That Would Be Writing It for You
I woke with something warm pressed against the tip of my foot.
The top of my foot, just outside the covers, was serving as a bed. I'd gotten up several times in the night to check where she'd gone, and each time she'd been under the desk — but by morning she had made her way this far.
She was bigger than yesterday.
When she was soaked through, I could feel nothing but bone; now that she'd dried, her fur had fluffed up and her belly looked plump. When I'd towel-dried her last night she hadn't been anywhere near this size, but as she slept, the fur around her entire nape had swelled up. When I touched it, my fingers sank right in.
She'd fallen asleep with one front paw draped over her face. Beneath it, her whiskers were bent so that one side curled upward, and they swayed every time she breathed.
I didn't dare move. She seemed like she'd wake.
Her belly rose and fell slowly. I watched that alone for a long while.
I'd never done this in the morning before. Whenever I opened my eyes, it was always to wake someone or fetch something for someone.
Meow.
She walked to her food bowl, cried, and looked at me. She'd beaten me to it.
"Food."
If she had a name, I would have put it in front of that. There was nothing to put there.
As I poured the kibble, she pressed up beside my foot. Yesterday, the moment my hand came near, out came the claws; today, she took a single step back as my hand approached. She stepped back exactly that much and no more. She didn't run.
When I came out of the shower, a message was waiting on my phone.
It was the person from yesterday. I still didn't know their name — only the number was saved.
After I sent it, I read it back. I'd only stated a fact, but the sentence looked strange somehow.
Another one arrived a little later.
It was the first I'd heard that they kept something. They'd said they couldn't take it into the dorm, so it must be living at home — which meant there was one more reason why that person had shown up at the same spot two days in a row.
Study group met once a week, and on that day we read each paper twice — once sitting down, once while walking. When I read on my feet, my steps slowed wherever I didn't understand, so even without marking anything, the places where I got stuck stayed with me. On the walk to the seminar room, I slowed twice, both times at the methodology sections.
When I opened the door, six people were already seated. Last time, six heads had lifted all at once. This time, no one looked up.
Sera set down her pen and slid a single sheet of paper next to her laptop.
"It's a work-study application. The department got two spots, and one of them is still open."
Twelve hours a week, through the end of the semester. In the recommendation field, a name was already written.
"Do freshmen qualify?"
"If there's a recommendation."
"What's the catch?"
Click.
The cap of her pen snapped shut, and then came the answer.
"You lead the presentation at next week's study session. Read the paper and present for forty minutes in front of everyone."
"……"
"It was supposed to be my turn, but you're doing it, Jung Woojin. You pointed out the paper's weak spot last time, remember. Just expand that into forty minutes."
It wasn't a request. It was closer to someone naming their price.
She'd carved out a place for me and handed off one of her own obligations. She claimed both sides came out ahead.
"I'll do it."
"That was fast."
"I don't have a reason not to."
Sera pushed the paper closer and set the pen on top of it. The cap was still on.
"Jung Woojin."
"Yes."
"This isn't me doing you a favor. I need someone to take my presentation off my hands. That's all this is."
"I know."
"…Most people say thank you at this point."
"I am thankful. But that and this are two different things."
I wrote my name on the application and handed the pen back.
"Still — thank you for the recommendation."
Sera picked the pen up again. She didn't uncap it.
The presentation was the following week. I'd been given forty minutes.
I fastened onto the point where the two papers sliced the same data in different ways. The two places my footsteps had slowed were, in the end, this week's core — and standing up there without grasping that, forty minutes would collapse into a summary.
A senior cut me off partway through.
"You said something similar to this before, didn't you?"
"I did."
"Then what's new?"
"Last time, the question was how you count the things that weren't used."
"……"
"Today's question is why they weren't used."
The sound of pages turning stopped dead on the desks.
"What you yourself did doesn't count as an event. It only counts when someone else does it."
"…Then what does count?"
"Nothing does. That's why they didn't write it down."
Sera wrote something in her notebook. It went on longer than last time.
Coming out of the seminar room, I saw Yuna standing at the end of the hallway. She was laughing with two girls from our department, and she was facing away from me — but to pass, I had to go right by her.
My breath came a beat late.
It had been ages since I'd seen her face, and still, that reaction hadn't changed. The calendar had turned over, but this hadn't gone back, and I doubted it ever would.
I adjusted my bag strap and simply walked past.
"…Jung Woojin?"
My name came from behind. I stopped and turned, and Yuna was looking at me; the two beside her had already sensed the shift and taken a half-step back.
"Hey."
"……"
"What is it?"
Yuna started to say something, then swallowed it and just exhaled. There was something she wanted to ask, and she was weighing whether she was allowed to.
"Nothing. Go on."
"Okay."
I walked toward the stairs. Behind me, their conversation started up again, quieter than before.
The old me would have gone if she called from that spot. I'd have gone without knowing what she wanted, and there was always a favor waiting when I got there.
This time, there was no favor.
It was the absence that snagged on me.
The days had grown longer, and it was still bright past six. Lights were coming on one by one in the shops near the back gate, and smoke was rising from the grill house in front of us, drifting out over the street.
Dogyeong was standing there.
There was no reason for him to be at that spot. The Student Council Hall was on the opposite side of campus, and his apartment was by the main gate — to end up here, he'd have had to cut straight across the campus.
"Yo."
"Hey."
"You said you were going to the hospital and then went totally silent. What's that about? I asked and got nothing back."
"I took in a cat."
"What? When? Where?"
"A little while ago. She'd been abandoned behind my building."
"…Dude, seriously."
He was grinning. I could have kept this conversation going for a long time. Dogyeong loved this kind of thing, and he never bothered to hide it.
