A Tour of the House Without Its Owner
Having calmed down the friends who had very nearly given her a heart attack, the very first thing Yeoncheong did was ask for the detailed plan for the party.
"I was thinking we'd order delivery."
A perfectly ordinary, reasonable answer from Suyeon, delivered with an expression that asked what other option there could possibly be when the place wasn't even a restaurant.
And yet.
At that answer, Yeoncheong's face crumpled.
"Chicken or pizza?"
"Probably, yeah?"
"That's what we order all the time anyway."
Yeoncheong brought a fingertip to her chin and sank into thought. It hadn't even been that long since their trip to the seaside, and since she rarely ate delivery food anyway, it wasn't a particularly tempting choice.
She recalled the ingredients left in the fridge and checked the time. There were quite a few people, but with cake for dessert, she wouldn't need to cook a huge spread.
...This could work.
Having finished her judgment, Yeoncheong suddenly bobbed her head and plucked some clothes out of the closet. At the sight of the homeowner abruptly bustling around all by herself, her friends demanded an explanation.
"I'll make dinner. I'm going to go grocery shopping, so wait here."
So saying, she pulled a short-sleeved hoodie over her head.
"Yeoncheong, *you're* going to cook?"
Seoha stared at her friend with wide, astonished eyes. Yeoncheong did live alone, but as far as anyone knew, she was a high schooler who'd only just started out. Of course people would assume she couldn't cook.
Her friends' reactions, however, were different.
Hasol, who had once received a handmade recipe book as a gift. Nayun, who had stormed the place with the others a while back and tasted Yeoncheong's cooking firsthand. Suyeon, who had eaten a meal Yeoncheong personally made on the day of that torrential downpour.
A peculiar glimmer of anticipation flickered across the faces of the three friends.
"What are you going to make us?"
"Not sure. I have a rough idea, but it might change partway through."
Yeoncheong pulled her head free of the hoodie and shook it out, roughly smoothing her mussed hair.
Suyeon, seemingly just now remembering, was already smacking her lips.
"So we can look forward to it?"
"Yeah. Look forward all you want."
Yeoncheong gave a small laugh, picked up her pants—then froze. In her haste, she'd almost changed right there as casually as she would have alone.
Clutching her pants, she scurried off into the small room. Seoha turned to the others and asked about Yeoncheong's cooking skills.
"Is Yeoncheong actually good at cooking?"
"I've eaten her food before. It's good."
"Maybe because I'm in the cooking club, but she even gave me a handmade recipe notebook for my birthday."
Going by Suyeon and Hasol's stories, that promise of something to look forward to didn't seem like empty bluster.
A moment later, Yeoncheong emerged having changed her pants in record time, grabbed her phone and wallet, and slipped on her shoes.
"I'll be back as fast as I can, so wait for me."
"Want me to come with?"
"No, I'll be fine on my own."
Yeoncheong shook her head at Nayun's offer, took hold of the door handle—and paused. She turned back, running her eyes over each of her friends' faces one by one.
"Don't do anything weird. Sit tight, got it?"
"Well, obviously."
At Yeoncheong's warning, her friends put on the most harmless smiles imaginable. But they were guests, and so Yeoncheong's feet were reluctant to carry her out the door. Then again, dragging them all along to the supermarket seemed like it would drain the life right out of her.
...I'll trust them. Just this once more.
With that thought, Yeoncheong opened the door and stepped out of the apartment.
The lock clicked shut behind her, and with Suyeon at the lead, her friends exchanged sly grins, already planning to poke through the place, here and there, without the owner's knowledge.
"It's human nature to want to do something *more* when you're told not to."
"The way she said that? She's definitely hiding something."
At that exact moment, Seoha stopped them all short.
"Guys, wait. I can't hear her footsteps."
Simultaneously, the door flashed open at lightning speed as the passcode was punched in.
Yeoncheong poked just her head through the door, eyes full of suspicion. Hasol tilted her head at her friend, who was planted motionless in her seat, shooting them all a wary look.
"Forget something?"
"...No. Turns out I did grab it."
Those narrowly narrowed blue eyes swept over her friends one more time—then she slipped away as smoothly as she'd come.
In the silence, the friends licked their lips.
"She gone?"
"Hold on. No footsteps yet."
Sure enough, after only the briefest of intervals, they heard footsteps descending the stairs.
The friends had waited until the sound of descending footsteps was well and truly gone—until they were certain the coast was clear—before cautiously rising from their seats one by one.
