Mirror (3)
“Let’s see… Kwon Minjae? Are you here? It says you’re a first-year…”
“Yes?”
My name suddenly spilled from the professor’s mouth. I startled so hard I answered on pure reflex. I could feel every pair of student eyes swing toward me.
“You applied with the club members, I see. Yu Nari won’t be handling the development side… so that means you’re the one coding, Kwon Minjae?”
“Yes…”
“Will you be all right on your own? Truth is, a lot of the upperclassmen are pretty interested in this competition. If you’d like, I could introduce you to a skilled student from our department…”
“Ah—no. I’m fine.”
What the hell was he thinking, just slotting some random person in like that? The professor made the offer as if he were doing me a favor. I didn’t need it, so I cut him off clean. A low murmur rose among the students; the professor cleared his throat a few times and finally started the lecture.
Only then did I remember Seoa had been saying something to me earlier. I glanced her way. She just wore a faintly bitter expression and never picked up where she’d left off. What had she been about to say? The thought drifted through my head, but I didn’t bother asking.
When class ended I headed for the café where Nari said she’d be waiting.
“Minjae! Wait a second…”
Seoa grabbed my hand in a rush and stopped me mid-step. I didn’t shake her off. I simply let that light force turn me so I was facing her naturally.
“I… I’ll wait. So… when you feel like talking to me, talk to me then. I won’t push myself on you first. Okay?”
That was what she told me.
Ah…
Honestly, hearing those words did soften me a little. Because they were different from everything she’d shown me until now. This wasn’t the Seoa who always put her own feelings first. She’d come to apologize several times before, but every single time I’d felt the selfish urge to get the apology over with so she could feel better. I’d never been ready, yet she kept prodding me toward reconciliation simply because she wanted it.
Just now, though, there was none of that. For the first time she seemed to understand me and was willing to wait, and that made my heart weaken. For the first time I felt like we might actually be able to talk.
“So what you want is to make up with me?”
“Yeah. I feel like I did something really awful…”
The rough scars on her fingertips were still there. I could feel them in the hand holding mine—the sandpaper texture of skin that had broken and healed over and over.
“We’ll talk next time.”
“Okay… I’ll wait.”
Seoa took one step back and was the first to let go of our joined hands. I left her standing there without a word and walked on.
My heart had softened—that much was true—but that was all. Her change in attitude had stirred something, nothing more. It didn’t mean my feelings about Seoa had changed.
There was no place for her in my heart anymore.
Anyone watching would probably think I was a ridiculous bastard. I’d decided on my own to keep Seoa in my heart, and now I was deciding on my own that she no longer had a place there. Even I found it so absurd I almost laughed out loud.
Still, loving someone isn’t a crime. It’s instinct. It’s my heart—am I not even allowed to think what I want about it? Of course I am.
I walked toward the café to meet Nari, turning those self-serving thoughts over in my head. What snapped me out of them was Nari’s sharp voice.
“Hey! Why are you so late?”
“Ah… sorry. I got held up talking for a bit.”
“With who?”
“Seoa… the girl I used to like.”
Maybe because I’d already cracked open the story I’d kept locked away once before, I found myself hiding nothing from Nari. I could spill everything that had happened as naturally as breathing. No—if anything, I’d wanted to bring it up first. Like someone desperate for advice, I’d wanted to tell her.
Even now, the way she treated me felt as casual and unguarded as if we’d been friends for years. I was getting swept up in that, starting to mistake her for a really close friend without even realizing it. And even if that was just my delusion, right now Nari was the only person I could unload this suffocating feeling onto.
“What did you talk about?”
“Just… she said she’d wait until I wasn’t angry anymore.”
“So? Do you want to make up with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know. Are you actually missing a few screws?”
“I know I’m pathetic…”
Nari let out a long sigh, as if I were driving her crazy. Then she stood up and held out her hand to me, still sitting there deflated.
“Forget it. Let’s just go to the club room. Unnie’s waiting.”
I hesitated for a second about whether it was okay to take her hand so casually, but she’d offered it first… refusing would have looked even weirder, so I grabbed it and stood. In that brief contact I felt a faint, ticklish flutter in my chest.
Even this made me think Nari was similar to Seoa. The way she did things that made people misread her, completely unselfconsciously—that was just like Seoa.
Since we were already at the café, we bought drinks to take to the club room for the meeting. Of course I paid for everything. Nari had already finished a coffee while waiting for me, yet the moment I offered to buy drinks she ordered another iced americano, saying she’d have one more.
“You know unnie likes mint chocolate, right?”
