The Third Balance Game — In Progress
I checked the boss's phone, and before I knew it my gaze had drifted down toward her chest.
She was sitting, so I was looking down at her from above. Whether I should call it lucky or disappointing, no bare skin showed through.
Ah…
Even with an apron layered over her clothes, the sheer size of them was impossible to ignore. I'd always known she was well-endowed, but knowing the exact measurements made them feel even more absurd.
A woman like this… her boyfriend… wait, is she even married?
What kind of man ends up marrying someone like her? I couldn't picture anyone who would actually match her.
Five minutes of staring and marveling at her looks later, the boredom set in.
Seriously, nobody's coming…
If it was going to be this dead, why had she even bothered hiring part-timers in the first place? She'd mentioned last time that the place had only just opened, so she probably hadn't expected it to be this empty either. Maybe that was why she hadn't hired anyone else after me.
I didn't have a body, but I figured I could at least fill a seat. I settled at a table and started watching the street through the café windows.
There's really nothing to do…
No phone, no computer — time crawled. Most of the people walking past didn't even glance at the café. Every so often someone would flick a look this way, then turn right back and keep walking.
Watching the boss flinch every time a passerby looked like they might come in was both cute and a little pathetic.
Seeing her like this, I kind of hope the café takes off.
Just… not on Saturdays, when I work. Those days can stay quiet.
People-watching from a café table eventually got old, so I decided to move on.
Take care.
She wouldn't hear it, of course, but not saying goodbye felt weirder than saying it.
Next stop was, of course, the Gym. Familiar places were the first ones that came to mind, so I kept gravitating toward spots I'd been to recently.
Inside, the guy at the counter was the same male employee who had a thing for Ajeong. Apparently this guy worked every single day of the week.
Living the grind, huh…
I left that brief thought behind and started circling the whole floor. I'd hoped, but no — Ajeong wasn't there, and neither was anyone else I knew.
In under five minutes I'd lost interest in the Gym and drifted back outside with nowhere particular to go.
Where to…
I was starting to think I'd made the wrong call. I'd chosen the future because the idea of looping the same day in the past sounded miserable — and somehow this was even more boring.
From here on, efficiency was out. The only criterion left for picking a destination was whether it might be fun.
Without a body, there was almost nothing I could properly enjoy. Then it hit me: a movie theater. I hadn't been to one since I was a kid, and two hours seemed like a solid way to kill time, so I decided to catch a film.
I picked a generic Korean thriller. Walked right in without paying — a bloodless entry. Nobody stopped me. Nobody even noticed me.
…
No popcorn.
I couldn't buy any, and I couldn't eat any either, so my mouth just sat there bored. No phone to scroll, either, so I actually paid attention to the pre-show ads.
Oh…
I hadn't expected it, but they were still running that same tire commercial. On the big screen it was almost entertaining.
It felt like a full ten minutes before the movie finally started. The plot was pure mass-produced formula — but it was definitely fun.
This place knows how to make a movie.
I considered watching another one, but nothing else on the board looked appealing, and burning this free time entirely on films felt wasteful. I went looking for something else.
Which is how I ended up at a manga café.
Lying next to strangers and reading over their shoulders turned out to be surprisingly decent. I got lucky and found someone starting from volume one, parked myself beside them, and read along from the beginning.
"Oh…"
He liked a panel enough to flip back and savor it. He had no idea I was there, but the feeling of reading together was genuinely fun.
…
Wait. Is this guy actually an idiot?
I'd gotten so absorbed that we'd burned through five volumes stacked beside him. Naturally I expected him to grab the next ones in sequence — and he did go get more, which I appreciated — but I couldn't hold back the cursing.
After finishing volume five, he came back with volumes seven through twelve. He'd skipped six entirely and was reading with a hole in the story, and he still hadn't noticed.
He made it all the way through twelve without ever catching on. I marveled at the sheer density of that skull and smacked the back of his head for him — my hand went straight through.
I'd managed to kill some time, and it was still only ten at night. The guy I'd been reading with packed up and went home. With the flow broken, I left the manga café too, but with absolutely nothing left to do I just planted myself on a busy downtown street.
Back to people-watching. Being a nightlife strip, there were plenty of flashily dressed people to look at, so at least there was something to see. That was how I scraped through the long, boring hours until morning, unable to sleep.
Six in the morning.
I'd need to be at the Gym around ten to see Ajeong, which left me four hours to dig up information on Bitcoin. Without a body, the only thing I could do was spy on other people's screens.
