I Wouldn't Know
Baek Serin sat across from me at the table, glancing over again and again while her fork clicked against the plate.
She clearly had something she wanted to say. Even so, she kept checking my face, which wasn't like her at all.
I set down the fork that had been on its way to my mouth. I was the one who couldn't stand the silence, so I spoke first.
"What, you want bacon in it next time?"
"...No. Not that."
She twirled the noodles she'd speared on her fork, eyes still turned my way, and added it short and quiet.
"......If you're the one who cooks, then I'm the one who has to work. Right?"
I went so blank I forgot, for a second, that I was even supposed to be chewing. I managed to chew and swallow the noodles still in my mouth, let out a long sigh, and answered.
"Since when is cooking such a big deal? And that's years from now, isn't it?"
"How would I know. More to the point—how long are you planning to keep that part-time job?"
The subject blew past in an instant. I was still staring blankly at Baek Serin when she pulled out the phone she'd tucked into her pocket.
"Mom put money in. Said it was to congratulate us on moving in together."
"......Cohabitation Gift Money. That's a phrase I've never heard in my life."
"Anyway, she said you should quit the part-time job and just loaf around the house for a while."
"Whoa......"
...What was this strange feeling. It wasn't a bad thing, not by any stretch. It was more like—why did it feel as if I were sliding my own foot into a Venus flytrap?
That aside, it was incredibly novel. Parents who wired their kid spending money because the kid was moving in with someone—those existed? We'd known each other for over twenty years, but this was outside anything I'd expected.
"When does your break start?"
"Thursday. Find a sub by then?"
"Sounds like you're nailing it down that I have to quit."
"Then what, you want me to watch the house by myself?"
She wasn't some pet with separation anxiety. That was a little strange, wasn't it?
Then again, I had a bit of money saved on my end too. Maybe I'd spend at least a little of this summer resting at home. When I thought about it, I hadn't gone to college, and since getting out of the service I'd done nothing but part-time work, nonstop.
"Then we ought to take a trip before it gets hot."
"Huh? What did you just say?"
I'd been scraping the sauce left in the pan along with a noodle. I lifted my head a little.
Serin's eyes had narrowed, twitching this way and that as if she were hunting for the meaning in what I'd said. She looked thoroughly unconvinced.
"We've traveled a fair amount, haven't we?"
"We went plenty, stuck between our parents."
"...Right. We've never gone just the two of us."
Thinking back, neither of us had ever been the one to bring up a trip first. Rolling around the house had simply been daily life. We'd never left for somewhere far with any special meaning attached to it.
I understood now why she was looking at me like that. It wasn't the sort of line that was supposed to come out of my mouth first.
Maybe, while we were at it, a trip to the beach would be nice.
"We'll sort that out bit by bit later. If you're done, I'm clearing the table."
"I'll do the dishes."
"What do you want for dessert. There's ice cream in the fridge—want that?"
"If it's chestnut, you're dead."
"......"
It was good, though, that one...... Of course I'd bought tangerine too, knowing she'd be like this.
Anyway, I picked up the pan and the plate, set them in the sink, and headed straight for the fridge. I tore open the tangerine ice cream and walked over to Baek Serin, who had already taken up her post there.
"Hey. Why do you always leave the rubber gloves and never use them?"
"It's a pain."
I popped the ice cream into Serin's mouth as she clattered a plate up into her hands.
"I'm telling you, you'll get dishpan hands."
"Mmph—mm—"
"......"
She could have talked once she was done. Even if it melted and ran, it was the sink, so it would've been fine. In the end I took the ice cream back out of her mouth.
"Mmph— Hey, so you're not gonna hold my hand, then?"
"...That was the important part?"
"Then wear the rubber gloves from now on."
Instead of answering, I plugged her mouth with the ice cream again. I'd only said it because I didn't want her catching a rash and her hands getting itchy, so why had her thoughts gone that way?
I had no idea how a girl like this had managed to hide what she felt all this time.
"Nn—ee hee—"
"...Fine. I'll hear you out."
She looked ready to say something else, so I pulled the ice cream from her mouth. I held it hovering just in front of her lips, leaned against the sink, and quietly watched her in profile.
Her hair stirred faintly as her arms moved. Her lashes stretched long. Eyes still fixed on the sink, the soft of Serin's cheek twitched.
"Augh, my teeth are cold. Hah—"
For someone whose teeth were supposedly that sensitive, she had no trouble chewing ice cream. Doing this felt a little like squeezing a treat into a cat's mouth. I'd never actually done it, but that was the feeling.
"Oh, but—shouldn't we have at least one TV?"
"Out of nowhere? Why, you trying to watch Netflix or something?"
"So we can watch porn."
"......"
Clack. Clack.
Serin set the plate on the drying rack as if nothing at all were the matter. She flicked the water from her hands, wiped them on a towel, and turned around.
