Jo Jeong
The morning after Jo Jeong had pasted me for running my mouth in a fighting game, I picked up the phone I'd tossed somewhere on the bed and looked at the screen.
The first thing I saw was the number telling me it was 7:00 a.m. After that, a handful of messages—some from last night, some from about an hour ago. They'd come through the game's messaging system.
Which meant the sender was, obviously, Jo Jeong. I unlocked the phone and skimmed them.
First, the ones from around midnight.
An ordinary check-in, asking if I'd made it home all right.
Come to think of it, I'd face-planted the second I walked in yesterday. It had been my first time out in a while, and my body was wiped. I apologized in my head for never answering, then read the next messages.
Those had come at 6:00 a.m.—about an hour ago.
That was nonsense.
...Being called that did sting a little. I was going to ignore it.
Kidding. She must have felt bad, in her own way, about me sprinting last night so I wouldn't miss the last train. I let out a short laugh and tapped the screen.
At that, Jo Jeong's status flipped from offline to online almost at once.
So she really had been worried. Jo Jeong grumbled on the outside, sure, but underneath she genuinely tried to look after people.
I was sitting there, oddly touched at having caught that, when she sent another message.
Huh. What was this about? She almost never played first thing in the morning.
Normally she only logged on around quitting time—six or seven in the evening. Even on weekends and days off, she stuck to that window almost without fail. Once I'd even asked her, half seriously, whether she was slaving away at some black-company job.
So I asked. I was curious.
And that was how I found out. So all this time, it had been because of the part-time job.
Yeah, that tracked. Part-time work could run on weekends, and if she was juggling it with school, only logging on around then explained everything. She seemed to play only at PC bangs, too, so of course she'd fixed her hours.
Speaking of PC bangs... oh. Right—I'd only collected the PC bang rewards through the second tier. To milk the rest of them dry, I had roughly fourteen hours left.
Yesterday I'd talked a big game and hadn't actually meant to fill all the way through. Now that it had crossed my mind, though, I wanted them. Fine. Since I was thinking about it, I might as well go.
I messaged Jo Jeong again.
The reaction was lukewarm. If she was asking for a reason like that, maybe coming with me wasn't all that appealing. Hmm... or maybe she just couldn't smoke in peace with me sitting next to her.
I was turning that over when her reply landed almost at once.
...That startled me. She typed insanely fast. What was the rush? Was she being careful, in case telling me not to come would make things awkward?
The replies had stacked up so fast I just blinked at the screen a few times, then hauled myself up to get ready to leave.
Permission was permission, whatever the reason. I'd better get there early, before the seats filled up like yesterday.
And so I was back in front of the PC bang. I glanced around, and there was Jo Jeong, standing in the same spot as yesterday.
A white shirt, black slacks, a gray cardigan thrown over the top. When our eyes met she gave a little wave, and the cardigan sleeve fluttered with it.
A perfectly casual outfit. I didn't mean anything by it—just that she looked perfectly fine, dressed like a normal person.
I waved back at about the same energy and returned her greeting. Seeing that, Jo Jeong strode right up to me.
“Hey.”
“Hm? Oh—yeah. Good to see you?”
And then, out of nowhere, she greeted me.
So the wave from a second ago didn't count? Why come all the way over just to say it out loud?
When I returned the greeting, a little awkwardly, she bent at the waist and looked up at me for a moment. Eyes locked on mine, she just stared—quietly, the way you'd take something in.
...What? Why was she suddenly like this? Had she eaten something weird, or did I have something on my face?
Whether I was worrying about it or not, Jo Jeong kept looking at me. Then—
“...Let's go. Before the seats fill up.”
She turned her gaze away and walked toward the building. I had no time to ask what any of that meant. I just had to follow.
The hours at the PC bang weren't much different from yesterday.
We filled time for the event rewards and took down bosses together. Jo Jeong said she was hungry and went to order food, then spent ages deliberating, as if nothing on the menu appealed again. Watching her, I suggested eating out today as well.
The one real difference... she didn't smoke. She must have remembered I'd said I didn't, and been considerate. I was honestly grateful not to have to sit in cigarette smoke for no reason.
The meal we ended up having, somehow, was hamburgers.
There was a handmade-burger place nearby she said was good and that she went to often, so I'd followed her. It really was good—good enough that if I ever came back to this neighborhood, I figured I'd walk in on my own.
We were having an easy time of it, the way friends do, when one problem showed up.
“Hey.”
“...Yeah.”
“You.”
“......What?”
“Why are you so quiet?”
The problem was that Jo Jeong wasn't talking. Not one bit. If I didn't start it, her mouth stayed shut. We'd gotten past the awkward stage ages ago, so there had to be some other reason...
...Was she sulking? No, that didn't fit. When I did talk to her, she answered properly. She even spent the whole day staring straight at me—enough that the look was starting to feel a little heavy.
Now that I thought about it, she'd been off since the greeting this morning. For some reason she'd said hello a second time, and when our eyes met she'd just gone still and scanned my face.
Even I—someone who usually read the moods and thoughts of the people around me pretty well—couldn't make sense of it. So I'd asked her outright.
“I'm not telling you.”
Shot down. Instantly.
“Then why do you keep staring?”
“That's a secret too.”
“Oh, for—... I'm gonna lose it. Are you actually mad about something?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell...”
She kept staring, and it was uncomfortable.
We went back and forth like that—a scuffle that wasn't quite a scuffle—for a little while. Only then did Jo Jeong look away. A moment later she was suddenly walking ahead of me.
“Anyway, let's go do something. The PC bang's probably full by now.”
She set off, her body swaying lightly as she walked.
Shuffle, shuffle. Then a steadier tread. Two sets of footsteps sounded—mine and Jo Jeong's, out looking for something to do.
“Here. Found it.”
She stopped short and pointed at a building. It was a coin karaoke with a pretty ridiculous name.
“Karaoke?”
I said it like a question, more puzzled than anything. She just didn't seem like the type who enjoyed singing all that much.
I hadn't known it from chat alone, but talking to her in person, she was pretty quiet. Her speech came out blunt, chopped into short pieces.
So I'd figured karaoke with Jo Jeong just wasn't going to happen...
“What. You don't like this place?”
“No... it's not that I don't.”
“Then let's go in. We're short on time.”
Contrary to what I'd thought, she seemed to like singing quite a bit. I let her pull me inside.
We found a room that was reasonably big and clean and went in. Before I could do anything, Jo Jeong had her wallet out and added eleven songs. The reason it was an awkward eleven: add ten, and under the name of an event you got one more free.
Free was free, so that was fine.
While I was thinking that, she took the remote and punched in a title. Then she hit start without hesitating... and the song she'd picked was no joke. Rock. Difficult rock, at that.
From the way she talked, I wouldn't have guessed she could sing well. Was she actually incredible at it? The difficulty on that one was pretty—no. It was just high.
“Ah. Ah.”
A couple of taps. A breath. Whether I was thinking any of that or not, Jo Jeong went through the motions of testing the mic a few times, and for some reason it built up my expectations. She looked incredibly practiced. Like a pro.
The backing track began to spill out, and Jo Jeong started to sing—
—only for her voice, from the very first high note, to fail to hold and blow wide open. In other words, she cracked, and threw my expectations straight at the floor.