hah, yeees…"
"Lift your hips a little for me."
She shuddered at my voice and still lifted her hips, just slightly, and I stripped the rest of it off her.