A Date
A Date
"A date, huh..."
Embarrassing as it is to admit, I had never once been on a date with a woman.
It was because I simply hadn't bothered to date, but either way, it was true that I'd never been on one.
"Let's do it. A date."
It wasn't that the date itself felt like a burden.
Even if two people aren't a couple, if a man and a woman just spend time alone together, doesn't that count as a date in its own way?
Besides, we'd already kissed, even if it hadn't been entirely by my own will.
Getting embarrassed over a date at this point would be ridiculous.
Aria apparently hadn't expected me to agree so readily. She blinked for a moment, then her face flushed bright red.
"Really?"
"Of course. Have I ever lied to you?"
"I know you haven't, but I didn't think you'd accept so quickly..."
Just as I thought.
I was becoming more and more certain.
Aria was confident when she held the initiative, but the moment I took it, she wilted.
That side of her was cute, and I wanted to tease her a little, but remembering how earnestly she'd asked me on the date, I felt a bit bad about teasing her. So I just stroked her hair.
"If it's a date, we should do it properly, right? Let's meet in front of the house at eleven."
A date ought to have the right atmosphere, shouldn't it?
Getting dressed up and meeting outside—that's the first step to making a date feel like a date.
Of course, that might just be my own biased idea, since I didn't know much about dating, but at least that was how I saw it.
Aria agreed lightly and went back to her room.
I did the same and returned to my room first.
I checked the clock. It was a little past 9:30.
The reason I'd deliberately set the meeting time for eleven was to give Aria plenty of time to get ready.
For a guy, thirty minutes is more than enough since we don't do makeup and all that, but it's different for women.
First, I opened my closet.
I had a decent variety of clothes, but for some reason, none of them really appealed to me no matter which one I picked up.
"Maybe I should've bought some clothes."
Since I'd never cared about styling, most of the clothes in my closet were either comfortable or neat-looking.
Which was only natural.
You only dress to impress when there's a woman to meet.
I'd never had any intention, motivation, or even thought of dating, so there had been no reason to buy clothes just to dress up.
"Guess I'll have to pick from what I've got."
Before I knew it, it was already mid-spring. It wasn't hot enough to call it hot yet, but the temperature was warm, making it awkward to wear an overcoat.
So I ended up choosing two pieces.
Plain slacks for the bottom, an oversized shirt for the top.
After that, I showered, put on sunscreen, and sprayed cologne. Even I thought I was making a fuss, but still—it was my first date, wasn't it?
"Good thing I bought cologne, at least."
I didn't use it often, but it was something I needed.
Not because I had strong body odor or anything, but because I sometimes had to attend dinner parties for my mother's birthday.
But even after finishing all of that, I still had thirty minutes left.
I debated what to do for a moment, then ultimately went outside.
Better to go out early and wait than to be late.
When I stepped outside, pleasantly warm sunlight and a cool breeze greeted me. The sky was perfectly clear without a single cloud—ideal weather for a date.
I drifted into thought.
At this point, wouldn't it be okay to accept Aria's confession?
I'd started seeing Aria as a woman, and honestly, I couldn't really imagine doing this with any woman other than Aria.
But something held me back.
I was one step away from the finish line, yet it felt like I'd dropped the baton somewhere.
Part of it was that I didn't want to reach out with half-hearted feelings, but there were plenty of other problems too.
Even if Linnea accepted our relationship, my father still didn't know about it.
And then there was life after marriage.
I didn't speak a word of Swedish.
Even if I went to Sweden to get married as things stood, what would I do there? I didn't even have a college degree, and even setting that aside, I was still agonizing over how to make a living in Korea, let alone Sweden.
If I couldn't even speak the language on top of that, the only thing I'd be able to do was sit around at home living off the money Aria earned, playing the kept husband.
I really hated that.
Maybe plenty of people would like that, but at least I didn't.
Besides, if I lived like that my whole life, wouldn't Aria eventually get sick of me?
"Brother, did you wait long?"
"No, I just came out too."
The clichéd line came out automatically.
At the same time, I looked Aria over.
"You look pretty today."
It wasn't empty flattery.
Unlike usual, her straight hair was worn down.
Her outfit also had a different feel from usual, giving her a fresh kind of charm.
"You look even more handsome today too, Brother."
After exchanging such embarrassingly sweet words, we reached for each other's hands at the same time, neither of us first.
"Shall we go?"
"Yes, Brother."
We had no set destination.
This was a spur-of-the-moment date, after all.
And asking a guy with zero dating experience to plan a date itinerary would only make things stiff and awkward.
