When You Boldly Show Your Panties, It's Awkward
"Oh, so I'm not supposed to touch?"
"Wouldn't most people... get flustered?"
"I have a friend who keeps saying her chest is big and telling me to feel it sometimes."
I figured she meant it the same way my friend did, so I'd planned to give it one squeeze and pull my hand away.
"Jaehee, you're bolder than I expected."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Pfft—! Jaehee, you're a little weird."
As she laughed hard enough to make her shoulders bounce, her chest jiggled ever so slightly.
Why does it move around so freely like that?
"You're staring at Unnie's chest way too hard, Jaehee."
"If it's out on display like that, anyone would look. Especially right in front of me."
Just what kind of person was she?
She had mathematical knowledge that clashed completely with her glamorous looks, yet she had zero hang-ups about showing skin. At the same time, she seemed a little too scatterbrained to be some kind of seductress. She left me with far too many questions.
"How old are you, Unnie?"
"How old do I look to our Jaehee?"
She cupped her face in her hands and gazed at me with sparkling eyes.
I had no idea how I'd suddenly been put in the position of having to guess her age. This was the kind of thing that could easily hurt someone's feelings if you got it wrong, which made it a real pain.
"Thirty?"
It was an empty joke, of course. She looked twenty-five at most. I just wanted to mess with her a little.
"Th-thirty...? Really? For real?"
She must have taken the joke at face value—her mouth fell open as she stammered. Looking at me with that world-has-ended expression made me feel like I'd committed a crime.
"I didn't take care of myself all this time just to go around getting told I look thirty..."
"I'm kidding. Twenty-five."
The moment I said it was a joke and gave the age I'd actually expected, her face transformed in an instant. Both corners of her mouth shot up into a brilliant smile, and she nodded with extreme enthusiasm.
"Jaehee, correct! You got Unnie's age right on the first try?"
"That's just how you looked."
"Usually when people are in college they say twenty-three or under."
"Did you take a leave of absence?"
"Yeah, I did. To make money."
I'd heard it was common enough to take a year or two off to earn money.
"I'll get back to the problems."
My head, which had heated up from working through the math, seemed to have cooled down some, so I focused on the problems again. She watched me from the side, and after I'd solved about five of them and was rolling my neck a little, she tapped my shoulder.
"Jaehee, Unnie's rich."
"Ah, okay."
"Boring reaction. When someone this pretty says they're rich on top of it, people usually get super interested."
If you suddenly announce you're rich, of course this is the reaction you get.
"How rich are you?"
She seemed to want me to show interest, so I asked.
"You guess, Jaehee. If you can guess the number in Unnie's bank account within three tries, I'll buy you a gift as a way of saying let's get along from now on."
"A gift? What kind of gift?"
"Anything you want. One thing. Price doesn't matter."
"What if I ask you to buy me a house?"
"Then I'll buy it."
That breezy answer made me doubt my own ears. For some reason, it didn't feel like empty bragging. It really seemed like if I guessed the number in three tries and asked for a house, she'd actually buy one.
"Go on, guess."
She'd boldly bragged about being rich. And she'd answered a ridiculous joke about buying a building as if it were perfectly possible. A single house cost somewhere between five hundred million and one and a half billion won. Being willing to pay that kind of money meant the number in her account was something you couldn't casually estimate.
"Can I just get the unit right?"
"That would make it way too easy."
"Um... twenty billion?"
"Pfft! Way too much. If I had that much, why would Unnie even be going to school?"
Even I had to admit it was an absurd amount.
Then again, being able to casually offer to buy someone a house already meant she probably didn't need to be in college, didn't it?
"Then five billion?"
"Oh my? Correct! You got it in two tries. Amazing, Jaehee."
"You really have five billion?"
Twenty billion or five billion—to a freshman like me, both were numbers I couldn't even begin to imagine.
"Yeah, I do."
She answered with even more confidence, then opened her banking app and proudly showed me the number on the screen.
