Half a Hero: Lee Hayun (4)
Lee Hayun walked in ahead of me, ponytail swaying.
I was left holding eight cans of beer, without a single word of warning.
Was I supposed to take this the way it sounded?
…But she'd definitely said Lee Jiyoon was home.
"……."
The hesitation didn't last. Convenience-store bag in hand, I followed Lee Hayun step by step.
If she lived alone, or in some wide, luxurious place with decent soundproofing, maybe. This was a shabby villa she shared with her little sister—the kind that wouldn't surprise anyone if it collapsed tomorrow. She probably just wanted a drink, plain and simple, something to wash the last hour out of her head.
…Eight cans of beer. Hard to say whether that was meant for two or for three.
Through the dim hallway and up the stairs, Lee Hayun reached the second floor first. By the time I caught up beside her, the lock beeped four times in a row and the door opened. She still hadn't taken the bag, just stepped through on her own, so I figured I was meant to come in too.
…Now that I was actually here, I was a little tense.
I rolled my shoulders once for no real reason, then stepped inside, careful not to push the pace too far ahead. Part of me wanted to grab Lee Hayun by the wrist and drag her straight to a bed. For now, though, the right distance was still just a close junior. A friendly underclassman.
That way, someday, she'd come apart on her own.
"Unni's home."
"……."
"I said I'm home."
"……."
"Look at her. Gaming so hard she won't even answer."
Instead of paying me any more mind, Lee Hayun slipped into the one room with the light on. A moment later a playful shriek burst out of it—kyaaa.
I set the convenience-store bag on the floor and took off my shoes to the sound of the sisters tangling. One more pair joined the two already at the entrance.
Lee Hayun's place was, as expected, extremely cramped. Wider than the tiny one-room studio I lived in alone, sure—two rooms, even. But for Lee Jiyoon and Lee Hayun both, it looked a little tight. If nothing else, a living room about one and a half times this size would've been much better. Or they could start by throwing out the furniture that only took up space and didn't do anything. Ah—swap that yellow light for clean white, and the place might even come alive.
I was lining up my shoes and quietly looking the apartment over when the door Lee Hayun had gone through burst open.
"Let's drink. Drink."
"You can't even hold your liquor, what are you—"
Lee Jiyoon, dragged out in white polka-dot pajamas with a wireless headset still on. The moment her eyes met mine, the meowing complaints she'd been throwing at her sister shriveled at speed. Thinking she might have mistaken me for a burglar, I yanked my neck warmer down and showed my bare face. The reaction didn't change. She tore free of her sister's arms, hid behind the wall, and stared at me with an expression that said, plain as day, what the hell are you doing here.
Compared to the Lee Jiyoon they'd call the Witch ten years from now, her emotions swung a lot harder.
"…You? Why? No, uh…."
She looked like she had plenty to say. Unfortunately, she only had one mouth. Jiyoon's lips worked open and shut, then turned on her sister instead of me. Easier, apparently, to scold the sister she'd lived with for twenty years than to curse the person who'd cured her headaches.
"…Lee Hayun."
"Yeah?"
"S-Seo Woojin, was it? Why is he here? Did you bring him? Did he stalk you or something?"
"Shopping cart."
"Shopping cart?"
"Over there. The convenience-store bag. He carried it for me."
I lifted the bag a little, and Jiyoon's eyes started darting between me and it. Her brows pinched on their own; she clearly had a mountain of questions. Hayun left her sister like that and walked to the kitchen, hauling out a small table—a cheap little round one, the kind that would be packed solid if three people sat around it.
"Anyway, Jiyoon. You drinking?"
"Me? Alcohol? With Seo Woojin? And you?"
"Yep. I'm not asking you for money."
"No, I know that, but… out of nowhere? Why, exactly?"
"Just because. I felt like drinking."
"Huh…?"
She didn't seem eager to tell her sister what had just happened. I'd been standing quietly by the entrance. Careful of Jiyoon's mood, I walked over to the living room where Hayun was. They hadn't turned the boiler on; the floor was pretty cold.
"What do you want? Oh. I should've bought you something you actually like back at the store."
"I'm fine. I don't really know canned beer."
"You don't? Never had it? Right—you're only twenty."
"…Yeah."
I'd only ever drunk soju and draft beer, and only because I'd caught the eye of that lush, Yozora. I couldn't exactly say that, so I just said I didn't know. The reason was different. The result was the same.
"But you've had alcohol, right? Like, at a bar."
"A little."
"How much can you hold?"
"Uh…."