So I figured we'd just wander around the busy streets and check out whatever caught our interest.
"The weather's nice today."
Seeming to enjoy the pleasant weather, Aria looked up at the sky.
Unlike usual, her silver hair was down, fluttering in the wind and sparkling as it caught the sunlight.
"Yeah. Not hot, not cold."
Most of all, I was relieved it wasn't hot.
I didn't mind either way, but if it got hot and our clasped hands got sweaty, Aria might feel grossed out.
We chatted about various things as we walked toward the busy district.
My daily life at university, things that had happened while Aria studied abroad, the scenery she'd seen traveling around the world for competitions.
Six years is a long time.
Even though we'd opened up far more than usual, we still hadn't unpacked even half of our stories by the time we reached the busy streets.
It was noon. Since we'd both eaten breakfast late, neither of us felt like lunch just yet.
So the first place we headed was a movie theater on the fourth floor of a massive shopping mall.
"Is there a movie you want to see?"
"Hmm, I don't know much about movies... Any movie is fine, so could you pick for me, Brother?"
"Being told to pick whatever I want is the hardest request of all. How about I just go with this one, then?"
The movie I picked up was a horror film that I was pretty sure had been out for quite a while.
The title was White Night.
I didn't know the details of the story, but the poster alone looked so ominous that anyone could tell it was practically screaming, "I'm a horror movie."
"Yes, sounds good!"
But Aria actually seemed delighted.
What? Was my little sister secretly a horror movie fanatic?
I worried it'd be embarrassing if I screamed while Aria was enjoying herself, but I couldn't back out after suggesting it myself. That would make it look like I was scared.
In the end, I booked tickets for the earliest showing at the kiosk, then ordered two zero-calorie colas and one popcorn. Fortunately, the seats were completely empty, so we were able to grab the best seats in the center.
"What do you think the movie's about?"
"No idea. Just from the title and poster, I can't even guess."
Maybe it was the director's philosophy, but there wasn't even the usual synopsis you'd expect from a movie.
Just a snowy field with an eerie atmosphere, the title White Night, and clichéd lines like "#1 at the North American box office!" and "Witness shocking horror!"
"If there's nothing else to do, want to head up early?"
"Head up?"
"To the theater."
Asking directly whether she needed to use the restroom beforehand felt a bit awkward, so I'd phrased it indirectly, but Aria's reaction was subtle.
"Hmm, whatever you prefer is fine, Brother."
"Yeah? Then let's head up early."
The movie's runtime was only ninety minutes.
At that length, there was no real need to stop by the restroom.
I'd asked because I didn't feel the need either.
Carrying the colas and popcorn, we took our assigned seats.
Maybe because the movie had been out for a while and might leave theaters soon, there was almost no one in the auditorium.
One person in the very back center seat, two in the very front. The side seats were completely empty. The people in the back looked like a couple killing time, same as us.
With the ads playing on the screen as background noise, we sat down in our reserved seats.
"It's totally empty."
"It is. But I like this too. I always imagined movie theaters being crowded."
I'd been feeling a strange unease and sense of something being off for a while now.
I cautiously voiced the question that had been forming.
"Aria. Is this your first time at a movie theater?"
"Yes! So I'm really looking forward to it!"
Wait, hold on.
First time?
I searched my memory. I was sure I'd taken Aria to a movie theater when she was little...
No, I hadn't.
When she was very young, she couldn't speak Korean well, so there was almost never a reason to take her to the movies. Once she got a bit older, there had been several opportunities, but our schedules never lined up, or something came up suddenly and it got canceled right before we could watch together.
"You didn't watch movies in Sweden?"
"I've seen a few movies themselves, but I've never been to a movie theater. I was busy preparing for various competitions, and most of the movies I did watch were just to analyze the background music..."
In other words, today was the first time Aria had ever been to a movie theater.
And from the sound of it, she hadn't really watched many movies at all.
Suddenly, I was hit with regret over choosing a horror movie. Had that really been the right call?
But as if refusing to let us leave now, the theater lights went out and the fire evacuation notice began.
Ah, it'll be fine.
It was just a ninety-minute horror movie, after all.
If it got too scary, she could just watch through half-closed eyes.
Aria, completely calm, seemed fascinated by the movie theater itself. Her eyes sparkled at the screen as she munched on popcorn.
Just as I was feeling relieved by how composed she seemed, the production and distribution company logos passed by and the movie began.
It opened on a snow-covered mountain in the Arctic.
An expedition team dispatched to explore the Arctic set out confidently, but before long they encountered a severe blizzard, and several members ended up falling into a crevasse hidden by the whiteout.
