Why Are You Here
Seven in the morning.
That was the hour I opened my eyes today.
It had only been two days, and yet lately I'd been waking remarkably early. The reason, of course, was obvious. I had to meet Jojeong at the PC bang and claim the login rewards.
Still not fully awake, I got ready through a fogged blur of vision—dumped cold water over myself, washed up, and changed. All of that took about twenty minutes, which put the time at 7:20 a.m. For reasons I couldn't name, I'd finished getting ready to leave faster than usual.
Hmm. Was today some kind of special occasion?
Yesterday I'd thought I ought to head out a little earlier, but I hadn't expected to actually follow through like this. Then again, the subway could always run late.
I stepped out of the apartment at once.
Another ten minutes passed.
The moment I reached the station, the train—again, I had no idea why—pulled in a little earlier than usual.
Was this what it felt like when heaven itself stepped in to make sure you couldn't be late? At this point it wasn't even about being late. I was going to arrive far ahead of the time we'd set.
Well, showing up earlier than promised was a good thing, wasn't it?
I thought it might even be nice, this time, to get there first and be the one waiting to greet Jojeong. I headed for our meeting place in a strangely good mood, and then—
"Whoa."
I'd arrived a whole twenty minutes early.
"This is way too much time to spare."
Now what was I supposed to do with it?
Just stand here and wait twenty minutes?
I had my phone, sure, but boring was boring either way.
I hadn't even eaten breakfast. Should I go grab something and come back? Yeah, no. Then I'd definitely be late.
And so the idea I finally landed on was this.
"I'll just wander around for about ten minutes and come back~"
A walk. A very light one.
And so began the grand first step toward relieving the boredom of all this leftover time. Short as it was, it turned into a perfectly pleasant little survey of the neighborhood...
Turned...
...
It was supposed to.
I gasped for breath. Both hands braced on my knees, I used them as a prop and hacked out a cough. Maybe it was because I hadn't run in so long—my heart felt like it was aching.
"Hah... huff..."
How had it come to this...?
It happened in the moment I set out on that first little journey to kill the boredom. More precisely, not the moment itself—about two or three minutes later.
Right. Which is to say, until that bit of time had passed, I'd been fine.
I was taking a pleasant walk, drinking in the cold morning air and glancing around the way a country kid freshly arrived in the city might.
And then I saw someone familiar. Someone very, very familiar. Someone I knew far too well.
Why is she...
That person was—
...here?
My ex.
Why?
She didn't even live around here. There was no reason for her to come anywhere near this place, and certainly not at an hour this early.
What? What is this? Why her?
A thousand thoughts crashed in at once. All I'd caught was a profile, but we'd been together for years. There was no way I was mistaken.
Long, straight brown hair. A height close to mine. That confident smile she always wore, bright and effortless.
And above all, those eyes. Desire—no. Those red eyes, brimming with every kind of hunger, proved it was her.
My body shook. No—it locked. I hadn't seen her in over three years. I'd spent all that time running, doing everything I could not to cross paths with her.
What on earth had she been doing in a place like—
I was standing there, staring, when she seemed to feel my gaze and turned her head slightly to the side.
Ah.
Our eyes met.
Fuck.
I yanked my gaze away at once, then started running with everything I had. I didn't even know where I was going. I just ran to get away from her, praying that if by some chance she hadn't seen me, she would go her whole life without ever catching on.
How long did I run? When I finally stopped, I was catching my breath with my knees braced beneath me.
I hadn't expected to break a sweat in weather this cold. And it had been ages since I'd last run, too...
That was when it happened.
"...Siyun?"
A voice reached me from in front of my lowered head—a voice the exact opposite of the ex I knew.
"What are you doing here?"
Quiet. Drowsy. The kind of voice that sketched a blank, expressionless face the moment you heard it.
"Ah, uh... you know. A bee kept following me, so I was running away."
It was Jojeong.
"...There isn't an idiot in the world who'd fall for a lie like that."
She said it with a faintly furrowed look at my excuse. I answered as if it were the purest truth.
"It is true."
"Then why were you running all by yourself, way off in the distance?"
"...Tch. Whatever, then."
"...Are you a little kid?"
Jojeong sighed. Aigoo.
"If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. Everybody's got at least one thing like that. I get it."
Then she flicked her gaze away, sat down on a nearby bench, and patted the spot beside her.
