Just the Two of You
By the time I got back, the second period was already half over.
When I opened the back door of the lecture hall, the air inside hit me warm and heavy. Wet umbrellas stood crowded along the rear wall, and the windows had fogged over so completely that the outside had disappeared.
At the front, the TA was handing out the group assignments. Twenty students split into five groups, and at the top of Group 1 sat Dogyeong's name.
"Jung Woojin, Group 3. Sit with your group, please."
Chairs scraped across the floor all at once. When I sat down in the back, I noticed the front of my shirt still clung damp to my chest.
The hospital had said it was nothing much. A few ear mites and poor nutrition, but nothing actually wrong with him. They'd apply the mite medication and keep him until evening, so I'd left him in their care and come back.
Two vaccinations, one neutering, food and litter all added together came to a little over a month's worth of tutoring fees.
I had two tutoring jobs. Four sessions a week covered my rent and food, so losing a month of that income meant exactly what it sounded like — I could do the math without a calculator.
Even so, I'd wanted to bring him home.
The chair beside me scraped back.
"Are you, by any chance, Jung Woojin?"
A girl with her hair in a single high ponytail sat down, already pulling out her laptop before she'd even finished settling. She was fast about it.
"Yeah."
"I'm Im Haram. I texted you yesterday."
"Yeah."
"I'll drop the formalities then. You said we were classmates yesterday, remember?"
She hadn't even waited for my answer.
"Then I'll drop mine too."
"...Yeah."
"We both ended up in Group 3."
"...Yeah."
"I saw the roster earlier."
She tilted her laptop screen halfway toward me. Both of the files I'd sent yesterday were open on it.
"Really, thank you so much for the materials."
"Did you read them?"
"I started to and gave up. Chapter 16's in English, remember?"
She said it laughing. Her voice hadn't dropped at all while admitting she hadn't managed it.
This girl spent four years in love with Dogyeong. She's the one who revised a letter draft eight times, and that letter never gets delivered.
Right now she was sitting next to me with a face that knew none of it.
"You're close with Yoon Dogyeong, right?"
The sound of the TA flipping through the roster came from up front.
"I am."
"Saw him at orientation. He's popular."
"......"
"All the girls know his name."
"That sounds like him."
"But I've never even managed to talk to him."
Haram closed her laptop and turned half her body toward me.
"So here's the thing."
Up front, the TA began calling out next week's presentation order.
"Let's the three of us grab a meal sometime."
I've heard that sentence before. Back then, I said I knew a place. I made the seat happen. Dogyeong showed up late, and every time things turned awkward, I was the one who steered the conversation back. That evening, Haram called me and asked me, one detail at a time, everything Dogyeong had said.
That's where the four years began.
"Not eating."
Haram blinked.
"...Huh?"
"Have it just the two of you."
"Just us two? I don't even know the guy."
"Then you'll get to know him."
"...Can that actually work?"
"If it doesn't, it doesn't."
I wasn't sure whether my tone had come out too harsh. Haram started to answer, then shut her mouth.
"It's just, things would be easier with you there."
Easier with me there — easier for her, that is. I'd said that same sentence to Dogyeong once, and he never understood it.
"The one it's easier for isn't me. It's you."
"......"
"If I'm there, you won't have to talk to him at all."
Haram turned her head away. She didn't look angry.
"...That's true, actually."
It came out sooner than I expected.
"But it stings a little, because you're exactly right."
"Sorry."
"No, don't apologize. It makes it weirder."
She fished a pen out of her bag and scribbled something in her notebook. She kept talking as she wrote.
"So I have to be the one to start the conversation? All by myself?"
"Yep."
"...Ugh, seriously."
On rainy days there isn't a seat to be found in the campus cafeteria. Everyone who might have gone out pours back in instead, the serving line stretches all the way to the door, and the smell of wet clothes mixes with the smell of soup until the air inside turns heavy.
I was halfway through my tray at the window seat when another tray landed in front of me.
It was Dogyeong. Half his soup had spilled, and he'd carried the tray over exactly as it was, sloshing and all.
The moment he sat down, he pushed his kimchi toward my side. He'd been doing that since high school.
"I got in."
"Yeah."
"......"
"Congratulations."
"Yeah."
He lifted his spoon, then set it back down. He didn't scoop any soup — just turned the bowl in place.
"It's just, I helped her with her application essay. The night before. She asked how to write it, so I told her mine took forever, and showed her mine."
"......"
"And then only I got rejected."
Yesterday Yuna had said she couldn't bring herself to ask Dogyeong. She'd asked the night before that instead.
Clatter, clatter.
"She said sorry, and I said it was fine. But she barely talks to me now."
"......"
"Woojin."
"Yeah."
"......"
Two spoonfuls of rice went by before he found the next sentence.
"Never mind."
"Say it."
"It's nothing. Forget it."
Dogyeong never hesitates when he wants something. He asks twice with a grin, and if that doesn't work, he smacks you on the shoulder. Right now he was just pushing his chopsticks around.
"The student council gave me something to handle."
