Which Sailor Uniform?
Crushed under the sheer power of an absurd amount of money, I had to do a 24-hour stream with Gyeongdo. And not just any stream — a half-cam stream in a sailor uniform.
"Aaaaaaaah…!"
I thrashed around on the bed. Seriously? I actually had to wear a school uniform? It had already been almost four years since I graduated high school.
And it wasn't even a normal school uniform. A sailor uniform?
I felt a little weird saying this, but I had been a pure, ordinary model student who had never once tailored her uniform to be tighter. And now I had to put on a sailor uniform? Really?
"Uuuuugh…."
Swallowing my shame, I searched for sailor uniforms on an online shopping site.
The very first word that came up was none other than cosplay.
Right. A sailor uniform wasn't a normal school uniform — it was something you wore for cosplay. The kind of cosplay outfit you put on to act cute for your boyfriend, or to pull off a surprise event for him.
And I was going to wear one of those. In front of Gyeongdo, no less.
I was dying of embarrassment. Just imagining what Gyeongdo would say when he saw me in a sailor uniform was already pissing me off.
I kicked the innocent mattress over and over while scrolling through the prices….
"……Okay, the prices are surprisingly cheap."
They really were on the affordable side. A regular cosplay sailor uniform ran about twenty to thirty thousand won, and even the expensive ones made of good fabric only went over a hundred thousand. Compared to the massive donation that had gotten me into this mess in the first place, it was practically free.
"Uuuuuum…."
After a long internal debate, I finally messaged the person who was going to be looking at this uniform the most.
A reply came back in less than a minute.
The second I brought up the sailor uniform, Do Gyeong completely lost it.
I was going to have to split him into Do and Gyeong. That felt right.
The design? Ah. The design.
He had a point. I was only going to wear it once, so there was no reason to buy an expensive one. What I needed was a pretty design — something that actually looked good.
Every single message this guy typed made my blood boil. How could a human being be like this?
If I kept chatting any longer we were going to start fighting for real, so I gave up and decided to pick one myself….
Still, he said he'd pick for me. I immediately sent him a bunch of designs, and after looking through all of them, Do Gyeong….
…immediately started running his mouth again.
No matter how annoyed I got, it always felt like I was fighting a battle I was guaranteed to lose, and that was deeply unpleasant. I needed to take that unpleasantness out on Do Gyeong.
Should I barge over right now and bite him?
I was seriously considering it when—
—he suddenly recommended a design out of nowhere.
If you're going to do it, just do one thing, you asshole.
Still, thanks to Do Gyeong I'd at least saved myself some decision time, so I supposed that was something.
I should go hit him. Just once. That felt like the correct course of action.
Just once. One good hit.
I'd barge straight into Do Gyeong's house, give Yeon-i a little affection first….
SMACK!!
"GYAAAAAAAAH!!"
I slapped Do Gyeong across the back with my bare palm while he was mid-game. He didn't even ask if I'd arrived anymore. How did a guy like this even exist.
For the record, I'd considered biting his shoulder, but I remembered how much it had hurt him last time, so I held back.
You should be grateful, Do Gyeong. I went easy on you. Got it?
Lee Yebin, that absolute lunatic, suddenly asked me to pick out a sailor uniform for her and then showed up at my place to smash me across the back with a palm strike.
I was dead serious — she should have gone into sports. Volleyball, especially.
No, wait. Thinking about it, she was too short for volleyball.
Tsk. Then what was she supposed to do? High-school dropout freeloader?
Okay, that was a stretch. She'd gotten into a decent university, so she would have figured something out either way. Probably.
"So why are you here, exactly?"
Why was she here.
Lee Yebin answered in a completely unbothered voice.
"Just because."
"My back hurts from getting hit by you. Could you maybe just leave?"
"Don't wanna~ Why should I~ How much are you gonna pay me~"
She was being so childish I wanted to die.
Right — "how much are you gonna pay me" reminded me of something.
"Hey, Lee Yebin."
"What."
"You messed up the spacing in your KoTalk earlier. When you write 'gonna,' the particle needs a space in front of it."
The second those words left my mouth, Lee Yebin stood up from her seat and walked toward me with her fist raised.
"No violence! No violence!"
THWACK!
"AAAAAGH!!"
Lee Yebin's fist connected with my head, and I had no choice but to clutch my skull and scream in pure agony.
She, of course, replied in a voice that sounded thoroughly satisfied.
"God, you piss me off so much. Illiterate bastard."
"When did I ever use that to dunk on you…!"
"I dunked on myself."
She was genuinely insane. I tried to be helpful and she still lost it.
I rubbed the spot she'd beaten and glared at her. Lee Yebin was staring back with a thoroughly pissed-off expression — and that was when something suddenly occurred to me.
"How much did that sailor uniform cost?"
"Huh? Around a hundred thousand won."
"Top and bottom combined?"
"Yeah."
What kind of sailor uniform cost a hundred thousand won.
"Hey. Did you buy the design I picked?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Hold on."
I reverse-image-searched the exact sailor uniform design I'd recommended to her. Both a Japanese direct-import site and a Korean shopping mall came up.
The Korean mall had it for a little over a hundred thousand won. The direct import, shipping included, was seventy thousand. And since the order cleared the free-shipping threshold, express delivery was available — three days.
In other words, buying from the import site was just better.
"Hey, Lee Yebin. Come here."
"What?"
"You ordered from this place, right?"
"Yeah, and?"
"If you direct-import it from Japan, it's thirty thousand cheaper."
"Huh? For real?"
"It takes three days, but our all-nighter stream is in three days anyway. Just wear this one."
Lee Yebin thought about it for a second, then shook her head.
"I should still try it on at least once, though."
"Well, yeah."
"So wouldn't it be better to try on the Korean mall one tomorrow, and if it's fine, return it and order from here — and if it's not, return it and buy something else?"
……Okay, that actually made sense.
"Who are you?"
"What."
"You're not fucking Lee Yebin. There's no way Lee Yebin is this smart."
"Are you insane? I have a good head on my shoulders, okay? I don't need to hear that from someone who got worse grades than me."
"I've told you this a hundred times, Yebin-Yebin. School smarts and actual smarts are two completely different things."
"Gyeongdo-Gyeongdo, that still doesn't mean you're smarter than me."
"Alright, that's it. During the all-nighter stream, you and I are playing a puzzle game."
"A puzzle?"
"Yeah. A puzzle game. We'll settle this."
The moment I said "settle this," Lee Yebin answered with total confidence.
"Deal. Bring it."
"Ooooh, look at that confidence."
"There's no way I'd lose to you."
I accepted her cocky challenge on the spot and immediately started looking for a puzzle game — or any kind of brain game — we could play together. Somehow Lee Yebin ended up searching right next to me.
The game we settled on was a mystery title; if we ran it for the full 24 hours through to the ending, it should fill the stream nicely.
"Alright, this game then."
"Deal~ I'm heading out now~"
"Off-stream day, right?"
"Yep~ So I'm gonna sleep like a rock~"
"Cool. Get lost already."
"Hmph~ Buh-bye."
Lee Yebin waved her hand back and forth as she headed home, and I bought the game we'd be playing together — then sat there thinking.
…Whose place should we stream from?
I pictured Lee Yebin's room for a second and made up my mind. My room was definitely the better option. A room that was always clean beat a hastily cleaned room by a factor of ten. Plus, there was no reason for her to rush out and buy a cam.
Yeah. I'd just message her.
In response, Lee Yebin sent me a photo.
She already installed it?
After that message, the chat went dead, as expected.
Instead, a thunderous stomping started up from behind me.
…Come, then, O Death. My conscience is clear.