The Competition (5)
I had no choice but to listen to what Sebin noona was saying, my whole body wound tight with tension.
Something she wanted to say… Did that mean she was about to bring up what happened back then?
I had asked her once before if anything bad had happened to her recently.
It seemed she was finally about to give me that answer. Back then she had clearly been watching Nari’s reaction, and now Nari wasn’t here. Alone together in this club room, noona looked ready to tell me at last.
“Do you think of me as someone you can’t really trust, Minjae?”
“Huh…? Wh-what are you talking about all of a sudden…?”
It felt like my breath had caught clean in my throat. I never imagined she would open with something like that.
And what exactly was she aiming for with a question like that?
I couldn’t pin down her intention, but I could feel that whatever she was about to say wasn’t meant to be kind.
“We’ve been pretty close all this time, haven’t we? Didn’t you feel that way too?”
“Ah, no?! Of course not…”
“Then why won’t you tell me anything?”
“Tell you what…? What am I supposed to have hidden from you…?”
Even as I answered, a flood of thoughts raced through my head.
Was it really okay to answer like that? That I hadn’t hidden anything from her? No—I had hidden everything from her.
My weak side, my ugly deeds—I had buried all of it because I didn’t want her to see. And now that same person was trying to brush it off with a clean face? Was that right?
“Actually… I met one of your friends recently. Out of nowhere she contacted me first.”
Wait… one of my friends? The only person Sebin noona would call “my friend” was Seoa. But even so, what connection could Seoa and Sebin noona possibly have that would lead them to meet alone?
I was going crazy.
I couldn’t even begin to guess what the two of them might have talked about. The same way you feel pure dread when you suddenly face something completely unknown, I was feeling a fear of the unknown right now.
“That… time when you stopped coming to school. That was because of that girl too, right?”
“…….”
“I think I helped you back then. How do you see it?”
“You’re right. I was able to pull myself together back then thanks to you, Sebin noona.”
“Mm… thank you for thinking that.”
“Huh? I’m not just saying it… I really mean it. You helped me a lot. I’ve always been grateful to you…”
As I spoke, my eyes met hers for a moment. The noona looking back at me wore a face without the slightest tremor, simply watching me.
“Then why won’t you tell someone like that anything?”
“Th-that’s…”
“No, even that much is fine. Maybe it was hard for you to say. But… why tell Nari the things you never told me?”
Ah…… I squeezed my eyes shut without meaning to. Everything she said was so completely right that I had no rebuttal left; all I could do was shut my eyes tight.
Yeah. This was my fault. I had known all along that I was doing wrong… and I had just kept looking away.
It was always going to come to this someday.
“You said I helped you… so why am I the only one who knows nothing, while only Nari knows the truth?”
“I’m sorry… but I didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
Still, how did she know I had told Nari? That part bothered me a little. Nari wasn’t the type to go around talking about it, and I certainly hadn’t been spreading it either.
Seoa definitely… wouldn’t have known that I had poured all those worries out to Nari. So how could Sebin noona say it like that?
A small curiosity lingered. Even though picking at that detail wouldn’t change a thing, I still clung to the question like an idiot.
The most likely possibility was that Seoa had deliberately stirred things up that way to drive a wedge between us. If not, then Sebin noona might simply be testing me right now.
Either way, the fact itself was true, so I chose to apologize honestly.
If I kept denying it even here—if I claimed I hadn’t told Nari either, that I hadn’t shared those worries with anyone at all—that would have been the worst kind of lie. A lie so bad I would have been ashamed of myself.
“You looked like you were having a hard time, so I told you I’d listen to whatever was on your mind, right? But you didn’t say a word. And that was fine. Up to that point it was fine. Even if you didn’t talk to me, I thought it was okay as long as you could draw a little strength from me. But… why was it so easy to tell Nari?”
Noona kept speaking in a voice so level it had no rise or fall of emotion at all. What feeling was she holding while she said these things? Was she forcing down anger? Was she carefully hiding the shock of feeling betrayed?
I had no idea. I couldn’t read her emotions at all. And because of that, I didn’t know how I was supposed to respond either.
All I could do… was stay quiet, listen, and answer honestly.
“I don’t think that’s right. We’re a group of three, and leaving just one person out… talking like that behind their back doesn’t feel right to me…”
“Noona… I really didn’t mean it that way. With Nari it just kind of happened…”
“Exactly. That means you didn’t trust me enough, doesn’t it? You never saw me as someone close, as a friend, as someone you could open up to. The worries you could somehow end up telling Nari—you never managed to tell me. In the end you made me hear the whole story from that girl instead of from you.”
Everything she said was right. If I put myself in her place, I would have felt pretty miserable too.
