The Loner Who Carries the Load
It was the beginning of September.
School was fully back in its normal rhythm now, and the students had finally shaken off the last traces of summer vacation, settling their attention on school life again.
Even the blazing heat of summer had begun to lose its edge, to the point where the thin summer quilt had to be packed away in the closet.
Of course, the temperature still rose high enough to feel hot during the day, but
when night came and the cool breeze started blowing, it felt as though it were quietly announcing that summer was drawing to a close.
"Ian. I’ve been noticing this lately, but there seem to be a lot of customers who look kind of depressed. They’re definitely high school students, but somehow they even look older than they should..."
"There are only about two months left until the college entrance exam. It’d be safe to assume that anyone from the students who visit here and looks gloomy is a third-year high school student."
I had finished my part-time shift at the sandwich shop as usual and was walking home with Yu Somi.
Back in July and August, it had still been bright at this hour because the sun hadn’t gone down yet, but now the sky was completely black and the streetlights were shining.
"Whoa... then in two years, will I end up like that too?"
"If you end up needing college entrance exam scores... then probably. It’d be something to decide after talking it over with your parents or your teachers in detail."
Preparing for the exam would be hated by anyone.
Somi probably didn’t want to study for it either.
And yet, the expression on her face after hearing me was brighter than I’d expected.
"Ian. Then... before I get all worn out from exam prep, don’t you think I should make sure I enjoy how I am right now?"
"...?"
I turned to look at her, wondering what on earth she was talking about.
She was smiling at me with both arms spread wide to either side.
"Oh. So today too, you want me to hug you."
"Correct~♪ Come on. Hurry, hurry!"
Ever since we finished our sandwich shop shift and were heading home, Somi would occasionally ask me to hug her.
It had started when she grabbed me on the way home and hugged me, complaining, "I’m not getting enough skinship!"
Well, Somi always complained about not getting enough skinship, and by now I didn’t really feel resistant to hugging her anymore, so I didn’t refuse.
...
But was it just my imagination, or was the frequency slowly increasing?
Lately it felt like it was almost every day...
"Ian~ My arms hurt~❤"
I didn’t know. It wasn’t like she was half naked the way she was at the pool, so a hug should be fine.
I stepped toward her, arms open, and wrapped her gently in a hug. A soft, happy sensation welled up against my chest.
Hm... should I hold her tighter? Usually when I hugged her like this, she’d complain, "Tighter!"
...
But today, Somi seemed to be talking about something a little different.
"If you’re not busy today... do you want to come see the painting at my house?"
"Painting?"
"Yeah! Sometimes I paint at home on my easel, but taking photos of them doesn’t really capture the feeling... and bringing them around to show people is a hassle because they’re too big."
After hearing her out, I hesitated for a moment at the idea of going into a girl’s house.
Her family would obviously be there too, so nothing weird would happen, but...
Would it be okay if I just went in, looked at the painting for a bit, and left?
-♫-♪~♩
Just then, my phone buzzed with a message notification.
It was from Mom.
We were out of ingredients for tomorrow morning’s breakfast, and she wanted me to stop by the supermarket and buy bread, eggs, and milk on my way home.
"Somi, sorry. I’ve got something my parents asked me to pick up, so I think I need to stop by the supermarket first. I’ll come see the painting another time."
"Ah... it’s okay! The painting isn’t going anywhere. Then I’ll see you at school tomorrow!"
Somi looked truly disappointed as she gave me one last tight hug, said goodbye, and left.
If I had checked whether the lights were on in Somi’s house at that moment, I would have learned a terrifying fact...
But I lacked a proper sense of danger back then.
So I wouldn’t learn what was really going on until years later, after graduation.
.
.
.
After parting with Somi near her house, I headed to the big supermarket to run the errand Mom had given me.
If the list had only included sliced bread and milk, I would have just handled it at a neighborhood convenience store.
But since I also had to buy eggs in one trip, I didn’t really have another choice.
That said, the supermarket closed at 10 p.m. today, and it was only 8 o’clock now, so there wasn’t time to leisurely browse other items.
So I planned my route in my head, then quickly pushed a cart through the store and finished the errand.
...
I came here often enough that it took less than ten minutes to put everything from the list into the shopping cart.
That included the potato chips I’d grabbed on impulse while walking through the food section and spent more than three minutes trying to decide on before finally giving in and tossing them in.
After finishing my shopping, I was about to head past the checkout, when I spotted someone familiar at the self-service packing station set up off to one side.
She wasn’t facing me, but with her slightly small build and ash-gray hair falling to around her shoulders,
just from that alone, I figured there was no way this was going to be one of those, I mistook her for someone I knew who looked similar, situations.
Especially since she was still wearing the Baekseung High School uniform, there was no way I could possibly have missed her.
When I moved a little closer to check, it turned out to be Lee Narin, carefully packing the things she had just bought into two fairly large boxes.
