Written as a Boarding House, Read as Cohabitation: The Semester Begins
It was written as a boarding house but read as cohabitation. The new semester had begun—the season that made every university student shudder. Orientation week was over. It was the second week, when club recruitment kicked off, but I couldn't be the one sitting at those booths. It still made my teeth grind. If only we'd had a temporary club room, I wouldn't be wasting time strolling around campus collecting stares. I'd be coding. Kim Jeong-jun, who had said he'd contact me if the thing he was looking into worked out, had gone completely silent. The only people I interacted with were Yoo Ji-young, who shared two general education classes with me, and Kim Jeong-a, who was in the same department and year as me. When I asked Kim Jeong-a if she knew anything, she told me she lived separately in the dorms and didn't have much information. Ah, I hadn't reapplied for the dorms. The wall of curfew annoyed me too much. ... It felt like I'd lost the joy in life. It had been a long time since my reincarnation that I'd felt this way. I was preparing Digital Inside with Kim Mu-sik, but something was missing. It lacked stimulation.
Then, from somewhere, the sound of a song blending guitar and drums reached me. Without realizing it, I was drawn forward, my feet carrying me toward the noise. After pushing through the dense crowd, I finally saw a band performing right in front of a club recruitment booth.
"...Not bad?"
It was a genuinely solid performance. The sound quality stood out most of all. When they finished and took a short break, I approached and tried to strike up a conversation.
"Hello~"
"Ah, hello!"
Damn. I'd spoken to someone who clearly had the face of a social butterfly, but it looked like I'd miscalculated. Their face flushed bright red and they already seemed on the verge of short-circuiting.
"The thing is, I've been making music on a computer lately. I was wondering if I could get some advice."
I could confidently say the tracks I'd created were pretty high quality, but something still felt off. Like the original flavor of the songs wasn't coming through.
"Ah... it's a little difficult right now... Hey, Eun-ji!"
The girl lounging in a chair in front of the keyboard, sipping water, perked up.
"Yes, sunbae? What is it?"
"You're basically our composer, right? This person wants someone to look at the music they're making on a computer. Think you can help?"
"I'm totally down. I've been wanting to try electronic music after seeing Seo Taiji anyway. This is perfect timing. Could we meet after the booth closes today?"
"Ah, yes. That works."
The rhythm game project was finally beginning to stir.
Class ended. After waiting a short while, it was four o'clock. The club recruitment booths were starting to pack up. The band club had finished their last performance and were gathering their equipment.
"Ah, there you are. Good luck out there~"
"No, it's not like that. Ignore him. Let's go. Are we heading to the engineering building?"
"No. We were using the computer lab but got kicked out, so... my house..."
Ah, shit. Saying it out loud made it sound even worse.
"...I was going to palm it off on the drummer, but that would've been a disaster."
"Haha... yeah, bringing a guy into the house is a bit..."
I had zero interest in being seen as gay. A woman living alone without parents inviting a man over would be interpreted as flirting no matter how charitably you looked at it. Thankfully the house was close. After some casual chatter on the way, we arrived in no time.
"It's really close. Must be convenient for commuting. Could I live here with you?"
"There are spare rooms. Want one? The boarding fee is pretty high, though."
"Oh..."
I'd only been joking, but she looked like she was seriously considering it.
"Ah, right. We haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Yoon I-seo, class of '93, computer engineering."
"I'm Lee Eun-ji, class of '93, electronic and electrical engineering. We're the same age, so should we drop the formal speech?"
"I'm fine with that. Nice to meet you."
"Yeah! Hehehe..."
Was that a strangely sticky laugh, or was it just my imagination?
"So, about the computer..."
"It's in my room. Follow me."
It was a good thing I usually kept my room tidy. Not that there was much to clean in the first place.
"..."
Eun-ji wore a stunned expression.
"This isn't a girl's room at all!"
In the end, Eun-ji shrieked at the top of her lungs. Still, thanks to frequently hearing Park Seung-hyeop's dolphin-like high notes, my ears were used to high frequencies and took no damage.
"There's no makeup at the vanity, no posters, just a bookshelf and a single computer. Does that even make sense?"
I had nothing to say. It seemed like she, too, had some kind of fantasy about what a girl's room should look like. Maybe she was also TS reincarnated?
"Uh... anyway, the music first!"
I quickly changed the subject. If we kept talking about this, we'd probably end up at a cosmetics store in the shopping district before long.
