As a Man and a Woman
The question of whether she liked him as a woman likes a man made Jiyoon falter for a moment.
...No. What am I even saying?
From where she stood—a woman past thirty—Dohyun ought to have felt like a child. Even Dayeon, twenty-five and standing right in front of her, struck Jiyoon as cute, which meant someone younger still should have felt all the more so.
"Yeah. As a man and a woman."
But her mouth was running off on its own, saying things that had nothing to do with what she thought.
I've actually lost it.
This feeling she couldn't govern, spilling out of her however it pleased, left Jiyoon thoroughly rattled. In her entire life, she had never failed to keep herself in check quite like this.
"I'm fine with it! That just means there's one more person I can talk about Dohyun with!"
Unlike Jiyoon, who was wound tight with tension, Dayeon was just as bright and bubbly after the words left her mouth as she had been before.
"...No, but how can you just be okay with that? Liking him as a man and a woman—how is that fine?"
The whole situation sat so far outside the ordinary that Jiyoon couldn't stop feeling thrown. The reaction coming back at her was nothing like what she had expected, and every prediction she had made was falling apart. The bewilderment sat plainly on her face.
"It's not normal, is it? Usually, if someone else likes the person you like, it feels... awkward, doesn't it? Uncomfortable?"
Of course, that was only how things usually went. Somewhere in her head she understood that there were people in the world who didn't feel that way. But understanding something and actually accepting it were entirely different matters—and for Jiyoon, who had never had much interest in dating to begin with, that gap was even wider.
"I dunno? Isn't it a good thing if more people like Dohyun? Hmm... okay, yeah, it doesn't exactly feel... normal, I guess?"
Thinking about it the usual way, the world took one-on-one relationships as a given. Only then did it occur to Dayeon that someone might find this strange.
...But now that I think about it, why did I assume this was normal?
The question surfaced all at once. Dayeon had never dated anyone herself, but she had grown up watching how other people did it, and what she had grown up watching was, for the most part, ordinary one-on-one relationships. And yet she felt no real resistance to seeing Dohyun together with Eunchae. She felt no real resistance to the idea of even more people coming to like him, of meeting him together. The question of why had only just now occurred to her—it wasn't that the unusualness of it had ever bothered her.
"Hmm. Is Dohyun... an alpha male?"
The thought crossed Dayeon's mind that maybe he was simply so exceptional that having several women around him felt like the natural order of things.
"Huh...?"
But the conclusion Dayeon had arrived at only piled more confusion onto Jiyoon.
"I mean, it's like... when you're with Dohyun, you know? Even though he's younger than me, he feels more like an adult. And it's comfortable. With Eunchae, being with him fills her up with joy, and she says just looking at him is enough to make him seem amazing and cool."
A man who could give each person exactly what they needed. Wasn't that the very definition of an alpha male? Dayeon launched into something of a speech on the subject.
"Honestly, matching yourself to someone else like that isn't easy, right? And if it's hard, it shows. That's just how it is. But Dohyun isn't like that. Ah—of course, if he leaned on me, that would be charming and cute in its own way, too...!"
"...Isn't that just because you're completely head over heels for him?"
Jiyoon said it that way, but the truth was she had been thinking something fairly similar herself.
"No, it's a little different from that. I mean, I am completely head over heels for him, that's true."
She didn't deny it—but she spoke as though that alone couldn't account for everything. Even she knew, though, that this was not exactly a solid answer to the question of a many-to-one relationship.
"Anyway, that's how I feel. If someone comes to like Dohyun, whatever kind of feeling it is, I'd be happy just knowing there's one more person who likes him. And if that person is someone good, like you, unnie—even better!"
She cared about Dohyun enough that of course she would want the people who liked him to be wonderful, decent people.
"I see. Well... thank you. For saying I'm a good person."
Jiyoon felt as though she had been genuinely acknowledged.
"You're a good person too, obviously. That's why Dohyun likes you. Yeah... I hope he likes me, too."
Not everything had been resolved. There were still parts she didn't fully understand. But one thing she had come to realize with certainty: her feelings for Dohyun ran deeper than she had thought.
"I'll go all out backing you! Don't worry!"
