The Mask
"How's it look?"
"It's all right."
"Yeah? Doesn't seem too worn out?"
"I don't really do weights anyway. It should be fine for training."
"It's been a while for you too, hasn't it?"
"Yes. So I thought teaching the kids would be just the thing, to get my feel for it back."
Seo Eunchae stood quietly with her eyes on the ring at the center of the gym, and even from behind I could tell she had sunk into the feeling of it. I gave her a moment, watching her, and then spoke.
"Then come here. Let's have a cup of coffee."
"Yes."
Once we were in the office I watched her take the sofa and headed for the tea table. I set about the coffee this way and that, and asked without turning around. Once the gym's doing better, maybe I'll ask them to put in a capsule machine. Brewing a pour-over after all this time is a pain.
"You didn't take sugar, right?"
"...Yes."
The answer came a beat late, and I wondered if her taste had changed in the meantime, so I asked again.
"Want me to put some in?"
"Ah, no..."
"...? Why the weird answer?"
"It's just... surprising, seeing you brew coffee, hyung. I'll take it plain. Just hot, please. No sugar."
"All right."
I'd asked on the off chance, and thankfully it wasn't that. If she'd gotten stirred up over a cheap bit like remembering how she took her coffee, I might have been disappointed in Seo Eunchae. I drew two cups, set one down in front of her, and sat on the opposite side.
"You seem to be doing well. You look good. Somehow you look even better than when you were in school."
"This is what happens when you eat and loaf. Once I set it all down, the world turned out to be getting along just fine."
More precisely, there had been one enormous change. And it struck me then that it hadn't even been that many days since I'd walked away from the corporate grind, and still I'd managed to stay busy.
"...I worried a lot."
"...Yeah. What's this, all of a sudden. Not staying in character?"
"We're not at school anymore."
"Then quit calling me hyung."
Seo Eunchae, who had been reaching for her cup with a look of pure disbelief, turned her eyes on me.
"What."
"...You told me to call you that."
"Don't remember."
"...Unbelievable."
"Anyway, it overlaps with Changsu and it's confusing, so change it."
"Who's confused?"
"Someone."
Maybe she thought the pinky I was using to tip my coffee was pointing at the ceiling, because her gaze went up and then came back down.
"...? Did you find religion?"
"Something like it. Then call me sunbae."
"...I don't want to. We're not at school. And you don't even come to the club meetups."
"Don't you know once a sunbae, always a sunbae?"
"Ugh, seriously. Say that to kids these days and you'll catch a beating."
"Kids don't even say 'catch a beating.' You're on this side of it too, you brat. Where do you think you're slipping off to?"
"I am not. I'm completely MZ. The kids genuinely think I'm their friend."
"You just pulled a parent joke on me."
"Wh-when did I?"
"Weren't you teasing me that my mom's dead?"
"When did I! Is that what that was supposed to mean?! You're twisting people again."
"There's no way you're MZ. And the MZ you're talking about don't call themselves that."
"You really still don't let a single word go."
"And what reason do I have to lose?"
"I'm still in my twenties! And in three months I'll be mid-twenties!"
Oh. Right. My birthday's in July, so am I turning twenty-eight? The thought lifted me for a second. I'd been living as if I'd forgotten. Wait. Then Rahee's twenty-one. Hyunji's twenty. No—I ought to ask their birthdays first. I nearly dropped straight into guilt. Hold on. If Hyunji's birthday falls late, does that mean she and Rahee are the same age, even for a little while? I'd think about that later.
"Well, well. Get a little older and you start knocking your sunbae's age. Pick up a doctorate and throw your manners out with it? Was the thing that heavy?"
"There you go, blowing it out of proportion again."
"Right. What MZ person drops 'blowing it out of proportion' in the middle of a conversation? If you'd said 'false advertising,' at least it would've been funny."
"...That's funny?"
"If it isn't funny, you let it go. Why get annoyed? A bit is something you keep throwing until one of them lands."
