The First Stirrings of Aki's Possessiveness (1)
It was four years later, and Aki and I had ended up attending the same elementary school. It was spring of my third-grade year, already three weeks into the new school term.
When I was ten years old, I had just finished homeroom and was getting ready to head home. That’s when Jaehyun, my classmate and kindergarten buddy, sauntered over.
“Wooju, you know we’re all meeting at my place after school today, right?”
“Yeah, I know. Was it by four o’clock?”
“Yep, that’s right. You actually remembered?”
“Of course I did. How could I forget a friend’s birthday?”
“Nice, Wooju. …Oh, by the way.”
“Hm? What?”
“What about that thing I asked you about before? You know, bringing your girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend? Wait, you mean Aki?”
When I asked back, unsure, Jaehyun grinned like I’d hit the nail on the head. I shook my head at him.
“She’s not my girlfriend, though…”
“Anyway, is she coming? You’re bringing her today, yeah?”
“No. I don’t think that’s happening.”
“What? Why, why?”
“I casually asked her last time and she said no. She doesn’t want to go to some stranger’s house.”
“S-stranger…?”
Jaehyun stammered like he’d been genuinely shocked. From his perspective, he and Aki had gone to the same kindergarten and were even in the same class now, so being treated like a total stranger must have stung. The truth was, back then Aki tended to put anyone who wasn’t me on the back burner… but Jaehyun, who either didn’t know or didn’t want to admit it, stepped right up to me.
“Hey, hey, what do we do? What do we do?”
“There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll just have to come by myself, I guess.”
“No! You can’t! I already told everyone you and she were both coming over!”
“Huh? Why would you say that when it wasn’t even certain?”
“Because that way more girls will show up! All the girls want to get close to Aki…!”
Just like back then and even now, Jaehyun had always been brutally honest about his own desires. He flailed for a moment before grabbing both my shoulders.
“Wooju. No—Wooju! I’m begging you as a friend. Can’t you please bring her today?”
“I don’t know… It’s not like I can just drag her along because I want to…”
“You’re basically her boyfriend! Every time we ask you to hang out with us, you just say sorry and go play with her instead! So if you ask, she’ll definitely listen!”
“Hmm, I don’t think that’s quite right…”
The other kids didn’t really get it, but Aki could be surprisingly stubborn. Normally when boys and girls played together the boy would take the lead, but in our case it was the opposite. Even when I tried to get her to play with the others, she only wanted to play with me. How was I supposed to explain that so Jaehyun would understand?
I was still pondering how to put it into words when a familiar voice called out from a distance.
“Wooju~chan!”
The girl calling my name with chan instead of the more formal san—proof of how much closer we’d grown over four years of constant interaction. The nickname was familiar yet still a little strange. When I turned, sure enough, Aki was standing right beside me.
“School’s over, so let’s go home now!”
Aki’s family had moved two years ago, and their new house was quite close to ours—only about a ten-minute walk. Because of that, we walked to and from school together every day. Today, just like always, she had come to my desk to head home with me.
Jaehyun must have seen it as his chance. He casually circled behind me and gave my back a little poke.
“…Hey, Wooju!”
He didn’t say it out loud, but it was obvious he was asking me to try one more time.
“Hmm…”
It probably wouldn’t work, but I figured I might as well ask. With that mindset, I stood up and brought it up naturally.
“Yeah, let’s go. By the way, Aki, it’s Jaehyun’s birthday today.”
“Jaehyun? Who’s that?”
“Nam Jaehyun. The friend from our kindergarten days. Remember?”
“Ohhh, Nam Jaehyun-san? Yeah, I know him!”
“He’s having a party.”
“Ah, I see. Nam Jaehyun-san, omedetou! (Happy birthday!)”
At that age, Aki often mixed Korean and Japanese together. She probably spoke Korean at school and Japanese at home, so it was a common occurrence. These days it’s less noticeable, but back then she was in what people jokingly called “broken Korean patch” mode—mixing polite and casual speech, misunderstanding words, and sometimes muttering rapidly in Japanese, which left me flustered. Still, thanks to good upbringing, she was basically a polite and kind child.
But.
“Thanks! So Aki, today…”
“…Fujiwara-san.”
“Uh, what?”
There was only one time when Aki became this firm. It was when someone she wasn’t close to called her too casually. As I mentioned before, Japan has its own unique naming culture called yobisute. Basically, there are specific honorifics for people you aren’t close to and different ones for people you are, and using the wrong one is considered bad manners. If someone ignored that and called her by her first name like I did, or approached her too casually, Aki would immediately turn serious.
