The Uninvited Guest
Wondering if I had finally and completely lost my mind, I turned my head with studied calm and looked over the classmates sharing the table with me.
Whether I was supposed to call it a relief, I couldn't say. All of them were staring past my shoulder with the empty faces of people whose souls had stepped out. The girl who looked like a die-hard fan of the Iron Empress had her mouth hanging open, soju she'd been midway through swallowing dribbling down her chin.
So I wasn't seeing a ghost. I hadn't felt her come in at all, but there was nothing strange about failing to sense a hero who could slip into hypersonic movement whenever she pleased.
Fifteen seconds passed. They felt like fifteen minutes.
No one spoke—not us, and not the tables around us either. In that stifling quiet, the pressure settled squarely on me. Someone had to start a conversation, and that someone was going to have to be me.
"Uh, um… excuse me. How did you come to be here?"
"Have you lost your mind? What's with the formal speech? It's us. Did you drink that much tonight?"
She sounded as easy as if we'd met only yesterday and parted on ordinary terms. I seemed to be the only person in the room who felt awkward at all.
Heroes in this world were trained to be entertainers, granted. Even so, next to the withdrawn girl I remembered, she had grown far too comfortable in her own skin.
"Taehyun oppa did drink a lot today… um, um, but I'm right, aren't I? That's her? Iron… Empress?"
Yeri seemed to sense at once that a fan of hers was at the table. Her gaze shifted. She crossed the distance in a few long strides, dropped into the empty seat beside the girl, and held out her hand.
"Lim Yeri. Iron Empress is just the name I use as a hero. Pretty tacky, isn't it?"
"N-no, I don't think that at all! It suits you so well, actually…"
"The press keeps saying it's too violent. That it sounds more like a villain's alias than a hero's. I must look like a villain, then."
"You don't! That's not what it—"
"Don't tease your fan. It's not like you."
I said it. Yeri looked at me, smiled, and nodded.
"If Taehyun says so, I ought to listen. Sorry for messing with you. I like my hero name, actually. Oh—would you like an autograph, as an apology?"
"Yes, yes, I'd be honored…"
"All right, then. And your name?"
"Han Jisu…"
With practiced ease, Yeri drew a colored card and a marker from the inside pocket of her coat, dashed off a signature in one quick flourish, and pressed it into Jisu's hands.
"I had an errand nearby for the first time in a while, so I came to see a friend. I didn't expect there to be this many people already. Jisu, are you and Taehyun close?"
"Ah… I don't really know?"
We were in the same class in Political Science and International Relations, so a group project tangled us together now and then, but I hadn't built any real closeness with the people at this table. When your childhood friend appears out of nowhere and asks whether you're close with someone, there is no answer that isn't awkward.
And who did she think she was, my mother? Barging into a drinking table to ask a question like that. Strip away the world-class superhero, and this was the behavior of a first-rate nuisance.
"What do you mean, you don't know? Tell me. He vanished saying he was going into the army, so I've been worried whether he's even managing school. Did you come straight in, Jisu? No year off to retake the exam?"
"Yes. I applied early to a reach school, and I got lucky…"
"Wow, incredible. So the holistic review actually came through. I love that. Then Taehyun and I are both three years older than you. If he starts hitting on you kids, you tell me. I'll go knock the manners back into him."
"No, Taehyun oppa is completely hopeless with girls. That never happens."
"Right? Hyung only ever calls the guys when he wants to drink. He won't even go near a place where there might be women."
"Twelve years of co-ed school, he says, three years in the army, and he's more awkward around women than I am—and I went through boys' middle school and boys' high school all the way…"
It wasn't the army. Not really. It was the memory of having turned down the hero sitting at this very table that had made getting tangled up with women feel unbearable.
Yeri had been listening quietly to the talk passing back and forth. Something in her expression brightened, and she glanced my way.
"Oh? Is that so?"
"It is."
"My Taehyun gets shy, I'll give you that, but not so shy he deserved to be called hopeless. Why did you go and join the UN forces, of all things? Wasting two or three perfectly good years wasn't enough—you had to forget how to talk to women, too?"