"You know you look frivolous, right?"
"Don't you know baseball? Hit three out of ten and you're national-team material. Land one and it's a home run. Come to think of it, it must be about time for the WBC."
"It's already over. And what on earth are we even talking about?"
I let out a short laugh at the mutinous look on Seo Eunchae's face as she clutched her head and started, little by little, to get irritated. It brought the old days back. She could endure anything else, but she had never been able to stand it when the subject kept sliding off somewhere strange. Still the same.
"Then will you call me oppa?"
"...O-oppa...?"
"Well, what else. If you're thinking of calling me Mr. Shinwoo, get out of here. I'll just learn kickboxing and coach it myself."
"There's no way that would work."
"The first one, or the second?"
"Both, obviously!"
"All right. I'll stop."
She let out a sigh and answered while looking at me, and her face was still cold. Close to expressionless.
"There's something I want to ask."
"What? I'm the one who has to look good for you now. Say whatever you want."
"...Oppa, why did you hate me so much?"
She had hesitated over the word, but once she decided, she called me oppa cleanly. Same temperament as ever. And there was a misunderstanding in it. I hadn't disliked Seo Eunchae. Didn't she know that if I had, I wouldn't even bother with this kind of back-and-forth? People really never know their own face.
"Don't you remember? The day you first came to the club."
"...Of course I do. It was the day I first met you, oppa."
The nuance was a little off, but I answered while quietly turning that day over.
"You should have greeted the seniors properly that day. They were your direct sunbaes, same department and all. Do you have any idea how much a first impression matters?"
"...Don't tell me."
"What? You get it now?"
"...You were covering for me?"
"Yeah. Why else would I chew you out? Why would I scold you for no reason? It's a hassle."
"...You did? Then everything after that, too..."
"...Are you actually smart? If I hadn't scolded you right there, the rumor would have gone through the whole department."
"So... that's why you did it...? Because of me..."
"Yeah. Stubborn on top of it, and you wouldn't fix it. All that effort for nothing."
That incident had already fastened the first button of our relationship, and that was the larger part of it. I ended up in a position where I had no choice but to take her to task over every little thing, like a senior in the military. But if I hadn't, Seo Eunchae really would have ended up on the outside—not only in the club, but in the department too. Because I'd taken the villain's part, those seniors had gotten along with her well enough, as I remembered it, so I didn't think the effort had been entirely wasted.
"Same thing today. Is greeting people still that hard?"
"...I can't do it well. It's awkward."
"If a greeting feels awkward, isn't that a problem with your social sense? Direct sunbaes especially—you're going to be seeing them for years. They're not exactly strangers."
"They are strangers. They don't help my life one bit anyway."
"So I'm just a stranger who doesn't help you one bit, too?"
"Ah, no... That's not what I meant..."
A sigh came out of me on its own at that cynical tone, the same one from the day I had first been alone with Seo Eunchae. I knew people didn't change, but this was hopeless. Looked like the effort really had been wasted.
"...I'm not saying that cynical side of you is a bad thing, but keep the basic courtesy. You're talented and you're pretty, so I figured you couldn't help living up to the face, but if you keep on like this you're really going to get into trouble."
"...M-me?"
"Who else. Don't play dumb. You know that's a little obnoxious, right?"
"Ah..."
"And. At some point you started wearing the mask well in front of other people and getting along just fine, didn't you?"
"...Yes... It is a mask, though."
"How nice it would be if you just lived like that. Not the mask—sincerely. You're going to have to use it later anyway, so what's the point of wearing it out now?"
I'd said it lightly, but anyone could have seen it was true. Watching me quietly lift my coffee, Seo Eunchae slowly parted her lips.
"...Doing this after so long, it feels like I'm back in the club room."
"You're a problem too. Do you like getting scolded? There won't be any more of this from now on, so don't worry. I'll be careful too."
"...I don't want that."
At those words I stopped the cup on its way to my mouth. What didn't she want?
"...Please keep scolding me like that from now on, too."
