The Everyday Life That Was Hardest to Keep
A one-sided love perspective is bad for your mental health.
Anyone who's been through it knows just how much it can drive a person insane.
Every single day you sit there fretting, hanging every possible meaning on the smallest thing she does.
Just this present moment where nothing is happening at all.
I wanted nothing more than to keep this peaceful everyday life, exactly like this very instant. It was such a humble wish of mine, yet it turned out to be the hardest thing of all.
Maintaining this everyday life was the most difficult thing.
Because she had started liking someone else now.
"Hey! Walk home with me! Why are you leaving me behind?!"
"It's because you're always stuck to me that you can't get a boyfriend."
That was my timid little rebellion, and at the same time my timid little consideration.
I've had a girl I've been close with since elementary school. The kind of opposite-sex childhood friend people always talk about, yet almost never actually have.
That fantasy element was real for me.
I liked her. The feeling probably started around middle school.
It was the moment she received a confession from another guy.
Even I was thrown off by the emotion rising inside me then.
My chest tightened, sweat broke out, and I turned my eyes away because I couldn't stand watching the scene… yet some urge forced me to look again, as if I had to see how it ended.
I was startled by myself.
Why… why was I reacting like this just from watching Seoa get confessed to?
It was probably an emotion too complicated for a middle-schooler to understand.
Once she became a high-schooler, the number of confessions she received shot up. For reasons I never quite figured out, though, she never once dated any of those guys.
Honestly, that brought me relief. At first I fretted every single time, but at some point I stopped tensing up much because I already knew she would turn them down.
Lately, however, the story had started to change.
Even through high school she had stayed right by my side without ever drifting away. Only now, after we had both become full-grown adults, was a crack finally threatening to appear in that everyday life.
The everyday I had tried so hard to protect… was about to shift.
"Is it really because of that? I wonder when I'll finally get to hang out with Senior Woo-bin~"
"……"
It was the first time I had ever heard her say something like that.
Her taking the initiative and developing feelings for another guy—that was a first. Looking back, she had always been the one receiving confessions. Maybe that was exactly why she had been able to reject every single one of them.
The reason she had never dated anyone until now was simply that none of them had ever caught her heart.
And now that same girl had someone she liked first.
I couldn't help feeling a serious sense of threat.
My arrogant little belief that I could keep her peacefully by my side forever was suddenly on the verge of shattering into pieces.
It was terrifying. Truly terrifying.
The emotion I had felt back in middle school rose up again, vivid as a trauma.
"Then maybe from now on we should just go home separately?"
"D-do whatever you want. If you want to ditch me, go ahead…"
"Eeh? You're the one who suggested it! Besides, if I don't drag you around, who else is going to look after you?"
The second it looked like Seoa might actually start walking home without me, my resolve crumbled and I grabbed hold of her again. Pathetic and cowardly—that was me.
"My legs hurt. Carry me piggyback."
"No. You look heavy."
Seoa really did seem to treat me purely as a friend. Honestly, even that was fine. As long as she just stayed by my side, I didn't care if she never saw me as a man.
In other words… as long as she never became some other guy's girl, I was okay.
Just trading these silly jokes and walking home together—if I could keep enjoying that everyday life, that was enough.
Was this greed?
It didn't even feel like greed. I honestly thought of it as a humble wish.
"Hey! Have you ever even lifted me? You wanna die? Hurry up and carry me so you can check for yourself whether I'm heavy or not!"
With that she forced herself up onto my back.
And this was exactly the flow I had intended. I deliberately provoked her so she would get riled up and end up making physical contact with me like this.
How about that? Pretty damn creepy, right?
Yeah, that was the kind of person I was. Someone who deserved every bit of criticism. But what could I do? That was simply who I was.
If I hadn't been this kind of creepy guy in the first place, I never would have kept liking Seoa so much while burying those feelings deep down, content just to stay by her side under the convenient excuse of being childhood friends.
"Okay, put me down now. This is actually pretty comfortable—getting carried the whole way."
Once we reached the front of the studio apartment she lived in alone, she said that and slid off my back. For a brief moment it had been pure happiness.
"Ugh, so heavy… Lose some weight."
"What?"
"Anyway! I'm heading off. Get inside safely."
"Ah! Right. My mom said she wants you to come over to the house sometime. She'll cook for you… I think she just wants to see you after so long."
"Really? It has been a while."
"Yeah. Let's go to my parents' place together one of these days. I need to visit Mom soon anyway."
Just as I was about to turn and walk away, Seoa said that to me.
It was welcome news. In the past I used to hang out at her house all the time, but as we got older, visits to Seoa's place had become almost nonexistent.
She was a proper young woman now, after all. A guy who reeked of male hormones like me couldn't just barge into that sacred territory anymore.
Actually, there was a more fundamental reason than the one I just spouted.
Once Seoa started living on her own, the chances for me to visit her family home naturally disappeared.
