Truth in Wine
"Hey, hyung."
"Isn't this the third time I've seen you today? What now. What do you need this time?"
It was somewhere around three in the afternoon. The place was the convenience store — the one where I was about to start my shift. The little bell over the door jingled, and once Jaeseop confirmed that the person walking in wasn't a customer but me, that was his first reaction.
"Booze in the morning, clothes at lunch. What are you buying this time?"
"I'm not really here to buy anything. Just figured I'd kill some time until my shift starts…."
"You've still got two hours. Well, if you're offering to help out a bit, I wouldn't mind…."
A suspicious look settled on me, slow and deliberate. I averted my eyes, cold sweat prickling under my collar, and then his voice shifted — like something had just clicked.
"Got something on your mind?"
"…Is it that obvious?"
"Yeah, it is. A guy who lives alone has no reason to kill time anywhere but home. Especially not a guy like you who entertains himself just fine on his own."
Bullseye. He was right — normally I wouldn't have any reason to come outside just to waste time. Games, books, whatever — I could do all of that at home. The fact that I hadn't meant….
"Meaning something's wrong at home."
"Sharp as ever."
"We've known each other longer than a day or two. This much is nothing."
He said it modestly, but his powers of observation really were something. Picking up on someone else's troubles from the tiniest scrap of evidence wasn't something an ordinary person could do. If our positions were reversed, I definitely wouldn't have noticed.
"So what's going on?"
He asked, chin propped on his hand, eyes fixed on me. Every inch of his posture said he was ready to listen.
"I'll hear you out. No customers anyway."
"Pretty dead in here, huh."
"That's our store for you. When people don't come, they really don't come."
True enough. And then, when they did come, they poured in like a flood. I still had grim memories of those rushes.
"Go on, spit it out."
This was the same Jaeseop who'd shown up to help me out whenever things got truly rough during those hellish shifts. Facing that look of his, I opened my mouth.
"I, uh… recently ended up taking in a younger relative."
"A younger relative."
"Yeah. But we're basically strangers, and the kid is ridiculously skittish…."
"Mm."
I went on carefully. How I'd given her some simple housework because she seemed uneasy just sitting around doing nothing. How I'd been explaining various things around the apartment when, through a mistake that was really both of ours, she'd gotten a little wet. How she'd suddenly gone incredibly tense and anxious after that. How, in the end, things had gotten so awkward that I'd left the house well before my shift was supposed to start.
I laid it all out for him — or as much as I could. There were a few details I had to leave out, of course.
"Hmm."
"Any idea why?"
"Well. One guess — neurosis?"
"Uh, what?"
The word that came out of his mouth was nothing I'd expected. Neurosis. I'd entertained the thought a little myself, but hearing an actual psychiatric term out loud still hit differently….
"Don't freak out. Don't go panicking just because you heard a mental health term. That's disrespectful to people who actually deal with this stuff."
"S-sorry."
"Neurosis is common, and there are a ton of types. Obviously I can't diagnose anything properly. It just seemed like a lot of what you described lined up. Could easily be something else."
I nodded seriously as I listened.
"As for other causes — hell if I know. You're the one who knows the kid, not me. There's only so much you can figure out from a secondhand account."
"But she won't tell me anything…."
"Hmm. You said she's an adult?"
"? Oh — yeah."
I nodded at the sudden question. …Come to think of it, I'd never actually asked her age, but she was probably an adult. Probably… yeah. Almost certainly.
"Then there's one thing that might help. Results vary depending on the person, but."
With that, he stood up and walked over to the fridge. He opened the door and pulled out a bottle. A soft clink of glass rang out.
"Truth in wine. You know the saying?"
It was soju. Not one bottle — several.
"Uh, but when someone's drunk…."
"What people say when they're drunk isn't the real truth? Sure. But you've got to get them talking first before anything else can happen."
Beep. He scanned the bottles through the POS without waiting for an argument. Clearly not interested in hearing one.
