Drunk on a Night of Letting Go
Outside the window, the night was loud.
In a college town, the night the semester ends is the one night everyone sets everything down and goes around scattering that childishness called youth. They borrow the warmth of alcohol to feel opened up, bolder than usual, because this is the hour they spend trying to learn the things they never learned as adults—and the things they never will.
I rested my chin on the windowsill and looked down. I should have been out there too. This was the season when I ought to have been. And yet I wasn't. I didn't feel wronged about that. It was only that the things which shouldn't have surfaced made it unpleasant, and because I was still in that season of my life, I couldn't get free of them.
I was soaking in the view and my own sentiment when the door lock clicked. Yujeong came wobbling in.
"What? Why are you back so early?"
"I'm not class president anymore, so sitting in on the general meeting feels awkward. And I have to head down early tomorrow."
Break started tomorrow, but she didn't have the air of a college student bursting with excitement. She toppled onto the beanbag in the corner. The sound was strangely addictive. Like a day closing.
"Oh, right, sunbae. Want a drink?"
She lifted the convenience-store bag she'd been carrying, acting as if the idea had only just occurred to her, though she'd clearly planned it all along. I snorted a quiet laugh to myself.
"Sure."
Thanks to her, I might get to feel a little like a college student on leave.
Letting out that odd little chuckle of hers, Yujeong dragged the beanbag over to the limit of the distance between us. Two five-hundred-milliliter beer cans landed on the low table, green labels with a strong scent.
"I splurged a whole thousand won, you know. The domestic stuff is four for nine thousand."
"I'll pay you back later."
Yujeong shook her head and cracked a can. The hiss of carbonation filled the quiet room. Luckily it hadn't been shaken much; no foam spilled over. She passed me one of the opened cans.
I took it and drank. I hadn't reached for this often since that day, and the sharp, astringent taste after so long pulled a sound out of me before I could stop it.
"Kyah. It's been forever. Ordering delivery just never quite happens."
"Wait, so you've been living like that completely sober? Not even drinking?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
We laughed at the same time, enjoying the joke. Yujeong held her can out from a distance, proposing a toast. I clinked mine against it and savored the feeling.
I'd never held my liquor well, so I got tipsy fast, but before I knew it the can was empty.
"You must have really wanted to drink."
To me, who'd been drinking without much talk, Yujeong handed over the next can.
"Sunbae, what happened with Taehun-sunbae isn't your fault. I was the one who wanted it that way."
Mid-sip, she quietly tossed the subject at me.
"I don't think it's my fault either. You made the decision. I just can't say I had no part in it."
"Straight to the point."
Yujeong took a bitter sip, then went on.
"Doesn't it scare you, staying shut up in this room like this?"
"Why?"
She pushed her lower lip up, thought for a moment, then looked me straight in the eye.
"You're young, and you're trapped in a room. And if you died, I'm afraid no one would find you right away. That you'd just disappear."
"Sure, it's a shame, and it's scary. But I don't plan to stay like this forever. I have to take it step by step. Early on I didn't even clean. Then one dawn I stepped just outside the door and it was quiet. Like I was possessed, I went down the stairs, all the way to the main gate, and I thought, someday I want to go out. So even if it's only at dawn, I clean like other people do, and sometimes I go out before the sun's up."
Yujeong looked at me, startled.
"You can go outside?"
"Of course! As long as I don't run into a woman, there's no problem."
At that, her face went sullen.
"Right. That's a shame. I kind of imagined the day you got all better and could go outside, and you'd thank me, saying it was because I came to your place."
"What are you talking about. You tried to kill me."
Yujeong's face went red as she remembered that day.
"Th-that. Well. I admit it was a mistake. Yes."
"What happened, anyway."
I asked her calmly, circling back—give and take, more or less—to that day when she'd flown into a rage as if I'd touched a nerve. A little embarrassed, Yujeong downed a mouthful of beer before she answered.
"I mean, I never had any intention like that. I was just working hard at the things I got into. But the guys always misunderstood."
I already had a pretty good idea what she meant. With a face like a small animal, liking turned into affection fast. Honestly, if I weren't in this body, she wasn't someone I could keep in the house.
"And of course the guys who like me are always popular and talented, so it turns into the girls getting jealous. It's so annoying. I was just doing my own thing. Why does it always end up like that. Seriously."
Yujeong drank again to vent her frustration. Her can was empty now too.
"I'm gonna use the bathroom real quick."