Looking at what she’d bought, I could see everything from the smallest sizes of soy sauce and vinegar to steel hangers, bathroom mats, and electric fly swatters.
Apparently she’d recently moved and was buying all the things she now needed in a new place.
And the clay and carving knife... those must be for art class.
But it looked like the boxes she’d prepared were a little too small, because she was struggling over a single box about the size of a tissue container that no longer had room to fit.
...Come to think of it, even if she managed to fit everything in, I wasn’t sure Lee Narin could actually carry that home by herself.
Seeing that each box had tape wrapped around it to make handles, it really did look like she intended to carry it all the way home alone, and that made me a little uneasy.
Then Lee Narin looked at the box she couldn’t fit anywhere because it was too large for the remaining space,
let out a deep, discouraged sigh, and carried it back to the checkout counter.
She looked like she was just going to return it because there wasn’t enough room in the box...
Wait. Looking at it now, that’s a slice of cake.
In the end, I couldn’t hold back and called out to Lee Narin to stop her.
"Lee Narin! Wait a second. If you’re having trouble carrying it, should I help?"
.
.
.
"One of those boxes weighs almost ten kilos... If you didn’t have a way to move your stuff, why didn’t you just buy a moving cart?"
"The cart is supposed to be delivered to my old house, and it’d be a waste to buy another one. But I couldn’t go hungry, so I came out to buy groceries, and I accidentally bought too much."
I was now heading toward her house with both of my hands full of Lee Narin’s belongings.
And the things I’d bought as Mom’s errand, along with the slice of cake, were being carried by Lee Narin.
Fortunately, her house wasn’t very far from the supermarket.
It was close enough that a high school student who exercised regularly could carry a combined twenty kilos of boxes without much trouble.
"By the way, do you like cake? You didn’t look very happy when you were trying to return it earlier."
"No, I don’t especially like it. I just bought it because today is my birthday."
"..."
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I was just thinking I’m glad I spoke to you. You went to the trouble of buying yourself a birthday cake, and it would’ve been too sad to return it because you had no way to carry it home."
Even before I regressed, I’d had quite the loner career, so I’d once bought my own birthday cake and lit the candles by myself.
After realizing all that did was make me depressed, I’d stopped doing it.
But no matter how much of a loner I was, I’d never bought a self-birthday cake and then had to return it because I couldn’t carry it home.
Lee Narin still wore the same blank expression, as if she couldn’t understand what the problem was. Did she not realize how her situation looked from someone else’s point of view?
"Well, anyway, happy birthday. And I’m going to tell all my friends about your birthday, so... you’d better be prepared to keep your phone in your hand until you go to sleep tonight."
"...!?"
She seriously thought she could hide her birthday from her friends?
I didn’t know about Han Sia, but if it was Yu Somi, she’d definitely unleash an endless hell of messages as punishment for the crime of daring to hide her birthday from a friend.
.
.
.
Even after that, we walked along while talking about all sorts of things.
What kind of house she’d lived in before moving here, what kind of club she was thinking of joining, and so on.
Then I asked her about life as someone living alone.
"Isn’t it hard living on your own? If you’re by yourself, there must be a lot of things to do, like cleaning and laundry."
"I’m used to being alone, so it’s fine. I can cook at least a little, too."
Come to think of it, among the things Lee Narin had bought, there was very little in the way of instant food.
Most of the groceries she’d picked out were ingredients already prepped and packed in small portions.
The closest thing to instant food was a soup processed into powdered stick packets.
When I lived alone before I regressed, I practically solved every meal outside. Impressive.
"But... even when I go home, there’s no one there, so it’s true that it gets a little lonely. Lately, though, Somi taught me how to watch anime, and that’s helped a bit. Before that, I really didn’t even want to be at home."
"Then how about inviting a friend over? Like a housewarming kind of thing."
Sure, the only friend she could invite right now was Yu Somi, but I thought that if she kept making more friends in the future, it would help ease the boredom.
But... Lee Narin must have misunderstood what I just said, because she frowned slightly and answered,
"What? Are you trying to get into my house now? Sorry, but if you think you can do something to me, you should give up. There are plenty of old men who tried approaching me with the same kind of methods and got beaten so hard they ran away."
"No, I meant you should try inviting Somi..."
"..."
Even after hearing me, Lee Narin kept her frown for a moment.
Maybe she was trying to determine whether I was telling the truth.
After about five seconds like that, she finally seemed to realize she’d misunderstood, and her expression eased as she apologized.
"...Ahem. Sorry. I live alone, so I’m a little sensitive about this kind of thing."
After that, I delivered Lee Narin’s luggage to the front of her house, and she thanked me and handed me one of the chocolates she’d just bought.
...
Still, it was annoying that she’d suspected me of being a pervert, so the moment she went inside and closed the door, I immediately called Yu Somi and exposed Lee Narin’s birthday.
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