Fanatic (1)
This was exactly why I'd been dreading seeing Sehee.
It had to have been over an hour by now.
I couldn't even move my own body, so I had no choice but to sit through every last word of the lecture pouring down from right beside me.
Not that I was about to hold it against her. You'd have to be out of your mind to snap at someone who was worried about you.
She was a woman of this gender-reversed world, no question — and yet the rims of her eyes had gone red. She was holding back tears.
I felt terrible. Being worried over was part of being in someone's life. Keeping the bad news from her until the very end… looking at it that way, maybe I'd only been thinking of myself.
Sehee had been the closest to me at the orphanage, the one who'd followed me around the most. At the very least, I should have told her.
"Sehee. Come here."
"…Huh?"
I had her come closer — she'd been sitting on the floor beside the bed — and wrapped my arms around her. The angle was awkward; she ended up burying her face clumsily against my chest.
I told her I was sorry, carefully, and I felt her breathing settle a little.
…Was it settling? It almost seemed like it had gotten a little rougher.
Anyway.
After that she pulled away, her face faintly flushed — maybe she was embarrassed about tearing up in front of a guy, then getting hugged.
"I'll do the dishes. And tidy up the room a bit. You just rest there, Oppa."
"Huh? I can do that later. Why don't you rest with me?"
I meant it, at least somewhat — but one look at Sehee's eyes and it was obvious she had no intention of backing down.
Getting hurt after insisting on running parcel-loading shifts by myself, then calling my little sister over and putting her on dish duty… as a twenty-three-year-old man, it was pretty pathetic. But stuck on this bed, I didn't have the strength to stop her anyway.
"No. I'm not giving in, so don't even try."
"Nn… alright."
"Oh. And they say lying on your stomach makes it worse when your back hurts."
"Seriously?!"
No wonder it had never healed properly before. There was a reason people said you had to take internet medical advice with a grain of salt.
With Sehee's help I groaned my way onto my back, and she headed to the sink and started on the dishes.
My place is pretty small. I don't think it causes any real problems day to day, but any sound carries through the whole apartment. The clatter of Sehee doing the dishes filled the room.
Even a glance told you her movements were clumsy, and the noise that came with them was anything but quiet. And yet, somehow, listening to it settled something in my chest.
How long had it been since anyone else was in my home? Ari hadn't even come inside yet.
She'd come all the way from the orphanage because she was worried about me, and then she'd started helping with the housework. Having someone who would go that far for me… it made me genuinely happy. Was this what people meant by being blessed with good people?
One extra person in a house that had nothing much to it, and the whole feeling of the place changed. I never thought this cramped room would ever feel cozy. The version of me who'd always tried to handle everything alone, even when things got hard, suddenly felt pretty stupid.
That was the thought that came to me.
"It's like we're a married couple."
Heh. What was I even thinking, with a kid like her.
The words had slipped out under my breath, but they'd been buried under the noise anyway.
That night, for the first time in a very long while, I drifted off with a truly peaceful heart.
Three-thirty in the morning. I'd already blown past my usual bedtime by a wide margin.
At last, this tedious meeting was over.
"…Alright. Go on."
…Tired of a meeting I ran every single day. Was I losing my original passion?
No — even so. We'd already pushed the meeting back by several days. Tomorrow was Sunday, my regular off-stream day. Couldn't this have waited until then?
Reason knew perfectly well that was nonsense. Instinct just kept complaining anyway.
Still. It wasn't a situation I was happy about.
This week, Yuhan's stream — or more precisely, Yuhan's face — had given off a completely different atmosphere from usual.
The Yuhan who always streamed with an easygoing energy and a bright, lively expression had suddenly become someone else entirely. The dark circles sitting heavy under his eyes, the languid voice that sounded like it was melting with fatigue, the way his movements had slowed now that all that liveliness was gone — it even looked, in some strange way, seductive.
How to put it. The things he did without thinking at all looked like they were designed to entrance a woman.
That first day, I'd been so worried by the change that I'd texted him. He must have been busy with something; the reply only came later, saying nothing was wrong.
And me? He'd said he was fine. I could hardly interrogate him about it, so I just enjoyed his stream.
In my own way.
Yuhan's stream, at its core, had a remarkably free atmosphere. Chat that would have gotten a ban ages ago from any other male streamer, he laughed off — and more often than not, he was the one leaning in with the raunchy bits himself.
Lately in particular, with that decadent allure of his spilling over instead of merely showing, the sexually charged comments aimed at him had exploded.
And.
Not that I'm proud of it, but in the middle of that endless feast of dirty chat… Aristo235. I was there too.
Once, on a day when the stress had piled up past the breaking point, I'd typed comments like that on an alt account — and the rush of pleasure had been staggering.