"......"
"No, actually, I could do that one myself."
"Okay."
It was the first time Dogyeong had ever withdrawn a request. It wasn't that he'd learned how to give things up — it felt more like he'd sensed, ahead of time, that I wouldn't take this one.
"...Yeah."
I used to think asking first was the same as helping.
"I'm heading out. Gotta go back to the hospital."
"The hospital? Are you sick somewhere?"
"Not me."
"...Then who?"
I picked up my tray and stood.
"I'll tell you later."
I'll tell you later — that was something Dogyeong used to say to me. Coming out of my own mouth, it sat wrong, and once I'd said it, nothing came behind it.
Dogyeong called out something more, but it came from behind me and I didn't catch it.
I'd borrowed a pet carrier from the hospital. Climbing the stairs one-handed, I could hear it rustling the whole way up.
My room was two steps from the front door. Put in a desk and a bed, and what was left was just enough floor for one person to lie down. I'd left the window open when I went out in the morning; rainwater had pooled along the sill, and a stain spread down the lower stretch of the wallpaper where it had soaked in.
I set the carrier on the floor and closed the window first.
I poured the food, set out the water bowl, spread the litter in front of the bathroom. A cardboard box I'd gotten for free on the way home, laid on its side, gave him one place to hide his breath.
I left the carrier door open and sat at my desk, but he wouldn't come out for a long while. Then one front paw appeared first, followed by the face, then he circled the room once and tucked himself behind a desk leg.
I reached out a hand.
Hissss.
A front paw shot out first. The claws were bared; they grazed the back of my hand, but no blood came. He kept his teeth bared as he lowered his body and backed away all the way to the wall.
I pulled my hand back. He'd curled into my arms during the day, but not now. In that place, coming to a human had been his only way to survive. Here, every smell, every sound, the feel of the floor beneath his paws — all of it was brand new.
Anything dropped somewhere strange gets scared. And when they're scared, the claws come out first.
These days, so do mine.
He hadn't cried once since coming into the room.
It turned out crying was for when there was no one to call for.
I tried calling out anyway.
He didn't come.
I hadn't even given him a name yet, so there was nothing proper to call — I just made a sound, and the cat only stared at me.
For years, being someone who came when called had been my whole job. Phone rang, I picked up. Someone called, I went. No one called, I went first anyway. I'd thought that was what a relationship was.
This one doesn't come even when you call.
And I wasn't angry that he didn't.
I opened my laptop. The window I'd left up yesterday was still there on the screen.
Comfortable Person
...I always give in and listen. But afterward, for some reason, I feel strange — and I still don't know why.
Only the cursor was moving, blinking at the end of the paragraph. I rested my hands on the keyboard, then lifted them off.
What happened today wouldn't fit into sentences. The one that was open but never came out, the one who'd had someone else fill his food bowl, the fact that Dogyeong couldn't bring himself to ask for something for the first time — I hadn't yet found a place to put any of it down.
I minimized the window.
I didn't close it.
My phone buzzed. It wasn't the number Haram had texted from yesterday.
The question could have been about the cat or about me, and left deliberately that way — which made it work as a question for both of us.
No message came after that. Much later, one more arrived.
Crunch, crunch.
Somewhere along the way, the one behind the desk leg had made it to the food bowl. When he finished eating, he came all the way to my feet and sat down — still, though, just beyond the reach of my hand.
I'd never thought about what to name him. I only learned today that I was supposed to.
I turned my phone face-down and opened the journal article again.
When I turned a page, no sound came from down by my feet. I looked over to find him lying on his side, front paws folded in, his belly rising and falling in a slow rhythm. All that time staring at the wall earlier, and now his back was pressed against my side.
It was the first time he'd fallen asleep since coming in.
I watched him for a long while before I felt something shift in my own face. The corners of my mouth had turned up.
I've smiled plenty of times. When Dogyeong was funny, I laughed. When Yuna laughed, I laughed along. I smiled for photos, too.
Every one of those, someone had been watching.
I lowered my eyes back to the article. In the time it took me to read two more pages, no one called my name.
I hadn't known quiet could feel this good.
I got down from the chair, leaned my back against the wall, and sat on the floor. After a while the cat opened his eyes and looked at me.
I hadn't called him, but he got up and walked over.
He set his front paws on my knee, climbed up from there, and curled himself into a ball. When I laid a hand on his back, the fur was still not quite dry, and as I stroked him slowly I could feel each bone of his spine catch against my palm, one by one.
In middle school, I kept a notebook. I wrote down what happened at school and never showed it to anyone. I entered it in an essay contest once and didn't win.
When I got to high school, I stopped taking it out. It wasn't that I didn't have the time.
Everything I had to write about was someone else's story. Who Dogyeong liked, what had made Yuna cry, how I'd smoothed it all over.
To write about myself, I'd need things I had actually done — and I had done plenty, but none of it was mine.
Purrrr.
The sound started somewhere beneath my hand. It resonated faster than the rise and fall of his breathing.
Today, for once, there is one thing I decided without asking anyone first.