Let's Live Together
Phew.
In the end I had to head back to the café and wait for Hyeonji. Having someone to kill time with was nice, but was it really okay to keep going like this?
I had clearly decided to quit the high-school-boy cosplay, yet I still couldn’t shake free of its aftereffects. Even though everything was nothing more than a novel, before I knew it I was delaying my dropout without even realizing it.
And then Hyeonji—the one person I could most easily cut ties with—contacted me again. If she wanted me to resell the bike to her, that would be fine, but…
“I showed up. Why aren’t you saying hello?”
“…?”
While I was lost in thought she arrived. The moment I lifted my head and confirmed it was her, the words slipped out on their own.
“No bandana… today?”
It was true. She hadn’t simply taken the bandana off; her entire outfit was a world apart from last week’s.
Instead of hiding that glossy long hair she was so proud of, she had pulled it back into a single loose tie. Add a skin-tight knit top, skinny pants, and boots that came up to the knee, and the already mature girl had been transformed into a full-blown woman.
Concept-wise it was the complete opposite of Teacher Eunju’s look—pure all-black. She looked like she’d thrown on whatever was closest, yet somehow every piece screamed luxury-brand chaebol fourth-generation heiress out for a casual stroll. Well, Hyeonji came from money too, so maybe she was just doing a decent imitation.
“You said you didn’t like it.”
She answered a little stiffly, eyes sliding away. Yeah, I had said that.
“But you also said I don’t know the first thing about fashion. So why bother listening to me?”
“This is fashion too. I used to dress like this.”
“‘Used to’—you mean middle school?”
“How’d you know?”
How wouldn’t I? The exact moment she started channeling that ridiculous ’90s Generation X vibe lined up perfectly with when she joined A Team.
I didn’t know the details, but back in middle school she had probably been surprisingly ordinary. Then high school hit, delayed puberty kicked in, and she started rebelling against her dad by rewinding the clock.
“Just a hunch. Anyway, why’d you want to meet today?”
“What’s good here?”
“Probably… the sandwiches?”
She clearly wasn’t going to talk until she ate something, so I bought a sandwich and a juice. Hyeonji tilted her head like something was off.
“Why didn’t you get one for yourself?”
“I already ate.”
“With who?”
“You never consider that I might’ve eaten alone? Sometimes on weekends when I don’t feel like cooking I come here for a sandwich. It’s a hobby.”
“And your niece?”
“She’s… Aunt probably fed her, right?”
Hyeonji shot me a look that said, What kind of irresponsible uncle are you? Did I really have to take this kind of heat from the person least qualified to lecture anyone about responsibility?
“You eat too. Eating alone looks weird.”
“I already ate, so why should I eat again? And since when do you care what other people think?”
“Eat.”
“….”
For someone who strutted around full of “I want to be different” bravado, she apparently still didn’t want to look like the lonely zoo monkey stuffing its face by itself. I had no choice but to buy a second sandwich and juice and come back to the table.
“I was a little surprised. Figured you’d never contact me again.”
“Why?”
“Why…? Because of me you couldn’t buy the bike. That’s why you stormed off mad that day, right?”
“Not at all.”
“Really? But I basically stole your bike.”
“I told you to buy it, so you bought it. Why are you making me sound like some weirdo?”
“….”
So she had never been angry at me? The last few days of radio silence had just been her being busy?
“I thought about it.”
“You? Thinking?”
“You want me to choke you?”
“It was a joke—why the death glare… Anyway, what did you think about?”
So Hyeonji actually fretted over things? And fretted hard enough to go days without contacting me and then show up like this?
Hoo…
She took a deep breath that didn’t suit her at all. Her throat bobbed once; she looked seriously nervous.
“When you quit school you’re leaving home, right?”
“Obviously. I’ll probably clear out of this neighborhood completely. Maybe drop by Aunt’s place once in a while.”
That way Hyeonji wouldn’t come looking for me. If we ran into each other by accident I could just blame Aunt.
“Are you taking your niece with you?”
“Leaving her with Aunt forever doesn’t feel right. But don’t worry too much—daycare systems these days are solid; they keep kids until evening.”
“She’s still little, though.”
“She’s been doing housework since she was tiny, so she’s sharper than you’d think. Why do you keep asking?”
“….”
Hyeonji paused to steady herself. Normally she ran her mouth with the brain filter switched off; today she was dragging her feet for some reason.
Then she finally answered—with words I had never imagined, words I should never have imagined.
“I’ll live with you too.”
“…?”
It took a long moment just to process the sentence. I understood the words themselves, but the meaning still refused to land.