“Yeah. She always drinks it. Avoids it at night, though…”
“You’re pretty attentive. So what do I like?”
“How would I know?”
“Couldn’t you at least try to find out?”
“You never told me, so how am I supposed to know?”
“You talking back now? You do know I’m older than you, right?”
While we bantered like that we arrived at the club room. Our voices must have carried pretty far, because Sebin noona opened the door and stared at us like we were some strange new species.
“Unnie—! I brought Minjae. And drink this!”
“Ah… yeah. But when did you two get this close?”
Sebin noona still looked completely bewildered, as if she couldn’t adjust to the sight of us.
And we answered at the exact same time, like we’d rehearsed it.
“We’re not that close. / We’re not that close?”
“Haha… anyone can see you’re close.”
Just a few days ago the club room had been quiet and empty; ever since Nari joined, the atmosphere had turned lively. It felt like the little hideout Sebin noona and I had shared had been altered somehow, but the noisy energy wasn’t bad at all. It made me realize I was finally hanging out with people other than Seoa in a normal way.
Before, this place had been where I got healing from Sebin noona. Now it felt like I was moving forward together with Nari. I really must have no backbone of my own… I seemed to get swept up in the mood of whoever was around me far too easily. When Nari grabbed me and spun me around, I didn’t resist—I just got carried along and somehow kept advancing without even noticing.
“Okay… the concept and setting of the game are roughly decided, so noona, please start fleshing out the clear goals and rewards. That’s the first thing we need to lock down.”
I said it to pull the scattered space back into focus. When we were meeting, we needed to concentrate on the meeting. We couldn’t lose sight of the real goal. We’d gathered to enter the competition, after all.
“And Nari… these are the character designs noona came up with so far. Take a look and tell me if you have any opinions. I think it’d be better if we shape the designs together from the start.”
“Okay… I’ll check them out.”
They both followed every ordinary thing I said without a single complaint. I felt a little grateful for that, and the more grateful I felt, the more I thought I had to do better. I vowed to take the most responsibility and keep my head on straight.
Nari, with her industry experience, caught on quickly and dove into drawing on her own. That was how we successfully finished our first meeting with everyone present.
Thank god. Thank god this picture was somehow coming together. We’d almost ended up with nothing at all… a strange swell of emotion and pride filled my chest.
The three of us walked home together under a sky that had already gone dark. It was a completely new landscape. Me, who’d never had a friend besides Seoa… walking home laughing with two other people. Two girls, no less. Neither of them was mine, of course, but it still felt like an important enough point that I wanted to say it that way.
“What are you grinning about like that? It’s creepy.”
“Don’t be mean to Minjae. He’s gotten a lot brighter since you came, Nari. It’s nice to see.”
“Th-that’s also kind of creepy…”
Nari looked a little embarrassed at the idea that she’d made me brighter, so she turned her face away and muttered. I wanted to tease her a bit, and at the same time I wanted to slip my real feelings into the joke.
“But… I’m not lying. I’ve really gotten a lot of help from you, Nari.”
“……Whatever. If you’re grateful, buy me a drink.”
Such a Nari answer. Usually people ask for a meal, not alcohol, right?
Separately from that, I thought going for drinks together like this would be fine. It was a kind of celebration, after all. The day the three of us officially kicked off our competition entry. The flow, the mood—it all felt right.
“Th-then I’ll treat. Want to go grab a drink together?”
I asked noona first. Between two people with experience, she was the one who’d end up most left out. Somehow Nari and I—both of us with industry backgrounds—kept ending up talking to each other, so I figured I should look after noona at least this much and asked her first.
“Hmm… I’d like to, but I need to get home early today.”
“Unnie?! So you’re telling me to drink alone with this guy?”
“Haha… you two seem close enough. It’ll be fine, right?”
“Still…”
Uh… this was getting a little awkward. I’d suggested drinks to include noona, but if she bailed it left us in a weird spot. I tried to say something to keep her, but she hurriedly started walking away first. There was something faintly strange in the air around her. Her retreating steps bothered me a little, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“You drinking?”
“……You said you couldn’t drink just the two of us.”
“You’re the one buying, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Fine, then.”
Deep down I’d wanted all three of us together, but tonight it looked like it would just be Nari and me. Honestly, drinking with just the two of us wasn’t that bad either. I wanted to unload more of my worries on her anyway. I’d never told noona anything about Seoa, so if the three of us had gone I probably wouldn’t have been able to talk about it.
And so I simply accepted this daily life that had started changing so fast around me, without understanding what any of it meant.