Date with the Crazy Women
The screen blazed brightly inside the dim theater, illuminating every corner. On it, a frail heroine tied to a dilapidated bed begged desperately for mercy from a psychopathic masked killer. The sheer volume of guts and blood spraying in every direction was enough to turn even my stomach, and I'm a man.
Please, please don't hurt me! PLEASE!!
...Wasn’t this supposed to be an outing for the girls to get closer?
Yeah, I was certain I’d asked Baek Soyun for exactly that. So why the hell were we watching this gorefest? And on top of that….
HA, HA! Do you trust your boyfriend? You should trust that. Because….
“No, NO! NO!!”
“Aang, how scary~♡”
On my left, Calathea clung tightly to my arm, pressing it into her chest while letting out fake screams and teasing me. On my right, Audrey sat bolt upright, her face deathly pale, squeezing my hand in a death grip. It created a very strange formation.
It was interesting to discover this new side of Audrey—I’d assumed a movie like this wouldn’t scare her at all—but I wasn’t sure if it was actually helping them bond. It didn’t seem like Baek Soyun had simply messed up the reservation. I’d never once seen her make a mistake at work. There had to be something here that men just didn’t understand….
That’s what I’d thought, at least.
“Ugh, that was genuinely terrible. Manager, where on earth did you find a movie like that?”
“…It wasn’t good?”
“Yes. It was the worst.”
The moment the movie ended, a barrage of harsh criticism flew at me. Calathea hadn’t even blinked at the brutal scenes, but Audrey was still pale, moving with stiff, creaky motions even now.
Hmm. This was….
“…It’s kind of cute that you’re both making the same face. Hmm? Don’t tell me you picked this movie on purpose, hoping for exactly this…?”
“N-no, it’s not like that!”
“Manager….”
While Calathea barely held back her giggles beside me, Audrey fixed me with a glare full of resentment. She rarely showed emotion, so even this look felt fresh to me. At the same time, it made it painfully clear just how angry she was.
Still, I couldn’t blame Baek Soyun for planning the itinerary, so I hung my head like a condemned criminal.
“So what’s the next date course? Can I get my hopes up?”
“Uh, um… It’ll be way better than this one.”
“…I certainly hope so.”
Calathea sounded like she was looking forward to how boring the next activity would be, while Audrey tossed out that cold remark and pressed her lips tightly shut.
“Ahem. Then let’s put our masks back on and head to the parking lot… Huh?”
“……….”
As we started to move, I suddenly felt my right arm being tugged backward. When I turned, Audrey was pinching my sleeve between her thumb and index finger. The instant our eyes met, she gave a tiny shake of her head—please don’t say anything—and quickly looked away.
…She really is cute.
I fought down the smile threatening to lift the corners of my mouth and deliberately slowed my steps so Audrey could follow while still clutching my sleeve.
“Explain it to me one more time, Manager.”
“Uh… So you search the room for puzzles, solve them to get hints for the next puzzle, and repeat the process until you find the key to escape the room.”
The next stop after the theater was an escape-room café. It was a bit rundown—probably because Baek Soyun had booked it in a hurry—but it still had all the necessary elements. Since this was the first time for both women, it was more than enough.
The problem, however, was something else entirely.
“I still don’t get it.”
“What part?”
“Can’t you just break a lock like this?”
Calathea tilted her head, grabbed the padlock hanging on the cabinet, and gave it a light yank after tensing her wrist.
“See? Like this.”
With a sharp crack, the lock shattered and my heart sank right along with it.
“Hey! You can’t just destroy property like that!”
“It’s an escape-room café. I was just escaping the way the name suggests, wasn’t I?”
“No, you’re supposed to solve the puzzles to open the locks…”
“Too inefficient.”
“And I told you not to freeze it and smash it, Audrey…!”
God, I was losing my mind. Was the concept of enjoying the process of escaping a locked room completely foreign to them?
I tried my best to calmly explain the rules over and over, standing right beside them, but in the end the part-timer watching the CCTV saw the entire interior being demolished and forcibly ejected us.
“Paying money to get locked up in a place like that… I really don’t understand that café.”
“Tell me about it. A room you can’t leave unless you have sex would’ve been way more fun.”