A transgression that crossed a line I'd never crossed in my life. And the target of it: a man with a warm heart that didn't match his looks, and who was far too handsome.
Afterward I'd sunk into a considerable amount of guilt and self-loathing, but the sensation itself had stayed in me. It was a pleasure I couldn't forget.
That guilt had lasted all the way through the night Yuhan slept at my place… but my mindset had changed now.
The day he went home, I'd gone to see Junhyuk, and after that — I still didn't know why — my head had gone strangely clear.
There wouldn't be a person who hid behind anonymity to sexually harass someone they liked, or their partner. Of course I'd never done anything like that to my boyfriend… to Junhyuk.
And then a memory had surfaced.
A conversation among my friends in high school.
"This asshole's always running his mouth like this."
"What, you little shit. If you're jealous, get lost."
"God, you idiots, I swear!"
I didn't particularly like letting swear words out of my mouth — not when I was thinking out loud, and not otherwise. My friends were free to curse however they wanted; I just didn't like doing it myself.
Anyway, whether I disliked swearing or not wasn't the point.
Conversation between friends. Of course it wasn't always like that — but friends throwing pointless insults at each other was an extremely common situation. It wasn't the kind of swearing that would drive anyone apart, and if anything it could bring people closer.
I'd also seen plenty of friends teasing each other about breast size. Thinking about it that way, wasn't "friendship" a relationship where you had a fairly generous amount of freedom in how you used language?
If anything, I was the weird one for having avoided swearing all this time.
Yuhan and I hadn't known each other that long, but we'd already built a closeness that could reasonably be called best friends.
This was normal between friends. Friends swore. Friends talked dirty. All the time.
So the sexually charged comments I was typing were just jokes between friends. Nothing I needed to feel guilty about.
Which was why, for those first two days after Yuhan changed, I typed away with enthusiasm.
His stream-end time, which had always been consistent, crept a little earlier in irregular little jumps. The meetings with the managers and editors that always followed a stream got pushed back. And my workday always ended with Yuhan's broadcast.
But eventually, the complaints boiled over.
Tomorrow was Yuhan's regular off-day. I'd really wanted to catch today's stream — but I couldn't put my own work off any longer.
I'd wanted to finish as fast as possible, but the backlog was huge, and now it was three-thirty in the morning. The work was finally done.
I was too sleepy to even drag myself to the shower.
Sleep first. As for the stream I missed today, I'd just have to catch the VOD tomorrow.
I was looking forward to tomorrow.
Hair? No time to wash it.
Clothes? This was not the moment to be picky.
Why — why had Yuhan gone to do parcel loading?
I resented my usual thinking: that donation alerts were a distraction in the middle of a game. I should have left them on anyway. Instead of ending the stream early after the gaming set, should I have run a radio broadcast? If I had, would I have heard the news?
And if I couldn't even manage that, I should have gotten up a little earlier today. Sleeping until past noon — what was that about?
All of it was hindsight. None of it mattered now.
Right now, getting to Yuhan's place as fast as possible was the only thing that did.
Why was the underground parking garage this big. Why did this road have a speed limit. I needed to turn right — why were those people crossing the crosswalk so slowly.
I honked in situations where I could have waited. I drifted a little over the speed limit, then a little more.
I reached Yuhan's neighborhood far faster than expected, and even so, today, no amount of speed was going to make me on time.
I should have been here yesterday.
I parked somewhere decent and headed for the address I'd heard last time.
The gloomy atmosphere blanketing the whole neighborhood swallowed me whole.
I was going to lose my mind.
Guilt made my steps slower and slower. What good was being a good student. What good was having a little money at home. I was the kind of bitch who couldn't even look after one of her own friends.
I finally arrived at Yuhan's place.
I knew it was poor manners for a woman to show up at a man's house out of nowhere. Men needed time to get ready before they saw anyone, after all.
But I was nowhere near sound enough of mind to be thinking about that.
I knocked, and there was a presence on the other side. Yuhan.
He wasn't coming out right away. His condition really must have been bad.
Or was he getting himself ready to come to the door?
"Yu-Yuhan… it's me!"
…Couldn't he at least say something? Was he in so much pain that even that was too much?
Should I call? Text, at least?
I was still standing there in a daze when a sound came from the door.
The first time I'd ever set foot in Yuhan's home. The situation was serious, and I still felt a flicker of anticipation about walking into a man's room. I was pathetic.
The door creaked open. He could stand, at least! That was a relief.
"Yuhan! Are you all ri—"
The person who came out was a woman I'd never seen before. No. That wasn't true.
I'd seen her once.
The day I first met Yuhan. A girl from the orphanage. The one who'd glared at me with open hostility until the very end.
Her name was… Sehee, I was sure.
She stood in the entryway, looking at me.
With the exact same eyes as that day.