The Never-Ending Cleanup
Days had passed since Yeoncheong had saddled her future self with that heavy burden — making side bets promising favors if she ever dated two people at once, handing out Free Pass coupons to Suyeon and Seoha as "White Day thanks," and dealing Favor Passes to Hasol and Nayun.
For third-years, the college entrance exam was everything. They studied hard in class, and twice a week they threw themselves into gym class, sprinting around to burn off stress. One identical day after another.
The only variety came from the little tasks: at Teacher Jisu's request, explaining to the first-years who couldn't join a club what the Free Inquiry Club actually did, or picking up where they'd left off the year before, hunting down the school's ghost stories. Each new bit of club activity was the day's small reward.
Besides, the clubroom they'd recently moved into had been cleaned with their own hands until it practically gleamed, and tucked away from prying eyes, it made for a cozy little sanctuary.
The warm spring afternoon breeze drifted through the clubroom.
Yeoncheong called out to her one and only clubmate and friend.
"Suyeon."
"Hm?"
Suyeon, sprawled across the desk swinging her legs, looked up at her. Except she wasn't looking at Yeoncheong at all, so Yeoncheong kindly turned her friend's head back around.
Where her friend's gaze had landed: a bookshelf steeped in age, crammed with books that had never been put away.
It would have been nice to tackle them when they'd cleaned the clubroom, but between old school literary journals and volumes that still needed sorting, the job had been too much for two people alone. Those were the books they'd put off back then, since the work really needed help from the library club members. But now it was finally time to deal with them.
"When are we ever going to clear that stuff out?"
"...Mmmmngh. Does it have to be today? Let's do it tomorrooow."
Suyeon whined like she'd just spent her last ounce of energy on earth, and honestly, the aegyo was pretty adorable. But Yeoncheong, when it came to cleaning at least, was strict.
She turned Suyeon's head back toward her and pressed her lips together.
"Teacher said to get it done fast. And Suyeon? You've been saying that for three days now."
"Hnnng."
Groaning as she was, Suyeon knew perfectly well the job wasn't going anywhere. She squirmed around on the desk and finally sat up.
"Uuugh... I don't wanna..."
"Come on, hang in there. Once this is done, the cleaning's completely finished."
Yeoncheong kneaded her friend's shoulders, offering encouragement.
"Ooh, there. Rub right there a little more."
Ask and suddenly it's the last thing she wants to do. Keeping her hands where they were, Yeoncheong gave her friend's head a couple of playful taps.
"Once we finish, I'll do it again. So let's hurry up and knock this out."
"Tch... fine."
Suyeon found it annoying that Yeoncheong had made that her bargaining chip, but it was work that had to be done either way. Yeoncheong, eager to be done with cleaning, got off cheap with a shoulder rub, while Suyeon got to soothe her fatigue and sneak in a little selfish pleasure of her own.
The so-called "Win-Win."
"We need to find people to help us. The library, right?"
"Let's ask Seobin first."
The two of them left the clubroom and headed straight for the library.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The moment they arrived, they found Seobin sorting books as she always did.
"Oh, that. I heard about it from Teacher Jisu a while back."
Thankfully, there was no need to explain everything from scratch.
Three years as a library club member made her one of the most knowledgeable people in the school about its archives, and apparently Teacher Jisu had already given her a heads-up. If anything, Seobin said she'd wondered whether they'd already finished the job with other library members, since no one had come to call on her.
Yeoncheong poked Suyeon in the side, lips pursed.
"Sorry. Our lazy club president kept putting off the cleaning."
"You only call me president when it's convenient for you."
"Oh, like you're any better? You're always going 'obey the club president' when it suits you."
Watching the two of them squabble, Seobin smiled faintly.
"Got it. So you're clearing it out today, right? Go on ahead. I'll just finish what I'm doing and follow."
"No, we'll wait. Come with us."
