Competition (8)
"W-water… please…"
In that blood-chilling silence, I forced the words out in a thin rasp. Maybe it was from not speaking for so long. Or maybe it was my mouth, stripped of every last drop of moisture, gone completely dry.
I tossed the plea toward Nari and noona in a voice that sounded like I was already halfway dead.
Both of them looked at me at once.
"He's awake…"
"Minjae, are you okay?"
Noona got up first and brought me water. Nari just sat there staring, not moving an inch.
I drank it like a man possessed.
It's good… I had never known water could taste this good.
Once I'd managed to wet my throat, I took stock of the room again. The moment I sat up, the two of them stopped talking the way they had been. But the strange atmosphere lingered all the same.
It was so thick you could feel how uncomfortable it was just to share the same space… unpleasant enough to make your skin crawl.
"I'm sorry. I checked out way too early…"
"Don't. You've got nothing to apologize for. I'm the one who suggested birthday drinks for no reason… Are you feeling any better now?"
"Yeah…"
"What? So you're saying it's my fault, unnie?"
"Nari. You know that wasn't what I meant. I went along with it too…"
Ah… just when things seemed to be settling, that one line set Nari off all over again. Normally she wouldn't have cared about something like that… but she was being so sensitive right now.
Noona, on the other hand, seemed to have pulled herself together a little and looked calm. Only Nari still had heat left in her. So if I could just get Nari to cool down, that would probably be enough.
"Come on, you know noona didn't mean it like that… I'm the one who drank it in the first place. There's nothing wrong with birthday drinks. Just calm down a little. Normally you wouldn't even care about something like this…"
Nari suddenly stood up. She looked me and Sebin noona over once, then strode straight for the front door.
"Forget it. I'm leaving."
Uh… if this kept going, it was going to be a complete disaster.
Nari was walking out… and if I just said "see you" and stayed behind to spend more time with noona, that would be insane. Even I wasn't that clueless. Not that clueless.
Calling it a night right here was the best option we had.
Sebin noona nodded and stood up too. The three of us left my place again and started walking.
Public transit was still running full tilt at that hour, so we headed first for the stop Sebin noona needed. Nari said she had to catch hers from the other direction, so I figured I'd walk Sebin noona to hers first since it was closer. There was no other meaning to it. Just that simple reason.
And… the whole way, none of us said a word. If I didn't speak first, the only sound between us was our footsteps.
Ah… this was rough. Even I was getting uncomfortable.
"Alright, I'm off. Take care of those hangovers, everyone… See you tomorrow."
"Yes… Noona. Get home safe."
"……."
Nari never said goodbye to noona, not even at the end. Noona glanced at her, then asked me to look after Nari a little. And then—
"That's hilarious, seriously. Unnie's the one who blew up first… and now you're talking like I'm the bad guy?"
…What?
What kind of sudden detonation was this!?
I wanted to clap a hand over Nari's mouth right then and there. But the words were already out in the world… and there was no taking them back. Not unless we all pretended to be crazy and agreed it never happened.
Which meant everything now… hinged on how Sebin noona took it. Whether this snowballed into a real fight depended entirely on her reaction.
"……Nari seems pretty drunk. Sorry, but take care of her for me, Minjae."
Thankfully, Sebin noona didn't rise to the bait. She handled it with the maturity of someone older, the way an unnie should.
After that, she boarded the bus that pulled up and headed home.
Which left me walking with Nari again. Even with Sebin noona gone, the air was still heavy. I snuck a sidelong look at her.
Even at a glance, her lower lip was stuck out in a clear sulk. Then those lips started to move, and before long Nari opened her mouth and began to speak.
"Hey. Do you think I went too far too?"
"……Uh, no?"
"Then! Why! Didn't you! Say! Anything! To unnie!"
Nari suddenly clenched her fists and started punching me—carefully, methodically, one hit at a time. She hit me in a steady rhythm, like she was keeping time.
So… for a while I just took it.
Then I started wondering why I was supposed to stand there getting hit, so I waited for the next downbeat of her fist and caught her hand mid-swing.
"Stop… if you keep hitting me like that, it hurts."
She clearly hadn't imagined I'd defend myself. Nari flinched and looked up at me, startled, then immediately tried to yank her hand free.
But if I let go right away… she might lose it again and start hitting me, so I planned to hold on until she calmed down.
