The Words I Like You
Before she could so much as offer an opinion, Baek Serin dropped the TV into the cart. The number I'd glimpsed was fifty-five. On her own, she never would have dared a screen that big.
Next came the household furniture. Serin had been scrolling in silence; she broke the brief quiet and spoke again.
"...Hey. I'm only asking, just in case."
"Absolutely not."
The answer shot out on reflex. My eyes were on the monitor. One look at the cursor hovering over a bed, and whatever I was going to say was already decided.
"...We're going to sleep together eventually anyway."
"I know. Eventually."
"Come on. Then it doesn't matter if it's now or then."
"It matters. It just does."
I couldn't explain it cleanly, but right now it was too much. Tell me to share a bed with a total stranger and I'd still turn it over a few times, wondering if the thing was even reasonable. If that stranger was Baek Serin, I didn't need to think very hard at all. We'd known each other forever, and maybe precisely because of that, the odds of an accident were high. I could already see her closing the distance with a look that said this much was fine, wasn't it?
"Haa... whatever. The rest of the time is mine anyway."
"So I'm already living under someone's thumb?"
Someone started surfacing in my head. A broad back... making stars... Both of them men, both somewhere in their mid-to-late forties... Ugh. My head.
Why hadn't my father, by way of an early education, told me to get a woman in hand before she got me? I could almost resent him for it.
"Under a thumb? Then we live by devouring each other."
"Wow. That's even weirder."
"...Hey, wait. What you're saying is we can't sleep together. That's it, right?"
"...Right?"
The cursor that had been rummaging through the furniture tab stopped dead. Serin turned her head a little and looked up at me, and as if something had just clicked, her eyes went round.
"Then lying in the same bed during the day is fine, isn't it?"
"Wow. You really went straight for the heart of it. ...As if."
What kind of half-baked nonsense was that? She was flailing, desperate to find a crack no matter what.
"Why? As long as we don't fall asleep, it's still allowed, right?"
"Then I'll just fall asleep."
"...You'll sleep?"
I was at a loss for words. If she'd put on a joking face, I might have had something to throw back. Because she was coloring in that strange way, an ominous picture flashed through my head.
"Ah, no. The living room. No matter what happens, the living room."
"That's adding a rule. No. Overruled."
"A judge would catch hell for a verdict like that."
"You just lie there and behave. I'll take care of the— ah."
We turned quietly toward the monitor. Not one of us first. Both at the same time.
This was why a wandering mind was dangerous. You never knew what was going to come out of your mouth.
"...Hey. What were we even looking for?"
"...We bought the TV, so whatever you need."
Somehow both our voices had gone strangely calm, and neither of us asked why. Still, this was Baek Serin. A woman who had mastered swapping her face faster than anyone—
"...You?"
"Aaaaah— stop. Hey. Please, stop."
...Ah. Now I understood for certain. She'd gotten a taste for teasing me, too.
Forget ten patient chops at a tree that won't fall. She'd picked up a chainsaw and was trying to cut me down by main force.
...Holding the line was harder than I'd thought. Honestly, I'd assumed it wouldn't get to me.
Then red flashed at the edge of my sight, and when I looked, it was Serin's profile.
Seriously—did the sight of me embarrassed matter more to her than her own embarrassment?
...Were we all right like this? It felt as if we'd both dropped our guards and started swinging wild.
Serin, steadying her breath in a slow hoo, hoo, let a quiet voice slip out.
"...Ah. I should stop messing with you today."
"Of everything I've heard today, that's the one I'm gladdest to hear."
"What? Say it like that and now I feel hurt."
Serin whipped her head around. Her light-brown eyes darted, trying to read my face.
"Before you say something weird—being glad to hear it and it being good are two different things."
"...Hey. Then what's good?"
"I haven't thought about that..."
More and more, it felt like my brain was melting. The answer that should have leapt out on reflex never came. I hadn't once imagined she would seize on that and refuse to let go.
"Hey, what is it. What was the best thing you heard today?"
She came at me with eyes drawn like half-moons and the corners of her mouth lifted high. Watch her for a while and her changes of stance seemed even quicker than mine.
Anyway. Something I'd liked hearing...
"Hey. Haven't we talked way too much today?"
"...We have, haven't we."
