Senior! Come to Jeju With Me for Three Days!!
The request from my junior came so far out of nowhere that I just stared at her, dumbfounded.
"Wh-what?"
"Are you going to play dumb with me?"
Dr. Baek Ah-rin came charging at me without the slightest warning. The top buttons of her shirt had come undone, leaving the line of her cleavage fully on display. I was so embarrassed that my eyes had gone there first that I jerked my head away.
"Senior! Why are you turning your head? Don't tell me you're refusing?"
"That's not it...! Anyone would be startled if you came charging at them saying something like that out of the blue."
There was no way I could tell her the truth. That I'd looked away because I'd been staring at her chest.
"This isn't because you don't want to grant my wish, is it?"
"No! Absolutely not!"
"Then please grant it."
"What is it that's got you like this?"
Right. There was a promise I had made with Baek Ah-rin when she first joined this clinic. If she covered for me whenever I had to step out, I would grant her one wish. And she had—brilliantly—for nearly three years, every time I had to rush off to see my daughter. But in all that time, she hadn't said a single word about the wish. I'd assumed she simply didn't want anything. And now, out of nowhere, she was calling it in...
"...D-do I really have to say it out loud for you to know?!"
"Of course you have to say it. I'm not a mind reader."
Ah-rin's face went red in an instant. She seemed to realize she'd made some kind of blunder.
"Th-that's...! It's hard to say right now, sir! After work, buy me a drink!"
"Drinks?"
"Yes, drinks, sir!"
That caught me off guard. Ah-rin hated alcohol.
Whenever I'd asked why she didn't drink, that was always the kind of answer I got. Still, I'd figured there had to be some reason behind it.
But there were plenty of strange people in the world. When she refused to drink for no apparent reason, whispers started up behind her back. And the most infuriating of those whispers was—
Why had that gotten to me? I still remember flying off the handle and getting into a huge fight with a classmate over those words. She wasn't even my girlfriend—just a junior. And he hadn't been insulting me. Even now, I sometimes wondered why I'd reacted that way.
Right. Looking back on it now, maybe that was it. Because that junior of mine, Baek Ah-rin, was just so genuinely good-hearted... I'd wanted to stand in her corner. That was probably all it was.
The flustered look on her face right now still held that same innocence from back then.
I used to enjoy drinking. I had a naturally high tolerance—I could put away enough to put anyone else under the table and still be fine. That pleasant buzz. I liked the floaty, weightless feeling of being drunk, so I indulged. But after the divorce, once I started raising my daughter on my own, I quit.
"I hate it when you drink, Daddy."
"Because you come home late. That's why I hate it."
That single remark from my daughter was all it took. I could have drunk at home, of course. But I figured that if she was exposed to alcohol while she was still a minor, she might wander down the wrong path, so I didn't.
Come to think of it, it had been quite a while since I'd had a drink myself. Yeah. Maybe it was okay to drink now. My daughter had grown up right. She was an adult, and she'd passed through this society's first and most important gateway—she'd been accepted to Hankuk University. The time when she needed me was coming to an end. All those hours I'd poured entirely into her. The moment had come when I could finally invest some of that time in myself.
"Alright, Dr. Baek. Let's do that."
"Th-thank you, sir. Senior!"
"What do you want to eat?"
"Ah... um... well... I've never had a drink in my life, so I wouldn't know what's good, sir."
"Then you don't have any foods you won't eat?"
"Have you only seen me eat once or twice, sir? I'll eat anything."
"Then how about some dog stew?"
"Eek... eeeeek!"
Ah-rin shot me a look of pure disgust.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding."
"You startled me, sir."
Teasing Ah-rin was always a treat. Her reactions were so big and theatrical.
"If it's your first time drinking, we've got to start with grilled pork belly and soju."
Her eyes lit up in an instant.
"Pork belly!! Pork belly sounds great, sir!! I've been craving pork like crazy lately!"
"There's something I need you to do, Dr. Baek."
"What is it, sir?"
"Find us a good pork belly place nearby."
"Yes, sir! Senior! I'll find one right away!"
Ah-rin's face was as innocent as a child who'd just been given a treat. Maybe that was exactly why I'd kept her close all this time. Still, what on earth was she planning to ask for that she'd even drink alcohol—something she'd avoided her entire life? I was a little worried... but this was Ah-rin. She wasn't the type to demand anything strange.
"Yeah, no need to overthink this."
Just take it easy. She was a sensible person; there was no reason to worry. Clinic hours were about to start. One by one, the early-bird patients began to appear. Buoyed by the prospect of my first drink in a long time, I got to work.
The place Ah-rin had chosen was a frozen-pork-belly joint of the absolute shabbiest variety. And it wasn't one of those places that had jumped on the trend of freezing premium cuts, either. This was the real deal: the cheapest of the cheap.
"Come on... you couldn't have picked somewhere a little nicer...?"
"I heard this place was cheap and really good... I'm sorry, sir...!! I'm so sorry!!"
The moment she saw my face, Ah-rin panicked and started apologizing over and over. But this wasn't something she needed to apologize for.
"Don't be. The place isn't what matters. What matters is the drinks and the company."
"Even so... I'm sorry, sir......"
"Soju's the same soju wherever you go. And the company hasn't changed, either. The place doesn't matter. Come on, let's go in."
I gave her shoulder a reassuring pat and steered her inside.
"Yes... Senior."
