The Border Collie Girl's Catfight
“I’m a virgin!”
My brain shut down on the spot.
My heart was hammering so hard I could actually hear the frantic drumbeat of my own pulse.
“Uh… yeah.”
What the hell was I supposed to say to that?
Sia was older, so it was entirely possible she’d had experience with men. Or maybe she simply hadn’t found the right person. Either way, my mind was spinning.
While my face was twisted in pure panic, Sia’s expression remained deadly serious.
“Want to walk me through how you reached that particular conclusion?”
Even though I spoke casually to her and she kept calling me Yujin-nim while clinging to me in the most overwhelming way possible, she was still three years older.
She had to have her reasons.
“I was scared you might misunderstand, Yujin-nim.”
“Misunderstand what? And you’re plenty old enough. Even if you had done it, it wouldn’t be weird, and I’m in no position to judge you for it.”
We weren’t even dating.
Besides, lying here underneath her like this was getting increasingly awkward.
She still looked a little tense, but now that the weight was off her chest her face had completely relaxed.
The restless, fidgety expression she always wore around me was gone.
There was only a woman in front of me now.
Not the unfortunate girl, not the magical girl Sia, not the Sia who followed me around.
Just an ordinary girl named Sia.
“Ah, it’s hot. Guess summer really is coming. Ice creeeeam!?”
As I tried to sit up, Sia grabbed my shoulders and forced me right back down.
“Coward.”
“What did I even do?”
“When you called my senior a rag and a sugar daddy earlier, I got scared you might think that I… that I had…”
I realized my mistake instantly.
A piece of trash like that—would he really have stopped at emotional abuse?
Hadn’t he sexually abused her too?
“I’m sorry. I should have worried about that side of it too. I just…”
“I didn’t,” she said, slapping both hands over my mouth.
“Senior only ever saw me as decoration. We dated, but he never once touched me. It wasn’t that he was practicing abstinence or anything.”
“He never did it with me, but he did it with other women. One day I came home and found him naked with someone else.”
“After that, even when I was in the house he’d call them over. Sometimes he’d tell me to leave for a while.”
“The funniest part is that even when my heart was being ripped apart, when I was throwing up and crying and passing out, I still couldn’t let go.”
“That’s how stupid I was.”
“I’m beyond saving, aren’t I?”
The confession was so heavy it left me stunned rather than horrified.
Physical pain or mental pain—which would you choose? There was no stupider question in the world.
It was cruel to think, but for someone like Sia, the physical pain might actually have been kinder.
Not because bodily wounds could heal.
But because Sia was so terribly fragile.
She was a balloon that would burst at the slightest sharp touch.
“No. If you were truly beyond saving, there wouldn’t have been any hope left. But you’re here with me now, aren’t you? You chose me over that senior bastard of your own free will.”
“Can I take that the wrong way?”
“Huh?”
Through the tears filling her eyes, I saw a soft, peaceful smile.
“I love you.”
“I… I’m…”
“I know. I’m not asking you to date me. I know the pus from that senior is still stuck inside me, and that I have no right to say something like this to you, Yujin-nim. I don’t want to make things difficult for you. I just didn’t want to hide how I really feel.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Sia smile like that—so light, so unburdened.
I felt something twist sharply in my chest.
It wasn’t pain or sadness.
It was happiness. Joy.
The vivid sorrow of failing to save Seoyeon.
The wound that still tore at me from never being able to meet her.
The past that kept tightening around my throat because I couldn’t protect her happiness.
The thousands upon thousands of “what if I had just…” thoughts.
And here was Sia, showing me a smile I had never managed to see before.
“Ahaha… haha… Thank you, Sia.”
“Huh? For what…?”
“It’s nothing. I just got overwhelmed for a second. It means what I did for you wasn’t wrong. This time, I really managed to save someone.”
If I kept talking, the tears would spill.
I could already feel my throat closing up.
“Haaaaam… ugh. Ah, I’m awake now.”
I forced a yawn, letting the tears escape under the cover of embarrassment.
When you’re feeling awkward, nothing beats a good yawn.
“Yujin-nim… are you crying?”
“Who’s crying? Pretty sure that was you, Sia.”
We looked at each other’s tears and broke into the stupidest smiles.
It was ridiculous. And we had never been happier.
“So what are you going to do about the house?”