I'd been about to quietly leaf back through the day, but my brain felt ready to overload, so I stopped. Of everything since I'd become an adult, today might have held the most talk. Usually, even when we were in the same place, it was light conversation and otherwise each of us doing our own thing.
"You're not failing to remember on purpose so you can sneak past this, are you?"
I was barely turning through it one page at a time when Serin, unable to wait even that long, jabbed her sharp voice into my ear.
"It's the opposite. I remember all of it, so I can't pick."
"And what's that supposed to mean."
"I heard so much today that choosing is hard."
Serin, who had been looking up at me, blinked twice and turned back to the monitor. As if the meaning had only just reached her, she flushed a little and let her voice out quietly.
"...So you're saying it wasn't bad."
"...Right."
To anyone else, the length of what we'd traded today might have looked ordinary. The density was what had run high—high enough that pointing to any single line and letting it out of my mouth felt impossible.
"So slow down a little."
"That's not something I get to control."
"You managed fine for twenty years."
The wheel scrolled. A click.
"...I can't anymore. No. I won't."
The talk had been flowing quietly along. Serin's hand on the mouse stopped. She turned the chair a little and looked at me.
Her cheeks were still washed in soft pink, but it wasn't the face of someone embarrassed. Hesitant, and at the same time like a person who had already made up her mind. Serin's lips, pressed tight and twitching, slowly began to part.
"I didn't do well for twenty years. I endured."
Like something long held down was finally coming out, a voice with a little force in it went straight into my ear. No answer worthy of those words came to me. How was I supposed to shake off, as if it were nothing, the weight of feelings she had carried all that time?
A short silence. The one who spoke first, again, was Serin.
"I know there's plenty of time. That doesn't mean we have to come closer slowly, does it?"
My silence went on. No decent excuse came to mind. What she'd said was Baek Serin's true feeling, and a fact I couldn't deny.
"Even so... building it up one thing at a time isn't so bad either, I guess."
"Have you always been this good with words?"
"Shut up. Don't look down on someone who's being sincere."
"Ah. Get sworn at, and I feel alive again."
A soft breath of a laugh. Smiling faintly, we turned our eyes back to the monitor.
We still weren't thinking about what we were supposed to buy. Serin's hand, back on the mouse, still didn't move, and my gaze didn't waver either. The eyes that ought to have been on the screen kept resting on her profile.
At first I hadn't known how to take that side of her, the one that felt so unlike the person I knew. Maybe I hadn't needed to think very deeply. We were already ready. We were the sort of pair that only had to open our hearts.
Still glancing at the cursor that hadn't moved, I let out a small voice.
"Nothing to buy."
"Yeah. Nothing we need right this second."
"Right this second."
"...Yeah."
The talk ended in a few short words. As if thought had taken us again, we sank back into the quiet. Even in an exchange that amounted to nothing, each of us was measuring a meaning of our own.
Right now.
A way of saying we would still be together after this, and that it wasn't the end.
...A person changing in a single day might be a pretty simple thing after all.
I'd clearly done too much thinking today. The light had gone before I noticed, and glancing out at the scarlet sky beyond the window, I added one more line.
"What did we used to do, on ordinary days?"
"Computer. Phone."
"I don't know how we stood it. When there's this much to say."
"That's just you not talking."
"Because I didn't have anything to say."
"Happy now that there's a lot?"
"There might be so much it's a problem."
Serin finished paying and closed the browser. She shut the computer off right after that, stretched, and turned her upper body toward me.
"Say everything you want to say. I'll keep going for as long as I held it in."
"When I think of something."
"Even if you don't, keep talking to me."
"Such as?"
Serin, who had closed her mouth for a moment, narrowed her eyes. As if she were choosing what to bring out, her lips moved once, then again. She let out a short breath and quietly opened her mouth.
"I don't even expect you to say you like me yet."
I couldn't answer.
"...I just want to hear your voice."
For all the time she'd taken to get there, it wasn't much of a request. Even so, my mouth wouldn't come open. After holding back for that long, was consideration still the first thing with her?
"...So just keep saying things. Anything."
She tacked the short line on and stood. Without a word, I followed her back with my eyes as she left the room.
I like you...
How did she hold that in all this time.
It's really hard.