“Uh, Hyeonji? I’m a little lost here. What did you just say?”
“I was already planning to leave home. So let’s live together.”
“Have you lost your mind? Why would you leave home? And even if you did, why with me?”
“I’ll pay half the rent. Splitting it saves money.”
“Who said anything about money? Do you even understand what living with me would mean?”
“Living together.”
“….”
Rare was the girl who could reduce “let’s cohabit with a guy” to something that simple. If she were carrying my kid maybe, but we had zero justification for sharing a roof—less than zero.
“D-does that even make sense? No matter how easy I look, we’re still a guy and a girl. How can two people who aren’t even twenty just decide to live together?”
“There’s your niece.”
“True, but people will look at us weird.”
“Why would they look at us weird?”
“Because…”
Anyone with eyes would see a pseudo-family. She and I would inevitably end up in the dad-and-mom slots, which basically made us high-school parents, right?
“Look, Hyeonji. I know you slept through sex-ed class, but when two healthy teenagers of opposite sexes live under one roof, something always happens.”
“Something?”
“How am I supposed to say it out loud? Basically the same thing that happened to my older brother.”
“You want to do that with me?”
“Of course not! Why would I do anything with you? But everyone around us will assume we are.”
“You don’t have to care what people think.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do! And more importantly, have you thought about the bad influence on my niece?”
“I’ll treat her well.”
“….”
Nothing got through. The steel in her eyes told me she really had spent the last few days thinking about nothing else.
But. How. Could. I. Possibly. Live. With. Her?
I wasn’t nineteen—I was thirty-four. And that “niece” wasn’t a kindergartener; she was Kang Harin!
“Haa… Hyeonji. Our situations are different. I’m leaving because I don’t have parents to look after me. You still have a dad.”
“I don’t want to live with Dad.”
“Sure, not right now. But puberty ends eventually. What if you leave and then want to go back? If he finds out you didn’t just live alone but lived with a guy like me, how hurt do you think he’d be?”
“Hurt?”
“Obviously. If my daughter did that I’d drop dead of rage that same day—”
“I’d like that.”
“….”
Completely the wrong approach. Shoving the “Dad shield” at a girl whose only goal was revenge on her father just poured gasoline on the fire.
“Haa… Fine. I’ll rethink quitting school. So stop talking about suddenly running away from home.”
“Why the sudden change of heart?”
“You have to ask? Honestly I’m against you leaving even after graduation. But if because of me you throw away your high-school diploma too, how am I supposed to live with that guilt?”
“You don’t have to care.”
“I do care, so how am I supposed to stop caring?”
Imagine a fly buzzing around your head in summer. You can chant “There is no fly… there is no fly…” all you want—it’s still just covering your eyes and pretending.
This was instinct. Meeting Hyeonji had been pure bad luck, but once she became someone I knew, there were things an “adult” simply couldn’t ignore.
How was I supposed to sit back and watch her become a middle-school dropout runaway because of me? Then Hyeonji’s eyes lit up like a puppy’s.
“You care?”
“Of course I care.”
“I care too.”
“Huh?”
She turned her head away again. Lips twitching with clear reluctance, she finally forced the words out.
“I don’t know why, but I care.”
We finished our short talk and left the café. Hyeonji must have been starving; she demolished the sandwich so thoroughly I just handed her mine as well.
All right, time to go our separate ways. After I sent her off, where exactly was I supposed to kill the rest of the day…
“So what are we doing now?”
Apparently she had no intention of letting me leave. The question about our next schedule came out so naturally that I briefly lost the power of speech.
“What do you mean ‘we’… What is there to do? You go home, I go home.”
“Don’t wanna.”
“Uh… then maybe take a walk while listening to those old songs you like?”
“Didn’t bring my headphones.”
“….”
So that was why she looked so different today—not just the missing bandana, but the absence of those signature oversized headphones. Still, what exactly were the two of us supposed to do now?
“The bike…”
“The bike? You’re saying you want to ride the bike with me right now? That seems a little much.”
“That’s what you bought it for.”
Was she seriously teaching me the original purpose of a motorcycle? Absolutely not.
To ride it I’d have to go home first. That meant risking a run-in with Harin, and the unprecedented disaster of her calling me “Dad?” right in front of Hyeonji.
“Do we have to ride that? The world is full of things to ride—why a bike on a day like today?”
“Like what?”
“For example… a bus? You’ve never taken a bus all the way to the end of Seoul, have you? Sometimes that kind of experience is nice too.”
“….”
She clearly hated the idea. Her lower lip jutted out like a big dog whose snack had been stolen. But I held the height advantage; no amount of pouting would change anything.
