Is This Really Okay? (5)
I put in everything I wanted to say.
I cut everything I shouldn't.
Send.
"……."
I read the KakaoTalk I'd sent Lee Hayun one more time, slowly, then let out a quiet sigh and set my phone face-down on the desk.
I'd been a little worried I might have slipped, but thankfully there wasn't a single phrase in there that could cause trouble. The excuse was decent enough on its own, too. I couldn't claim I went often, but a PC bang was somewhere I dropped by now and then when I was bored and had nothing better to do. And the sight of me gaming with Seo Woojin had only been special at the very beginning. It wasn't anymore, was it? These days it was just... if I had to compare it to something, boiling ramen for dinner. That level of ordinary routine.
Unless I went and sent another suspicious text or two on top of this, there was no way dense, hopelessly dense Hayu—
...my sister was going to catch on to anything.
"……."
...No.
If I wanted to dress it up, I could probably send the most blatant message imaginable with my eyes squeezed shut and she still wouldn't notice. But there was no reason to take a dangerous gamble just to cook up one side dish I could live off for a few weeks. I wasn't an idiot. Yeah. If I simply stayed put and did nothing, Woojin would keep churning out side dishes for me anyway...
"...Haaahm..."
Break time.
The noisy chatter nearby was getting on my nerves, so I jammed my earphones in, plugged my ears tight, and flopped forward onto the desk. Fortunately my seat was close to the window. Fortunately lunch had just ended, so nodding off to food coma would look perfectly natural. Fortunately I'd spent all this time ignoring every kid who wanted to get close to me. Fortunately I was a voluntary outcast... and so even while I lay there pretending to sleep, not a single clueless classmate came over to bother me.
And thanks to that, buried in the soft smell of fabric softener, I could sink into a single thought.
"……."
I wonder.
Really.
Is it okay for me to be doing this... with my sister's boyfriend?
Something like that.
Well. A trivial little worry, more or less.
Is this really okay?
I'm only managing to say it now that the thought has finally occurred to me, but honestly—the things I said to my sister when she crept home last night... wasn't that a bit of a sudden swerve? The thought came late, but it came. If I did the math, hmm... it had taken a long stretch of about eighteen hours after I'd said those strange things to her.
The more I thought about it, the more relieved I was. Seriously. Lee Hayun—I'd blurted out, right beside her, that I wanted to watch them have sex, and all she did was stammer and fluster and let it slide, meek as anything. If it had gone the worst possible way, I might not have been caught outright in the "secret relationship" between me and Seo Woojin, but... it could have climbed at least as far as a tiny little seed of suspicion.
Haaah...
I messed up. I messed up. I should have played dumb last night, then told my sister the next day, just like a little while ago, I'm heading to the PC bang with Woojin~, and come home way later than she did, tossing out something like the game was fun~. I'd let my feelings run too far ahead.
...Ah.
While hiding, of course, the part where my legs had gone weak and were trembling. Yeah.
"...Of all people, Lee Hayun had to go and moan in a voice that got me hot... shit..."
I spat the words out for no good reason, sullen, and sighed into the collar of the coat I'd zipped all the way up to my chin. Anyway, this was all Lee Hayun's fault for doing something so damn arousing that I couldn't judge the situation properly. Woojin was a little at fault too, secretly calling me under the pretext of wanting me to check on things and then having sex for hours on end. If the sound of him slamming into Hayun's ass—thud, thud—his hips crashing into her lower belly like a madman, hadn't turned me on that much... If I hadn't known so well what it felt like to be pounded by Woojin like that... If Hayun, turned into a docile meat onahole beneath him, hadn't spent nearly four hours, five hours, moaning Oppa in that cute little voice...
"...Sigh."
Of course, that was only how I said it. In my head, I knew perfectly well. Whatever the cause, the one who couldn't hold back and pulled the trigger in the end was me. But if I admitted that outright, wouldn't I sound way too much like a pervert? While my sister was with Woojin, I'd listened to the two of them having se...x through my phone, and I'd come so many times I couldn't count them all on my fingers, so I might be skirting the edge of pervert.