"...What?"
"...I missed it. Hyung—no. Oppa's way of talking..."
That was the moment. A small crack ran through Seo Eunchae's icy expression, and a very faint heat haze drifted from her lips. I had already learned the haze could bloom even without us having crossed that line, but that wasn't what mattered now. No way. Surely not. Her, of all people.
"...I wanted to hear it so badly..."
"...It's not that, right?"
"...Yes?"
"...Never mind. Anyway, you're out in the world now, and I'm basically unemploy—"
"Please don't say it like that."
She had cut me off to answer, and when I looked at her face she went on.
"You were the only one who got angry at me and pointed things out like that, oppa. Everyone else just praises me..."
"...Well, they would. You're that outstanding."
"...From now on, too... please scold me like that..."
She had been watching me with a tense look while my answer came late, and when a thin smile spread over that face I lost the words for it. So that was it. I understood now. Cut a whole year off a doctorate and job offers ought to pour in from everywhere—I'd wondered why she was coming here. Had it really been because of me? Not to get revenge. Probably. Even without that heat haze, it was a look I couldn't have failed to read.
"...All right. But is that all?"
"...Yes?"
She was only asking it back, but it was already too late. She could probably feel where my question was going, and was still telling herself no way, surely not. That's how smart people are. More often than you'd think, they believe their own thoughts won't be found out.
"You like that?"
I asked it with two meanings at once. Someone with Seo Eunchae's instincts and her head would understand well enough. At my words the hand lifting her cup stopped dead, and her pupils trembled, the fluster plain in her eyes. Because of it, the icy expression cracked a little further.
"Y-yes?"
"You understood, and you're still in the habit of asking again?"
"No. I'm not."
"You know this about me. I loathe lies. I'm asking one last time. Do you like that?"
"...Ah..."
The change that passed over Seo Eunchae's face in that moment was something else. Under a tone close to pressure, the expression that had briefly gone soft and hazy shifted back into fluster, then returned to her usual blankness. But there was one thing she couldn't hide. A small bloom of it was beginning to spill not only from her lips, but from around the nape of her neck.
"Should I scold you over things that make sense, or should I pick faults even where there aren't any?"
"...H-how did you kn—"
Unable to finish, Seo Eunchae quietly bit her lip. She was probably turning over the mistake she had just made.
"...I—I thought I was hiding it well..."
"Yeah. Late as it is to say it, you're impressive. I only just found out myself."
"...Yes?"
"I thought you really hated me. Every time you looked at me, your face just went stiff."
"I—I couldn't help it..."
"Yeah. I get it now."
So. She liked being scolded. There didn't seem to be any actual play yet, and I wasn't sure of the full shape of it, but a bent close to masochism was clear enough. Her expressionless mask had been impressive enough that I was only catching on now. Had she only looked short on social sense because she was using it to hide her own proclivity, and not to get by among people? Knowing, especially, that in front of me she had looked blank and cold because she was straining so hard to manage her face, the strength went out of me.
"Be exact. Is it the pressure, or the restless ache?"
At my words Seo Eunchae—flustered enough to clutch the denim over her tight thighs—answered quietly.
"I don't know. I really don't. It just... suddenly."
"Since when?"
"...The first day. When you glared at me and got angry..."
"What did it feel like?"
By then she couldn't look at me. She stared only at the ripples trembling in her cup, and answered quietly.
"...My chest clenched tight... My heart started pounding, and then, ah, down there..."
"You got wet. And?"
Startled, Seo Eunchae jerked her gaze up, and the moment our eyes met she flinched and dropped it again.
"...A-and... little by little, the h-heat... I started to feel it... and then the second I met your eyes, oppa, from low in my stomach..."
"It burst?"
"...Yes..."
"Then have you ever done it on purpose?"
At my words she swallowed hard, and by then the mask and the blank expression had vanished from her face entirely. Flushed red all the way to her ears, that pale face, burning now, looked like a woman's at last.