Five billion and fifty million won.
It was a truly ridiculous figure.
Overwhelmed by a number I had never once seen in real life, I stared with my eyes wide open. She shrugged, winked, and flashed a V-sign.
"Unnie's crazy rich, right?"
"Unnie."
"Yeah, Jaehee?"
"Please be friends with me. Unnie's the best."
Whether she casually flashed her chest or looked like she treated clubs like her own living room—what did any of that matter?
She was a rich and pretty unnie.
"Pfft! What? Your tone just completely changed."
In this capitalist society, if you got the chance to get close to someone with money, anyone would pull the same about-face I just had and try to keep them around somehow.
I'm not the weird one here.
"Unnie, so you're buying me a gift?"
"Yeah, of course. Want me to actually buy you a house?"
"No. That was just something I said. What I want is... a tablet. I don't have one."
"Text Unnie the model you want... ah, we don't have each other's numbers."
After we exchanged numbers, just as I was about to put my phone down, Unnie leaned in a handspan closer.
Sunlight pouring through the window settled over her pink hair and made it glow softly. The color didn't look cheap in the slightest—as if someone had carefully selected and placed every strand. The scent brushing past the tip of my nose was the same. Sweet yet settling with a heavy richness, it was clearly nothing like the cheap stuff.
"Eeh? Rich Unnie? Jaehee, how can you save me like that?"
"It was the first thing that came to mind."
"At this rate it's going to be hard for us to get close."
"Then how should I save you?"
"Goddess Hajin Unnie, and add a heart too."
"A heart? Why do I have to add a heart?"
"Just add it."
Even if seeing the number in her account had made me start treating her more favorably, saving her name with a heart after it was still...
"If you add the heart, I'll buy you the latest laptop model too."
"I'll add the heart, Unnie."
Trying to control people with money, huh. This unnie understands capitalist society way too well.
"Pfft—! Ah, this is too fun. Okay, back to studying."
"Yes, Unnie."
I turned my eyes back to the worksheet, and Unnie began writing out a new formula on the practice pad.
"Alright, this time you find the u yourself, Jaehee."
I worked through a problem of similar difficulty to the ones Unnie had explained so far. But the new one waiting for me was much harder. Even when I tried applying what she'd taught me, nothing jumped out at a glance.
I stared at the expression and just fiddled with my mechanical pencil while Unnie propped her chin in her hand and waited.
"This... part."
"Why did you think it was there?"
"Was I wrong?"
"Don't worry about that. Just explain why you picked that part."
"Because if I differentiate it, it seems like it would connect with what's in front."
"Exactly. That's the key. You're looking for the chunk that, when you group it as u, lines up perfectly with the rest of the expression."
Unnie circled the part I'd pointed to and wrote u. Below it, the solution unfolded line by line.
My mind had gone completely blank with no sense of how to even approach it, but following Unnie's hand, I somehow reached the end before I knew it.
"Now if we put u back to the original?"
"Like this?"
"That's right. Well done, Jaehee."
Even that short, simple praise made a smile rise on my face naturally. It was the first time anyone had ever complimented me while I was studying math.
"With substitution integration, it's normal not to have a feel for where to cut at first. The more you see, the more the patterns jump out. And you already found it in one go."
"Wasn't it just luck?"
"Luck is skill too."
Hearing the top student of the math education department say that luck was skill was a little funny.
The problem Unnie pointed to next was in a far more complex form. Even so, this time I could pick out the chunk the moment I looked at the expression.
Following the flow Unnie taught me step by step, before I knew it a full hour of nothing but math had flown by.
"This is the first time I've ever concentrated this hard on math."
"Pretty tough, right?"
"It'd be a lie if I said it wasn't."
"Still, focusing for a whole hour right from the start is impressive."
I honestly admitted that my brain probably couldn't handle any more math after this. Unnie respected my opinion with an easy smile.
"By the way, Mom's late."