But I wasn't exactly a pervert.
"I need to be careful next time. No getting worked up and saying dangerous things..."
Telling my sister, when she came home late at night, straight to her face, so you were out fucking your boyfriend until this hour. Up to there, it would have just felt like a little sister with no sense of tact, so that was fine. Telling that same sister, I'm worried, so I'll watch the two of you have sex from right beside you. Yeah. That one definitely crossed the line. I was never doing that again. My sister was, well, an idiot...
...which she was.
But if I kept flashing my tastes around that blatantly, it was only a matter of time before I got caught, wasn't it? The moment to start showing it openly was when I was truly certain she suspected me. I could do it from then on. For now, I would hide it. Hard.
"...Why isn't he here. ...I don't have time."
I kicked at the ground with the toe of my sneaker and checked my phone screen. It was already getting close to six in the evening, the time I'd agreed on with Woojin. Weird. He wasn't the type to break a time promise. Was he nearby? Maybe he couldn't find the way?
Right around when that thought hit, I leaned against the building wall, turned my head, and through the crowd in the distance a familiar face started to come into view. My first male friend. And, at the same time, my sister's first boyfriend.
"……."
Before our eyes could so much as tick against each other and turn awkward, I gripped my phone and moved my fingers for no reason at all. I opened a browser, found a useless search history that said "date outfits," and hammered the X in a panic in case anyone saw it. I opened KakaoTalk, which didn't have a single notification, saw nothing but ads, and closed it. YouTube was the same. Open, close.
By the time the snow-white hair I'd tucked behind my ear slipped carefully down and brushed my cheek, a large shadow had fallen in front of me. A shadow that seemed to be playfully copying me, head ducked low. There was no way some passing stranger I'd never met would suddenly do something like this...
I fiddled with the pitch-black ball cap on my head and looked up, and there were his eyes, already come all the way in from far off, bent at the waist, smiling with innocent brightness.
...Sure, he fell a little short of words like sculpted. Still. Still, his smile was on the handsome side. Handsome enough that it felt a bit of a waste to leave him for Lee Hayun alone.
"Hey. Lee Jiyoon."
"...What."
"You saw me earlier. Why'd you pretend you didn't?"
"...The hell are you talking about. I didn't see you."
"Yeah? Then, well... oh. This is the place you said you'd be waiting, on KakaoTalk?"
"...Yeah."
"Why's the building stuck down an alley like this. Hard to find."
"……."
Maybe because he was tall. Even bent over like that, his eyes were about level with mine. ...Beanpole. Which meant my sister, even smaller than me, could barely get her cheek up to his shoulder when she stood close. Roughly a fifteen... twenty centimeter difference, maybe. Mmm. I wasn't sure it was a heart-fluttering height difference. It was a height difference that got me hot, though. Outside, you got to see the cute picture of a cheek nuzzling into a shoulder—but what would it be like on a bed? It was a height difference that made me curious, too.
"For something down an alley, the building's cleaner than I expected."
"What, you think every PC bang has to be in a building about to fall down?"
"No, no. I'm just saying it's a nice building. Why do you take it like that."
"……."
"Anyway, what were you looking at while you waited? YouTube?"
"Hey, shit... Don't peek at someone else's phone. ...Pervert."
"Pervert? If you were looking at something weird out here, aren't you the bigger pervert?"
"...Anyway. I said don't look."
Ah... seriously. This wasn't the flow I'd wanted. Was it because I'd spent twenty years being rude to everyone? Far from a gentle, bright way of talking like my sister, the rough words had jumped out the way they always did, and I bit my lip, just barely. Texting had been a little easier, since he couldn't see my face... No. This wouldn't do. I had to kill my temper. From what I'd seen yesterday, even if he'd made her do it, Hayun hesitating and calling him Oppa had gotten him insanely worked up. So instead of being pointlessly prickly, I should be soft and docile like Hayun... feminine...
....
...How was I supposed to do something that disgusting while sober. Blech.
