Die!
Knock, knock.
The sound of someone rapping on the door rang out.
"Ah-reum-ah, are you all packed? Are you sure you don't need Mom's help?"
Pi Ah-reum answered without opening the door.
"Yes, I'm all packed. Don't worry about it."
"How are you going to move all that luggage by yourself? Wouldn't it be better if Mom helped? I'll move it with the car."
"Mom, you have that alumni reunion today. I'm really fine. I don't even have much stuff."
"Are you really okay?"
"I'm okay. I told you, I called a friend."
"You said this friend of yours is only twenty years old. I still think it'd be better if Mom drove you......."
No matter how many times she refused, her mother kept pressing, and Pi Ah-reum let out a sigh.
"My friend's a good driver! Don't worry about me and just go run your errands!"
"Ah, fine. Why are you yelling? Let me know if you need anything, okay?"
"Okaaay~!"
Soon, the sound of the front door closing echoed through the house.
Pi Ah-reum poked her head out of the door and asked her younger sister in the living room.
"Ah-rin-ah, did Mom go?"
"Yeah. She just left a minute ago."
"She's not gonna come back in or something, right?"
"No way."
Pi Ah-rin, her sister two years younger, answered as she pulled out the snacks she'd stashed under the sofa.
Pi Ah-reum came out of her room with a sigh.
"Phew. I know she's my mom, but she's way too overprotective."
"She just does it because she worries about you."
"It's the fact that she's still like this no matter how many times I talk to her about it. And you're sneaking snacks right now too."
The younger sister was pulling snacks from under the sofa.
She had clearly been eating them in secret and had hurriedly hidden them when Mom walked back in. It wasn't the first or second time this had happened.
Pi Ah-rin nodded as if in agreement.
"Num-num. Honestly, not even being allowed to eat snacks freely is kind of frustrating. I mean, I get it since there's medical history on both sides of the family......."
"I didn't even get to try cola until a friend bought me some in elementary school. Before that, I seriously thought cola was some kind of demon's drink."
Pi Ah-reum's mother, Moon Hee-seon, lived with an almost morbid anxiety about health. This was because, in addition to her own parents, her husband's side also had a history of diabetes, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, and even cancer and rheumatism. In fact, both of Moon Hee-seon's parents had passed away from cancer, which further worsened her hypochondria.
And that was why Pi Ah-reum and Pi Ah-rin, the two sisters, had grown up as dutiful daughters, understanding their mother's fears and adapting to her ways.
But understanding something and adapting to it your entire life were two different matters. Honestly, at times it was so suffocating she felt like she couldn't breathe.
Pi Ah-reum watched her sister munching on the snacks and spoke.
"You know you have it a bit easier thanks to me. The fact that things have gotten a little better than before is all because I took the lead and fought the battles for it."
A parent's worry naturally diminishes as they witness their child's deviations. If the degree of straying is severe and pointed in the wrong direction, anxiety may intensify, but an appropriate amount of rebellion could also serve as a trigger to relieve a parent's excessive fears.
And the fiercest battles were usually fought by the eldest son, or the eldest daughter, while the younger siblings were the ones who reaped the benefits.
Pi Ah-rin flipped through TV channels and flailed an arm halfheartedly.
"My unni's the best, fighting to live on your own. Go off and become a total delinquent. Run wild, let's go."
"...Could you put some soul into that? And what's with 'run wild'?"
"It's a trendy phrase from the webtoon I read."
"Weird stuff is trendy these days. Anyway, go get changed. My friend's gonna be here soon."
"Euung. That's a bother. Can't I just stay in my pajamas?"
"No!"
"Oh, whaaat. Pajamas are fine to show!"
Seriously, she never did anything she was told the first time. Pi Ah-reum's expression crumpled. So this was what it was—Mom was scary, and Unni was a pushover.
Pi Ah-reum smacked her sister's butt, who was flopped over on the sofa, with a Chalsak-chalsak sound and yelled.
"Hurry up and get changed! It's a guy, I said!"
"Ow! Stop hitting... Huh? A guy?"
Pi Ah-rin's eyes went wide and round. She sprang up from where she'd been lying flat and asked.
"The friend coming over is a guy?"
"Uh."
"Your boyfriend, Unni?"
"Uh, um. No, not that, he's just a really, really close friend......."
Pi Ah-reum answered somewhat tepidly. It was true they'd gotten sex out of the way at their very first meeting, but it definitely wasn't a relationship you could call dating. If you had to put a label on it, more than friends, less than lovers, was the feel of it.
'Sssip. Should I have just said let's date properly from the start after all? No. If I had, with Cheol-jin's personality he probably wouldn't have even been able to go through with the sex.'
Even then, hadn't she been flat-out rejected once when she pushed to have sex? The line she'd spat out in response was truly a sight to behold, even thinking about it herself.
- Did I say let's date? I said let's fuck.
What else had she said after that? She'd gone on about how Sex First, Love Later was the trend these days, talked about sexual compatibility, and said all sorts of crap like what if it turned out to be small once they actually got down to it. The very fact that all of it had been for the sake of graduating from virgin status was a passage that showed just how unhinged Pi Ah-reum's sex drive had been at the time.