"Sorry… let go. I won't hit you…"
Nari said it in a voice that had shrunk down to almost nothing. She seemed a little calmer now, so I finally released her arm. That was probably… the first time I'd ever won against Nari.
"Why are you so angry? What happened?"
Riding that momentum, I figured I'd try to actually talk.
But I never got an answer to my question. Because Nari suddenly said something completely out of left field.
"What would you do if unnie confessed that she liked you?"
"That doesn't… even make sense. Why would noona like me."
"That's the point. That's why it's a what if. You never know… maybe unnie has a hobby of collecting loser guys. You can't know what's in someone's heart."
"I already know I'm a loser… but saying it to my face still stings a little, you know?"
And… was she saying the only people who'd ever take an interest in me were people with a nasty hobby like collecting loser guys?!
That one really dug into my chest.
"Just answer. What would you do."
"I-I don't know… if she was confessing because of a hobby like that, I'd probably turn her down. Most likely…"
"Then what if it wasn't a hobby. What if she just actually liked you."
"Enough. Why do you keep bringing up stuff that has zero chance of happening. You're going to give people the wrong idea."
"It might not be as impossible as you think. And…"
Nari trailed off for a second, so I shifted my gaze over to her. Our eyes met. And just as quickly, Nari jerked her eyes away.
"S-so like, personality-wise you're a total loser… but looks-wise, maybe not all the way to total loser. Just regular loser level…? The kind of guy you could take home and tweak a little until he fit your taste?"
"……So basically I can never escape being a loser."
"And there's already the Seoa example, right. It's not like she liked you because collecting loser guys was actually her hobby."
"I guess…"
We kept walking while trading that kind of nonsense. I had no idea where we were going. We were just walking with no destination at all.
Noona liking me…? Of course, for someone like me, nothing could be a greater blessing than that. But I still wasn't sure. Without facing that situation in real life, even I couldn't give a solid answer.
Why was that. I turned it over and over in my head as I kept putting one meaningless foot in front of the other.
And that was the moment. The moment I realized the answer.
"Then what would you do if I said I liked you?"
"……For real?"
"No, I said what if! Why are you acting like you just got an actual confession?!"
I reacted before I could stop myself. Even knowing it was hypothetical… I still flailed like that without meaning to.
And thanks to that reaction, Nari launched into teasing me with pure delight.
I decided I couldn't just sit there taking it, so I started a little counterattack of my own.
At this rate it really felt like I was the only one losing.
"Ahh… if you confessed, I wouldn't accept it, though?"
"Who are you to reject my confession?"
"Then who are you to assume I'd obviously accept it?"
"I'm pretty."
"Well… I'll give you that. But people's hearts aren't solved by looks alone, you know?"
"……Ah. Yeah."
Nari went quiet all at once, like someone had dumped cold water on her. So… I shut my mouth too, for no good reason. The atmosphere had turned awkward.
And only then did my surroundings start to register.
"S-so… Nari. Where even is this? Where are you supposed to catch your bus?"
"How should I know."
"You weren't walking because you knew where we were going?! I thought I was walking you home!"
"I was just following you."
After that, Nari said she'd just take a taxi, so I put her in one and sent her off. We'd been so absorbed in the conversation we'd been having that we'd just been walking aimlessly the whole time.
And that… was how the day ended. In the end I never found out what noona and Nari had been talking about that led to all of this… but there was nothing I could do about it.
I could only hope that when we ran into each other again in the club room tomorrow, the atmosphere wouldn't still be like this.
But the next day, nobody came to the club room except me.
Half hoping it was a hidden-camera prank, I searched the room top to bottom—but nothing happened at all.
Honestly… I was a little angry. No, not a little. I was pissed. The competition was right around the corner… and both of them just bailing like this? What the hell were they thinking.
And over a fight that small. It wasn't even like they'd had some huge blowup, right? So what was so uncomfortable that they couldn't even show their faces.
I'd been through something similar myself, but somehow I was this strict about it when it was other people.
I picked up my phone and put social media to its intended use for once. The first thing I could check was Nari's story.
"Hey… is this really the time to be drinking like nothing's wrong?"
What was there to brag about. Nari had posted a story of herself drinking, bold as anything. Looking at it, those were the only words that could come out of my mouth.
But… looking closer at the story… she seemed to be drinking with people from our department. And the scale of it looked enormous. Like they were holding a company dinner or something.
And my body, as if it had already sensed something ominous, went straight to the story Seoa had posted.
Wait… could this be the same drinking party?