"I had no idea there was even a space back there," Seobin said, wandering the inside of the clubroom with wide, wonder-struck eyes.
"Wow~ What a nice room."
Most other clubrooms were old annex classrooms, so they all shared the same layout and the same look. But this place, practically radiating the atmosphere of a club that was truly their own, was an object of envy even for Seobin.
She had plans to decorate it someday, of course — but for now, a desk, chairs, and a bookshelf were the whole of it.
Finishing her quick tour-that-wasn't-quite-a-tour, she turned her attention to the bookshelf.
"These are the things that need sorting, right?"
Habit, maybe. Seobin ran her fingertips gently over the spines as she passed.
"Yeah. Teacher said there were old school literary journals from back in the day, plus this and that."
"She mentioned keeping only the good-condition ones in the archive room and disposing of the rest..."
"That's what I figured too."
Having skimmed the titles, Seobin slipped a hand into her pocket. Then she pulled out a sheet of paper — a list of the school literary journals currently stored in the archive room.
"I already checked what's in the archive. We only need to gather what's missing."
Right before they'd left the library, she'd seemed to be fiddling with a computer for a moment — apparently she'd printed it out then.
When Suyeon tugged one book free, dust that had piled up in every crevice came with it, and when the book was opened, the dust settled on top of the pages fluttered up in clouds.
Yeoncheong and Suyeon fanned the air in front of their faces, but Seobin seemed so used to this that she simply carried on explaining without a hitch.
"Check the title against the list, and if it's not on there, set it aside. It doesn't have to be a literary journal, either — any regular book in decent condition gets collected the same way. We can shelve them in the library."
"Do we really have to pull them all out?"
"Mm-hm. We have to check the book's condition too. And if there's a cover on it, the contents might be something different."
Seobin explained the reasoning all the way down to the why, so annoying as it was, there was no way around it.
Yeoncheong followed the instructions, comparing titles against the list and sorting the books into two piles — those to keep and those to toss — while the other two began prying the books that had long since taken root in the shelf off one by one.
"Cough... cough. Seobin, you okay?"
Unlike Suyeon, who grimaced with every book she wrenched free, Seobin beside her was perfectly composed — such a stark contrast that Yeoncheong wondered if there was some secret technique to it.
"No, it's rough, but I can manage."
"A true library club member."
"It's not like that's why, but..."
A strange compliment was still a compliment, and they do say praise will make even a whale dance. Seobin laughed awkwardly, looking pleased and embarrassed at the same time.
Despite the dust standing between them like a barricade, the two chattered away cheerfully as they pulled out the books.
This is so boring...
Yeoncheong looked like she had the comfortable job, sitting and cross-referencing the list, but in truth she was bored out of her mind.
Pick up a book, check the title, flip quickly through it to double-check its condition. Books to dispose of went left, books to keep went right, and the ordinary volumes belonging to neither category were stacked neatly in the middle.
The other two at least had each other to talk to. She just sat there, repeating the same dull task over and over.
It was only natural that her eyes wandered off the black text on white pages to watch her two friends having fun.
"Oh, seriously?"
"Yeah, so..."
She had no idea what they were talking about, but watching Seobin — who had never once been in the same class as them — carry on a conversation so naturally, Yeoncheong had to admit Suyeon's trademark social skills were impressive. The moment the talk threatened to lapse, she'd toss in the right response, or steer the conversation with a question. Around this time last year, Yeoncheong had been the beneficiary of exactly that.
If someone asked her to name Suyeon's best quality — or the reason Yeoncheong liked her — this would be one of the first things to come up.
But at some point, Yeoncheong's listening ears had turned into eyes, and those eyes had locked onto one spot.
The two of them had left the books at eye level alone and were working on the ones above their heads. Neither had thought to grab a chair from behind them, so there they stood, up on their tiptoes, grunting with effort.
And as she leaned forward, Seobin's chest pressed up against the bookshelf...
"Wow... holy crap. That's insane." The words came out before she knew it.