Of course they did. Seoa herself barely went there, so how was I supposed to show up alone?
Even so, I had convinced myself she was putting a little distance between us, and that was why I had freely invented that ridiculous excuse earlier.
Anyway, this invitation from her was an unexpected stroke of luck for me.
"Minjae, you've been well? Feels like only yesterday you two were running around here as kids. Time really flies."
"Yes, ma'am. And, uh, you've been well too, right?"
"Oh, don't even get me started. Lately it's like she's hit a late puberty or something—my daughter's been giving me no end of trouble. Minjae, you're treating your own mother well, aren't you?"
"Ah…"
I was sitting at Seoa's family dining table for the first time in ages, sharing a meal.
At home she would normally change into comfortable clothes, yet she stayed in the same outdoor outfit she had worn the whole day, as if conscious of my presence, and ate like that.
Back in early high school she used to have a set of pajamas she always wore around the house.
A black slip with a thin cardigan thrown over it.
After that I never really had the chance to visit, so I had no idea what she usually wore these days. Today, at least, she hadn't changed into anything comfortable.
That small change stung a little. We used to act without any barriers between us, yet somewhere along the way, as our bodies grew, a sense of distance as members of the opposite sex had appeared.
I felt, for no good reason, that we had drifted a little farther apart.
If there had been even the slightest chance that she and I could become something more, this kind of gendered distance wouldn't have hurt—it would have made my heart race. It would have meant she was starting to see me as a man.
But she never seemed to look at me that way at all, so the change only made me feel how much we were no longer the same as before.
She didn't even think of me romantically, yet she still put up these unnecessary walls. We hadn't been that kind of pair.
Her attitude was contradictory and cruel at the same time.
She didn't feel me as a romantic interest, yet the biological difference still raised an instinctive guard that stood between us.
Just from the fact that she hadn't changed into comfortable clothes, I was already thinking this far.
I was a serious case myself. If she ever found out what was going on inside my head, she would be horrified. She might even look at me with pure disgust.
"Mom! What are you talking about?"
"Oh my~ Was it a secret? That Woo-bin oppa, or whatever his name is. The one you said you liked…"
"It's not like that… The way you say it makes it sound like I was excitedly gushing about Senior Woo-bin to you."
Yeah. That's exactly how it sounded to me too.
Seoa's mother had even called him "Woo-bin oppa." That meant Seoa must have been floating around the house alone saying things like "Woo-bin oppa is so cool."
The rice that had been going down fine until a moment ago suddenly stuck in my throat. Without realizing it I just kept chewing the mouthful that wouldn't go down. The white grains got mashed between my teeth over and over, spreading an unpleasant sweetness through my mouth.
S-still, Senior Woo-bin had never gotten to eat a meal at Seoa's house like this. For now, at least, I was still ahead.
I comforted myself again with that pathetic little method.
It was the only way I could soothe the restless anxiety churning inside me.
"But Minjae, don't you have a girl you like?"
"Well, I don't know…"
Nothing was more awkward than getting asked that while the person I liked was sitting right next to me.
If I could have said whatever I wanted, I would have answered, "I like your daughter! I've liked her all along!"
"This kid? Where would he find a girl? I've never even seen him talk to any girl besides me."
"Seoa, then you should at least have the sense to give him some space sometimes."
"Ah! Is that it? Has Minjae been unable to meet girls because of me?"
Seoa's eyes went round as she stared at me.
Both her mother and Seoa herself—were they all just teasing me together?
Look at me. An ordinary face. No—probably a little below ordinary. Without Seoa I probably still wouldn't have managed a single word to a girl. I was that classic type of loser.
Yeah… thinking about it that way, maybe I had been blessed with a childhood friend who was way too good for me.
Seoa had the kind of looks everyone acknowledged.
I really had been lucky.
Back in elementary school, before girls' faces showed their true potential, I had discovered that hidden gem.
At the time she wore red glasses and was a bit chubby; she didn't particularly give off the vibe of a pretty kid.
Of course, now there was no trace of that old self left—she had become a perfect beauty.
Even I found it amazing. How could a person change this much?
Either way, having claimed this beautiful girl early and built up goodwill in advance was the single proudest achievement of my life.
After the meal I left her house in the most ordinary way.
Honestly I had thought that, after so long, we might lie down in her room together like old times and flip through some comic books.
But of course that wasn't allowed. We had simply grown too big to act the way we used to.
My heart ached again. Was I the only one… feeling this way?
Did Seoa feel nothing at all about these changes?
It wasn't as if only I had been close to her, so why did only I have to hurt over every little thing like this?
"But you're really not going to get a girlfriend?"
"Me? Well…"
Without the slightest idea what was going on inside me, she poked at my insides like that. Moments when she said things like this were when keeping my expression under control was the hardest.
"I can't really picture Minjae dating some other girl either…"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just… something…"
She started to continue, then swallowed the rest of the words.
"Ah, never mind. Hurry and go."