"And one more thing."
He said.
"Skip your shift today. I'll cover for you."
"What?"
"I'll call the boss too. Guy's pretty flexible — should be fine."
Then he loaded the soju bottles into a plastic bag and… slid his own card into the card reader.
"Here. Take it."
"Hyung, come on."
"Awkwardness needs to get cleared up fast. Leave it hanging after a first meeting and it festers."
As he spoke, he suddenly grabbed my hand, forced it open, and pressed the plastic bag into my grip.
"Talk it out, get some rest. See you tomorrow."
"…Thanks."
"Whatever. Just pay me back sometime."
I gave a short bow toward the playful grin on his face. Stepping out of the convenience store, the cool air greeted me.
"…Aum.Gulp."
The question of whether this was even the right approach still wouldn't leave me alone.
She'd already been properly drunk that morning. Drinking again in the afternoon was going to be rough on her liver. The whole situation could, depending on how you looked at it, amount to coercion. There was no guarantee that anything said while drunk would be the truth. She might just clam up instead.
…And somewhere along that line of thinking, I found myself circling the same doubts over and over — stalling.
"…Gulp."
The snack was jerky. Thankfully, the mild version.
The drink was soju. Completely ordinary soju.
Thinking about it, I'd never actually had a proper conversation with her while she was drunk. Idle chatter, sure. I'd heard her drunken rambling before. But a serious talk? Never.
"Pwah."
Might as well try it this time. Sink or swim, it needed to happen.
With that resolve, I coaxed Cecilia into drinking with me. Just keep the amounts under control, I told myself.
"Mmngh?"
But here's the thing. This was genuinely not what I'd intended.
"…Ehehe♪"
…She was already on her second bottle.
With a thoroughly plastered Cecilia sitting across from me, I clutched my head all over again.
"Ah~! I should've cut her off halfway…!"
At first she'd been hesitant, but once she got going she'd been gulping it down so happily that I'd just sat there watching without thinking. Déjà vu. I was pretty sure the exact same thing had happened this morning….
"Ugh…. Why am I like this…."
"Eunhyuk, Eunhyuk♪ Lookit this!"
Cecilia called out as I dragged a hand down my face. Looking up, I found her with two strips of jerky stuck in either side of her mouth, paws held up like a cat.
"Tiger teef! Rawr~!"
"…."
"Heehee. Ehehe♪"
"…Well, at least the anxiety seems to have cleared up. That's nice to see, I guess."
Not that she was capable of any real thinking at this point. Whether to call that a good thing or a bad thing, I honestly couldn't decide.
"Ah, whatever. Want me to pour you another?"
"Mm~!"
Since things had already gone this far — might as well just race each other to blackout. I filled both our glasses.
A soft glugging sound filled the room as the clear liquid rose in the cups.
"Wanna cheers?"
"What's cheers?"
"Ah, right. So you tap your glasses together like this…."
The two glasses met lightly in the air, and a bright, clear clink of glass rang through the room.
"Cheers."
"Cheeers~!"
A faint sweetness and the scent of alcohol slid down my throat and escaped back out through my nose. It tasted good. Annoyingly so.
"Pwahh. …I feel like the means and the end just swapped places."
"Isss good♪"
While I sat there tilting my head, Cecilia munched on jerky between sips, murmuring happily to herself. She was cute.
"…Still. I should at least try. Hey, Cecilia?"
Just sitting here drinking with no purpose would be a poor way to face Jaeseop after everything he'd done. Even if the answer wasn't satisfying, I was going to get one. I turned to her and opened my mouth.
"Mmngh~?"
"Why were you so scared earlier today? Do I really look that scary?"
As I asked, I picked up a piece of jerky myself and chewed. This was good too — not too salty, and somehow compelling. No wonder Cecilia was grinning over it.
"Mmngh~ Scared?"
"Of me?"
"Nuh-uh~? I like Eunhyuk."