“Nam Jaehyun-san and I aren’t close, so please call me Fujiwara-san.”
“Ah, sorry…”
“……”
Whenever the usually smiling Aki suddenly went stone-faced just because someone used her first name, I always had the same thought: She hates it so much when people she isn’t close to act too familiar… so why didn’t she react that way when she first met me?
That question actually remained unanswered even when we got older, but anyway.
“Fujiwara-san, I’m having a birthday party at my house today. If it’s okay with you, would you like to come and—”
“I’m sorry. I already have plans with Wooju-chan today. I’ll come next time if there’s an opportunity.”
“Uh, next time would be a whole year from now…”
“Wooju-chan, let’s go.”
Aki flatly rejected Jaehyun’s invitation, linked her arm with mine as I awkwardly stood up, and marched straight out of the classroom.
-Hey, look at that.
-They’re going home together again, just the two of them?
-Aren’t Wooju and her dating?
It was third grade—peak age for childish teasing. The moment a boy and girl played together, everyone would make fun of them. Yet even though Aki boldly linked arms with me in front of the whole class and drew every eye, she didn’t seem to care at all. Whether you called it bold, aggressive, or both, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I was half-dragged out by her. As we walked, I glanced around nervously at the other kids’ stares.
“Hey, Aki.”
The moment we turned onto a quiet side street with hardly anyone around, I spoke up.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Why don’t you ever play with the other kids?”
I asked because I was worried about her. The truth was, Aki almost never played with anyone except me. When I was around, she would at least chat a little thanks to me acting as a bridge, but when I wasn’t there, she became an isolated island. You could tell just from how she treated Jaehyun. Her hair was such a pretty color and her face was so cute that if she just acted a little friendly, everyone would definitely try to get close to her first. But because she put up walls and refused to make other friends, I felt both sorry and sad for her.
The biggest reason, though, was something her father had told me.
“Wooju, please become good friends with our Aki.”
Four years ago, right in front of Aki, her father had sincerely asked that of me. He was a bit stiff, but definitely a good father, and those words had stayed lodged in my mind ever since. That’s why I wanted to be a good friend to her. I even hoped she would have more friends like me.
“Do the other kids dislike you? If that’s the case, I can talk to them and—”
“No. I just don’t like any friends except Wooju-chan.”
Whether she knew how I felt or not, Aki shook her head as if she had no interest in making other friends.
“Huh? Why?”
“Because watashi (I) am going to marry Wooju-chan later.”
“……”
On top of that, she kept declaring things about our future without ever asking me first. I let it slide since she still wasn’t fully fluent in Korean yet. But that was one thing, and this was another. The way she stubbornly insisted on not making any friends except me started to make me uneasy.
…What if Aki ends up with zero friends like this?
In first and second grade, none of us knew anything and we were all still adjusting, so we got along decently as a group. But by third grade, when kids start to have some discernment, they tend to stick to their own little cliques. And because I had spoiled her too much, Aki didn’t belong to any group at all. If things kept going like this, she might spend the rest of this year—no, the next several years—with no friends except me.
…That can’t happen.
It just couldn’t. Not when her father had asked me to look after her. I genuinely believed that, so as I walked beside Aki, I racked my brain for a solution. Some way for her to blend into the class right away.
“Wooju-chan, why aren’t you answering? Don’t you want to marry me?”
“Huh? Ah, no. It’s not that I don’t…”
“Then we’re getting married? We are, right?”
“Well, that’s…”
…Wait a second.
Something flashed through my mind while I was thinking.
Marriage. What do you need for a wedding? Guests. And guests are basically the bride and groom’s friends. So if I used friends as the excuse…?
“…Aki.”
I stopped walking.
“Yeah? Are we getting married?”
“No, that’s not it. Want to go eat tonkatsu together?”
And just like that, I used tonkatsu as bait to gently coax her.
“Oh! Tonkatsu? Just you and me, Wooju-chan?”
“Yeah, how about it?”
“Yes! I want to go eat tonkatsu with Wooju-chan!”
“Then let’s stop by the house first and drop off our bags, okay?”
“Okay! Tonkatsu, tonkatsu with Wooju-chan~”
“……”
…Sorry, Aki.
We weren’t actually going to eat tonkatsu. But it was all for her sake, so she’d understand… right?