Jealousy (3)
Could it be... jealousy?!
That night.
Lee Hayun had been groaning and tossing in bed, and the moment she came face to face with the truth, her eyes flew wide open again. A moment later, she squeezed them shut just as tight.
No. Ha. Don't make me laugh.
There was no way she was jealous of Jiyoon. That was absurd.
They hadn't even done anything special. They were just stuck together for treatment, and that was the whole of it.
But this tangled feeling refused to come undone so easily.
...It was more like—
It nagged at her. In a strange, prickling way.
Yes. That was the right way to put it. Jealousy felt a little too strong.
"Hnnn..."
Late March, the very start of spring, and the weather was cold enough that the phrase four seasons didn't even come to mind. Because of it, Lee Hayun had the blanket hauled all the way up to her lips, eyes closed, sinking deeper into her thoughts.
Even now, just across the living room, Woojin's voice was probably still leaking out of Jiyoon's room, little by little. Put like that, it sounded strange. What she meant was that Jiyoon was gaming late into the night and on a call with Woojin while she did it. Talking out loud was easier than typing in chat, or so she'd said. Something like that.
...Anyway, every one of those little habits was part of what she'd meant by it nags at me.
Boiled down, it came to this: her boyfriend was far too close with her little sister. Somehow the phrasing had come out sounding like the title of a Japanese manga.
"...They can be close. Mm-hm."
Murmuring under her breath, Lee Hayun rustled around under the covers and kept thinking.
Unlike her, a year older, the two of them were the same age. From Jiyoon's side, she'd simply gained a friend to game with. From Woojin's side, Jiyoon was his girlfriend's little sister, so of course he'd want to treat her well and keep any trouble from starting. Line it up like that, and it was perfectly reasonable. If the two of them had been snarling at each other like cats and dogs every time they crossed paths, that would have been a far bigger headache.
Her head could manage a perfectly rational judgment.
But the heart wasn't always so rational, was it?
It nagged at her for no reason. It irritated her for no reason.
...Maybe jealousy really was the right word.
"Ugh..."
It was kind of funny, though. The object of it wasn't some stunning girl who'd appeared out of nowhere. It was her little sister, who'd spent all twenty years of her life liking games more than boys.
...No. Whatever else was true, she was a stunning girl. That part, at least, was right. The confessions Jiyoon had gotten back in middle school and high school—just the ones Hayun had heard about secondhand—there were at least...
"......"
Ugh. What was she even doing?
She could just be honest with both of them, couldn't she? Jiyoon, don't get so close with Woojin. Woojin, spend the time you'd spend playing with Jiyoon playing with me. She couldn't say it that bluntly, of course. She'd have to circle around it a little...
Alright—phone. Phone...
He was getting sick of the game.
...No. He'd never been interested in the first place, so the accurate version was that he was running out of the will to endure it. At the start he'd thrown himself into it on nothing but the determination to get close to Lee Jiyoon, but now that he'd cleared about thirty percent of that goal, he couldn't quite remember why he was supposed to be clicking a mouse so furiously at another human being. If the game had actually suited his taste, a thought like this wouldn't have crossed his mind at all. Apparently this kind of game just wasn't for him.
Wouldn't something like an eroge fit him a whole lot better? At least those got him hard.
"Ugh..."
One in the morning. People like Lee Jiyoon and CZ might be another story, but for an ordinary person, this was about the hour sleep started to creep in. He announced he was heading off first, pressed his fingertips into his stiff eyelids, and logged out of Discord.
...What the hell was he supposed to do about that dumbass. Seriously. The second he'd said he was going to sleep, the guy had lit up with how happy he was—and the moment Woojin logged off, Lee Jiyoon had shut Discord down too. He'd probably been hoping to try something with her while Woojin was gone...
Next time, maybe he ought to just play the sounds of the two of them having sex straight into the mic and knock some sense into him. He kind of wanted to drop an I'm gonna cum inside into the microphone. He kind of wanted to drop a Get it up with your mouth—I'm gonna pound you till you pass out in there too. He kind of wanted Jiyoon forcing her moans down, then failing, hitching and yelping and flinching—wanted that in there as well.
Well. Someday. Someday he'd get to.
He had just flopped onto the bed when it happened.