When I checked and realized it was long past the time she should have been back from grocery shopping, I found a message from her. She'd run into a friend while shopping and was going to chat for a bit before coming home.
"Looks like Mom ran into a friend and is hanging out."
"I see. Then shall we hang out until your mother gets here?"
"Yes, I'd like that."
When the person teaching you suggests taking a break, of course you have no choice but to accept.
"But Jaehee, you're really handsome."
"Me?"
"Yeah. What am I supposed to do when you're this handsome? You'll have every girl wrapped around your finger."
"Pfft! I do get a lot of confessions."
Strangely enough, from elementary school all the way through starting college, I'd received countless confessions—not from the opposite sex, but from the same sex.
Of course, I'd turned them all down as kindly as I could.
"Whoa, you're fucking handsome right now! Jaehee, you really are twenty, right?"
Having my age questioned was something I was used to by now.
"Want me to show my ID? I really am twenty."
"Being this handsome is basically cheating. What's your hobby, Jaehee?"
That question naturally shifted the mood into getting to know each other better.
Now that she was treating me more warmly than when we'd first met face-to-face, I wanted to learn more about Unnie too.
"Working out. I've liked it since I was little, and I go to the gym every day."
"You really must love exercise. But with albinism, don't you have a hard time going out much when the sun's up?"
"Yeah, so I mostly use the gym in the apartment basement. When I want to run outside, I do it at night."
"How long do you go for?"
"At least an hour, usually around two."
That was when it happened.
Unnie grabbed my upper arm and forearm and started kneading them like dough.
"Wow, it's actually rock-hard. When did you start working out?"
"Since elementary school. Back then I swam regularly, and these days I focus on the gym."
"Can you flex for me?"
The moment I put strength into it the way she wanted, her eyes went wide and she poured out genuine admiration.
"Whoa! Insanely hard. Jaehee, this is crazy?!"
I hadn't kept working out to show off my muscles or strength, but it was still a compliment that felt good no matter when I heard it.
"What's your hobby, Unnie?"
"Unnie's is shopping. I really love clothes. So whenever I have free time, I go buy more."
After seeing the number in her account with my own eyes, it no longer felt like a luxurious hobby. If anything, it suited her perfectly.
"I bet Unnie only goes to the luxury floors. Like those chaebols in dramas, saying 'from here to here' and sweeping everything up."
"Eeh? It's not that bad. Unnie looks at the price tags too."
"Even with that much money?"
"If you just spend freely because you have money, you'll end up broke no matter if you have tens of billions."
As we kept talking, I kept noticing her shifting her waist this way and that, trying to loosen it up.
"Unnie, is your back bothering you?"
"Unnie's back is a little bad."
"This chair's uncomfortable, right? Want to sit on the bed instead? The bed should be better."
"Really? Then Unnie would like that."
Unnie got up from the chair and hopped right onto the bed.
She pressed her back firmly against the wall, stretched her legs out straight, and looked at me with a much lighter expression. I turned my chair around and we continued the conversation.
"Unnie, you must have been popular at school, right?"
"Unnie was treated like a ghost at school."
"Liar."
"It's true. From first year on, I never joined a single school event. Didn't socialize either."
"If I were Unnie, I'd have met everyone and dated like crazy."
The fact that someone with a face like that had gone around without mixing with people created a serious sense of disconnect.
A rich woman with idol-center-level looks who was a voluntary loner—that was a setup you almost never saw in real life.
"Have you ever dated, Jaehee?"
"No. Never. I went to an all-girls middle and high school. What about you, Unnie?"
"Unnie has dated before."
"Of course. I bet you've done it a ton."
"I feel like Unnie's image is getting weirder and weirder."
She tucked her hair behind her ear and shifted her outstretched legs. Since I was looking at her from the front, the black panties between her short leather skirt came into full view.
"Unnie, I can see everything right now."
"Yeah, I know."
Was that really something you could just answer with "I know" and move on?