"Sit. You're wiped. Catch your breath, then we'll go."
"...Uh, y-yeah. Thanks?"
"Forget it. You came all this way and still weren't late. We'll call that even."
Thanks to Jojeong, I rested on the bench for a little while. I kept stealing glances around, half afraid my ex had followed, but thankfully nothing of the sort happened.
Right. Why would she follow me? We were already over. It hadn't even been that good a relationship, so there was no reason at all. If anything, she would have wanted to avoid me too.
Only once my heart finally settled did I let myself slump back against the bench, thinking that over. Jojeong, apparently bored, swung her legs back and forth, one then the other. The jumper she'd worn—conscious, it seemed, of yesterday's cold—flapped with the motion.
Then she glanced sidelong at me, slumped there, and asked:
"You okay now?"
"Yeah. Thanks to you."
"Good, then."
Her face looked full of questions she wanted to ask. Why I'd been so rattled. What I'd been running from without a single glance back. She looked intensely curious about all of it.
But.
"Let's go. We can't lose our seats."
She didn't ask a thing. As if keeping her earlier word—no, as if she were someone who hadn't seen anything at all—she simply moved on to something else.
...Haa. Right. This wasn't the time to be sitting around like this. I'd just treat it like a chance encounter on the street, and forget it.
I slapped my own cheeks a few times. Pap, pap—I tried however I could to grab hold of myself.
And then, hup. A small sound slipped out of her as she hopped down and landed.
Little kid, my ass. Pulling stunts like that made her look more like the little kid. And she was the one saying it to me.
I let a small laugh escape, doing my best to shake the stray thoughts, and followed her.
I looked around. Was she there? I didn't see her.
What about somewhere nearby, a spot you wouldn't notice unless you looked closely? ...No. Not there either.
Then what if, juuust maybe, she was hiding somewhere... There was no way. She was enough of a crazy bitch for that, sure, but at least right now she had no reason.
Whenever Jojeong's eyes weren't on me, I scanned the area around the PC bang building as hard as I could, checking with something close to obsession whether my ex was there or not. Only once I was certain she wasn't did my stride finally return to its normal pace.
I felt a little bad, being out to have fun and thinking about something else the whole time...
Things between us are uncomfortable enough that running into her would turn out even worse.
There was nothing I could do about it. The one small mercy was that Jojeong didn't seem to have noticed me scanning everything around us.
From here on, though, I focus on hanging out.
I'd confirmed she really wasn't here, and since she hadn't followed, she probably hadn't noticed me either. Time to stop thinking about my ex.
I let out a long, deep breath and followed Jojeong inside the PC bang.
"Cast Silence."
"..."
"Silence. Now."
"......"
"Siyun, Si— ah."
"Huh? Uh? Mmm?"
Your character has died.
The message that popped up in front of me was there to welcome me back. And at the same time—
"Si. Lence."
—so was the glare from beside me.
"Ah, sorry. I spaced out for a second."
"...You're not focusing?"
"I really just had a stray thought for a second. Next try I'll do it righ—"
"You remember how many times you've said that now?"
"...Nnngh. Sorry."
"Enough with the apologies."
"Sorry."
"I said don't."
"Sor—"
"Just don't talk."
I shut my mouth. If I opened it again, I had a feeling another apology would come out anyway.
After she—wanting Silence that badly—had gone and cast it on herself, we didn't retry for a while, and we didn't speak either. We just clicked at the mouse and keyboard without purpose.
I don't know how long that went on. I'd started looking around without realizing it when Jojeong sighed and spoke, more worry than irritation in her voice.
"If you can't focus, we don't have to today."
If it was too much, we could put it off until next time.
"No, I can do it. I was just a little sleepy. This time I'm seriously, absolutely, one hundred percent clearing it, so let's go again."
"......Hmm."
Jojeong suddenly turned a steady stare on me. She met my eyes and looked into them, long and unblinking.
And then, all at once—
"Huh? Hey, what are you doing!"
She'd shut off my computer and hers in a flash. It was so sudden I couldn't even react.
While I sat there flustered, she shot to her feet and started clearing the station. Then, without so much as pretending to hear me, she seized my wrist.
"Let's go eat. I'm hungry."
And just like that, she hauled me out of the PC bang. Fighting it would have looked pathetic, so I quietly followed her.