Fortunately, the stranded team members weren't seriously injured. They also had plenty of people, and enough food and water. On top of that, the Arctic was in the middle of the midnight sun season, so it stayed bright even at night.
The castaways never doubted that rescue would come soon.
Once this blizzard passed, their comrades would come to save them.
Two days passed like that.
The blizzard stopped, but no rescue came.
Some team members raged that those bastards had abandoned them, while others worried that the rest of the team might have been caught in an avalanche or something.
Opinions were divided, but everyone was equally uneasy.
By the second day, their food and water supplies were gradually running low.
In that situation, a young man named Eric among the stranded members stepped forward.
"The blizzard seems to have stopped, so I'll go out and take a look. I'm one of the least injured, at least. Fortunately, we have rope, so if I can just climb up, it should be fine."
Eric climbed the sheer ice cliff carrying only two ice picks.
He nearly slipped and fell several times along the way, but Eric—who looked exactly like the typical blond macho man from an American movie—barely managed to make it out of the crevasse.
All the castaways watching the scene cheered.
And then, just as they all believed without a doubt that a rope would come down—
Something dropped from the sky with a thud.
It was Eric's head.
"Kyaaaaaaah!"
Amid the castaways' screams, a familiar voice's scream was mixed in.
Then I felt a soft pressure against my arm. I turned my gaze and saw Aria, her face deathly pale.
I discreetly checked the seats in front and behind us. Fortunately, her piercing scream had been drowned out by the screams on screen, so no one was looking our way.
But even as Aria clung to my arm, she didn't close her eyes. Did she feel some sense of responsibility to watch the movie to the end?
The movie continued.
The castaways slowly lost their minds. The sky beyond the crevasse remained bright. What had killed Eric?
The few who managed to keep their sanity tried to deduce what had happened based on the clean cut of Eric's neck.
But the deeper they dug, the more horrifying the conclusions became. Even a predator like a polar bear couldn't have cleanly severed only his neck in that instant.
Then was it a person?
Who?
The first thing that came to mind was the rest of the expedition team, but no matter how they thought about it, there was no reason for that. The expedition members had brought guns for self-defense, but they hadn't brought anything like machetes, so they wouldn't have had the means anyway.
And more importantly—what had Eric seen right before he died that terrified him so much?
The next day, three of the men who were still in decent shape climbed the ice cliff just as Eric had.
But their situation was different from Eric's, who had climbed with only one rope and two ice picks.
They were more exhausted, and they'd brought guns on their backs in case of any potential threat.
And then the man climbing in front—
locked eyes with "it."
"Eek!"
Again, Aria flinched and pressed herself even closer to me. At the same time, someone in the front row glanced back at us.
Well, this time the scream had come during a quiet moment, so of course they'd hear it.
But I couldn't really tell Aria to be quiet. It was my fault for picking a horror movie without thinking it through, and screaming during a horror movie is a natural reaction.
Aria seemed to notice the gaze too. She fidgeted for a moment, then whispered a request to me.
"Brother, could you cover my mouth with your hand...?"
I wanted to tell her to cover her eyes instead, but Aria clearly wanted to keep watching the movie. In that case, telling her to cover her eyes wasn't a good idea either.
I wanted Aria's first movie theater memory to be a good one if possible. But we were already about thirty minutes in, and keeping my arm stretched over to cover her mouth for the remaining hour was a bit much.
So I patted my lap lightly with my palm and said,
"Sit here."
Fortunately, the people behind us were in the very back row, so this much wouldn't block their view.
And Aria was so small that even sitting on my lap wouldn't obstruct my view either.
Once Aria obediently sat down, I wrapped one arm around her and covered her mouth with my other hand.
For a moment, I wondered if this criminal-looking position was really okay, but then the next jump scare popped up.
"Mmph! Mmmph!"
Fortunately, with her mouth covered, the screams weren't too loud, but Aria squirmed this way and that, and her butt rubbed against my thighs.
To erase the impure desires that surfaced, I recited the national anthem in my head while watching the movie. Fortunately, Aria stayed quiet except during the scary parts, so it was bearable.
That was how we made it to just before the highlight scene.
Aria, sitting on my lap, fidgeted and spoke.
"Um, Brother..."
"What's wrong?"
"Um, the restroom..."
"There's twenty minutes left. Can't hold it?"
"I-I'll try to hold it as long as I can...!"
But after that, Aria squirmed even more, and the friction against me grew more frequent.
Could Aria and I both hold out?
For the remaining twenty minutes.