She shot a look at me where I stood blinking dumbly, then caught my hand—ice cream and all—and took the ice cream into her mouth.
...Couldn't she have just asked for it. It also seemed, maybe, that the point had been to take my hand on the sly.
After working at it for a good long while, Serin slowly drew her face back and shaped a sly little smile.
"What? Getting embarrassed now, of all people? Hm?"
"I have nothing to say. Don't go around talking like that."
"You're the one who keeps going on about walking around shirtless, coming out of the shower, all of that. I was just trying it."
As a devoted user of incognito mode, it was true I couldn't think of a decent excuse. Even so, hearing that come out of Baek Serin's mouth left me a little off.
...Was this a double standard?
"If we need one, we'll buy one."
"Let's buy one, then. A monitor's way too small."
"Why does that sound like we have to watch it together."
"Of course we watch it together. You want me to watch alone?"
I turned my head at the sudden dampness against my fingertips.
The ice cream, quietly melting, was slowly wetting my hand. Serin must have caught where I was looking, because she bit off what little was left and swallowed it whole.
When the lips that had been touching it pulled away, only a faintly wet wooden stick remained, sitting there by itself. I went to drop it in the trash and found her eyes fixed on a strange spot.
"What are you staring at?"
"Nothing. Just wondering if, in about a year, I could lick all the way up your fingers and you'd stay quiet."
"...I feel like I'd still have something to say, even then."
At Serin's nonsense, I moved the arm that had stalled and tossed the stick into the trash.
I'd already thought something in her was broken. After that last remark, it seemed to have gotten worse. It also felt like she kept testing where the line was.
"The movers are coming tomorrow?"
"No, the day after. So until then, I'm wearing your clothes."
"Underwear?"
"......You pervert. I brought that."
"Then the option of going back home?"
"Obviously not."
Was that obvious? Then again, tomorrow was a day with no classes, and it overlapped with the elevator repairs, so it was the sensible choice.
"Anything you want to do today? I don't really have anything planned."
"I think I'll just look at your face."
"Ha..."
Seriously, why was she like this. Had all that embarrassment earlier been an act? She was vicious.
Serin, who had been staring a hole through my face, finally pointed her stalled feet toward the living room. At the same time a slack voice, the disappointment plain in it, brushed past my ear.
"You barely change your expression."
I rinsed the stickiness from my hands under the running water, then followed Serin's steps a little behind.
The footsteps I'd expected to stop in the living room didn't stop. They went on toward my room. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Baek Serin stretched herself out across my bed.
"Lying down the second you're done eating?"
"You lie down too."
Serin, glancing at the space beside her, lifted her head, and our eyes met. She looked at me with a flat, sullen stare, and before long her lips parted.
"Do you have any idea how long it took me to read your heart?"
"Out of nowhere?"
"You don't express yourself properly, and it's not like you have many expressions either. It was really hard."
...Was that how it was. I'd never really been conscious of it, so I wouldn't know. Then again, looked at that way, Baek Serin had been the easy one to read. It showed on her face right away, and even if not as much as now, she'd always said plainly what she liked and what she didn't.
"Then do you know what I'm thinking right now?"
"......Whether to jump you?"
"You crazy bitch. Seriously."
Serin burst out laughing with a pfft, then slowly pushed herself up from where she'd been lying and added,
"This is seriously unfair. I'm the only one being honest. Right?"
"I'm pretty honest too. Or is there something you want to hear?"
At that, she seemed to sink into thought for a moment, lips parting and closing as she picked through her words. Before long, as if a good idea had struck her, she drew a creeping smile into her eyes.
"Then—do I look like a woman to you?"
"......"
"Not a friend."
I'd walked right into another one of her wicked little schemes.
...Though, well, it was far milder than the question I'd been bracing for. She probably just wanted to see me falter out of embarrassment.
"Why are you asking something obvious."
Even so, I had no intention of letting it pass that easily. It wasn't a lie, either.
And yet look at her—she was the one who'd asked, and she was the one turning shy. A faint heat rose in both of Baek Serin's cheeks, and both eyes started blinking fast. She clearly hadn't expected an answer like that out of me.
"...Hey. Did you catch the curse too?"
"As if."
"......Then how far are you gonna let me go?"
"Ah—hold on. That's out."
"Ah, why. Why is this one not allowed either."
I wasn't some AI that went ding and handed over an answer the moment she asked. And we were even less a pair of feelingless robots.
"Doing it after you ask kills the mood."
Things carried out once you'd asked permission felt a little distant, maybe. An action that followed on its own, once you gave yourself over to the atmosphere, carried an entirely different weight.
"...But we don't know how to do that."
"......Ah."
Now that I thought about it, she was right. Neither of us had ever done anything worth measuring a mood against.