The Third Round
The third stop after karaoke was a private soju room.
Inside, sofas wrapped around the table in a U, hemming it in on three sides.
"I've got Heejin, so Seongyong, Minseok—you two sit here with me."
Dongmin-hyung claimed the seat of honor in the center and planted the two of us on either side of him.
Which meant the girls had no choice but to sit one on each wing. He'd blamed it on having a girlfriend, but it was obvious he was just trying to set us up. Dongmin-hyung's sly, slippery side was showing more than usual tonight.
"Then I'm sitting here!"
Cha Heejung snatched the seat next to me without a second's hesitation.
As for Lee Jieun...
She kept glancing back and forth between the empty spot beside Heejung and the one beside Choi Seongyong, clearly wrestling with the decision.
Jieun... that's not something you should be agonizing over.
I couldn't say it out loud, so I just screamed it in my head. Of course I'd love it if she sat on this side—but what about the atmosphere? The room was plenty big, and there was space enough next to Heejung, but a three-to-one split around the seat of honor would be a little...
Jieun seemed to realize that too, because she finally headed for the seat beside Choi Seongyong. Even then, she sat a little apart from him. The gap between those two was just a hair wider than the one between Heejung and me.
And yet Seongyong was beaming like he'd won the lottery, simply because she'd sat next to him.
"Five bottles of soju, and this anju, and this one..."
Once the seating was settled, Dongmin-hyung ordered the drinks and snacks without wasting a second. The food hadn't even arrived yet, but conversation was already in full bloom.
"Minseok-oppa, how are you that good at singing?"
Naturally, the first topic was the karaoke place we'd just left. It had been too loud there for much real conversation, but now there was no shortage of things to talk about.
"Right? Oppa, if you can sing like that, why did you always skip karaoke?"
"For real. We asked you to come a few times and you always ran off saying you were busy. I figured you were tone-deaf. Minseok, I have to look at you in a whole new light after tonight."
I'd had a few chances to go karaoke with Dongmin-hyung and Jieun, but I wasn't much of a karaoke guy, so I'd turned them all down. Back then I didn't even have feelings like I'm going to make a move on Lee Jieun or anything of the sort.
I thought about my answer for a second, then went with something safe.
"Come on, I really was busy. You have no idea how much I love karaoke."
"Let's go again next time! Nobody in our club sings better than you, oppa—I've never seen anyone!"
Lee Jieun, sitting diagonally across from me, launched in with an excited look on her face. She had a singer's gift of her own, and her expression was more sincere than anyone's at the table.
"Oh? I'm coming too! Wait—our schedules might not line up, though..."
"Please. We just pick a day off. Unnie, you're coming too!"
I hadn't even said I was going, and the two of them were already making plans like it was a done deal.
The Drinking, Singing, and Dancing trait really was something else. Even Jieun's singing was way beyond amateur level, and yet the only thing anyone was talking about was mine.
Seongyong, who you'd think would jump in and say he wanted to come too, just sat there in silence.
Yeah... I'd do the same.
Seongyong had been the one who first pushed for karaoke, and his rap skills were genuinely solid. But the singing order had cycled as Choi Seongyong, then Cha Heejung, then Dongmin-hyung, then Lee Jieun, then me, then back to Seongyong—over and over. So the three songs he sang after that first one were doomed to be measured against mine.
And then, at the end, after Seongyong's turn, when it was supposed to be Heejung's—
"Oh, last song. Minseok-oppa, you sing it instead of me!"
Heejung had given me her turn, which created a me–Seongyong–me sandwich that nobody could help but compare. Take a humiliation that wasn't quite a humiliation, then go back to karaoke with the same people? If it were me, no chance.
So Seongyong chose to flee the table right then and there.
"I'm gonna go have a smoke. Minseok-hyung, come with me."
And he was taking me with him.
"Yeah, we'll be right back."
I was starting to crave a cigarette myself, so I stood up. The problem was that both of us were sitting on the inside.
"Haa..."
Jieun sighed, stood up, and made room. Heejung, on the other hand, just stared right at me with zero intention of moving.
"Heejung, could you...?"
"Go ahead~."
She said the words and didn't budge, so I had no choice but to climb over her legs.
Squish.
And my thigh pressing into her ample chest was a physical inevitability. Had she engineered that on purpose, or was it an accident? We both pretended not to notice. But there was no way not to notice.
"Hyung. Let's go."
"Yeah, yeah."
Choi Seongyong first laid eyes on Lee Jieun a month ago.
"Ugh, I said I don't want chicken."
Working at a chicken shop had long since burned him out on the stuff, but his friends had strong-armed him into going anyway—to the very shop where he worked.
"I have to come here even after my shift?"
