A Comfortable Friend
I ended up back at the reading room.
“Is it really okay to skip the academy and study alone? You said yourself that you needed to go. Didn’t you tell Mom and Dad because you thought doing it by yourself would be too hard?”
“...Yeah, well. After thinking about it, the academy just feels suffocating...”
“Huu. I see. Well, you have to study when your mind is at ease.”
Both my parents had always believed that studying should happen in a comfortable environment, so they simply nodded along without argument. They might regret it by the end of the year, but right now I was choosing the path that wouldn’t leave me with immediate regrets.
Since things had come to this, I would just have to ask Seo Jian to teach me properly, exactly like she’d first suggested.
And the person in question was currently...
“Kyaaaaack! It’s seriously so gross!”
She sat slumped against the reading room wall, clawing at her hair.
“Then stop with the pointless stubbornness and just wash. You know there’s a safe way to do it with your eyes closed, right? Like sitting down. It’s already the third day.”
“Ah, I said it’s fine. You can see when I change clothes anyway, can’t you? I never thought this would get fixed in three or four days. I hate saying it, but you’re not doing this because you want to look, are you?”
“Ah, forget it. I won’t say anything anymore.”
As that conversation showed, Seo Jian hadn’t washed in days. Well, she did wash her hair. A person could fake being clean on the outside if their hair looked decent.
If I measured whether this tactic produced results... it wasn’t completely useless. When she only washed her hair, the vision link didn’t activate. The switch still happened when she changed clothes or replaced a sanitary pad. It seemed taking clothes off was the trigger.
“If it were summer I would’ve given up fast too, but the weather’s still cold. Just don’t say anything until a full week passes. I’ll take responsibility my own way.”
“...Do whatever you want.”
I stood up to head back to the reading room and tried to walk past her. At that exact moment she flinched and scooted backward in her chair.
“What are you doing?”
“That... in case I smell... don’t come too close....”
“......”
Jian covered her mouth with her oversized hoodie and turned her head away. Her face looked a little red, but I decided not to tease her about it.
And so April 1st arrived. Seo Jian’s seven-day no-washing challenge. Success!
“......”
“......”
“Are you satisfied now?”
“No.”
“Then are you going to keep going?”
“...No.”
Success my ass. In the end, the only thing left was one pitiful repeat examinee who was filthy from not washing for a week. At least she had washed her hair, so her appearance was somewhat tolerable.
Seo Jian and I sat across from each other at a table in the rest area. The door was propped open with a stopper, so there was no chance of suddenly getting trapped. A lot had happened over the past week. It wasn’t as if anything special occurred just because you didn’t wash. For the first two or three days she apparently hadn’t even planned to change her underwear.
But on the morning of the fourth day, Seo Jian suddenly called me.
“Hey, you know? Kim Hanbin… You said that when I change clothes, you see everything I see, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’m about to change my, um, underwear now? I’ll keep my eyes closed so don’t worry about it. It’ll be quick, really quick!”
“... Do it comfortably. I won’t say anything.”
She had tripped while trying to remove her panties with her eyes closed, fallen with a crash, and opened her eyes at the worst possible moment, so I ended up seeing her completely bare crotch. That was the aftermath.
“...Did you see?”
“What was it?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
I played dumb and acted like nothing happened. Since Jian did the same, it was as if it never occurred. Because of that early disaster, on the fifth day she changed her underwear while sitting on the bed. It took longer since she put it on backwards and had to fix it. Whether that kind of humiliating effort meant anything or not, the penalty still hadn’t been lifted by today. Even this morning she slammed her hand into the closet while changing with her eyes closed, so it was clearly affecting her studies too.
“Still, we learned one thing.”
“What?”
Jian asked, face planted on the table.
“That we can’t just half-ass our way through this. We have to solve it properly. You almost hurt your hand again today. We can’t keep not washing forever.”
“...Ha, I know. I won’t be stubborn anymore.”
Both our gazes moved to the whiteboard in the corner of the rest area. Nothing was written on it now, but the moment the door closed it would surely display some bizarre mission.
Jian pressed her forehead to the table again.
“...I’ll do the mission. Being stubborn any longer would be inconvenient for you too. Honestly, I can’t endure this anymore. I got scolded by Mom and my sister yesterday… they said I smell.”
“Smart choice.”
“But before that…”
“Before that?”