Thinking about it now, it was a truly embarrassing memory, and fastening the first button wrong had resulted in this ambiguous relationship, but—
'Ah, whatever. Kkang-cheol is fucking amazing at sex. Even if I think it over a hundred times, bagging him was a total win.'
—She didn't regret it in the slightest.
Probably, given Kang Cheol-jin's personality, he would have refused right up to the end if she hadn't pushed that hard. No matter how many times she thought about it, taking the virginity of a big-dicked sex genius before anyone else could get their eyes on him was a hundred times the right move.
It was right as she was rationalizing her track record like that.
KaTalk!
A KaTalk message came in saying Kang Cheol-jin had arrived.
"Huck. Hey, hurry up and change!"
"What do you mean, I already changed ages ago?"
"Oh?"
"What were you thinking about so hard all by yourself?"
Pi Ah-rin shook her head as if pitying her. Although she was her older sister, she did occasionally display an incomprehensible, fourth-dimensional side to her, zoning out into her own world or spouting things that made no sense.
"You little—to your unni!"
"Yeah, yeah. My shorty unni."
"You...!"
Pi Ah-reum raised both hands and lunged at her. But unlike herself, who barely scraped the low 150s in centimeters, her younger sister was a tall figure exceeding 165cm.
There was nothing she could do against a sister who simply stretched out a hand.
A humiliating posture with a hand planted on the top of her head.
Pi Ah-reum panted and fumed with the most wronged expression in the world.
"Eesh! I'm your unni! Hey, I'm your unni, I said!"
"Of course you are. I'm the younger sister. That's why I got hit a lot when we were little!"
"That's because you messed up! You've used my stuff without asking since we were kids!"
"Unni used my things without asking too, right? So we're even, right?"
"You started it!"
"Do-o-on't remember."
Pi Ah-reum's face, being toyed with, flushed bright red. Soon glaring venomously, she brought out her final weapon.
"I'm not giving you allowance anymore!"
"...Ehk? I thought that was just a one-time thing last month?"
Pi Ah-rin, this past May, had received an allowance from her unni for the first time in her life. The sum was a whopping 200,000 won! It was enormous money for a high schooler.
It was then that the sound of knocking came from the front door.
"Ah, it's Kkang-cheol!"
Forgetting even her fight with her sister, Pi Ah-reum rushed out in a flurry. Pi Ah-rin, belatedly grasping the situation, chased after her and yelled.
"Unni, I'm sorry! My allowance! Give me my allowance! My respected and beloved—"
Shouting like that, Pi Ah-rin reached the front door.
Her eyes flew wide open.
"—oppa?"
"Pardon?"
At the sudden form of address, Kang Cheol-jin cocked his head. He saw her, so clearly resembling Pi Ah-reum, and smiled kindly.
"Hello."
"Ah, yes. Hello."
"I didn't know Ah-reum had an older sister. I'm Kang Cheol-jin, Ah-reum's classmate."
"Yees. My name is Pi Ah-rin, oppa......."
Pi Ah-rin, her demeanor prim, greeting him shyly.
Seeing that, Pi Ah-reum's face crumpled into a strange expression.
'This bitch? Who does she think she is, wagging her tail like that?'
Without a doubt, it was a sight she had not once witnessed in twenty years of life.
'Could it be that sisters even share the same taste in men? Or has Kkang-cheol actually gotten good-looking by popular standards?'
Judging by how kids these days were reacting, the latter was the more likely scenario. In her own eyes, he looked better before he'd lost weight, but the world was truly an unfathomable place. By nature, a man was supposed to have a certain amount of flab, to have that reliable, warm, bearlike charm.
Meanwhile, Kang Cheol-jin asked back with a puzzled face.
"Oppa?"
He'd clearly stated he was Pi Ah-reum's classmate, yet she called him oppa. Did she think he was a re-taker? Had his face aged as he lost weight?
At any rate, Kang Cheol-jin decided to correct the misunderstanding.
"I'm the same age as Ah-reum. You can just call me comfortably......."
"What is this idiot saying!"
Peok, as was typical, a soft cotton-bat fist flew into his abdomen. Instead of reacting like usual, Kang Cheol-jin gently subdued Pi Ah-reum's wrist and spoke.
"Haha, the younger sister is so mischievous, you must have a lot on your plate."
"Eesh! You gonna let go? I'm the older sister!? Hey!"
"...Huh?"
Blink, blink.
Kang Cheol-jin stared at Pi Ah-reum with a dumbfounded look, then turned to look at Pi Ah-rin.
Pi Ah-rin smiled prettily and greeted him again.
"Hello. I'm Ah-rin, Areum unni's younger sister. Is it okay if I call you Cheol-jin oppa?"
"Ah, yes. Uh, yeah......."
Kang Cheol-jin answered tepidly and turned back to Pi Ah-reum. This kid is really the unni? Not the dongsaeng? This felt like something was seriously upside down.
Right after a split-second silence.
Pi Ah-reum erupted with a shout.
"Dead!"
"Hold on, isn't just blurting out 'dead' a bit much......."
"The look in your eyes just now was way worse, you know?!"
"......."
Kang Cheol-jin simply could not refute that.