He never showed his face once the workday ended, so that night was the first he knew of it. His ideal type was working at the same store.
Whoa... holy shit...
From that day on, Choi Seongyong glued himself to Lee Dongmin.
"Wait, she's the same age as me? What about a boyfriend?"
"How should I know? You want me to ask a twenty-year-old if she's got a boyfriend?"
"Hyyung~ just find out a little for me~."
A full month of clinging later, the chance finally came.
"Aigoo, fine, I give. I'll set something up this Christmas, so handle it yourself then—and stop bugging me. The owner already gave us money to gather the part-timers for a staff dinner anyway. I'll call Heejung, and that Jieun you've been dying for, and Minseok too. We'll all sit down together."
"Minseok-hyung?"
To Seongyong, Kim Minseok was just a goody-two-shoes senior. Unkempt, shaggy hair. A slightly soft, well-fed build. Put a few more pounds on him and stick a pair of glasses on his face, and you'd have a textbook otaku. When Seongyong had told him stories about how well he'd done in high school, the guy had listened like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
"I'm good with that! Christmas—let's go!!!"
That nerd was no rival of his. If anything, once you took the matchmaker Lee Dongmin out of the picture, the numbers lined up perfectly—one guy, one girl. Even better.
And then he saw Kim Minseok again, and the whole atmosphere around the guy had changed.
Whether he'd gone on a diet or what, his body looked solid now, and his face had a sharpness it never used to. The shaggy, messy hair had been cleaned up into something neat. He looked like a different person.
Seongyong pulled the potential rival aside at the first opportunity.
"Hyung, honestly? I've got my eye on Jieun. Think you could, you know... give me a little push tonight?"
Fortunately, Minseok seemed more interested in Cha Heejung than in Jieun.
"Heejung, is it? The girl you work with isn't bad either, you know."
What the hell does he even see in all that makeup...
Still, Seongyong knew a good chance to clear the board when he saw one.
"How about I give you and Heejung-noona a push tonight, then?"
He'd thought it would all go smoothly from there.
"The owner? Dongmin-oppa, the owner hates it when people who work at the shop date each other."
"Jieun, you don't have a boyfriend?"
Cha Heejung, needling the conversation off course, little by little.
"Why, Jieun? What's not to like about a guy like me? Tall, nice, handsome face to match."
"Ah, forget it. Lee Jieun, if you won't admit it, let's put it to a vote. Seongyong, Dongmin-hyung—how's my face?"
And Kim Minseok, steering the whole table, soaking up even Jieun's attention. Seongyong had never imagined the guy was this talkative. He was running the drinking party like a fish that had finally found water. There wasn't even a gap to jump into.
"Hyung, we're done with the meat. Let's move. Karaoke? How about karaoke?"
The food was finished anyway, so he pushed for a karaoke room. At karaoke, at least, he wouldn't have to sit there and watch. His friends had always said he could rap, and he believed it.
He finished the first track in style, and Jieun clapped for him. For a second he thought maybe he was the main character of the night.
And then he heard her sing, and all he could do was stare.
You're so worn down I couldn't even hold on to you~
Even though it breaks my heart, it's because I'm such a fool~!
Alright. Up to that point, it was still fine. He was already picturing the two of them coming back to karaoke together once they were dating, turning over what to sing next—
And then the guy he'd written off as a nerd tore the room apart.
I walk alone~
This road I'm on~
isn't the kind of road you walk with someone else~!
If I'd known he could sing like that, I never would've suggested karaoke.
Go be a singer. What was a voice like that doing in a chicken shop?
He could practically see the hearts in both girls' eyes. And of course that was the atmosphere in which his own rap had to come out. There was no way it was going to land.
He'd walked into that karaoke room full of confidence, and the minutes crawled by like a punishment.
Then came the third stop—the private soju room.
"I've got Heejin, so Seongyong, Minseok—you two sit here with me."
Lee Dongmin had handed him another opening. And Heejung, who seemed interested in Kim Minseok herself, grabbed the seat right beside him, which put Jieun down next to Seongyong.
Heejung-noona's into him too. If those two hit it off, there's nothing left to compete over.
One guy couldn't date two girls at once, right? Everyone already knew Lee Dongmin had a girlfriend. Which meant Jieun lining up with him was the natural order of things.
"Let's go again next time! Nobody in our club sings better than you, oppa—I've never seen anyone!"
"Please. We just pick a day off. Unnie, you're coming too!"
But Jieun, cruelly, didn't so much as glance in Choi Seongyong's direction. And there was no way he could bring himself to ask if he could tag along to a karaoke trip that Kim Minseok was going on.
"I'm gonna go have a smoke. Minseok-hyung, come with me."
Time to have one more conversation with the competition.