Semester's End
"See you tomorrow, Unni."
"Yeah. And Eun-a — don't go picking fights again and come back crying like you used to."
"…I wasn't crying."
"For the record, red eyes and a sniffling nose usually count as crying."
"God, I never should have called you that day."
"A friend of mine calls me up saying the girl she likes wants to blow off some steam — and then I walk in on her bawling her eyes out. Would you mind, just a little, considering how that felt for me?"
"……."
Eun-a's shoulders sagged. She tipped her head and gave mine a light, sulky bump.
It wasn't wounded pride so much as pure embarrassment — she couldn't even manage an apology, just fretted and grumbled instead. It was so endearing that I pulled her head in and drew her straight against my chest.
A soft, full bosom had a way of transcending everything.
Buried against me, Eun-a whispered a tiny sorry.
I stroked her hair, and she went on.
"…Your mom won't even be there this time, right?"
"Yeah… she's away on a business trip…."
"Can't you just not go? Every time you do, all you get is stress."
"Still… Mom says she wants the family together at least once a month."
I understood the feeling. But making siblings who couldn't stand each other gather even when she herself was absent felt a little…
Or maybe that was exactly why — because they didn't get along, she wanted them meeting without her too.
I'd only met her once, but even that single encounter had been enough to tell me she was a genuinely kind woman.
She must have her reasons.
"Fine, whatever. Have a good trip, then. And good luck on your exams."
"You too, Unni."
"Mm-hmm. Okay, I'm really going."
"Yeah. I love you, Unni."
"Love you too."
I pressed kiss after kiss to Eun-a's forehead, then stepped out of the car.
I stood there and watched until the black sedan slipped over the low ridge and vanished from sight.
She wouldn't have been able to see me in the side mirrors or the rear dashcam anyway. Pure self-satisfaction on my part.
Once the car was completely gone, I headed straight for the lecture hall to take my exam.
Climbing the little hill, I watched a whole spectrum of feelings cross paths.
Some people came down looking light as air. Others climbed with grim, determined faces, staring holes through major textbooks, notebooks, and tablets, steeling themselves for one last round of hell.
I preferred not to look at notes. Instead I pulled up everything I'd stored in my head, one piece at a time, and checked it over.
Once the exam started, pure brainpower was all you had — which was why I liked this method.
"You made it."
"I made it."
"Ready?"
"Flawless."
"Gonna snag the scholarship?"
"If I don't, who will?"
Familiar faces greeted me as I stepped into the lecture hall.
All three of them looked haggard, with a faint undercurrent of excitement running through it.
I felt the same.
Once this was over, total liberation from everything that had been grinding us down.
I was already looking forward to what Eun-a and I would do over break.
Locking ourselves indoors for days on end and doing nothing but having sex sounded fantastic. Catching up on all the games I'd been neglecting would be great too. A trip wouldn't be a bad idea either — we'd never traveled together, which made the thought even more exciting.
Like some kind of owl or dolphin, one half of my brain methodically sorted through vacation plans with Eun-a while the other half called up every exam memo I had on file.
"Hello, everyone~ This is probably your last exam, right? Naturally, everything is based on what we covered in lecture and applied from there, so it shouldn't be too difficult."
Translation: the exam would be packed with problems we'd never seen before.
By the time you hit third year, you'd been played by professors' lies more times than you could count.
Nobody left in this room was green enough to take that at face value.
"Everyone got a copy? We'll begin."
Yes. And then it was over.
Not that I handed in my paper the second it started, of course.
I just poured so much focus into the exam that time simply deleted itself.
Did that mean I bombed it…? No, not at all.
Hard, sure — but nothing I couldn't understand.
I filled the sheet to the edges and still wasn't satisfied.
I went back over it again and again, checking for anything I'd missed.
Right up until time ran out.
Which left only me and the professor still in our seats at the end.
"Last one out again today, huh?"
"Haha…. Just how it worked out."
He taught a required major course, and after taking his class every semester we'd gotten comfortable enough to talk casually.
I still hadn't forgotten the shock of him calling me by name around the midterms of freshman spring….
"It would be wonderful if both you and Yoo Eun-a joined our lab. Haha."
"Haha… I'm sorry."
I could only manage a strained smile at the professor's banter.
I still remembered an upperclassman I knew, in tears, begging me never to set foot in that direction.
I had zero interest in following in his footsteps.
And… I barely have enough time to date Eun-a as it is. No way I'm becoming a grad student and a professor's slave.
Becoming Eun-a's slave, on the other hand — that I'd welcome with open arms.
"Alright then. Have a good break. See you next semester."
"Yes, sir. See you next semester!"