“…As if a room like that exists.”
We paid for the damaged property, but there was no one I could bill for the damage to my sanity.
“Haa… Let’s just move on to the next course….”
It would work next time. I let out a weak sigh and trudged forward.
And the next place, and the one after that. We faithfully followed the plan Baek Soyun had put together, but every single stop ended in disaster and failure. By the time the sun began to set, even my steel-like resolve had crumbled.
I guess this just isn’t for me.
It didn’t seem like I was capable of properly carrying out the itinerary she’d made. Finishing the last remaining course probably wouldn’t change anything. Today’s plan to make Calathea and Audrey get closer… had to be called a failure.
“…Should we just go eat some meat?”
“Meat is always the right choice. Yup, yup.”
“I agree.”
The two immediately gave cheerful consent to my half-hearted suggestion. It was the first time I’d heard such bright voices from them all day.
…At least they weren’t looking at me with pity. If they had, I might not have been able to endure it.
“Let’s go… We’ll just walk around and duck into whichever place we see first.”
The three of us wandered the streets without a reservation, breathing in the evening air. The night in the bustling district shone endlessly bright, yet my own night felt hopelessly gloomy. Everyone we passed seemed to be laughing and chatting happily, which only made the contrast sharper.
By the way….
“Why are you staring at me like that, Manager?”
The temperature was dropping as the sun set, and I could feel eyes constantly drifting toward Calathea. Even with the mask on, her stunning face couldn’t be hidden, and her selfishly perfect figure was poured into revealing clothes. It was only natural.
“Here.”
“What’s this… huh?”
I took off my outer jacket and draped it over her. Once it settled on her shoulders, it easily covered the backside that had been drawing so many stolen glances. That should be enough.
“It’s getting chilly. Even if you’re not cold right now, just wear it.”
“Uh, um…?”
I turned away from Calathea, who was blinking like an idiot in the oversized jacket, and resumed my tired trudge.
“Audrey, what kind of meat do you want?”
“Samgyeopsal… or gopchang would be good too.”
“Alright. We’ll walk around and go into whichever place catches our eye first.”
For someone who looked like she’d elegantly slice into a high-class steak, her appetite was surprisingly hearty. Anyway, I just needed to find any meat restaurant, get these two inside, and soothe my aching insides with some soju….
“……Hng.”
We hadn’t been walking long when I felt Calathea looking at me and making a strange little sound.
“What? Trying to tease me again?”
“Huh? No. I was just thinking… I don’t think anyone’s ever given me something like this before.”
“Like this… you mean the jacket?”
“Well, not the jacket itself, but….”
She had already slipped her arms into the sleeves. After fiddling with the overly long cuffs and observing them, she lifted the collar to her face and sniffed curiously.
“…It smells like the manager.”
“I didn’t give it to you so you could smell it.”
“It’s fine. Yeah. It’s a good smell.”
Somehow… she seemed oddly docile. It was like she’d discovered something new and was cautiously exploring what it was. A calm Calathea was actually pretty nice in its own—
“By the way, Manager♡ Are you already taking care of your woman like this…? Hmm?”
…Yeah. Of course. The second I thought she looked pretty when she was being quiet, she reverted to her usual self in under three seconds and threw herself into my arms.
“Were you that bothered by people staring at my body? They should only be looking at me, yet those guys were freely enjoying the view?”
“Would I be? More importantly, could you get off—”
“Don’t worry about it too much, Manager. My bare skin is… a sight I only allow you to see♪”
“…For someone who says that, didn’t you show it to the prisoners and me until we got sick of it?”
“It’s common sense that the same sex doesn’t count. Don’t you know that?”
“Really? It seems a lot of common sense has collapsed without me noticing.”
In the end, it always came to this. If you’re going to bicker, at least get out of my arms first. I swallowed a sigh amid their endless squabbling and kept walking until a samgyeopsal restaurant finally came into view.
The street had grown rapidly darker, so we brightened at the sight and stepped inside.
And then—
“Auntie! Three orders of samgyeopsal and one bottle of soju, please!”
“Coming~ Got it!”
Exhausted on every level, I ordered the alcohol without thinking. The transparent green bottle that would summon the final disaster of the day.