The Second Vlog (4)
A heavy silence settled between us. It was so awkward and mortifying that neither of us could speak first. Chae-ryeong’s eyes wandered as she fidgeted with the collar of her t-shirt, while I kept my gaze fixed on the back of my own hand just to avoid looking at her. This part’s definitely going to feel painfully stiff once I edit it out… Even so, the camera sitting on the table kept rolling without a care.
Anyway, I figured it wouldn’t be good to let her soaked shirt stay on camera, so I peeled off the slightly thicker shirt I was wearing and handed it to her.
“...Put this on. Your shirt’s see-through.”
“Ah… um… thanks… but I can just wear my cardigan…”
“Your cardigan’s too thin. It probably won’t cover anything.”
“...Oh. Right.”
The cardigan’s fabric had tiny holes all over it, so you could see through it a little. In contrast, my shirt was a dark, fairly thick material for spring, perfect for covering her upper body. She took it, buttoned up the front, and completely hid the wet t-shirt underneath. The fit looked a bit awkward on her, but it was definitely better than having everything on full display.
“Um, I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick!”
“Huh?”
“I wiped it off, but it’s alcohol so it still feels gross. I want to wash up a bit.”
“Oh, okay. Go ahead. I’ll clean up here.”
She must have found the mortifying atmosphere unbearable. When I pointed at the table and spoke awkwardly, Chae-ryeong hurried off to the bathroom like someone being chased. I watched her retreating back and let out a sigh of relief.
“Whew, thank you, Yoo Chae-ryeong. You just saved my life too.”
I wiped up the scattered makgeolli with some tissues and silently thanked her for giving us both a moment to escape that nightmare of an atmosphere.
The sharp scent of makgeolli tickles my nose. The shirt Taeo gave me is way too big for my frame, and I can feel how loose it hangs on me. His familiar scent rises from the fabric and mixes with the alcohol smell.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart is pounding so fast I can’t tell if it’s because of the scent of the shirt he gave me or the smell of alcohol. Or maybe it’s just the makgeolli I drank. My face is even redder than before, and my head is flooded with embarrassment and some strange, unexplainable excitement. It feels completely different from my usual bright, energetic self. This is so awkward.
......Why am I acting like this over something so small? Seriously.
I step into the women’s restroom, turn on the faucet, and frantically splash water on my face. Part of it was to wash off the makgeolli, but mostly because I hated how strangely I kept reacting to Taeo.
“Yoo Chae-ryeong, have you lost your mind? What’s wrong with you? Seriously?”
It wasn’t even a big deal. He was just wiping me off, made a mistake, and lightly brushed my chest. It wasn’t on purpose. You can instinctively tell when someone has a blatant intention. That’s how I knew it really was just an innocent accident.
“......And it’s not like my bra was completely visible or anything, right? I walk around the house like that all the time, so why am I embarrassed?”
When he comes over to my place, he sometimes sees my underwear like last time. Honestly, I never felt embarrassed about it back then. It didn’t feel any different from him seeing clothes I’d just taken off. So why does it feel so embarrassing now?
......Because Yoon Taeo touched my chest? It was barely even a touch. There was no groping or anything sexual about it.
“Ugh… this is so mortifying…”
Even so, I was embarrassed. In my head, I kept replaying the weird little sound I’d made and the feeling of his hand against my chest. I’d just told myself not to overthink it, and yet here I was already doing exactly that. If I keep acting like this, it’s going to seem like I’m starting to see Yoon Taeo as a man. Which is ridiculous.
“It’s not something to get this embarrassed about. We’re friends, right? I should just brush it off.”
Yeah. Just like I’ve always done before. It’s not like this kind of skinship has only happened once or twice. We’ve spent so much time together that our bodies have touched in all sorts of places without me ever thinking twice about it. I even give him back hugs without hesitation, so getting flustered over something like this is weird.
“Right. That’s all it is. That’s it.”
My face, pinker than cherry blossoms, stares back at me in the mirror. Even as I say the words out loud, I try my hardest not to dwell on what had just happened with him.
“Yeah, it’s nothing…”
But somehow, that last sentence didn’t carry the same conviction as before.
......It had to be my imagination.
When Chae-ryeong came back from the bathroom, she was completely back to normal. It was like she’d put on full mental armor. To my eyes, it looked as if nothing had happened at all. Or rather, like she was making a very deliberate effort to appear that way.
“I cleaned everything up here.”
“Thanks for doing that. There’s still some left—want to drink a little more together?”
“Yeah, we bought it, so we should at least review it properly. Especially since we even ate the cherry blossoms.”
“True. Heh.”
Thanks to her effort, the mood quickly returned to normal. We weren’t the awkward versions of ourselves from a few minutes ago—we were back to our usual bickering selves. It almost felt like that whole moment had been an illusion. After all, the embarrassed Chae-ryeong I’d glimpsed earlier had shown me a face she’d never revealed to me before. But that was probably just my wishful thinking. She was simply embarrassed because of an awkward situation. She would have reacted that way no matter who it was. The only reason I was reading any special meaning into it was because I liked her.
