The Distance Between You and Me
People have a habit of psychologically fleeing from uncomfortable truths. They deny that an unpleasant fact is real at all, or they admit the fact while refusing to admit how serious it is.
Was I any different?
I made myself ignore what I had just heard and turned my eyes somewhere else. It was a kind of escape—unable to accept reality, I denied it, twisted it, and tried on purpose to forget. But what else was I supposed to do? I could neither agree with what she had said nor refuse it.
Living together carried a weight beyond anything I could have imagined. Sharing the same air from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close them again is the same as laying every last gesture of your life bare. And if that space happens to be a tiny studio apartment, you might as well say privacy does not exist.
I knew she was saying it out of concern for her older sister, Lee Harin. I could not simply turn her down. So I stalled, burying myself in other little actions to dodge the reality closing in. Fiddling with my smartphone while doing nothing at all was one of those excuses.
"What do you think, unni?"
But ignoring reality and looking the other way never actually solved anything. It only postponed the burden, making you want to escape even harder the next time around. A spectacular vicious cycle.
"I don't think you need to do that on my account. You can just drop by every now and then, like you do now. I'll keep in touch more often, too. You've got plenty on your plate already—how are you supposed to live here?"
Even I had to admit it was a perfect answer. It did not outright reject what she had said, and it offered a reasonable rationale plus a workable alternative. I was almost surprised I could sound that logical.
Was this what they called survival instinct?
And yet, despite my perfect answer, my sister's face refused to brighten. What about it didn't sit right with her? I found myself wishing, privately, that she were still wearing a high school uniform. If she were still tied down by schoolwork, this nonsense about living together would have been nothing more than a passing impulse.
Did she really have to put it into words?
"No. That's not it. I just don't want you going through all that trouble because of me."
"Does that even matter right now? I'm the only one left to look after my twenty-two-year-old unni. I have to do something."
"......"
I had nothing to say. It was not disgust at the wreck of a life I was supposedly living. I did not even think of myself as living that badly to begin with. I simply could not think of what to say to this "little sister" I was meeting for the first time.
If you wanted to split hairs, this was not my fault at all—it was Lee Harin's. So I was not the one living a wrecked life. But in my sister's eyes, I was nothing but Lee Harin. Whatever I said would only sound like an excuse.
My head started to ache. It felt like I was stuck in a dating sim with the reject option grayed out. Voicing an opinion is supposed to mean you are asking the other person for theirs, is it not? So why did she keep pushing until I could not say no? The resolve on her face made it clear she intended to live with me, one way or another.
A sharp hiss split the air.
Was I starting to see things, trapped in a situation I could not talk my way out of? Behind her, black smoke was rising with unmistakable clarity.
Wait. Black smoke?
"Is that burning?"
That was when she seemed to remember she had left the burner on under the frying pan. She rushed to kill the flame, but the meat had already been charred for some time.
"...Sorry, unni. I got so caught up talking I completely forgot I was cooking."
"It's fine. As long as you didn't get hurt."
It was a little burnt, but not inedible. If we just cut away the charred bits, it would be perfectly fine to eat.
The table she had set was even more impressive than I had expected. The side dishes looked delicious at a glance, and even the bulgogi—considerably smaller now that the burnt parts had been trimmed away—still looked appetizing. The spread could have come straight out of a Korean restaurant. After days of surviving on delivery and convenience-store meals, just looking at it was enough to make me sigh in admiration.
"...You're a pretty good cook."
"I put in a little extra effort today. Does it look good?"
"Yeah. It does."
"Right? Let's eat before it gets cold."
Despite saying let's eat, she just stared at me, unblinking, as I picked up my chopsticks. She had not even reached for her own spoon, as if she had no intention of eating. Under that stubborn gaze that insisted on watching me take a bite, I awkwardly reached for the bulgogi.
"It's good."
It was meat, at least, so once you set aside the burnt parts, the flavor was decent. There was a faint charred note, but nothing that really bothered me.
"I'm glad you like it."
Only then did she smile, satisfied, and pick up her spoon. I had no choice but to eat while watching her out of the corner of my eye. She stared so hard it was almost oppressive. I could barely tell whether the rice was going into my mouth or my nose.
Still, after nothing but delivery food, sitting down to a meal she had made herself... should I say it was not spicy or punchy? No—it was not that it lacked flavor. Everything on the table just tasted healthy.
Still eating, she looked at me with that same pleased expression and gently nudged a few side dishes toward my side of the table.
"Now that I think about it, unni, you're eating a lot today."
"...Am I?"
I could not help but wonder. The food she had made was good, sure, but I did not think I had eaten enough to warrant a comment like that. I had only eaten about as much as I usually did.
"Back then, even when I cooked for you, you'd barely finish half a bowl."
It was something I had been feeling throughout the little time we had spent talking. I had been far too strange. What kind of life had she lived, that every new detail only raised more questions?
"Unni, eat some of this too."
Before I knew it, she had picked up a piece of meat and set it on top of my rice. How long had it been since anyone had shown me this kind of kindness? It was a little startling, but not a bad feeling at all.
I picked up a piece of meat with my own chopsticks and quietly placed it on her rice in return.
"Unni...? What was that?"
My little sister, Lee Seohyeon, stared at me with a blank look, as if the gesture were completely foreign to her.
"Just a whim."
"Pfft. What is that even supposed to mean?"
She said it with a laugh, like she could not believe me, but she clearly did not mind.
Maybe I should start working out.
The thought came to me naturally the moment I stood up to clear the empty dishes. I had only eaten until I was full, and already my body felt not just sluggish but heavy. And when I thought about all the humiliating moments my lack of stamina had already caused...
...Working out was not optional. It was essential. Intense exercise was out of the question for now. Starting with jogging seemed like the way to go.
While I was turning that over, my sister, still doing the dishes, suddenly threw a question at me.
"Unni, when did you start playing Last of Quantum?"
"Hm? Uh... not that long ago. I saw it on Newtube and it looked fun."
"Really? That game looks insanely violent, though. So you like that kind of thing."
The way she said it almost sounded like a reprimand, as if she had not known I played games like that. From some people's perspective, Last of Quantum was a hard game to accept. It was a game about killing and being killed, and it showed those scenes in unsparing detail. It had earned an adults-only rating for a reason.
But I considered even that one of the game's charms. What would happen if a game that prided itself on realism started censoring things? If you killed someone and the blood came out green, nothing would shatter immersion faster. That was why I accepted the graphic depiction as part of what made Last of Quantum what it was.
Of course, there were people who hated that. Every so often you would run into someone wringing their hands about what would happen if playing a game like this made someone kill a person in real life.
There was illogic, and then there was that. By that logic, playing a dating sim would get you a relationship, and playing a rhythm game would let you compose music. A game is just a game. Nothing was dumber than tying it to reality.
I hoped my sister was not the type to think that narrowly about games. Fortunately, her comment seemed to have been simple curiosity.
"You never really talk much, so I had no idea you even liked this kind of thing until today. I watched the videos—you're actually really good."
...Just how had she been living, day to day?
The more we talked, the larger the question mark over Lee Harin grew. Nothing in my common sense could make sense of the person she had been. It felt like I was looking at something operating on a plane far above my own.