Three Steps Again
At the sound of the door lock opening, I jolted upright and hurried for the bed.
The rattle of a rolling suitcase filled the room. I turned to greet her as if I had only just woken.
"Oh. You're back?"
The moment Yujeong came in, she parked the suitcase in a corner and rushed to the beanbag, turning it over from every angle like a detective working a crime scene. Then she looked at me, displeasure plain on her face, and started the interrogation.
"Why is it so warm? And it smells a little like sweat."
I already knew I was caught, but I did my best to avoid her eyes. Even as she spoke, Yujeong pulled the beanbag into her arms and sniffed at it. I couldn't hold out any longer.
"I sat on it for a bit yesterday and fell asleep. Sorry."
She let out a short laugh, dropped the beanbag as if tossing it aside, and turned back toward the suitcase.
Today she was wearing a light, airy dress, so unlike her usual clothes that the sight of her felt unfamiliar. When she noticed me staring, she spun in a full circle to show it off.
"Pretty, right? I bought it yesterday! To wear when we go out."
"Where are you going today?"
At the question she stopped dead, then hurriedly unzipped the suitcase and started unpacking.
"Nowhere. I don't have any plans today. I just bought it, so I wanted to try it on!"
She was suddenly grumbling, and I offered a line to soothe her.
"It looks good on you."
Yujeong's face burned red. She ducked her head so low she looked ready to dive straight into the suitcase, then pulled something from her bag and threw it at me. I startled, but I caught it without dropping it. A gift set of potato bread from a highway rest stop.
"Eat your potatoes."
"Thanks. I will."
After that we went quietly back to what we'd been doing. She took clothes out of the suitcase, and I only watched her, steady and glad she was here.
Maybe the attention made her self-conscious. Yujeong turned her back to me, gathered what she'd unpacked, and carried it to the clothing rack beside the desk. She shoved all of my clothes aside, pulled out a few hangers, and hung her own things up.
"You look kind of like a dog guarding the house today. Why are you only staring at me?"
"That's not what this is. But why are you hanging your clothes on my hangers like it's the most natural thing in the world?"
"It's a pain to haul them back and forth, so I'm just going to leave them here. You barely own any clothes anyway. The rack looks pathetic and bare."
"Okay."
Yujeong looked at me, visibly startled.
"What? Out of nowhere? You're being weird today."
"How?"
"Aren't you supposed to say you don't want me to?"
"Well, you're going to do whatever you want anyway. And if I was going to mind, then from the start I never should have—"
I hadn't even told her to come quickly. The day I'd called her for no good reason rose up in me, and I couldn't make myself finish.
Yujeong must have felt the air change. She cleared her throat, trying to pull our attention somewhere else, and then, all at once, slipped her arms in and started hiking the dress up over her head.
"Hey—what are you doing!"
I clapped a hand over my eyes and spun around.
"What? You're such a pervert. What did you think was happening?"
At the perfectly calm sound of her voice I sneaked a look back. Under the dress she was wearing a tank top and shorts. Ten years came off my life.
Yujeong hung the dress on the rack as if nothing had happened and hopped onto the beanbag in little squirrel steps. She rubbed herself into it the way an animal marks a nest it has claimed. It felt as if the missing piece in the middle of the room had clicked back into place. She settled against the beanbag and turned on the TV like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Oh, right. I missed last week's episode. Do you have any streaming services?"
"Yeah, I've got Netflix. Do they rerun it there too?"
She pressed buttons as if to check, then sank completely into the show she followed. Once her attention left me, I picked up my phone, put on a video, and lay down.
"What do you want to eat later? I'm buying today. I got my allowance."
"Right—how long are your parents going to be gone?"
"That woman, I swear. Ugh, she makes me so mad. Why is a person that obnoxious? They'll probably be back around the end of fall semester. It's a long-term posting this time, apparently. I don't get why both of them have to go when one would be enough."
"Yeah? So your parents think you're housesitting, don't they?"
Yujeong sat up and looked at me.
"Oh, your phone. You're just using it now? I thought it was broken and that's why you didn't. No, they know."
"Did you tell them it was a female senior's place? Or a classmate's? Some junior's apartment?"
"No?"
I sat bolt upright.
"I just told them honestly it was a male senior's place. The photo getting found is what started it, so I said you weren't that kind of person. They only told me to be careful. They didn't really say anything else. And it's not like you could be that kind of person anyway."
The way her family worked—something you could hardly swallow in a country still this Confucian—made my head spin.
"Then what was the photo."
"Ah."
We ate dinner on our own. She took the kitchen; I stayed on my bed with a simple Chinese meal. Because of that, little beads of black bean sauce had spattered the blanket, and they nagged at me.
After she finished, thoroughly irritated, Yujeong lay face-down on the beanbag, which she had moved back beside the bathroom.
"I'm telling you, just show me."
I did my best to ignore the glare she had fixed on me and bundled the blanket into a neat square. At this rate I'd be heading for the coin laundromat before dawn.
"It's really... nothing... special."
It very much looked like something special. Stripped of the TV, Yujeong shot resentment at me from her nest like a thoroughly furious prairie dog.
"If it's nothing, then we can just go on like this."
"Ugh, you are seriously so petty!"
