A Heart at Odds with Her Actions
My mind started wandering, uninvited, toward how I was supposed to spend time with my little sister from here on out.
Maybe I should ask about school?
Except I didn't know a single thing about her. If I brought something up clumsily, would she be disappointed? Every kind of anxious thought crowded in at once.
And while I was still turning it over—
Click.
Before I knew it, she had finished getting ready to leave and was standing at the front door.
"Well, unnie, I should get going now."
She looked at me as she said it, and for a second I almost smiled without meaning to.
"You're leaving?"
I forced my expression under control as I answered, and somewhere in the back of my mind I was glad she was going home. The fact that I felt that way was so ridiculous I couldn't stand myself.
I gave my side a quick pinch, trying to scrub the thought away.
She had come because she was worried about me. She had cooked, done the dishes, taken care of all kinds of things—and here I was thinking like that with her standing right in front of me.
I felt like garbage. That this was my true feeling… I didn't want to admit it.
"I'd love to live together, honestly. But I have to go to school, and it seems like you don't want that anyway."
If she weren't tied down by school… she would have kept saying that horrible thing about living here together.
Right now, I was genuinely grateful she was a high school student.
"Why don't you just skip school and stay?"
That's… really not it.
"You're still a student. Students can't skip school."
I tried to deflect, and she found it so funny she burst out laughing and waved me off.
"Unnie… you're being way too obvious. Don't worry, I'm going."
"That's not it. Now that you're actually leaving, I just feel a little sad."
I made a token effort to hold her back, at least once, for appearances. Maybe because I already knew she was going, the anxiety in my chest washed away as if it had never been there.
"Aigoo… when is unnie ever going to grow up?"
She let out a short sigh and shook her head, and I had nothing to say back.
What even counted as being an adult, anyway? Everyone's standard was a little different. Some people called you an adult just because you were older. Some said you weren't one until you were economically and socially independent.
So was I an adult? By age, I definitely was. Factor in economic and social independence, and I couldn't give a firm answer.
Creeeak.
She opened the door, then turned back as if she still had something to say.
Her words reached me just before the door closed.
"What?"
What is that supposed to mean.
Answer me before you go…!
Even after slipping out of her unnie's place, Seoyeon looked back more than once.
She could tell herself there was nothing to be done—school and other practical problems stood in the way—but the worry was real.
Is it really all right to leave her like this?
What if the next place they met wasn't the studio apartment, but a hospital emergency room? Forget cleaning the room—it didn't even look like she was eating properly, and that only made the worry worse.
If Seoyeon had her way, she would have stayed and made sure her unnie ate every single day. But she was a high school student who had to show up to class, and that was the reality. If the school had been closer to her unnie's place, she might at least have considered it.
She checked the time. It was already well past noon. By the school schedule, everyone would be in the middle of lunch. Even if she headed there now, she would clearly arrive around the time classes were almost over.
Going was probably pointless—but showing up late was still better than not showing up at all.
Seoyeon boarded the subway home and pulled her phone from her pocket, opening Jump's Newtube as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She watched a video of her unnie in silence—then suddenly frowned.
In the chat crawling up the side of the screen, sexually harassing messages popped up often enough to notice. Most of them got banned almost immediately, but that didn't make the feeling any better.
She watched a little longer, then checked the comments as well. There was praise—that she was good at the game, that her custom character was pretty—but here, too, the thread was packed with people sexually harassing Unknown's character. There were comments mocking Jump as well, but that wasn't what Seoyeon cared about.
They talked about her looks, of course, and about her body. There was even someone wondering what sounds she would make in bed.
They're talking about my unnie like what? Like she looks like she's been through a lot of men?
In reality, her unnie's social anxiety had been so bad she hadn't been able to make friends, let alone get involved with men. There were things you could say to a person and things you couldn't, and this had crossed the line by a mile.
Even if it was only a character in a game, the face was identical to her unnie's in real life. Every one of those comments felt like it was aimed at her.