Suyeon stretched, working the stiffness out of her body, and muttered,
"Wow~ So this is how little Yeoncheong trusts her friends... I'm hurt. Truly."
"I never dreamed she'd wait right outside the door."
Nayun said this after opening the door and peering outside.
Suyeon wandered naturally into the bathroom and began her inspection, while Nayun, having confirmed the coast was clear outside, turned her attention to the small room. Watching the two of them, Hasol gave an awkward laugh.
"Judging by what we look like right now... maybe she's got a point."
"No, Hasol. You've got the cause and effect backwards."
Seoha kept talking as she opened the nightstand drawer and cast her gaze around the apartment.
"None of us ever intended to ransack her place from the start. This is only happening because Yeoncheong doesn't trust *us*."
"Your face is saying something completely different..."
Seoha's face was brimming with a scheming glint rarely seen on her. So Yeoncheong was an all-girls high school student now—but until half a year ago, she'd been a boy in his absolute prime.
Obviously she'd have at least one thing in this apartment she couldn't show other people, they'd reasoned—and Seoha's face was full of plans to find it and tease Yeoncheong senseless over it.
Nayun looked at the saintly act Hasol was putting on and asked,
"So? You're just going to sit there quietly until Yeoncheong gets back?"
Hasol seemed to ponder it for a moment—then started rummaging through the kitchen.
The friends nodded solemnly at the sight of Hasol's last-minute change of heart. Honestly, how many people could have resisted?
"Wait, Yeoncheong uses skincare stuff?"
Nayun said, startled, as she emerged from the small room holding up a cosmetic product. At that, Suyeon poked her head out of the bathroom.
"Oh, that? I bought it for her over break. Told her to take care of her skin."
"Really? It's definitely just the bare essentials, nothing extra... Yeah, no way in hell Yeoncheong bought this herself."
The friends chatted on, completely at ease, gossiping that would have made Yeoncheong's ears burn had she heard it at the supermarket.
"Ugh. This is exhausting."
Having judged that they'd searched nearly everything, Nayun flopped onto her back with a groan.
Hasol, meanwhile, could only keep marveling at the kitchen.
"Yeoncheong seriously lives so clean. Even my mom doesn't keep things this spotless."
Guided by Yeoncheong's personal philosophy that cleaning should be done a little bit every day, the kitchen glittered like new no matter where you looked. Somewhere along the way, the original objective had fallen by the wayside entirely, and she was too busy admiring the kitchen to notice.
Suyeon hadn't gotten anything out of her search either; as she emerged from the bathroom, a lament spilled from her lips.
"Wow... how does she own *nothing*?"
The apartment contained nothing remotely scandalous—in fact, hardly any items that revealed Yeoncheong's personal tastes at all.
Nayun muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"Hey, I'm starting to think she's not just single and clueless—she's straight-up got zero knowledge in *that* department, like, at all."
The friends nodded from their various posts around the apartment. What had once been a throwaway joke was looking increasingly like the honest truth.
"Ah. All that moving around made my throat dry."
"Want some water?"
At Hasol's offer from the kitchen, Nayun threw both hands up in enthusiastic welcome. Hasol opened the fridge to grab some water—and froze, eyes going wide at something she pulled from the back.
"Is this... alcohol?"
"What? Where, where?"
It wasn't the juicy something they'd originally been hunting for, but it was more than enough of a topic to rally the friends, who were wilting from their lack of findings.
Suyeon, standing right beside her, took the can from Hasol's hand. Hasol pointed at the back of the fridge with her newly emptied one.
"There's a whole stack in the back."
Beer cans, piled up in the deepest corner of the refrigerator. They belonged to Chairwoman Yurim, who was using Yeoncheong's apartment—so close to the school—as her own secret liquor stash.
Yeoncheong had resisted tooth and nail, but she'd ultimately been unable to withstand Yurim's pleas, delivered with head bowed in supplication.
Suyeon leaned in, peering at the stack, then burst out with an awkward laugh.
"Ha! Ha Yeoncheong. All that grief she gave me during the school trip, asking whether I brought a *student* onto campus with alcohol..."
With no homeowner present to explain that these belonged to Chairwoman Yurim, there was no way to clear up the misunderstanding.
Nayun, who had crawled halfway across the floor to get there, examined the can closely and said,
"Pretty sure that one's non-alcoholic."
At her words, Hasol and Suyeon took a second look at the can. A big fat zero printed on the side did seem to confirm it.
"Aww. That's no fun."