In the end she trailed after me with a reluctant air. Hands stuffed in her vest pockets, face full of complaints—yet strangely she never actually said the word “no.”
Vrrrm—
We climbed onto a random bus and headed for the very back seats. Sitting side by side, we talked while watching the scenery roll past the window.
“Come to think of it, you said you had a part-time job. Guess you get weekends off?”
“Only weekdays. Three to nine.”
“So that’s why you were at the library that day? Finished work and wanted a smoke?”
“Tastes better there.”
She only smoked six cigarettes a day and claimed to know “taste”? Then again, the low volume probably meant her sense of smell hadn’t been ruined yet.
“What kind of job is it, anyway?”
“None of your business.”
“None of my business? Between us there’s nothing we can’t talk about.”
“W-what’s ‘between us’ supposed to mean?”
She whipped her head toward me in sudden fluster. But think about it: we were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the back seat of a bus, the distance between us measured in centimeters.
I’d already been turned ninety degrees away, drowning in her shampoo scent. When our eyes met at nose-touching range, I couldn’t even breathe.
“I mean… we’re friends, right? So you can tell me that much, can’t you?”
“….”
Hyeonji snapped her head back toward the window. The motion sent her hair flying, drowning me even deeper in shampoo.
Regardless, she tossed out the answer like it was nothing.
“McHonald’s…”
“McHonald’s? Wait, are you a delivery rider there? Hey! Who’s the store manager? What kind of lunatic hires a kid without a license to deliver—”
“I work in the store.”
“In the store? So you’re flipping patties?”
“I work the counter!”
She raised her voice like she couldn’t take any more. Those fierce eyes glared at me, yet somehow the feeling wasn’t unpleasant.
“That doesn’t make sense. You’re telling me you put on the uniform and the hat and then, in the sweetest voice, go ‘Here’s your Factos Burger set~’?”
“Got a problem with that?”
“….”
No problem at all. Only regret that I’d lived to thirty-four without ever witnessing the scene. The gap was just too huge.
Honestly, the idea of her holding down a proper part-time job had already been hard to swallow. Given how she lived and died by pride, I figured she’d stick to physical labor that kept her out of sight.
But no. She was a counter staffer at the place where kindness was life itself—McHonald’s.
Picture her in full uniform, barking out burger orders in that gravelly deep voice.
“Huh? Then how come nobody’s ever seen you? At least one kid from Cheonji High must go to McHonald’s.”
“Drive-thru.”
Ah. So even Hyeonji, as the self-proclaimed Queen of the Street, was putting in secret effort to protect her image.
Working the drive-thru meant she wouldn’t run into any students for at least the rest of the year.
“Why there of all places? The pay isn’t even that great.”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Don’t tell me you fell for the ‘we give you free leftover burgers after closing’ line?”
“….”
She didn’t answer. But the way her earlobes tightened and her whole body stiffened told me I’d scored a direct hit.
“Come to think of it, you seem to have elementary-school taste buds. Giblet soup is one thing, but never having tried sundae-guk? Seriously?”
“So what? I don’t like trying new food.”
“Looking at you, you’d chew through rebar, yet your pickiness is off the charts?”
“What do I look like?”
She narrowed her eyes sharply, refusing to let that one slide. The problem was that once she asked, I had almost nothing left to say.
“Just… you look like someone who can eat anything.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Looking like you can eat anything means looking like you can eat anything. What further explanation do you need?”
“Who else looks like me?”
She clearly suspected some low-down insult was hiding in my words—probably figured I was mocking her rough masculinity.
“If I had to pick someone… Olivia Hussey.”
“Don’t know that weeb character.”
“Why is Olivia Hussey a weeb character? Hard to explain. If you’re curious, look her up yourself.”
“….”
Hyeonji huffed and pulled out her phone. She typed “Olivia Hussey” into the search bar, eyes going wide enough to split the skin, then hastily shut the screen off.
“You’re messing with me.”
“Why would that be messing with you? I’ve thought so since the first time I saw you.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Of course she is. Mom told me my late dad was crazy about her when he was young.”
“Then why say I look like her?”
“Because you do. Why are you so suspicious?”
“It’s a lie.”
“What do I gain by lying to you right now?”
“You just think it’s funny to tease me.”
“….”
Hyeonji shook her head like she couldn’t believe a word. Then she turned away completely and sealed her lips shut.
But I meant it. The Olivia Hussey I’d only ever seen on old screens was nothing compared to the one sitting right beside me—someone I could see, feel, and smell.
I just couldn’t say that out loud, so I named a look-alike instead. Because I was someone who was never allowed to say, or even admit, that she was beautiful.