I pushed down the ridiculous expectations I kept having and went back to acting like my usual self.
Glug glug. We poured the makgeolli, now flat and without foam, into paper cups and drank together. Once the sharp taste faded, a bland flavor lingered in my mouth.
“How is it? Does it taste like cherry blossoms?”
“Cherry blossom flavor or not, it just tastes like flat cola… So this is what it’s like when the carbonation’s gone…”
It was my own fault, so what could I say? Even to me, flat makgeolli didn’t taste very good. Chae-ryeong made a slightly disappointed face but pulled herself together and offered her review.
“Still, there is a faint cherry blossom scent. It’s like… 0.01% cherry blossom flavor added. Kinda like those artificial fruit drinks.”
“Oh, you mean the ones that don’t have any real fruit, just artificial flavoring?”
“Exactly. Like that.”
Since she was the one who had actually chewed and eaten the petals, her opinion was probably accurate. The “cherry blossom makgeolli” label came with a premium price, but since it was an experience you could only have here, I decided to let it slide.
“.....Should we start walking again soon? I’m pretty full.”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
We cleaned up the table, threw away our trash, and stood up. Then we walked a little further to admire the cherry blossoms again. As we followed the path to the end, we spotted something hanging in clusters from a line in the distance. Chae-ryeong stared at the things dangling like laundry and asked,
“What’s that?”
“I think those are the wish papers? You know, the ones you write wishes on at temples or shrines?”
“Ah~! That must be it! It says ‘Wish Fulfillment’ right there.”
At the end of where she was pointing, a wooden sign was attached.
[Wish Fulfillment, Romance, Money, Career, etc.]
It looked pretty suspicious at first glance, but other people were casually buying the papers without a second thought.
“I guess you buy them over there.”
“And then you put them in that collection box and they let you hang them up?”
They were a thousand won each. A thousand won per sheet seemed a bit like daylight robbery, but when you compared it to those couple padlocks at famous tourist spots that cost tens of thousands, this might actually be cheap.
“Want to try?”
“Let’s do it, let’s do it.”
Of course Chae-ryeong wasn’t the type to just walk past an event like this. She’s a certified superstition expert who even believes in feng shui, after all.
“You really love superstitions.”
“It’s not superstition. They’re all real, okay?”
“You’re saying the bad energy at your house is what’s causing your insomnia?”
“If that’s not it, then why did I sleep fine when I lived at home but can’t sleep at all since I started living alone?”
“Because you stay up late on your phone. So stop watching shorts already.”
“Ugh. I can’t hear you. Don’t want to hear nagging.”
We each put a thousand won into the collection box and took a sheet of paper like everyone else.
“So what are we supposed to write? Our wishes?”
“Probably? It does say ‘Wish Fulfillment.’”
We picked up the pens placed in front of us and started writing. Chae-ryeong seemed to have something come to mind right away and began scribbling quickly. I tried to sneak a peek at what she was writing, but—
“Hey, no peeking. They say if someone else sees it, the wish loses its power.”
“Oh, is that so? Fine. I wouldn’t want to look at something so petty anyway.”
I was curious what she wrote. But I quickly lost interest and focused on my own wish instead. We finished at almost the same time, tied our papers onto the line, and pressed our palms together in prayer. When we were done, she turned to me with a smile, looking curious.
“...So what did you write?”
“Weren’t you the one who said telling someone else makes the wish lose its power?”
“We already wrote them, hung them up, and prayed. It’s fine to say it now.”
“Who even made up that rule anyway?”
It sounded like she just made it up on the spot. Hmm. But I was curious about her wish too, so I subtly tried to get her to go first.
“Then you say yours first. The person who speaks first goes first.”
“Me? Obviously I wrote to make our YouTube channel blow up so I can become a million-subscriber YouTuber.”
“That is such a you wish.”
It was honest and pure. A very Chae-ryeong-like wish with zero pretense.
“What about you, Yoon Taeo?”
I smiled quietly at her question and answered.
“It’s a secret.”
“A secret? Hey, that’s not fair! I told you mine!”
“Don’t know. It’s my business.”
I plugged my ears as she chased after me, bombarding me with words. Because there was no way I could ever tell her what I had written.
My wish was simple: Please let me start dating Yoo Chae-ryeong this year.
I wake up in the morning, check the comments, and unconsciously find myself checking the view count again. There have been days when I spent the entire day just watching the numbers climb, feeling so satisfied that I wasted the whole day. I could feel that YouTube was slowly becoming something I couldn’t separate from my life anymore.
And today too, the moment I uploaded, the comments exploded. I couldn’t help but smile with satisfaction.
Just like the first vlog, the second one received an amazing response too. The first video had already surpassed 100,000 views and was now heading toward 200,000. The subscriber count for the second video was also smoothly climbing toward 20,000.
But at the time, I had no idea.
I was just excited about our rapid growth and enjoying it, but—
“......This is a couple vlog, right? So are you and Yoon Taeo actually dating?”
—becoming famous too quickly wasn’t all good. That was the first day I truly realized it.