"...What. At this hour."
He'd been about to switch his brain off, but a vibration by his pillow made him reach out slowly. What met him was a single small notification. A KakaoTalk message, at this hour.
Maybe Lee Jiyoon had sent it. If she'd had something she wanted to say, she could've just tossed it into Discord a minute ago. Who knew. Maybe it had occurred to her late, after she'd already lain down.
He checked the notification and pulled down the status bar. The name waiting there was Lee Jiyoon's older sister.
And a rather loaded one, at that.
...What was this. She'd never once contacted him this late. Had something happened?
He answered as carefully as he could despite how tired he was, and what came back was a reply made entirely of questions. Staring at that tiny little syllable, he let out a long sigh and sat up. With her acting like that, lying back and texting felt awkward.
Why was she being like this. Out of nowhere.
Did it really have to be asked at this hour? Couldn't it wait until morning? She'd never contacted him at a time like this before, so was it actually important?
Dragging female villains into bed under the name of practice was one thing. Actually dating someone was new, and he was a little weak at this sort of thing...
He was turning over a few possibilities, uneasy at how unlike herself she was being, when Lee Hayun spoke first.
So that was why she'd messaged. Just that. Being a little honest about it ought to be fine. He'd already told Lee Hayun he didn't particularly like games, and she knew perfectly well he was forcing himself through them to keep Jiyoon company.
With that confirmation, the chat went quiet for a while. She'd said she had something to ask, and this was all it was? Surely it couldn't be that anticlimactic. He waited a little longer, and about a minute later a new message arrived.
But if he had to call it anything, it was clumsy. All that arrived was a string of messages with nothing in them. Then the chat died again for a long stretch.
What was she doing, really. If she had something to say to him, he wished she'd just say it. It was like she'd contacted him without deciding what she meant to say, and now she was dragging it out, and it was starting to wear on him. If he could see her clutching the phone and patting the mattress with her foot, or rolling around on the bed because she didn't know what to say, that would be one thing. This wasn't FaceTime. A text didn't show any of that. He just wanted to wrap it up and sleep...
He yawned lightly, rubbed under his eyes, and tapped the screen.
A moment ago he'd thought it was only talk about a game, and now it was something she needed a deep breath to say. Fine. He gave up. She could do whatever she wanted. With that, he lay back and set the phone on his chest. He only checked the screen again after realizing, belatedly, that KakaoTalk didn't vibrate while the display was on.
Unni was acting weird.
...Ah. No. Weird couldn't hold all of her. The sentence needed a small adjustment if it was going to be accurate.
Lee Hayun had lost her mind. Thoroughly.
"Heheheh..."
"...Why are you like this first thing in the morning? Seriously, why? Did you eat something wrong?"
"Hm? ...Heheh..."
"......"
She'd already known her sister was a little off on an ordinary day. Today was worse. The mouth that usually scurried around like a squirrel, spilling every story it had, was today too busy smiling to do anything else. The doenjang-jjigae was a touch oversalted—not inedible, but salty. She'd completely forgotten to take the side dishes out of the fridge, so Jiyoon had just gotten them herself.
...And on top of that, the fried egg was a little burnt.
"..."
Why was she like this? Had she won the lottery? Or else... Lately she'd gotten pretty good at controlling her strength, or so she claimed, now that she trusted Seo Woojin enough to get herself hurt left and right. An Academy scholarship, maybe?
Nothing in particular came to mind. Jiyoon pointed her chopsticks—still picking at the fried egg—at her sister.
"Lee Hayun."
"What?"
"I asked why you're like this in the morning. You're not the neighborhood idiot."
"...Eh? Did I do something weird?"
"It's not one or two things. I couldn't even explain them all."
"...Heh. Is that so. Mm."
"So what happened—"
"Nothing! It's just... I'm in a good mood today. Pfft, hehe..."
"..."
Terminal case. She shot her an incredulous look and cleanly gave up on getting an answer out of her. Anyway, Unni thought like a bright, simple puppy. The reason for all this—five minutes? Watch her for about that long and she'd have it figured out soon enough.
A soft buzz.
"...?"
Just as she was about to start picking her sister's expression apart piece by piece, the phone on the table gave a light vibration.
...A little—
No.
Extremely concerning, those messages.