"...Next time we have plans like this, show up at least ten minutes early."
"It's my first time coming here. Of course I might be late. And I wasn't even really late."
"Coming a little earlier than the time you agreed on is basic. You don't even know that? Idiot? Do you pull this on dates with my sister, too?"
"Then what time did you get here?"
"...About fifteen minutes ago."
"Fifteen minutes... you did wait a while."
"How is that a lot. It's basic, you idio— no, um..."
In the end, soft and docile my ass. I snapped at Woojin out of habit, then fiddled with the ball cap on my head for no reason. Because the way I talked wouldn't change no matter how I tried, and it made me feel like an idiot. Because Woojin really did look like he'd stepped out lightly just because someone said let's go to a PC bang. Because of that, my cheeks and ears felt like they were about to burn—since I had no intention of actually going into the PC bang like this, and had been thinking only of slipping off down some side path by whatever means I could. I shot the Woojin in front of me a glare, yanked the cap down so low my face disappeared, and started walking first.
For now, give up on bringing up last night and grabbing a motel on the spot. Give up on acting cute and cooing, spouting crap like Oppa the way love-blind Lee Hayun did. Instead, while we gamed, I'd naturally rag on him over and over—you can't game, and you can't fuck either—and when Woojin couldn't take it and got annoyed, I'd frame it like I'd give him a chance, so why didn't he prove it...
...Good. This was better. I wouldn't have to put on some baby-talk voice. Hoo...
"F-follow me. It's on the third floor."
"Third floor... oh, right. Do you come to PC bangs a lot, normally?"
"Not a lot. ...Sometimes. When staying home feels stuffy."
"Alone?"
"Who else would I go with if not alone. Hayun? She... ...My sister doesn't game. Says she gets motion sick."
"...Hmm."
I was revising the plan in real time when Woojin, following behind me, let out an awkward sigh, so I glanced back. What was that. That vague reaction. He already knew perfectly well I didn't have friends, so if he teased me about it, just a little, I'd been ready to actually take the hit this time. So why was he suddenly acting like he was watching my mood...
....
...Ah.
No way.
"Seo Woojin. Are you thinking about that guy right now? That... CZ."
"...No?"
"No my ass. It's written all over your face, so just spit it out. For fuck's—"
"...A little. Really, a little. Happy?"
"……."
"He likes games, and you like games. So... ...just in case."
"……."
"Why are you looking at me like that. ...Don't block the way, walk. You said third floor."
Wait.
Was this that thing?
...Jealousy?
Ah. I knew it. He'd made me stay on Discord with that guy on purpose while we had se...x. And last time, when I said CZ's photo and Woojin himself weren't all that different, he'd gone visibly sulky. All of that was jealousy...
....
...Should I use this, too? To help Woojin get a bad idea in his head?
"I don't even know what he looks— no, I know now! Anyway, I don't even know where he lives, so why would I go with him, you idiot!"
"I only thought about it. Just a thought."
"Going to PC bangs together, my ass... I've only ever gone alone. Coming to a PC bang with a guy is a first for me, okay? Because I'm a friendless loser?"
"……."
"...Dumbass. Seriously..."
Now that I thought about it, I'd never come with a girl, either. Anyway. Guys liked this kind of thing, didn't they? A girl's first. Taking it for himself... that sort of thing. Proof: Woojin, two steps below me on the stairs, was wearing the dumbest expression I'd seen since I met him. ...Yeah. If I used this right...
"Anyway, don't say weird stuff about who I go to PC bangs with, and hurry up."
"...Okay."
"Oh, you know how to pay at a PC bang, right?"
"More or less."
"Good. Then that's a reli— wait. Seo Woojin, why are you grinning? It's creepy."
"I wasn't smiling."
"You were, though?"
"I said I wasn't."
"You were. A dimple's worth, easy."
"...Stop nitpicking and just go up. We've been walking forever and my legs hurt."
A motel.
Or Woojin's place, where Lee Hayun had gone at it like crazy yesterday.
I might get there sooner than I thought...
And mark my territory.
Maybe I could.