“Yeah… They said someone’s living next door now. Even if we can’t sleep together like this every day, you won’t forget me, right?”
“How could I forget a puppy who doesn’t even dry her hair properly, calls me ‘nim-nim’ in public, and follows me around like this?”
“Someone confessed her feelings and still gets treated like a dog. I wasn’t expecting you to accept me, but it still feels like I just got rejected.”
“Ah, haha…”
All I wanted was for Sia not to get hurt.
If being rejected would hurt her… I’d have to think about that.
“Next time, I’ll protect you, Yujin-nim. Faster than Eunha. Before her.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
And so the next day, Sia left my side.
The girl who once seemed like she would die without me didn’t make a single gloomy or sorrowful face.
But I wasn’t upset.
Because the expression she wore as she left was that of someone who had finally set down every burden in her heart.
It was the expression I had always wanted to see from her, so I was happy.
…Of course, I was a little sulky that she couldn’t even shed a single tear, but only a little.
Really. Just a little.
“It’s going to be quieter now.”
The moment Sia was gone, Seo Eunha spoke up.
“I’d be fine if it got even quieter.”
“Wanna die?”
She was lying.
Without her around, things would feel empty.
I had zero intention of driving away a girl who was still carrying so many wounds.
“Did you like it?”
“Like what, all of a sudden?”
“Did you like the idea of taking her virginity?”
“Excuse me?”
I stared at Seo Eunha in disbelief, but she just looked back at me with that trademark apathetic expression of hers.
I wondered what the hell she was talking about—until I remembered.
‘I’m a virgin!’
That loud shout.
Wait, wasn’t she supposed to be asleep?
“Is it not summer but spring already?”
“Sia is like a little sister to me. A puppy.”
“She’s three years older. What little sister?”
I had nothing to say.
I’d gotten caught up in the mood and kept calling her Sia, saying I was supporting her, but she was still technically my senior.
Given our relationship, was it even okay to keep addressing each other this way?
Or was the relationship exactly why we should keep doing it?
While I was seriously contemplating alone, Seo Eunha had already vanished onto her designated spot on the sofa.
Some of us were over here having an existential crisis.
Ding-dong.
“Yeees.”
“It’s me, Han Yeeun~”
Han Yeeun, after quite a while.
I hadn’t seen her once since the day she ran into Seo Eunha.
I’d thought maybe her earlier words had been casual, but the very next day she’d brought side dishes, and above all, she texted me without fail.
All of that in just three days.
A new conversation started at least every three to four hours.
The saying “Don’t empty the fridge, but keep the lover’s seat empty” clearly hadn’t been empty words.
If Sia was a gentle Welsh corgi, Han Yeeun was a hyperactive border collie.
Now that I thought about it, her twintails did look a bit like border collie ears.
I hadn’t expected her to barge in like this.
“Come in.”
Last time I’d been so flustered I had no choice but to send her away, but now that I’d been living with Seo Eunha for a while, I was confident I could handle the situation.
We’d grown a lot closer after opening up to each other more.
“Like I told you before, Chaeeun is staying here for the semester.”
Song Chaeeun.
Since Sia knew Seo Eunha was a villain, she called her by her real name when we were alone, but she couldn’t do that in front of others. So she’d decided to keep using the name she’d come up with on the spot.
“Doesn’t matter. As long as I get to drink with Oppa, I’m good~”
A small girl walked into my house with light, cheerful steps and a bright smile.
She wasn’t even 160 centimeters tall, and her already baggy clothes looked even looser over her flat chest.
“Hey there, little one.”
“Oh, it’s the cheap unnie who claims to have a ‘deep relationship.’”
“Hmm? Isn’t my way of speaking better than your cheap one?”
Han Yeeun puffed out her chest and glared, refusing to back down. But Seo Eunha was nearly 170 centimeters tall.
Her chest was almost the size of a face, making the comparison with Han Yeeun’s pitiful size overwhelmingly one-sided.
No matter how you looked at it—
‘It’s a kitten trying to puff up at a big dog.’
“Well. When I think about Oppa having a ‘deep relationship’ with another woman, the fact that unnie only has a relatively shallow one means my way of speaking is actually cheaper. Congratulations on your victory.”
“What!?”
Han Yeeun turned to me with wide eyes, looking both tiny and adorable.
I glanced at Seo Eunha in a panic, but she didn’t pay the slightest attention to my gaze.
That…!