Shopping
The kans had started appearing on Jinhaksusa.
It still wasn't the window for submitting real applications. All anyone could look at now were projections, worked out from the samples that had come in so far and from last year's results. To the people on Blue Orchid Gallery, though, that distinction didn't seem to matter much.
Get the fuck out.
I slipped back over to the Jinhaksusa window.
It had been 3 kans yesterday, too. More precisely, it had climbed to 4 for a little while around dawn and then slid back down.
"Go up..."
It didn't really bother me. Really.
I hit refresh.
Of course. Ten seconds had passed.
I tried a few other schools. Inji University's med school sat at 7 kans, Gyeongsin's at 6, Hanseong's at 5. By the standard play, you put down one safe and one target, then spent the last form shooting for Yeonhwa. But the scores had come out well, and greed kept creeping in. Couldn't I afford to use two of them as reaches?
"This is hard."
I refreshed again.
"...Huh?"
I blinked. It had definitely been 3 a moment ago. Refresh.
Once more.
"Why is it going back down."
A sample must have dropped out and another come in, all in that short gap. These still weren't real applications, and there was no guarantee the people punching in scores would actually apply to Yeonhwa Med. Someone might have entered it just out of curiosity. Even so, a number smaller by one nagged at me for no good reason.
How did she know?
I couldn't argue. All three of us seemed to be in roughly the same state. Star sent over a few of the pharmacy schools she was watching.
...She wasn't wrong, though.
We went back and forth about applications for a while, and then Star asked.
It wasn't as if I'd never considered Hanguk University's regular departments. Even so, engineering tracks like electrical or computer science just didn't appeal.
The replies stopped for a moment.
I stared at the chat for a moment and tried to picture the people I'd only ever talked to through a screen, sitting around the same table.
"This feels a little weird..."
Star would be thinking I was a guy. Limit, too. And the person who actually showed up in front of them would be a girl.
I closed the chat and refreshed Jinhaksusa again.
"It's really not going up."
The next day, the kans hadn't moved much either.
"I am bored..."
A moment later, Star messaged again.
"..."
She'd said we should get a meal more than a few times, and every time I'd brushed it off with a vague I'll think about it. This time it didn't sound like courtesy. It sounded like she meant to set a real plan.
I didn't not want to. After weeks of talking every day, I was curious what they actually looked like. Whether Limit was as spare with words in person as in chat. Whether Star still talked without pausing for breath, face to face. I wanted to see them, at least once.
Star immediately called Limit into the group chat the three of us shared.
It was settled that simply. Star said she'd look into a date and a place, and Limit answered, short, that the two of them could figure it out.
The conversation moved on to something else soon enough. I set the phone down and looked at the closet.
"It's not like I don't have clothes."
From the day my body changed, the closet had filled with women's clothes as if they'd always been mine. Knits, skirts, pants. Not one of them was something I'd chosen myself. Until now I'd rotated a gray hoodie and black pants, because they were easy. I hadn't thought there was any reason to dress up.
Then my eyes went to the full-length mirror beside the closet. ...I really was pretty. Now that I'd turned out this pretty, I wanted to dress properly at least once. I was a little curious how different I'd look.
"I should go buy some clothes."
That was when a message came in from jolly.
I opened a map app and searched for a department store nearby.
The next day, I was standing in front of Hyeondam Department Store.
"Maybe I should've gone somewhere else..."
Now that I was here, I had no sense of where to start. I'd come to buy something to wear the day I met the two of them for the first time. Well... if I just wandered, something would turn up. The store was warm. Perfume drifting out of the various shops tangled together until it left me faintly dizzy. I passed the first floor and rode the escalator up to the second, where brands I'd heard of at least once stood in a row.
"Should I buy something here."
It wasn't that the prices worried me. I'd simply never bought clothes alone in a place like this, and that was enough to make me hesitate. I moved past the shops, scanning what the mannequins had on. A black coat caught my eye. It looked fine, but I walked on. The next shop had a similar coat, only the color a little different. I passed that one, too.
"...At this rate I won't buy anything."
The third time a similar piece appeared, I finally stopped. The moment I stepped inside, a clerk greeted me.
"Welcome. Is there something you're looking for?"
"...Winter clothes."
It was far too broad an answer. The clerk hesitated a moment, then asked if I meant a coat. I nodded. They brought out a black long coat and a dark gray one. My eyes kept drifting back to the black coat they'd shown me first.
"How about this one?"
"I think it's nice."
"Would you like to try it on?"
"Yes."
I took the coat, went into the fitting room, and drew the curtain. Unlike the clothes in the closet, this was something I'd come looking for and chosen myself, because I wanted to look pretty. Thinking that, I felt a strange tickle at my fingertips.
"...I'll just put it on."
I pulled off the hoodie and slipped the coat on over the T-shirt I had underneath. When I stepped out and checked the mirror—
"Oh."
The coat suited me far better than I'd expected. White hair spilling over the black coat looked sharper than usual.
"Black looks wonderful on you."
"Does it..."
"Your skin and your hair are light, so the contrast is lovely. A lower-toned knit underneath, something charcoal, would suit you very well too."
A moment later the clerk brought a charcoal knit. I changed again and looked in the mirror. This one suited me, too. Next came black slacks, then a beanie, recommended one after another. Standing in front of the mirror in all of it, I looked nothing like the usual gray hoodie.
Long white hair spilled out from under the black beanie. Wrapped head to toe in black and deep gray, only my face and my hair seemed unusually bright.
"Oh..."
Yeah. I'm buying this.
In the end I paid for the knit, the coat, the slacks, and the beanie. The clerk said I could wear them out, so the hoodie and pants I'd arrived in went into a shopping bag. I was about to leave the shop when the clerk glanced at my sneakers.
"Boots would go really well with this outfit."
"...You think so?"
And ten minutes later, I was standing in the shoe store they'd pointed me to, wearing black boots that rose to my ankles.
Guess I'm buying the boots, too...
Everything I'd picked was black or deep gray, not so far from my usual taste. Even so, I looked much prettier. I took out my phone to photograph myself in the mirror, then stopped.
My face would show up just like that.
I fastened the coat all the way and took the picture again so only the lower half showed, careful to keep my hair out of the frame, too. Click.
I sent Limit the same photo.
Classic Limit.
I paid for the boots and left the department store. The moment the taxi dropped me at home, I went straight to the mirror. I'd already checked several times at the store, so there was no real need to look again. Still.
"Good buy."
Watching the figure in the mirror, the problem I'd been putting off rose up again. Limit and Star thought I was a guy. And no matter how I looked at the mirror, there was nothing in it but a girl. What was I supposed to say when I actually met them? That I'd been a girl all along? And if they asked why I hadn't said so until now, would it be enough to answer that I'd never had the chance? The more I thought about it, the stranger it sounded.
"...I'll think about it later."
The exact date wasn't even set yet. I only had to settle it before we met. Having reached that conclusion, I changed into comfortable pajamas. I'd just lain down when my phone buzzed. It was Star.