"Ah, yeah. I've been meaning to say. Turn the sink on."
Her already-drunk face went one shade redder.
"Wait, sunbae, so you've been hearing everything this whole time? Are you actually a pervert?"
In a hurry, she didn't even wait for my answer. She snapped at me and vanished into the bathroom. I could hear the sink running properly. The girls in my year all did that as a matter of course. Next time I should at least have earphones ready.
I sighed and looked out the window. Behind me, Yujeong finished and came out, saw me, and asked.
"Don't you feel wronged?"
I turned toward her as she dropped onto the beanbag.
"I mean, sure I do."
"Sunbae, I'm sorry. I really am sorry, but."
Knowing it was something she shouldn't say, she hesitated and said it anyway.
"I have a rough idea, but I want to hear it from you. Can you tell me what happened?"
Out of nowhere, Yujeong drove a knife into my heart. The eyes set above her flushed cheeks, though, were entirely serious. Maybe it was the alcohol. My chest hurt, and yet I told her without hesitation.
"She was a girl I'd liked for twenty-two years. A childhood friend. We'd been together an absurdly, miserably long time. Neighbors in the same apartment complex. Elementary, middle, high school, even college. So I thought having her beside me was just how things were. Then I got to college and saw guys hitting on her, and that changed. That's when I realized. But the day after I finally confessed—the confession I'd put off because of the military—she slept with another guy. With me right there beside her."
My insides were boiling, but with Yujeong in front of me the curses didn't come out the way they usually would.
"She said it happened while I was in the army, because she was drunk. That night too, she said it was the alcohol. Fuck. Is booze some all-purpose pardon?"
Still, the feeling I'd pressed down was only sitting in its box, not gone, and in the end one word leaked out.
"Yeah, fuck. What a piece of shit."
I startled at Yujeong flaring up in anger again, and found she was crying.
"Hey, why are you the one crying. I'm the one who's supposed to cry."
"But it's so fucking annoying! No matter how much she liked it, how can you do that when you have a boyfriend. It's disgusting, seriously. Hwaaang—"
She suddenly buried her face in the beanbag and started sobbing, and I tried to soothe her.
"You must've had a lot. That's enough."
Face buried, only half of it turned toward me, her eyes and cheeks flushed red—it made a kind of cuteness that felt vaguely hazardous. The guys who'd circled Yujeong had simply been lured in by a Venus flytrap. Not that she meant to eat them.
"Sunbae, forget a girl like that and meet a good one. Seriously."
"I got it, so go to sleep. Want me to turn the air conditioner off?"
Instead of answering, Yujeong shook her head, went to the desk, pulled a tissue from the box, and blew her nose.
Don't leave that on the desk! Making herself right at home.
After that she came back, pushed the low table off to one side, and sprawled across the beanbag.
"Sunbae, can I sleep here tonight?"
"You already do. Ah."
She wasn't in her usual corner. She was planted in the middle of the floor. I let out one long sigh and lay down on the bed. Sleep wouldn't come, but having laid the past out for Yujeong once had left me drained.
"Sunbae, I'm sorry. For asking you to talk about that. It must hurt. But I wanted to know."
Her voice, muffled in the beanbag, came across the room thick and dull.
"It's fine. The doctor said talking about it now and then, until it becomes nothing, is a good method too."
"So I helped just now?"
I turned my head toward her, sprawled on the beanbag, and answered.
"Yeah. I think you did. Thanks."
Maybe it was the alcohol. I'd told her about that day more calmly than I would have believed of myself. I hadn't managed to hold all of it down at the end, but because she'd gotten angry for me, it felt as if there'd been at least a small tremor in the sensation of that night.
Yujeong lifted only her eyes and met my gaze.
"Sunbae, can I hold your finger?"
"Why is it 'I'll hold it' and not 'hold mine.' Pfft."
Her strange way of putting it made me laugh. Instead of any more talk, she rolled onto her side and held out her hand. Now that it came to it I got shy, and I stretched my fingers out until they were almost, but not quite, touching.
I don't even know why I'm going along with this again.
Yujeong focused on my fingertips, then poked at them with her own thin, slender ones. Like a bird testing nesting material with its beak. Whether she liked what she found or not, her fingers closed around one joint of mine, beak and all.
"Sunbae. A really good woman."
She must have been tired. Mid-sentence, she closed her eyes and fell asleep, and for a while I stared at her for no reason at all.
Worry about yourself. Don't worry about other people.