The sudden confession was so blunt it made my face itch. While I scratched the back of my head, she kept going.
"When you asked if I wanted to live here with you. I was really, really happy? It went zing~ through my whole head, and I went ufufu…."
A soft aum of her taking another mouthful of soju drifted over.
But at the same time, a question rose in me. Was that really something to be so happy about?
She'd said she didn't want to go back. She'd seemed to have nowhere else to go. So I'd offered to let her stay. That was all. I was just the person who'd happened to bring her home first among countless others. In fact, she'd clearly said before….
"Didn't you say it didn't matter where?"
"Mmngh?"
"This morning, I think. You said something like that. Like it didn't matter if it was my place or any other house…."
"Any other house?"
A little snort of a laugh. But her face, contrary to the sound, wore a bitter smile.
"Who's gonna take me in?"
"That's…."
I had nothing. Of course, anyone meeting Cecilia for the first time would start with wariness, but….
"Nobody takes me in. No~bo~dy~!"
Apparently it wasn't that simple a story.
"No one ever took me in. No one ever hid me or held me close. I was always alone."
Gulp. She swallowed her drink. As if she couldn't say any of this without it.
"When I said 'anywhere is fine,' that wasn't what I meant, Eunhyuk~."
"…Then what?"
"I meant any world is fine. Because, well."
Huu. She let out a breath. A heavy one.
"Any country, any region. The back alleys are all pretty much the same, right?"
"…."
"Cold, filthy, crumbling, miserable. And it cuts deep."
Gulp. She swallowed again. Listening to what came next, I briefly lost the ability to speak. What kind of past was she carrying? What kind of life had she lived?
"If you stay still, you never know when you'll die. If you don't want to die, you move. Somewhere else — a forest, a cave. Another back alley."
"Ceci—"
"So. I was really happy. That you said we should live together."
She said it with eyes that were remarkably calm.
"You gave me clothes. You gave me food. You didn't treat me like I was dirty. You didn't curse me."
"…Of course not."
"But there was a part of me that was afraid of that."
I swallowed my drink. My hand no longer reached for the jerky.
"Kindness without a price exists, right? It's scary. Scary and terrifying. Because you never know when or how it'll come back around."
She paused for a moment, then continued.
"I wish there was a price. I want a reason I'm allowed to be here. I want that certainty."
I listened quietly.
It made a little sense now. The way Cecilia kept searching for some kind of payment for being allowed to stay here. I felt like I'd understood, just a fraction, what was going on inside her.
"Eunhyuk gave me housework to do."
"…."
"But I failed."
She said it like that. It hadn't been a failure at all — just a simple accident, and not even her fault. But that wasn't how she saw it.
"Eunhyuk… you weren't mad?"
Her voice trembled. Her hands trembled. Both ears drooped flat, the tips quivering with unease.
"Am I allowed to be here…? I… I…."
What kind of past was she carrying. I didn't know. We weren't close enough yet for me to hear that far.
But even so, there was something I could do right now.
"Cecilia."
"…."
"Come here?"
"…!"
This girl was especially fond of hugs. More precisely, she seemed to like burying herself in my scent more than the hug itself.
Embarrassing and awkward as it was — if it could give her some peace, then fine.
"…."
Cecilia rose from her seat and padded over to me. Then she dropped low and threw her arms around my torso, pulling me in tight.
"…Nice… smell…."
"It's just store-brand body wash."
The sensation of her nuzzling her nose against me was ticklish. I gently stroked her back — not her head, her back.
"You can stay here. It's okay. I'm not mad."
"…."
"I will never kick you out. I promise. Housework — you can mess it up as many times as you want. I'll teach you again as many times as it takes."
"That."
Face buried against my stomach, she mumbled.
"Say it to me when I'm not drunk too."
Her voice was deeply content and soft around the edges all at once.
"I know I'll like it…."
I simply held her.
And for as long as she needed, I simply kept holding her.