…Come to think of it, I didn't think I'd ever gotten drunk enough to stagger. Yozora always went down first, and once she started raising hell at everyone else I was too busy pinning her down and shutting her up. Still, whenever that happened there were six or seven soju bottles on the table, and I was pretty sure I'd drunk more than half of them. She was the type who'd insist you had to clink glasses before every drink, spilling all over herself while she kept refilling mine.
"Two bottles of soju."
"Two? Of soju?"
"Yes. Around there, probably."
Saying I could drink a lot felt like bragging, so I lowered it to a respectable amount. All we had here was eight cans of beer anyway. Altogether, about two bottles of soju.
"You're not gonna turn red after one can, right?"
"That won't happen."
"…For real?"
"Yes. It's not like I've never drunk before."
"Then you're not getting drunk on this, are you?"
"Probably not. …Why do you keep asking, though."
"…Nothing. Forget it."
I answered while setting a can on the table for each of us, and Hayun squirmed up from her seat and headed for a corner of the kitchen. She was pulling a few packs of ramyeon out of the cupboard. She broke them up a little, dumped them into a big bowl, and sent it straight to the microwave. Once the hum started, she came back to my side and dropped into her seat.
"Lee Jiyoon."
"…W-what?"
"You're not drinking?"
"……."
"Then it's just us?"
A short silence. She stared a hole through the table we were sitting at, then vanished into her room. Hayun scratched her cheek, muttered that she guessed Jiyoon wasn't drinking, and started to crack a beer—only for a moment. The door opened again, and Lee Jiyoon walked out looking a little different from a minute ago.
"……."
…Well. All she'd done was take off the headset and throw a thin windbreaker over the polka-dot pajamas. Unlike Hayun, who'd edged a little closer to me, Jiyoon sat pressed much nearer her sister than to me. Not so much an equilateral triangle as a right triangle with Lee Hayun stuck in the middle.
"Unni."
"What?"
"One can. That's it. You can't even drink—why'd you buy this much?"
"…We'll see."
Jiyoon said it as she took an apple-flavored beer from the assortment on the table. Taste, apparently.
"And you, Seo Woojin."
"Yes."
"If you're thinking anything weird, give it up now."
"……."
"…! Hey, Jiyoon. Woojin's only here because I asked him."
Jiyoon ignored Hayun, who flinched and shot back, and kept going.
"You've never dated in the twenty-one years you've been alive, so the second a guy treats you a little nice, your heart just tips right over."
"Wh-what kind of bullshit is that. It's not like that…."
"…I'll be watching from right here tonight."
"……."
One look at her eyes and I could roughly guess why she'd decided to join this drinking session.
Puzzlement. Suspicion. Something off. A sly little dodge. And a dirty thought.
An emotion like several similar words stirred together kept tapping back and forth between me and Lee Hayun.
…Kind of fun.
"Anyway, you drink, and you go home. Got it?"
"…I will."
I nodded, opened a can like they had, and slowly held it out. A blunt, cold cheers rang against my fingertips.
Crunching microwaved dry ramyeon and drinking beer only lasted so long.
"……Haaah…."
"……."
"……."
The living room, which had been chattering along in high spirits, slowly went quiet. Hayun had been telling convenience-store stories—minus the part about the robber—and started nodding, swaying. Jiyoon, who'd joined in to keep an eye on me, was at some point just blankly sipping beer. And I was just following Jiyoon, quietly putting it away. The only sound left was the soft clink of cans Jiyoon set down without thinking.
She'd given her sister grief for not being able to drink, but Jiyoon didn't seem to know her own limit either. Well. She was only just twenty. If she hadn't snuck a little rebellion in while she was still a minor, she might not know.
…About a can and a half.
I'd thought they only shared eye color and erogenous zones. Turns out their tolerance was a perfect copy of her sister's, too. If she still thought she'd never been drunk, she was in a slightly more dangerous state than Hayun.
"…Hey."
"Yes."
"The trash…. Ugh…. Clean up the trash…."
"Trash?"
"The empty beer cans…. They're rolling all over…."
"When we're done, I'll gather them up on my way out."
"…Okaaay…. I'd appreciate that…."
"……."
That was the fourth time she'd said it. She'd started quietly cutting in like that back when Hayun was telling the story about accidentally ordering five hundred triangle kimbap, so by now she'd been at it for a good twenty minutes. In other words, the alcohol had been sweetly melting Lee Jiyoon's head for about twenty minutes. Left alone, she'd emptied another can by herself, so both of them were completely drunk.
"Unni… why'd you drink two whole cans…."
"…Haaah……. Pwah…."
I picked up a piece of the still-mostly-full ramyeon and fell into thought, looking at Jiyoon's snow-white hair.
…Both of them were drunk. Should I just do something?
…Or, since they'd remember tonight when they woke up, was it better to leave only a good impression and aim for next time?
"The trash…. Clean it up…."