We stepped in. It was a typical cheap meat house through and through. The reek of stale grease. An interior that was old... and clearly hadn't been cleaned properly. Unkempt middle-aged men, already drunk and loud, even though it was barely evening. The more I looked around, the more certain I became that this was no place to bring a woman in a miniskirt. But she had chosen it. Suggesting somewhere else would only hurt her feelings.
I picked the table in the farthest corner. Her skirt was so short I was worried someone might catch a glimpse up it.
"Sit over here."
I had Ah-rin sit facing the wall. This way, even if anyone tried to look, they wouldn't be able to see a thing.
"Thank you, Senior."
"Don't mention it. Excuse me!!"
"Coming."
And with that, we were ready to enjoy our pork belly and soju.
The grill hissed and spat.
"Wow, this is better than I expected."
I hadn't seen that coming. It really was a cheap-and-delicious kind of place. It had only been empty because we'd arrived so early in the evening; not long after we sat down, every last seat filled up.
"So it's a popular spot. At this price, with this kind of flavor... yeah, that tracks."
"What a r-relief, Senior. So it wasn't a bad choice after all, sir."
"Yeah, it wasn't. This is genuinely good."
We'd been eating nothing but the meat. The soju still sat unopened.
"Aren't you... going to drink, sir?"
"You didn't look ready yet."
The moment the bottle and glasses had been set down, the tension in her had been obvious. That was why I'd deliberately left the soju alone.
"You got that tense the second the alcohol arrived, so......"
"I'm sorry, sir... I couldn't help it........"
The hiss of meat on the grill. The voices of drunk patrons, swirling around our ears and going nowhere.
"Are you... perhaps curious about why I don't drink, sir?"
"...I am."
"Then why don't you ask?"
"Because you never brought it up."
"Do you really have so little interest in your junior?"
"...I just thought it was the polite thing not to pry. That's the only reason I didn't ask."
The grill hissed again, and the table went quiet. Ah-rin's face went through a whole performance—flushing red, draining white, then red again. What was going through her head? I had no idea—but the meat had started to burn. I used my own chopsticks to move a piece of perfectly grilled pork onto her plate.
"...I grew up getting beaten by my father, sir."
"What?"
Silence slammed down over the table.
"With... soju bottles, sir."
"So the reason you wouldn't drink was......"
"I was terrified just looking at the bottles, sir."
Ah-rin was shaking. She gripped her own arms with both hands, trying to will the trembling to stop, but it was no use.
"...That's why... I was so afraid... of drinking... that's why I couldn't, all this time, sir......"
"Then... why did you decide to drink now? If it scares you that much."
A sudden, tight pressure—as if her whole body had clenched down on something. The trembling stopped at once.
"That's because... I've decided I won't run away anymore, sir."
Her hand closed around the soju bottle.
"When you really look at it... this was nothing special, sir."
A crack as the seal broke.
"It was just alcohol, sir."
She put the mouth of the bottle to her lips.
"If it's nothing, then I should just drink it down already, sir!"
Ah-rin spun the bottle a few times, whipping the soju into a whirlpool. Then she finished twisting off the cap, set the mouth of the bottle to her lips, and started tipping it in.
"H-hey...!!! What... what are you doing?!"
Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp. The soju, already spinning, vanished down Ah-rin's throat in an instant. It happened so fast I couldn't even stop her.
She set the bottle down—neither too softly nor too hard. She had drained the entire thing in a single go, and yet the color of her face hadn't changed at all.
"I cut ties with my father, sir."
"......"
"I'm grateful he raised me alone and gave me the brains to get into medical school, but still... I didn't want to get hit anymore, sir."
"...You... you'd been getting beaten that whole time?"
"......"
She only smiled, faintly.
"I did leave home... while I was in college, sir. And once I left, I had no money, so I worked part-time jobs. That's why I could never drink with you, Senior."
Only now did it all make sense. Why she had always vanished somewhere in such a hurry the moment our university lectures ended.
"Things that were nothing started to terrify me, sir. The soju bottles my father used to drink from. The alcohol itself. My father, too."
Ah-rin's face was beginning to flush redder and redder. The soju she'd downed in such a rush was finally starting to catch up with her.
"I felt like if I kept going like this... they'd swallow me whole, sir... So... I went to my father and told him. That I was cutting him off."
Her hand closed around the soju bottle once more.
"And this alcohol too... this bottle too... I decided I was going to beat them... and I did, sir."
Ah-rin looked at me. Her eyes were growing bloodshot. Her skin had gone completely red. And yet her face looked utterly at peace.
"When it came down to it... it was nothing, sir. Not my father, and not this alcohol."
Ah-rin raised her hand, apparently meaning to order more. The proprietress saw it and immediately started to bring another bottle.
"...It's alright, ma'am, we don't need more. Hey, Dr. Baek...! You've had too much. Don't drink any more."
"...Hahh... so... Senior......"
Ah-rin looked at me. Her eyes were different from any look she'd ever given me. Hungrier. More yearning.
"That thing... we promised back then... c-can I... tell you now...?"
Her tongue was starting to tangle. If she told me now, she might not even remember it afterward. But I was curious. The words her reason had been holding back all this time—the ones she hadn't been able to say. This was the perfect chance to find out what they were.
"Go ahead. I'll hear all of it. Take your time."
"G-goood... hic!"
Even drunk, Ah-rin dragged the words out. But then, as if she'd made up her mind, she looked straight at me.
A thud.
And with that, she planted her face straight into the table.
Her first time drinking. The price of downing it too fast... was passing out cold.