“It’s not that we’re doing the mission right now. I’m going to go wash first.”
“...Now?”
Seo Jian lifted her head, forehead red, and nodded.
“We don’t know what mission will appear… If I tried it in this state…”
“......”
“Kim Hanbin. You’re not having weird thoughts right now, are you?”
“Hey! You’re the one who started it!”
“Ahem. Anyway. I’m saying I’ll wash and come back. Study by yourself or just wait a little.”
Scrape. Jian stood up. Kim Hanbin looked at her with a bewildered expression.
“But if that’s the case, why didn’t you wash when you came this morning? Where are you going?”
“There’s a bathhouse right next door. At this hour there shouldn’t be many people.”
“......Are you actually serious?”
I shook my head vigorously.
“Hey, washing alone at home is one thing, but if you go to the bathhouse I’ll end up seeing the women’s side…!”
The moment she heard that, Jian seemed to realize what she had almost done. Her face drained of color, then flushed bright red again.
“......”
“No, this is… I was asking if you hated the idea… uh, that… no, it’s not that I like it either…”
“Say you hate it, damn it!”
A perfect chop landed squarely on top of my head. In the end, instead of the bathhouse, Jian went back to her own house to shower.
April 1st. Still before noon. Seo Jian’s younger sister, Seo Jihyun, would have left for school by now. Her mother, Kim Yujin, had also gone to work. In other words, the house was empty.
It was the perfect chance to wash alone.
As for what I was doing at that time… I was simply sitting quietly by myself in the rest area, memorizing a few English words.
Then the owner grandmother poked her head into the rest area.
“...Where did your girlfriend go, leaving you here studying all alone?”
“Huh? Ah, no! She’s not my girlfriend, just a classmate from high school… yeah.”
But the grandmother didn’t seem interested in listening.
“Anyway, she’s a girl. So she’s your girlfriend.”
“Ah, haha… She’s not, but… yeah… She stepped out for a moment because something urgent came up…”
“Oh, really? Hmm. Should I close the rest area door?”
“Ah, no! It’s fine! The reading room felt stuffy so I came out for some fresh air.”
“I see. Make yourself comfortable. After all, at this hour it’s just the two of you here.”
She spoke indifferently and returned to the counter. As always, she started playing a TTS novel through the speaker. That was probably one of the reasons this reading room wasn’t popular. Maybe she was the building owner…
Thinking that, I buried my head on the desk and curled up. At that moment my vision flipped to complete blackness. Not a single point of light, not a speck of dust—total darkness.
“......?!”
Seo Jian had clearly closed her eyes and started undressing. I had prepared myself to empty my mind and just zone out, but soon her voice began ringing directly inside my head.
“Hey, Kim Hanbin. I’m going to try to wash quickly, okay?”
Her sharp voice hit my ears like a direct strike. I couldn’t answer, but she knew that and still spoke to me. Her voice sounded extremely tense.
“Click.”
The sound of a door. She must have taken her clothes off first and stepped into the bathroom.
“Shaaaaa.”
The sound of the shower spraying. The noise of water hitting her body and scattering. The sound of rinsing her hair. The sound of lathering shampoo. The sound of scrubbing with a shower ball. Every single sound came through.
Nothing was visible, but because I had already seen her naked once before, no matter how hard I tried to empty my mind, her figure kept forming on its own.
She must have seen exactly what I was thinking, because she kept talking.
“...You’re not having weird thoughts right now, are you?”
“I’m not.”
“It’s pitch black so honestly I’m a little scared. Still, don’t expect anything. Even if I fall I won’t open my eyes this time. You’re not waiting for me to open them, are you?”
“I said I’m not.”
“Hey, be honest. Does it feel good?”
“......”
“Whoa—!”
“Thud!”
“What the hell?”
A scream. But just like she had warned, she didn’t open her eyes. The one burning with anxiety was me.
“Ha, ha… Fuck. Ow… My hand hurts… There must have been a piece of soap on the floor… I almost slipped, grabbed the sink, and slammed my knee underneath… Ah, it fucking hurts…”
She sounded like she was in real pain, whimpering as she continued.
“Our house address is Haseong Apartment, Building 102, Unit 204. The password is 1554 star. If I suddenly stop talking while I’m washing, come find me, okay?”
I let out a chuckle at the excessive amount of information. At some point I had apparently become such a comfortable friend to Seo Jian, and it secretly felt good.