Suyeon, still clinging to her regrets from the school trip, carelessly set the can down wherever. Then she flopped down beside Nayun and stared blankly at the ceiling.
"I noticed it last time too, but Yeoncheong's place is so *boring*."
"Right? If I'd known it'd be like this, I'd have brought some stuff to play with."
There wasn't a single piece of furniture beyond the bare necessities, let alone knickknacks. With nowhere to hide anything and nothing to find, the grand tour of the apartment was winding down a lot more anticlimactically than expected.
Hasol's gaze drifted toward the one friend who still hadn't given up.
"There's still somewhere left to look?"
"No, this is the end."
Only Seoha was persistently combing through the last unexplored spot: the closet.
Suyeon turned just her head toward her.
"Anything interesting in there?"
"Nope. Barely any clothes, nothing unusual—"
Seoha opened the drawer at the bottom of the closet—and slammed it shut with a bang.
Startled by the loud noise, the friends bolted upright.
"What? What's in there?"
"Nothing. It's not that, it's just... that's where her underwear is."
Even Seoha, bursting as she was with teasing schemes, could exercise that much restraint.
But Suyeon immediately crept closer, insisting that was exactly the point.
"Come on, Seoha. They say the darkest place is right under the lamp. If she's hiding anything, it's *definitely* in there. You really think Yeoncheong doesn't have a single thing stashed away?"
Nayun crawled over inch by inch as well, peered at the underwear, and clicked her tongue.
"Tsk. That stings my pride. How does *this* pass for underwear worn by someone who used to be a man?"
Everyone knew exactly which part of herself she was feeling competitive about, but they all wisely pretended not to, lest they catch the sparks flying off her.
Suyeon slipped her hand right in among the underwear, rummaged about for a moment—and then, with a triumphant cry of *found it*, hauled something up and out.
What Suyeon had fished out was a box. One with a sticky note reading a surprise gift attached to it.
Hasol had already received her birthday present, so Suyeon naturally assumed it was hers, and opened the box.
And then.
Among the friends who saw its contents, a profound silence stretched for roughly three full seconds.
When Yeoncheong opened the door upon returning from her grocery run, an oddly frigid air wrapped itself around her body.
Did I leave the AC on too high?
Stepping inside with that idle thought, she spotted her friends huddled together by the closet and let out a sigh.
"Hey! I told you to sit still and not do anyth— wait. What."
Suyeon and the others looked up at her. Every single face in the room was flushed red—and Suyeon's was scarlet above all.
I put the present in the closet!
Because the birthday gift she'd bought recently was stashed inside the closet, Yeoncheong's movements turned frantic.
"You didn't look at my present, did you!"
She meant the gift she'd hidden in the corner of the closet—but as it happened, Suyeon and the others were holding what could only be called a certain *other* present in their hands.
"Th-this is... my present?"
Held in Suyeon's trembling hands was a black—no, with the clothes Suyeon had worn sitting right across from it, perhaps "pitch black" was overstating it—a garment in the deepest of dark tones.
Underwear of a style that, even if you bashed your head with a hammer, you could not imagine anyone wearing in daily life. If you absolutely had to pinpoint its intended use, you'd say: something for the dead of night?
Her friends were staring at her like she was some kind of beast rather than a person. Yeoncheong's survival instinct kicked her brain into gear.
Choose your words carefully and you live!
From the look of it, the thing had come out of the closet drawer. The drawer where the underwear lived. And the only person besides Yeoncheong whose hands had touched it was...
That damned Chairwoman...!
It came back to her now: the day she'd bought the Chairwoman's beer, her own underwear, and clothes for the school trip—Yurim had definitely been the one who'd "helped" put away the underwear.
Yeoncheong pressed a hand down from top to bottom in a gesture of self-soothing as she spoke. Her eyes were spinning in circles; it was clear she wasn't entirely sane at the moment either.
"Let's all just calm down. That's not your present. It's mine... no, wait, that's insane. Hold on. Technically it *is* mine, but..."
At those words, the friends began inching away from her.
Yeoncheong snatched back the foul words that had leapt out of her mouth unbidden, sweating over where on earth to begin her explanation.
"What I mean is, that's not my underwear, it was a gift I received... a-argh. Even that sounds wrong. Anyway, don't run away. Guys? *Guys?*"
Only after she cornered her distance-keeping friends and forced a three-way face-to-face meeting with Chairwoman Yurim herself was Yeoncheong finally able to clear up the misunderstanding.