"Got a picture?"
I pulled out my phone and handed it over. There was one photo from the night I brought her home — asleep on my knee.
"Cute. What's her name?"
"She doesn't have one."
"Why not?"
"Working on it."
As he handed the phone back, Dogyeong paused for a beat. Then his face changed — and he knew, even as it happened, that it was changing.
"By the way, Woojin. You know that thing I almost said to you at the cafeteria?"
"There's this senior in the student council. A fourth-year. She's job hunting now, and she was asking around if anyone could help her look over her personal statement."
A streetlamp flicked on. By the back gate, it was always this side that lit first.
"So I gave her your name. You're good with writing."
Dogyeong said this as a compliment. He always had, and he'd never meant anything else by it.
"Look it over, or write it for her?"
"Huh?"
"Looking it over and writing it are two different things."
Dogyeong thought for a moment.
"…I mean, writing it, yeah. She says she flat-out can't do it. Oh, but hey, it's not like you'd be doing it for nothing. She's paying."
"How much?"
"Three hundred."
The number arrived before anything else did.
That was almost exactly what the hospital had written up. Two rounds of shots, one spay surgery, and food and litter together came to around the same amount — and subtracting it from this month's tutoring pay would leave my rent short by about three days. One job would fill the gap.
The arithmetic stood up first.
It was that — the fact that there was arithmetic at all — that stuck worst of all.
"No."
The grin left Dogyeong's face a beat late.
"…Why not?"
"Because that's writing it for her."
"That's what I'm saying, you'd be getting paid for it? It's just like a part-time job."
"Part-time work or not, it's somebody else's statement."
"Dude, there are tons of jobs like that out there."
There are.
I knew that.
It's just that I'd done it for free, for a very long time.
"I'm not someone who does that."
"……"
"I'm trying to make sure I don't become that, either."
Dogyeong looked up. His face said he had no idea what I meant, and anger was climbing into it anyway, ignorant as it was.
"I honestly have no clue what you're talking about."
"I know."
"Hey, I just brought you a good opportunity. I brought it up first so she wouldn't go find someone else."
"Thanks."
"If you're thankful, why won't you do it?"
"Being thankful and doing it are different things."
Dogyeong raised a hand to grab my shoulder, then stopped.
If he'd grabbed it, it would have been exactly like every time before — but his hand froze halfway. I had never once dodged that hand.
"What is going on with you lately? At least tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"Then what the hell."
Under the streetlamp, only half his face was lit. Even while angry, his voice wouldn't rise — because this kid had never really learned how to be angry.
"Dogyeong. You gave her my name, right?"
"…Yeah."
"Did you ask me first?"
Dogyeong's mouth opened halfway, then closed.
"…That's—"
"……"
"I figured you'd obviously say yes."
After saying it, Dogyeong heard his own words.
"That's not how I meant it to sound."
"I know."
"……"
"That's exactly why I won't do it."
Dogyeong started to answer, thought better of it, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He took a half-step back, and he didn't notice himself doing it.
"…Fine. But I seriously meant it in a good way."
"I know."
That part was true. Dogyeong had never once done anything with bad intentions — which was exactly why he never understood what it was he'd actually done.
No — I wanted to believe that.
Dogyeong turned away first. Heading for the main gate, he retraced the path he'd cut across the campus, and he never once looked back.
On the way back, I stopped at the convenience store, picked up a triangle kimbap, and set it on the counter.
Beep.
While it scanned, I checked my balance. Rent was due next week and the tutoring pay came the week after, so there was a three-day hole. I could somehow manage that much.
Three hundred thousand won would erase that gap.
My steps slowed the second time that thought came around.
I was angry.
Not at Dogyeong. I was angry at myself for doing the math before I'd even finished hearing the number, and at myself for wavering, just for a moment, over whether I could survive three days. I'd spent years doing that work for free, and here I was, now, about to do it again for three hundred thousand won.
When I got back to my room, she was waiting at the door. She must have heard the key, because she was sitting right in front of the entrance, staring at me. At first she'd pressed herself all the way against the wall; now she'd come this far out.
I kicked off my shoes and crouched, and she came over beside my knee. When I didn't reach out, she bumped her head against the back of my hand first.
"…What is it."
I turned my hand over and scratched under her chin.
Purrr.
After that, I filled her food bowl and sat down at the desk. While my laptop booted up, the sound of her crunching kibble came from near my feet, and I stared at the screen until it stopped.
The four sentences were unchanged. Everything below them was still empty, going back to winter.
I laid out the day's events in order. The name he'd given out without asking. The I figured you'd obviously say yes. Three hundred thousand won. And the arithmetic.
They all gathered into a single thing — and it wasn't something born today. It was old; today was just one day of it.
I put my hands on the keyboard. Last time, I'd typed nothing here, but today a single line came out.
The reason I felt bad after going along with it wasn't that I'd been asked — it was that it had already been decided I would.
The next sentence wouldn't come, but it was different from before. Back then, I'd stopped because there was nothing to write. Today I stopped because I didn't know where to send what came next.
Something moved near my feet, and I looked down to find her pressed up against the leg of my chair. Who knows how long she'd been there — fur had collected on the lower half of my pants.
I needed to name her, but I still didn't know what. I'd been told I just had to make a reason to call her something, but beyond feeding time, nothing would come to mind.
I picked up my phone.
The reply took a while.
It wasn't weird.
After a long while, one more message came.
I was about to put the phone down, then picked it back up and typed one line. Deleting it took even less time.
That message had been a way of asking my name.
The document window now held five sentences. The first four were written in winter.