She got up just like that, took her wallet and a jacket, and walked out. Of course she had forgotten a hat; she came back, put one on, and left again.
About five minutes later, a photo arrived on my phone while I was watching a video. A Post-it was stuck over my eyes. Yujeong flashed a peace sign beside me, grinning wide enough to show her rabbit teeth.
Things with Taehun had been a fight, and the mood had been awful, and still she'd had the nerve to get that close and take a picture while I slept. So this was how freely someone could approach me, so long as I was asleep. Would whoever came near me from now on always have to live at this kind of distance?
Looking at a funny photo, I sank into a sour mood, and everything started to feel like a bother. I walked slowly to the front door, opened it, and called her.
"Come in. I'll let this much go."
Yujeong was standing outside with her hat pulled low. She held up her small red phone for me to see. That photo was set as the lock screen.
"I just took it because it was funny. Other than that there's really nothing, so. You said you'd forgive me, right?"
"Yeah. Let's settle it here."
The words really nothing still snagged at me, but I didn't feel like keeping the bickering going. I turned my back and started for the bed.
"Wait a second."
She called me to a stop, and the moment I paused, Yujeong shut the front door and came in. She took off her shoes and stepped into the hall, and a dry heave rose in me. I retreated one step. Every time she came closer, it was as if a switch flipped—my body answered with another retch, and I gave another step back. She kept checking until I reached the bed.
"That's amazing. How do you keep it so precisely at about three steps?"
"You're pretty impressive yourself, thinking of pressing right up next to someone like that and taking a picture while they're asleep."
Yujeong put away her jacket and hat and dragged the beanbag back to the middle of the room.
"Honestly, you were surprised when I left, weren't you?"
"Well. Yeah."
I answered while scratching my cheek, then watched the show she had already turned on. I didn't understand a single thing that was happening, but I watched it in a comfortable mood anyway. Three steps—but the steadiness in them was different from the day before, and that alone felt good.
"Still, at that distance we shouldn't have any trouble looking like we came together, so want to go to the coin laundromat later? You gathered the blanket to wash it, right?"
"Together? We can?"
Yujeong looked up at me, leaving the TV.
"Why not? I think I need to wash the beanbag too. And let's have a beer. It's been a while, now that we're seeing each other again."
"I was worried it'd be a problem if I collapsed on the way."
She grinned and waved a hand.
"Well, if we're going to keep this up from now on, you'll have to get used to it."
"How long are you planning to stay? The whole break?"
"Oh. I never told you. I'm a work-study student, so starting next week I have to go in to campus."
Something must have shown on my face. Yujeong asked with a playful smile.
"What. Did your heart flutter, thinking I came here only because of you?"
Embarrassment hit me. I pulled the sauce-stained blanket over my head and hid. Only Yujeong's bright laughter spread through the room.
Just past midnight, Yujeong and I headed for the coin laundromat, each of us hauling a bundle. She hopped along the streets of studio apartments like a rabbit.
"There aren't many people, since it's break. Last time I came, lots of people were still out at this hour."
"That's because break just started. Around mid-August everyone comes back."
She pulled up the hood of the sleeveless hoodie she was wearing and gave a little hop. The ears on it flapped, and she became a rabbit outright. Then she turned, caught the rabbit-ear design in both hands, and walked backward in front of me, shaking them.
"Well? Do I look like a rabbit? My teeth are a complex, but they suit me at times like this, right?"
"You're going to fall."
Too worked up to calm down, she soon bounded into the coin laundromat we had reached. She tapped quickly at the kiosk, chose a large washer, and carried the laundry over to load it.
"I bought dinner, so you pay for the laundry."
I took over the kiosk she had been tapping, paid, and tossed the beanbag cover into the machine she had picked. It was bulky and heavy. I had brought it in a shopping basket, and my hands ached.
In the meantime Yujeong pulled a magazine from the rack in the corner and talked to me.
"It kind of feels like my living-alone fantasies are coming true one by one. Want to buy stuff tomorrow and try cooking dinner? If it's kimchi fried rice, I know how."
"Look at you. For someone living alone, that practically makes you a chef."
"Then I'll have to open a fine-dining place that only serves kimchi fried rice."
Trading idle little jokes, we picked up beer at the convenience store and went back home. It had been a long time since I had felt the shape of an ordinary day, talking with someone at an hour like this.
Yujeong said she wanted to wash up, so I put in my earphones, lay on the bed, and waited for her.
This feeling.
It had been far too long.
The metal that had comforted me for half a year roared in my ears. Sometimes, when my head snarled itself into knots, that sensation of something churning my brain let me forget that day for a little while.
Not today.
I couldn't breathe. Why, all of a sudden? The feel of an ordinary life I had forgotten closed around my chest, as if it had turned to poison. Tears broke out of me without warning, like something faulty giving way. I struck the bed and my chest, searching for a pain that could stand in for this one.
I must have been loud. Yujeong, just out of the shower, hurried over. She watched me come apart and could only stamp her feet where she stood. Even as she panicked, lost for what to do, she was crying with me—I could see it through my blurring vision.
But the space between us could not grow any smaller than those three steps.
I'm sorry.
The person who was supposed to be there isn't you.
My body remembered.