Surely someone, somewhere, had been staring at charts since morning — or even since last night.
Starting near my own neighborhood risked running into people I knew and making things awkward, so I began the search right around the downtown area. It wasn't until the second building — the thirty-fifth unit — that I finally found someone looking at charts.
Finding someone on the charts was one thing. Getting the information I actually wanted meant waiting even longer. After about an hour, he finally did what I'd been waiting for.
"Whoa… if I'd bought this…"
He sorted by daily percent gain. I memorized the top three tickers and left the room immediately.
The biggest jump was thirteen percent. A little disappointing, but for a mere twenty-four hours, I'd have to take it. I'd either split the buy across all three, or if one looked liquid enough to sell easily, go all-in on that. With that decided, I headed straight for the Gym.
It was only seven-thirty, but I had nothing better to do until then, so I went early to watch people work out.
Spending more than three hours just watching other people train turned out to be surprisingly not bad. At one point a genuinely jacked older guy showed up and casually blew past my one-rep max, and I got to study form up close. I also got to see what everyone was staring at on their phones between sets.
Mostly webtoons and web novels — though unfortunately, nobody was starting from chapter one.
I scraped through the time, and when Ajeong was about to arrive I stepped outside the building to wait. After a short wait she appeared, and as always, every person she passed turned to look back at her.
It was only ten forty-five — earlier than I'd expected. Since I usually showed up a little after eleven, that meant she was getting here a full twenty minutes ahead of me. I'd known she always arrived first, but I hadn't realized she came this early.
Ah… what happens when I don't show?
It hit me then — today I couldn't come. Did that mean checking the future was pointless? Unlike what I was seeing now, the moment I actually moved, even a small change would ripple into the future. Either I was supposed to accept that level of variance, or maybe the future was fixed no matter what and wouldn't change at all.
I turned over a few hypotheses while I kept following her.
The second she arrived, Ajeong headed for the staff break room. I'd checked it earlier — not much in there, more like a storage closet where people could stash their bags. She put her things in her locker and started to leave.
Creeeak—
Someone else came into the break room first, blocking her exit.
"…"
It was that male employee. "Followed her in" was probably the accurate way to put it. He stood there blankly with no intention of moving aside, so Ajeong stepped back in to clear a path for him.
Thud, thud…
He walked in without a word. Nothing dramatic was happening, but a strange tension hung in the air.
"A-Ajeong… are you two really dating?"
"Excuse me?"
"I mean… it doesn't really look like it… Lately you don't even hold hands…"
Is this bastard insane?
Had he been spying on us this whole time? He'd noticed the awkwardness between us lately and was making a move.
"…It's not like that."
"I-It is, though… Did you fight…? Instead of some guy who only relies on his face, hang out with me, okay…?"
So that was how he saw me. A gym employee whose physique was nowhere near mine, calling me a face-only guy. I had no idea where he got the confidence.
"Haa… Please don't say things like that. I'm going to head out."
Thankfully, he stepped aside again without a fight. Maybe those occasional sour looks of hers had been because of this. For now it was just annoying conversation, but there was no telling how much worse it could get — she had to be under a lot of stress.
I should get here fast later.
Me stepping in to help was already decided. Once I went back it would be Sunday again, so I could figure out a solution then.
Outside, Ajeong headed for the locker room to change. I briefly considered following, then saw the middle-aged women and grandmas going in with her and immediately dropped the idea.
After a fairly long time she came out in her workout clothes, loosened up in the stretch zone, then started hovering near the entrance right around the time I usually arrived.
Cute.
She sat on a machine with no weight loaded and just stared at the door.
I can't come today…
Ten minutes of waiting later, she sensed something was off and started hammering at her phone. The male employee tried to approach again, and she fled straight into the locker room.
Parked in a corner of the locker room, Ajeong began firing off KokoaTalk messages and calls to me in a flurry.
"Hiiing… what is it this time…"
After three unanswered calls, she seemed to give up.
"I was going to try harder starting today…"
She muttered it pitifully, then started her workout alone, looking lonely. I wasn't sure what she'd meant by trying harder — no, I had a pretty good idea.
Fuck, is there an early exit button?
I wanted to go back so badly I found myself looking for a terminate option.
Huh?
The moment the thought finished, something appeared in the corner of my vision.
⏮ ▶️ ⏭
Fuck…
Eleven-forty at night. With barely twenty minutes left, I finally learned that fast-forward was an option.