Mediation
The instant he caught the sound of the elevator, he shoved Rahee off him—and almost in the same breath, the gym’s doorbell chimed. He eased her back with a gentler push, schooling his face as he went, and wiped the slick from his fingers on a towel as if he had only just finished a set. Rahee stared at him, utterly blank. Fortunately she was in black leggings, so the wetness didn’t show all that much.
“Hello.”
“...Ah... hel...lo.”
“...?”
Only then did Rahee’s gaze swing toward the bell at the entrance. The woman who had come in offered her a greeting, and Rahee just stared at the member in a daze before dipping her head. The woman tilted hers, puzzled, and disappeared into the locker room, but Rahee still couldn’t bring herself to look up.
“Go wash up. And check the CCTV.”
“...Okay...”
Regret and a hollow letdown soaked her voice. She answered him and still couldn’t make her feet move. He let out a short laugh and dropped his voice.
“You’re not getting off? Then I’ll go by myself.”
“...What?”
“Wasn’t this what you wanted?”
“...Yes! J-just a second!”
The smile that broke over her face was so bright his own heart gave a hard lurch. He’d worried he might have teased a girl with no experience far too hard, but the smile she turned on him had not a shadow in it, as if none of his torment had mattered at all.
“...I’m not running off, so take your time.”
He said it with another quiet laugh as she scrambled to gather her tablet, towel, and water bottle, but Rahee only nodded hard, buoyant, and strode off toward the front desk with long, eager steps. He’d known she was a little simple, but he couldn’t for the life of him say why she looked so cute today. Innocent, maybe. Artless.
He washed on legs that wouldn’t quite hold him, changed, and came down to the desk to find her already waiting, fresh and soft from the shower. The moment he appeared she looked at him with her whole face full of expectation, but he walked out of the gym without a word. At the elevator she came to stand beside him, watching his mood and twisting her hands together. Everything about her announced that she wanted to hold his hand, and he nearly laughed.
“Outside. People are looking.”
“Ah, ah... okay.”
The gym had filled up quite a bit by then. It made no difference to him, but Rahee already had a bad rumor clinging to her, so the considerate thing was his to do. She seemed to catch his meaning at last; the anxious look fell away, and she quietly took her place behind him. They rode down, and only once the building had slipped out of sight did she come scurrying up to his side. He took her hand without a word.
“Ah...”
“You like it that much?”
“...Yes. I-it’s not that getting off work is the good part...”
“I know. It’d be better if you just said it straight.”
She rushed the answer out like an excuse, and the aftershock of his teasing back in the gym was clearly still on her. When he replied with an easy smile she finally caught on and shot him a brief glare—then he squeezed her hand, and just like that she went shy again, stealing glances at him as if none of it had happened. A sigh of relief left her, and she spoke.
“Honestly, you tease me every single time...”
“But it was fun, right?”
“I-I was so nervous... I thought my heart was going to burst.”
“The place adds to it, doesn’t it? And that kind of tension is a little thrilling.”
“...D-doing that at work...”
“You didn’t seem to mind when you showed me your chest.”
“Th-that’s different. Even if somebody saw, I could just say I was fixing my clothes, so it wouldn’t really matter...”
By the time they left the building behind, the sky had gone a deep cobalt. He leaned in toward Rahee, who walked with her head bowed and his hand in hers, looking thoroughly embarrassed.
“For someone who came on to me, aren’t you being a little too coy?”
“...C-came on to you...?”
“Where’d all that nerve from the highball line go?”
“I-it wasn’t like that...”
“Oh? So I imagined it? Should I just turn around and go home?”
“N-no... please don’t, just...”
She clutched his hand in a hurry, and he smiled as he murmured back.
“Want a hint?”
She looked at him. He met her eyes without wavering.
“...I-I’ll try.”
“No point hiding it. I can tell everything anyway, you know?”
“Seriously... you’re mean.”
He had pitched the whisper deliberately over the top. She was glaring, lips pushed out, eyes dropping—and that was the moment the phone in his arms started to ring.
“Hold on.”
“Ah... okay.”
She looked plainly disappointed when he let go, but she closed her mouth and fell into a slow walk beside him while he answered. Hyunji’s name was on the screen. Only then did it hit him that, aside from the morning, he had barely answered her messages all day.
Ah. I really dropped the ball on this one.