"Why? Would it have been better if I'd come to college early and picked up a girlfriend or two?"
The instant my eyes met the Empress's, I flinched on instinct and ducked my head. I couldn't tell whether I had just looked into a person's eyes or into the eyes of a tiger prowling a dark hillside. Those irises, which ought to have been grey, flashed like headlights.
It might not have been my imagination. The flare lasted only a moment. When I lifted my head again, she was perfectly calm, taking a selfie with the server while she asked for a glass of soju and a glass of beer.
"Oh, but that was rude of me. I never even asked. Is it all right if I join you? Sorry for dragging a chair over and sitting down without permission. It's been so long since I was at a table this easygoing. I think I got a little carried away."
"Oh—oh, no, of course it's fine. For us to—please don't mind us, really…"
"Then would you switch seats with me? I'd like to sit next to someone I know."
Yeri pointed at Juhyeok, who was sitting beside me. He sprang up, swatting at the seat of his own pants, and bowed, flustered and honored at once.
"Ah, yes, please, right over here…"
"I'm really sorry for the trouble. It's just that it's been a very long time since I had the chance to talk to Taehyun."
Yeri carried both glasses over and sat down beside me. She didn't offer either of them to anyone. She popped the cap off a beer bottle with her finger, filled a cup about two-thirds full, and mixed in a shot of soju.
I sat there looking at her with more unease than joy on my face, and the others caught on that whatever lay between us was not simple. One of them asked,
"Should we… give you two some space? If it's been a long time, you probably have private things to talk about…"
"Hm? No. No, it's fine. Not just fine—please stay. If you leave the two of us alone, he'll try to run again. He thinks he's a cat."
"They're uncomfortable because you're here. That's what they're saying. Every table around us has stopped talking and is staring at this one. You're being a nuisance."
I said it a little bluntly. Yeri put on a look of exaggerated surprise, as if she had only just noticed, swept her eyes around the room, and called for a server. The moment she did, the server came scurrying over and bowed.
"Yes, ma'am—if you'd like to order anything else…"
"Give this to the owner."
What she handed over was her debit card.
"Y-yes?"
"Everyone here tonight… no. Every table on this floor. Put all of it on this card. Everything that comes in from now on, too. Pass that along. That's all right, isn't it?"
"Ah—yes!"
With that, she slipped a piece of paper that looked like a banknote into the server's apron.
"And a tip, since I'm making more work. Sorry. I just got back from working overseas, so I don't have any won on me. I don't think you'll be disappointed."
The server vanished with the card. Yeri took up her glass of soju cut with beer, shot to her feet, and looked around the room.
"Empress! Empress!"
Lim Yeri drained the glass where she stood, set it down on the table with a sharp tap, and sat back down. The customers packed into the bar, mostly university students, were still chanting her name.
"So, Taehyun. I'm a nuisance?"
"Do it like this and the staff just end up with more work."
"Which is why I tipped them. I felt bad. One hundred U.S. dollars."
"If you've got something to say, why not say it when it's just the two of us? Why all of this?"
"The quiet, when it's only the two of us—I have bad memories of that. Tonight I wondered what it would be like to hide in the noise of a crowd. To borrow a little bit of a buzz, while I was at it."
"You can get drunk on that?"
"Would you want me to be?"
"I can't believe the strongest hero in the world is talking about borrowing a buzz off one measly glass of soju."
At that, Yeri cracked open a full bottle of soju and poured every drop of it into the beer glass. Over the top she added a dainty splash of beer, no more than a single shot's worth. Then, the way a sprinter gulps an electrolyte drink the moment a race ends, she sent a whole bottle's mass of alcohol down her throat in heavy swallows, straight into her stomach.
The faintest flush rose in her face. Whether it came from the alcohol or from whatever she was feeling, I couldn't tell.
"Now can I borrow it?"
"…You can taste that? It has to be awful."
"Buzz borrowed. Too many people watching for you to run. Enough time has passed. So let me ask. Hey, Lee Taehyun."
"Let's not say anything tonight that's going to be an article online before morning. You just showing up here is already a disaster, but…"