"But you said you're not even dating him yet... is that okay?"
She was grateful, of course—but if they weren't even officially together, shouldn't Dayeon be looking out for herself first? The thought put an awkward look on Jiyoon's face.
"Ah, that is absolutely not a 'you worry about yourself' kind of thing...!"
It was the sort of remark that could easily be taken the wrong way, so she threw in an extra line just in case.
"I know, I know. Don't worry, I won't take it that way. And, um... I'm not sure if I should even say this..."
Dayeon hesitated, her expression turning uncertain. Jiyoon didn't press her. She gave her all the time she needed to think it through, waiting until Dayeon was ready to speak again.
"Mmm."
But she was having a hard time getting the words out. Whatever it was, it seemed difficult to say.
"If it's hard to talk about, you don't have to tell me right now."
Jiyoon spoke up first, trying to put her at ease.
"Mmm, n-no...! It's okay to say it, I think. You seem like you really like Dohyun a lot, unnie."
Talking with Jiyoon, Dayeon had felt how deep the other woman's feelings ran. She knew well enough that if you didn't truly, deeply care about someone, you put your own feelings first—you didn't worry about the things surrounding him, or take them into consideration. That was why she decided it would be all right to tell Jiyoon the truth about her relationship with Dohyun.
"So, um. I'm not dating Dohyun, exactly, but we are in a similar kind of relationship."
"A similar kind of relationship? What does that mean?"
Jiyoon tilted her head. Come to think of it, Dayeon had said something earlier too—that they weren't dating.
"I mean, like... sex partners...? That kind of feeling. But it's not like we're just partners! We go on dates, we do everything a couple would do...!"
She had never actually been on a one-on-one date, of course. Given how well Dayeon understood her own position, that had been unavoidable—but if the chance ever came, she absolutely wanted one.
"S-sex par... part...ner..."
Jiyoon took a considerable shock from the word itself. Dayeon knew perfectly well that this was the reaction you got the first time you heard it. She herself had been pretty stunned when Eunchae first told her.
"It's not like Dohyun said he just wanted us to be partners or anything. Me, Eunchae, and Dohyun too—we all considered the situation and decided to do it this way for now."
Worried that the words sex partners might make Jiyoon think even a little less of Dohyun, Dayeon added a slightly rambling explanation.
"And we were the ones who brought it up first, me and Eunchae...!"
Dayeon kept rambling, but something else entirely had caught Jiyoon's ear.
"That Eunchae person... she's also in that kind of relationship with Dohyun?"
The name Eunchae had come up now and then, and Jiyoon had been wondering who she was. From the way Dayeon kept mentioning her, it seemed she was involved with Dohyun in the same way.
"Ah, yeah...! That's right. Want me to introduce you? She's an illustrator—we've been friends since high school, and, um, she's a really good person...!"
Afraid she had said the wrong thing and thrown the already-startled Jiyoon even further off balance, Dayeon was starting to get flustered herself.
"Yeah. Meeting her sometime would be nice. Whew... but let me get my thoughts in order first."
Sex partners.
If you actually listened to the explanation, they were partners in name only—in practice it sounded like they were dating. Even so, the shock of the word itself was considerable. It wasn't that she had started disliking Dohyun, or that her feelings had cooled. She was just a little dizzy from the impact of that one word: partners.
"Sorry. I feel like I said something weird and made everything confusing..."
"No. If I'd found out later, the shock would've been even worse."
If anything, she was grateful Dayeon had been straightforward from the start.
"I see. Partners, huh."
She murmured it to herself and began slowly sorting through her thoughts. Putting her thoughts in order and arriving at a conclusion was one of the things she did best.
In the end, it's just the word that's like that. They're dating, aren't they? It's just that the dating happens to be many-to-one.
She slowly calmed her startled heart, and as she lined her thoughts up one by one, she found there wasn't actually anything that strange about it.
...But then again, what's there to be shocked about? The moment I accepted a polyamorous relationship, I was already a little weird myself.
She had known full well that Dayeon was in that kind of relationship with him, and she had still laid her own feelings bare. From that moment on, nothing about this had been ordinary.