It must have felt like being left out, like being bullied. Of course she would feel hurt. She had built a connection with me first, grown close to me first, and then I had poured my real heart out only to Nari, whom I met later… it was more than enough reason to feel left behind.
If I wanted to clear up this misunderstanding, I would probably have to explain why I had kept it hidden. And now that the situation had already come out… there was nothing left to hide anyway.
“Haa… sorry. I was being childish. I’m older than you and here I am getting jealous over something like this. Minjae, I’m sorry. I was being a little mean.”
After pouring out the knot she had been holding inside, noona seemed to settle a little; she apologized for getting too emotional and tried to wrap the conversation up.
But I couldn’t let it end there. If it ended like that… then that really would be the kind of person I was.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell you. I just couldn’t say it to you.”
“……Huh?”
“I wanted to open up to you right away too. When I was wandering around at my worst, this place was the only spot that gave me somewhere to rest for a little while. Every time I came here… you always greeted me with that warm smile. You were always the person who accepted me so warmly… how could I not trust someone like that? Of course I trust you and rely on you. The reason I still couldn’t speak… was because I didn’t want you to see the pathetic side of me. I always wanted to look like someone reliable in front of you, someone who could handle anything. So…”
I carefully laid out everything that had been sitting inside me.
And when she heard my real feelings, noona showed the first flicker of emotion since we started talking. I couldn’t tell exactly what feeling it was, but something had clearly shifted.
“I’m sorry. Even if I had my reasons, in the end you still didn’t know anything… I’m sorry for making you feel left out because of me.”
“I see. Okay. I think I misunderstood a little… I’m sorry I couldn’t handle it more maturely either. I should have waited more patiently like an adult… hearing it from that girl just threw me off a bit.”
Noona carefully held out her right hand toward me. It looked like she was asking for a promise.
“Since I already acted unlike myself once… I’m going to be a little more childish.”
“Huh? What…?”
“Promise me. From now on you’ll tell me too.”
“Ah, of course.”
I hooked my pinky around the one she had raised. Then, still linked, she added something more.
“No—this time, tell only me. Honestly… I got pretty jealous of Nari. So one thing should be okay, right? One thing that only I know… that should be fine, right?”
“Th-that’s… that would be deliberately leaving Nari out on purpose, wouldn’t it?”
“You already hooked pinkies and promised, you know?”
“Noona?”
I hurriedly tried to pull my hand free, but she tightened her grip and forced our thumbs together as well. And just like that, we ended up making a slightly unfair promise.
Well… she was probably just teasing. If things had ended on that heavy note the atmosphere would have gotten awkward, so she had wrapped it up with some cleverness.
After that it felt like pushing any more work would be too much, so we packed up right away and headed home together.
Walking beside me, Sebin noona now looked like someone with no worries left at all. That warm smile had returned.
I was relieved.
When the conversation first started heading that way, I never would have imagined it could end this peacefully—yet in the end it had wrapped up in this warm atmosphere.
Maybe clearing up the misunderstanding had actually brought us closer than before.
Like the saying that you have to overcome hardship to move forward. After getting through one hardship, I felt like I had grown one step closer to noona.
“Minjae, I was the one who first said I wanted to go to your place and work… you remember, right?”
“Ah! That really stuck with me too. I kept thinking I should have brought you along… it just wouldn’t leave my head. Haha…”
“For someone who felt that way, you seemed to have a pretty good time with Nari.”
“N-next time I’ll make sure to invite everyone properly.”
As if to prove how much closer we had become, noona now tossed out lines like that without any hesitation. If the conversation today hadn’t gone well… I would have started worrying about Nari’s safety.
More than that, I hadn’t known she was the type to hold things inside like this. From the image she usually gave off, she seemed like someone who wouldn’t care about that kind of thing.
Well, either way… the result was a happy ending, so that was good. That long-overdue time alone together had done its job of pulling us a little closer.
Time passed, and before I knew it only two weeks remained until the first submission for the competition. The deadline for the first round was right around the corner.
For the first submission you only needed a proposal document, concept art, and a prototype that implemented part of the concept… so the pressure still wasn’t crushing.
The real judging would start from the second round.
And with two weeks left until that first deadline, another event was coming up for me: three days from today was my birthday.
Birthday…
Honestly, I had never been the type to make a big deal out of my birthday, and I didn’t have many memories of people celebrating it for me either, so I didn’t feel particularly excited or treat the day like something special.
It was simply… the day I had been born. Nothing more.
On top of that, even Seoa—the only person who used to make a point of celebrating my birthday—was no longer by my side… so now the only congratulations I would get would be the messages from my family.
So I planned to just let this birthday pass quietly.
That was what I had planned.