I grabbed my things and ran straight for Clover, the restaurant-café run by the culinary department.
My chest ached and every eye in the place swung toward me, but I didn't want to keep them waiting any longer.
"You made it."
"I made it."
"How'd the exam go?"
"Flawless."
"Think you'll get the full scholarship?"
"If I don't, who will?"
I ordered my share of drinks and food and came back to the table.
The three of them had already finished eating and were on coffee.
"Why'd you eat so fast? You guys have zero manners."
"A guy who eats slow? Does that even exist?"
"Spicy pork? Ten-second clear, easy."
"You'd throw up mid-bite at that speed."
"Ahh — this is what we call common sense. Basic general knowledge."
When I'd first become a woman, their attitudes had been a little hard to handle.
I'd steadily projected a more easygoing, same-gender-friend kind of vibe until things shifted.
That particular greasy energy that always crept into mixed-gender friendships had been unbearable.
Now the atmosphere wasn't all that different from before.
The one real change was physical contact.
The casual roughhousing, the shoving and jostling — all of it had completely disappeared.
More precisely: I could still initiate, but none of them ever started it or pushed back.
Well. If that was how it had to be, that was how it had to be.
Weeks later, I no longer got hurt by the little sensitivities that came with the gender difference.
Probably….
Honestly, it did feel a little lonely.
We still laughed and talked like same-gender friends, but there was a subtle distance.
That was just the default setting for dealing with the opposite sex.
No matter how close you got emotionally, you couldn't cross that line.
"What are you guys doing over break?"
"Part-time work, for now? We should start thinking about jobs soon, but honestly I have no idea."
"For real. We're already at the age where we have to prep for employment."
"I thought I'd never have to become an adult."
"Same."
Becoming a woman had made the happiness my partner gave me grow by the day — but a partner couldn't fill everything.
There were feelings you could only get from friends.
It wasn't a question of which was better. They were different domains entirely.
"What about you?"
"Me? Wel…l? Not much, really. First order of business is goofing off with Eun-a like crazy."
"Hanging with your girlfriend is great and all, but you're not ditching your friends, right?"
On that front, I had to admit I'd lost a huge share of the happiness friendship used to give me.
I'd known that simply becoming a TS pretty girl wasn't some universal happiness substance that made everything wonderful — but it still hit harder than expected.
Sometimes, not wanting to feel the distance between us, I'd even turned down get-togethers on purpose just to avoid it.
Going forward… honestly, I wasn't sure.
I didn't want to drift apart from these guys either.
In the end, all I could do was wait for time to make this loneliness familiar.
Positive or negative, every emotion burned hot enough to hurt at first — but without constant fuel, it cooled fast.
Negative ones especially.
I'd learned that the hard way a few years back.
Of course, that also meant they could flare back up in your head out of nowhere and torment you all over again.
Anyway — I couldn't shake this sadness right this second, but I also couldn't hold everything in both hands at once.
Just like how giving up being a man had gotten me Eun-a's love.
The middle of that process was forced on me, sure — but it wasn't like I had no choices.
I was still turning that over when the Bitic guy — no, the former Bitic guy — opened his mouth around a mouthful of cookie.
"I'm ditching you guys, though?"
And the reason, out of nowhere: he had a girlfriend now….
"Holy shit, for real?"
"You lucky bastard. Ah, this guy gets a girlfriend too — why don't I have one…."
"Stop talking about soccer on blind dates. Die, you traitor."
"Anyway, that's the deal, so outside of work I'll probably just be with her? So that trip we talked about — I don't think I can make it. Sorry."
"…Was that actually happening? I figured it was one of those classic empty promises."
"You're the real traitors, you assholes."
The trip. Right — we had talked about going.
But of course, all four of us going together was impossible now.
I might be into women, but I was a woman.
You couldn't exactly bring a girl along on a guys' trip.
And they couldn't just leave me behind and go as three either.
Ah, dammit….
I'd barely steeled myself and started preparing to let the feelings go when a fresh wave of shock rolled over me.
We'd gotten together to have fun and talk, and my chest was getting tighter by the second.
Times like this called for something sweet — a mood reset.
Conveniently, the food I'd ordered arrived, so I went straight up to get it.
Seafood pilaf, a chocolate waffle, and an iced chocolate latte.
"Chocolate with rice? Are you insane?"
"I knew from the day you ate pineapple pizza."
"If a food sells, that means there's demand for it. You ever seen a place that doesn't offer pineapple as a topping?"
"…Why is that weirdly logical?"
"Ahh — that right there is what we call common sense."
Heh.
And so, laughing and talking, I started adjusting my body to a friendship that was quietly changing shape.