If you spent the night with someone—your first time, no less—and then your partner suddenly went silent, and you put yourself in her place... God, it was awful. She would have turned the whole day over and over, inventing everything she must have done wrong. The guilt landed harder than he liked. Hyunji had held out, too. She had waited the entire day and only called once it was fully night. She had a possessive streak; he could imagine exactly how hard she had been trying not to.
“Yeah, Hyunji.”
“Ah, oppa...”
He could hear it at once: her voice had gone small and sunken. This one really was on him. He should have been paying attention.
“Aigoo, I’m sorry. I was pretty busy today.”
“Sniff... it’s okay...”
“Were you crying?”
“Ah, no... B-but hearing your voice made me feel better. I’m okay now.”
She said so, but her voice was still thick and wet. He was going to have to soothe her properly. He was sorry to Rahee, but he caught her eye in a silent apology and quietly took her hand again. She squeezed back and turned her face away, and only then did he speak to Hyunji—brighter, a little higher, as if nothing at all were wrong.
“You won’t believe this. I suddenly ended up with a part-time job.”
“Huh? Where?”
“You might know it. There’s a café behind the bus stop where we met.”
“Ah, I know it. Their coffee is really good.”
“You do? I’m kind of close with the owner, and she asked me to help out for a bit.”
“Oh... I see.”
“Yeah. And, well... for some reason way too many people showed up...”
He kept the talk small and ordinary, the little things from the day, and bit by bit Hyunji’s voice brightened. Laughter started slipping through; she was nearly herself again. The problem arrived from the other side.
“...”
The hand holding his had gone stiff. The fidgeting was gone without a trace. And what he felt off her lowered profile wasn’t embarrassment. It was a thin unhappiness. Something closer to misery.
Hm.
He listened to Hyunji chatter on and studied Rahee. Jealousy? And if it wasn’t that, then what? He couldn’t see her face. He stopped, and Rahee, who had been walking beside him with no strength in it, flinched and stopped with him. A light tug turned her toward him, and he looked quietly into her eyes. When she tried to dodge his gaze he tugged again. Only under that urging did she slowly lift her head and meet him.
...This might actually be worth trying.
There was no jealousy in her. Jealousy would have needed anger, or irritation, and all he found in her eyes was sadness and gloom—or the helplessness that shows when self-esteem and confidence start to sink. The timing wasn’t what he had planned, but it was something they were going to have to face sooner or later. Better to settle it before Rahee’s feelings, or Hyunji’s, began to rot. If they couldn’t accept it, he could deal with that when it came. He was confident he could clean up after himself. The only reason he could stand in front of both of them this boldly, teasing as he pleased, was that there was no lie in it. A small lie called another, and sooner or later it shrank you from the inside. He couldn’t live that way.
“So today, just like you said, I followed my heart, and the professor praised me so much. And even the hard moves, I got all of them...”
“Hyunji.”
“Ah, yes, oppa. I talked too much, didn’t I? I was just happy...”
The canary-bright chatter on the other end vanished at once. Rahee, who had been staring blankly down at the sidewalk bricks with her head bowed, jerked her chin up and seized his hand hard. Panic flashed across her face; she shook her head, small and frantic. He only looked at her, steady, and didn’t look away.
“Ah, ah... I-I see. I-I’m sorry. C-can I ask who...?”
A small sniff came through the receiver. He pretended not to hear it, kept his eyes on Rahee, and went on.
“Yeah. I told you I work out, right? She’s the trainer there.”
“...Yeah... I-I see...”
He took in Hyunji’s drained little answer and the look in Rahee’s eyes, her lips pressed tight, and slowly opened his mouth. His own heart was beating a little faster. Even so, he put on the most ordinary voice he had, the tone of something that went without saying, and committed.
“...Huh?”
“...Eh?”
The air was far too grave for him to crack an ew and play it for a laugh, so he swallowed it. He had chosen to go straight through the front. He had his reasons: the lack of jealousy in Rahee’s eyes, the kindness in Hyunji’s heart, and—thin as it was—the simple fact of being a man in this world. He judged it a fair enough opening. And there was no better teacher than seeing a thing for yourself.
Find out firsthand.
If he couldn’t get past an opening this natural, he would at least know that the next time something like this came up, he would have to approach it with a great deal more care. If he failed to properly mediate the women he was holding, the happy sex life he was dreaming of stood a very good chance of blossoming into a whole thicket of complications. He needed to confirm that possibility with his own eyes.