I'll make sure you rot in jail.
Her unnie might not care about this kind of thing. Seoyeon couldn't just let it go. Even if someone had lost to an impulse and dumped it on the internet, they still needed to take responsibility for what they had said. The weight of a word didn't change just because it had been typed online.
So Seoyeon started capturing the comments that got under her skin, one by one. She intended to take every legal measure available—including charges for online sexual obscenity—and make them regret it.
Some amount of time passed. She had captured so many comments she no longer had any idea how many people she had on file when—
This station is…
She realized, too late, that they had arrived at her stop, and scrambled off the subway.
Even on the way to school, Seoyeon didn't stop capturing comments. A message popped up saying her phone storage was full, and she still didn't stop. She backed up the images and went right back to taking screenshots. She was that serious.
Storage Full
Not enough storage to save this screenshot.
If anything, the sheer number of people crudely sexually harassing her unnie only made her angrier. She wanted to capture every single comment that had harassment in it. But there were far too many for that to be realistic, so she was already filtering for only the worst ones—and even then, her gallery was filling up.
"Lee Seoyeon! You're being scolded right now and you're spacing out?"
She had gotten too absorbed in her unnie, apparently. The moment she arrived at school she had been hauled into the faculty office and grilled about why she was late—and she had completely forgotten that was happening.
"Teacher, I had circumstances today that made me late, I couldn't help—"
As if he had been waiting for her to start making excuses, the teacher slammed the desk.
"Right. Those circumstances. You said the reason for the absence was that a family member had a terminal illness and you had to rush over. Did you think I'd just go, 'Ah, I see,' and accept that?"
"…Excuse me?"
The answer was so unexpected she couldn't help being stunned. She had asked someone to paper it over as a family matter, but what was this? Turning her perfectly healthy family into terminal patients was already absurd. The fact that her friend had thought that counted as a valid absence reason was even more absurd. If you were going to invent a reason, there were plenty of more plausible-sounding ones.
"I know you're usually diligent, so I'll let it go this far today. But next time, I'm calling your parents. Understand?"
"Yes. I'm sorry."
Seoyeon left the faculty office and ran straight for the classroom where her friends were gathered. She threw the door open and started looking for her friend.
The friend who had cooked up that oh-so-plausible, perfect excuse was face-down on her desk, looking perfectly content with the world.
Holding down the anger boiling up from somewhere deep in her gut, Seoyeon walked over to the desk her friend was slumped across. And then—
Thwack!
She threw a fist into the back of her sleeping friend's head without a second's hesitation.
"Who's hitting me while I'm sleeping… oh, Seoyeon, you're here?"
Her friend clutched the back of her stinging head, sat up, spotted Seoyeon, and her expression eased. Seoyeon, on the other hand, was still scowling at her.
Her friend guessed why without much trouble and hurried to open her mouth.
"I didn't have a choice. The teacher came in right after you left… I didn't have time to think of a decent reason."
"Still, terminal illness is a bit much, don't you think?"
"I thought it was pretty original, actually."
Excuses needed to be plausible. What good was original?
She was her friend, but Seoyeon couldn't understand what on earth was inside that head. In that sense, she was the spitting image of her actual unnie.
What does she even think about all day?
If it were possible, she would have wanted to look inside. If she could do that, maybe she would understand her unnie a little, too.
Until now, she hadn't even properly known what her unnie liked or disliked. That was how little she knew—she had only found out her unnie played Last of Quantum because her friend had shown her a video.
Last of Quantum.
The game her friend played, and now her unnie too. If she played it, maybe she could get even a little closer to her.
"…You said you play Last of Quantum, right?"
At Seoyeon's question, her friend nodded.
"That's the game I've been nagging you to play with me every day."
"Then you must be pretty good."
"Ahem. Not to brag, but I hit Gold 1 this time. Platinum isn't even a dream."
"Then teach me the game."