"So... this is what I made..."
I played the tracks for her. Her reaction was far from ordinary.
"...This can't be real?"
After spacing out for a long while, Eun-ji finally recovered and started speaking like a normal human again.
"The song itself is genuinely good. The melody line is strong, but the background—should I call it that?—feels a little empty. If you add a slightly heavy bass in this part, even lightly, it would fill out the sound nicely."
Following her advice, I reinforced the bass and tweaked the minor details. The result...
"This is it...!"
I had perfectly plagiarized the music! I could dominate the music world!
"Could you keep helping me like this in the future? As thanks... um..."
"Reduce the boarding fee."
"Huh?"
For a second I thought she was joking, but Eun-ji's expression was dead serious.
"Not occasionally. Every single day. I'll help you every day."
"Huh?"
I felt genuine confusion for the first time in a long while.
When I first heard about clubs last year, I had been incredibly excited. I admired the University Song Festival, so when I learned that being good at keyboard could get me on stage, I immediately joined the band club. I helped the drummer with composition, we breezed through the preliminaries, and in July we even took bronze at the main University Song Festival. But after the festival ended, the whole thing turned into a never-ending party. Once the senior who led the band graduated, the passion died overnight. One time a drunk senior from the same band confessed to me, and I caused a massive incident by blurting out, "I like women." That senior left the club, but the others still tease me about it to this day. While I was seriously considering quitting and was half-forced to perform in front of the recruitment booth, I met I-seo. No exaggeration—she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. And she made music. The electronic music I'd grown interested in lately. Specifically trance. Taking a stranger home was already unusual, but both her house and her body carried a sweet scent. When I'd said the same thing to the senior who confessed, it had been nothing more than a polite rejection. But seeing someone like her, my heart pounded so hard I was sure it showed. Until the senior teased me about "giving it a shot with I-seo," I hadn't felt this way. Could I really be...? The thought had just crossed my mind when—
"Shall I give you the spare room?"
At that moment, something snapped inside my head. Then, as if she hadn't expected me to be so forward, she got flustered and played her music for me. Even that was art. What was this? A literal angel sent from heaven? Every time she leaned in to give feedback, that sweet scent made my head spin. On top of that, her comfortable clothes revealed breasts so large they could only be described as vicious, along with the deep cleavage between them. The urge to dive headfirst into that valley hit me like a truck. And after finishing her feedback, she said we should meet often and that I should help her? In a voice like rolling jade beads? This was straight-up seduction. Countless situations where I could excuse it with "It's fine because we're both women" flashed through my mind. Finally, the thought that boarding here was the perfect way to satisfy the stimulation I'd been craving filled my head. So I pushed.
"Huh? Huh? Huuuh?"
Confusion crept onto her previously smiling face, and every glimpse of it sent a thrill through me. Only then did I truly understand myself.
With Eun-ji's help, I received instrument samples from the band and got a lot of support while making music. The compensation was letting her board and... squish squish squish squish.
"Umm... is it really that good?"
"Ehehe."
...letting her touch my breasts. When I used to watch YouTuber stories in the past, I thought women who played like this were just weirdos. But was everyone like this? Thanks to that, whenever I sat on the sofa, Eun-ji would casually reach over and start kneading my chest. It didn't feel bad. If anything, since Eun-ji was quite attractive herself, it strangely excited me.
Ding-dong~ The doorbell in the living room rang. Who could it be? No one was supposed to visit.
"I-seo!!!"
When I opened the door, Kim Jeong-a, who had been waiting outside, leaped straight into my arms. More precisely, into my maternal embrace.
"Come in first. But why did you show up without saying anything?"
"Oppa found a place to use as a club room! He told me to bring all the club members!"
"Ah, that. I was wondering why there'd been no news. Looks like it worked out."
"...Who is she?"
Eun-ji looked at Jeong-a and voiced her confusion. Only then did Jeong-a notice her and jump in surprise.
"Ah, these days I'm making music instead of games, and this is the friend helping me. Her name's Lee Eun-ji. She's also boarding here for convenience."
"Boarding for convenience? This is just straight-up living together!"
"This is Kim Jeong-a. She's the kid who used to program with me in the same club."
"...Rival?"
What are you talking about, Eun-ji?
"Huh?"
"No, it's nothing."
...I must have misheard her?
A silent catfight had already begun.