Truthfully, Yeoncheong herself and the friends around her were no pushovers in that department either (one of them excepted), but before that overwhelming — that positively violent — display of raw tonnage, they were nothing.
It was only after becoming a girl that Yeoncheong had learned shoulders could actually seize up from the weight of a chest. At that size, how uncomfortable must it be? As she was sympathizing with Seobin's plight—
"What's insane?"
Suyeon's question made her flinch.
"Huh?"
"You just said 'that's insane.' Are you talking about us?"
She'd sworn she was only thinking it, but apparently her voice had slipped out on its own.
No matter how used she'd gotten to watching her girl classmates grope each other's chests and joke around about it in class... she could hardly tell Suyeon that she'd been staring at Seobin's chest in open admiration.
Yeoncheong's eyes darted around frantically, and then she held up the book she'd just set down on the left.
"It was the b-book. I was talking about the book."
"...Really?"
Suyeon gave her a narrow-eyed look, as if to say that was absolutely not the kind of exclamation a book would earn.
But there was only suspicion, no evidence...
And so Yeoncheong narrowly escaped the accusation.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
With sights that couldn't help but distract everyone, the sorting was dragging on at a snail's pace. In the end, once Suyeon and Seobin had pulled every last book from the shelf, they joined in on the classification work too.
"Still a long way to go, huh."
"Sorry we're so slow."
"Don't be."
"Well, this..."
At least the back-and-forth chatter took some of the tedium out of the simple repetition, and with two more pairs of hands, the pace picked up dramatically.
The sorting they'd worried might not get finished today — there was so much of it — was actually done.
The plan was for Yeoncheong to carry the archive-bound books to the archive room with Seobin, while Suyeon took the disposables out to be tossed...
"Hey. Baek Suyeon..."
"What?"
Suyeon was slumped boneless in her chair, as if nothing in the world could be her problem.
Yeoncheong turned her head toward the bookshelf — empty, spotless, or rather, the one that had been completely cleared — and stared.
"Why are those books back on the shelf?"
The very books that were supposed to be headed for the recycling bin — weren't they sitting right back where they'd come from?
Under that demanding glare, Suyeon straightened up in her chair.
"Well... a bookshelf just looks prettier with a decent number of books on it, you know...?"
A completely absurd excuse.
She'd almost certainly just found hauling the heavy books out to the bin too much work.
Yeoncheong shook her head, wearing a helpless little smile.
She did work hard, all things considered.
For someone who'd put it off and put it off because she didn't want to do it, she'd tried. And it was at least somewhat true that the shelf looked nicer now than it had when it was empty.
Yeoncheong decided to let it slide this time. She walked slowly around behind her friend and placed her hands on her shoulders.
Suyeon flinched, as if guilt had caught up with her.
"Wh-what?"
"You don't want it? Fine, then I won't."
"N-no, I want it! Do it!"
Time to complete the transaction.
Suyeon had cleaned hard in her own way, so Yeoncheong gathered what strength she had left and kneaded her friend's shoulders.
"Mm, ah. Right there... that's good."
"Hey... don't make weird noises."
"What's weird about it? Mm. It's only weird because you're thinking weird, you pervert."
They say the guilty see guilt everywhere, but this was the kind of performance where anyone watching would swear Suyeon was making those noises on purpose.
And she didn't stop there — she went on to tease Yeoncheong.
"Besides, you were staring at Seobin's chest the whole time earlier. That makes you the pervert."
If you weren't going to keep quiet, you should have kept quiet to the very end.
At those words, Yeoncheong squeezed with every ounce of strength she had.
"Aaagh!"
"What did you say I was?"
"Sorry! I'm sorry! My bad!"
Suyeon writhed this way and that, wailing her misery.
"I am not a pervert."
Even as she said it, something seemed to nag at Yeoncheong — she found herself staring intently at one of the disposable books sitting on the shelf.