"……."
Instinct ached for the first. The reason I still had in abundance calmly chose the second. If I were drunk too, I probably would've dragged Jiyoon or Hayun by the wrist into a bedroom. I definitely would've raped them while they were drunk and kept the photos as material. When they came looking for me the next day in despair, I'd use those photos to blackmail them again and keep a secret relationship going. Or the other way—rape Hayun, who couldn't even control her own hands and feet, then use the photos to blackmail Jiyoon.
…Both.
I didn't like either.
Setting aside, for a moment, the risk that they'd go straight to the police. What I wanted was a hero who abandoned even the fans cheering her on and, of her own will, knelt under me in secret, fawning. Force a relationship with blackmail like that, and the sense of conquest I wanted would go dull.
Fans chanting a hero's name. A hero who shut her ears to those fans and walked, on her own feet, to a quiet studio. And inside that studio, where the fans couldn't see, a hero barking like a bitch, falling apart into a complete mess, and happy about it.
Nothing had gone wrong. Nothing had tangled. There was no need to cheapen the result just to rush. Better to keep a good relationship going. Nothing more to gain by staying here, so later, using today as a start—
"…Wait. Wait a sec…."
"…?"
"Bathroom……."
I set an empty can down, and Jiyoon squirmed up and disappeared into a corner of the living room. Click. A door closing.
Just me and Lee Hayun, left in the living room.
Maybe because the place wasn't soundproofed well. Not long after Jiyoon went in, the quiet sound of water started.
Quiet. Quiet. The water kept falling, and then Hayun, who'd been dozing beside me, squirmed over and stuck herself to my shoulder.
But the movement was a little too unnatural to believe she was asleep. A woman who'd been swaying in front of the table a moment ago, like she was about to smash her head into it, had—the instant Jiyoon was gone—suddenly come to me and dropped her head against my shoulder.
"……."
"……."
In other words, Lee Hayun was awake.
In other words, Lee Hayun was pretending to sleep, pressed against me.
In other words, Lee Hayun wanted something from me while Lee Jiyoon was gone.
The water from the bathroom didn't stop. Something she couldn't say in front of Jiyoon. She'd been holding it in for a while, I thought. Probably from watching me. Did she think I hadn't noticed? Now she was even rubbing her cheek slowly against my shoulder, pretending it was just the fidget of sleep. Because of that, the impulse I'd been holding down with reason boiled up loud.
If Hayun wants it anyway, isn't it fine to just do it while Jiyoon's gone? Don't you remember exactly where she feels it most? Someday, later… a little sister jealous of her older sister. An older sister jealous of her little sister. Don't you want to see that?
Slowly, I lowered my head. At the same time I caught the chin of Hayun, who'd tipped softly against me, and forced her to look up. Maybe because I'd touched her so suddenly, Hayun flinched, her whole body giving away that she was awake. I ignored that cute reaction and carefully met her lips.
The smell of the beer we'd just drunk mixed into her breath. Bland, savory—a wretched flavor next to some candy-sweet kiss. Tasting that, I took one step further and slipped my tongue between her lips. Not deep, of course. Light. Just tracing lips soaked through with my saliva and hers.
…Eyelashes trembling every time my tongue brushed. A waist that twitched and tried to jerk away from nothing more than a kiss. Instead of touching the shy parts of her, I only slowly swept the thigh she'd left defenseless. Above, I kept feeding her mouthfuls of my spit for her to swallow. Below, I only stroked her thigh, slowly.
I already knew all of Lee Hayun's erogenous zones. I could already guess what kind of play she'd like.
Just as Hayun, who'd only been quietly taking it, started to squirm like she was about to do something, the water from the bathroom stopped.
"……."
"……."
I pulled my lips away at once and broke every clear thread still connecting us. Unlike me, Hayun still hadn't come back to herself—mouth slightly open, panting hard. I wanted to record every bit of it, but there was no time. After a brief moment of thought, I quickly laid her on her side and hid her so Jiyoon, coming out of the bathroom, wouldn't see.
Right then, the noisy rush of the toilet flushing came through the door. I wiped my lips roughly with the back of my hand and gathered the empty cans, and Jiyoon came out. If she'd been even a little faster, she would've seen me wiping my mouth.
"…You going? Home?"
"Yes. The beer's all gone."
"Theeen…. Unnii…."
"……."
Jiyoon went for her sister first. She grunted, wedged her hands under Hayun's arms, and hauled her up—and the Hayun I'd hidden under the table came into view.
"What did you eat? You're this heavy…."
"……."
…Maybe it was the alcohol. Or maybe it was something else. Ears and cheeks dyed bright red, Lee Hayun pretended to be asleep while Jiyoon dragged her away.