How Daring is This?

It really was strange.

Every country seemed to have its own nickname for the way women talked. Korea had the old saying that when three women gathered, the dishes would break. English speakers had their “girls’ talk.” The rest of the proverbs tended to put women down, so those could be set aside. Still, none of it was necessarily a bad thing.

No matter how equal the world claimed men and women were, physical and mental differences rooted in genetics were bound to exist. Women were said to produce more of the FOXP2 language-gene protein, after all, and to pick up speech earlier than boys. Of course there were individual differences depending on the genes you inherited, how you were raised, and the environment around you—but for the most part, that was how it went.

Gabi alone was proof enough. Her language scores had always been better than mine—Korean, English, even a second foreign language. We both held onto top marks on the exams, but I still remembered how she stood out in literature. And she talked a lot. Whenever the two of us had a conversation, Gabi was the one who opened her mouth first about ninety-nine percent of the time.

But the Gabi I used to know had only been the tip of the iceberg. Sitting with Jaemin, she chattered on without any sense of time passing at all. Jaemin was streaming, so he kept up a steady back-and-forth with his viewers, but the main content of the stream was clearly his gossip session with Gabi.

“How did you two meet Noel? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠How long have you been friends?”

“We’ve been together since kindergarten. Our neighborhoods were close, so we went to the same ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠schools the whole way through, and we even got put in the same class by chance more than once. Ah—but we went to different colleges. Our majors pulled us apart.”

“Ahh. Total childhood friends, then. It must have hurt like hell when you lost contact.”

“You have no idea. At first I just thought she was buried in assignments, and then she changed her number completely and I figured she’d cut me off. I never imagined her parents had locked her up and turned her into a wreck like that…”

“Ah… Yeah. It really does sound like those two wanted Noel to be born a boy. Maybe it was worse because the college wasn’t the one they wanted either.”

“Who knows. Noel went to a—wait, is it okay to say this on stream? Anyway, it was a prestigious school. Even that wasn’t enough for them, I guess.”

Once they’d opened the floodgates with my story, the two of them steered the conversation toward food they liked, songs they liked, and every other shared interest under the sun. All I had ever done was study; the only stress relief I knew was gaming. There was no room for me in that talk, so I just sat there blankly watching the viewers’ chat scroll by.

The camera was pointed at Jaemin, but the phone screen sat at an angle I could see. That was enough to satisfy my curiosity about what people were saying.

Over there, too, people were matching the rapidly shifting topics and snatching up whatever new bait rolled past so they could keep talking among themselves. Maybe chatting with them would have suited me better. Text had become more familiar to me than spoken words.

But pulling out your phone at a shared meal was rude, so I couldn’t join their chat that way—even though simply opening Celesty’s stream would have let me slip right in among them. So I just stayed quiet, let Gabi and Jaemin talk, and sipped plain water.

One particular line of chat caught my eye.

They were talking about the gukbap place we’d stopped at before the tteokbokki shop. It hadn’t left me with especially good memories, but I hadn’t walked out carrying any real bitterness either. From what they were saying, though, there was some unwelcome aftermath I hadn’t known about.

And Jaemin, professional streamer that he was, didn’t miss it.

“Huh, what happened at the gukbap place?”

“The gukbap place? The one we tried to go to earlier?”

“Yeah. They said there wasn’t room for a wheelchair, so we just left. Sounds like there’s more to the story, though. Can someone drop the link?”

“Ah, it’s fine. I can check it with mod permissions.”

The link a viewer had tipped him off to led to a video someone had filmed of us. Judging by the angle, it had been taken by a customer who’d been eating at the gukbap place. Thankfully everyone in the footage had their faces mosaicked, but telling who was who wasn’t hard. Between my hair color and the wheelchair, there was no way not to stand out.

That was the video of us leaving the gukbap place. Up to that point it was an ordinary clip of people walking out because a wheelchair wouldn’t fit, or because there was nowhere to put one. But the employee’s voice that followed was a lot harder to shrug off.

A coworker’s sigh after hearing what the employee who’d spoken with us had said before we left. That sigh was exactly what I wanted to make.

Had I really said it like that? Had they really heard it that way?

It felt unfair, but I couldn’t exactly shout that I was being framed. Words had always been a matter of a single syllable’s difference. No matter how good my intentions had been, I might have phrased the nuance wrong and invited that kind of misunderstanding.

“It’s a misunderstanding. I absolutely didn’t mean it that way… I just said that if I couldn’t get to the table in the wheelchair, I’d leave it somewhere else and sit in a regular chair. Then they said there was a theft risk, so we just left. If anyone took it the wrong way…”

“No, Noel. You didn’t say anything wrong. There was just a misunderstanding. When you’re busy and the irritation piles up, you can twist things like that when you hear them. Everyone, please don’t come down too hard on them.”

Honestly, being with Jaemin meant a mountain of things that needed explaining. At least this time he stepped up and took my side.

Maybe that was why every single viewer took our side. Maybe I really had been partly at fault. I didn’t know whether they were blindly covering for me or had weighed it themselves and reached that conclusion—but the fact that so many people believed me made something tighten warm and full in my chest.

It had never been like this before. When I’d had to explain the hack, I’d been alone. When I’d had to prove to Gabi that I was Yoon Noeul, I’d had to prove it by myself. This time I didn’t even need to. The viewers stepped forward and became my witnesses.

Well—plenty of people had been watching the whole thing, so of course that counted as proof. Still, I was so grateful that emotion surged up before I could stop it.

It really was strange. I’d thought the tears had dried up for good under my father’s fists. I never expected them to well up over something like this.

“Noel, I wasn’t there, but… people are saying it wasn’t your fault. Don’t cry. It’s okay.”

My lips trembled, and Gabi was the first to reach over and rub my back. Being soothed like that should have calmed me down. Instead, the tears that had been clinging to my lashes spilled over and ran down my cheeks.

“No, I’m just—grateful to everyone… I only ever got cursed at, so having people take my side like this is just so…”

It was because I’d become a woman. That was why my emotions were exploding out of control like this.

…In the end, you could say that was my fault too. But I hadn’t done anything wrong this time. That was enough.