The Studio Apartment (3)
No point in hiding it.
Daiso was a first for me. The world had reached a point where, for the most part, a single order from a computer or a phone at home took care of everything, so there had never been much reason to walk into a place like this.
"This building runs long, doesn't it? Straight up and down."
"Some of them are just wide.... Smaller than a superstore, sure."
Lee Hayun said it as she walked on ahead, lifting something shaped like a basket. She must come to places like this often. She looked entirely at home.
"So. What do you actually need?"
"Hmm. Figured I could use some dishes. And maybe some cooking tools, if they've got them."
"How come it's all kitchen stuff?"
"Ever since I started living on my own, I've only been ordering delivery. Thought it was about time I tried cooking a little."
Making a convincing lie is easier than you'd think. Simpler, too. All it takes is a thin thread of truth slipped in among the lies you don't mean, and the work is done.
Telling her I needed household goods, back when I first coaxed Hayun into this—a lie. Needing a pile of things because I hadn't been on my own for long—a lie. A man past his tenth year of living alone who couldn't cook—a lie as well. Of the whole pile, only one piece was true: that I'd been eating nothing but delivery. From yesterday through today, I'd managed a single meal at home.
"You got seasonings?"
"I think there might've been some salt."
"Then at the very least, soy sauce, soybean paste, sugar, sesame oil, red pepper powder...."
Muttering, Hayun tapped a note into her phone and took the stairs at a clip, footsteps clacking up and away.
She'd been training until a moment ago, hurt again and again, and the brightness still wouldn't leave her. I followed the soft swing of that jet-black ponytail, and the hem of the hoodie resting light over the curve of her ass.
"We'll get the seasonings at a convenience store or a grocery. Let's look at the other stuff first."
"They don't sell them here?"
"Nope. So I'm starting with a frying pan. Best value for the money. Is your stove gas at home?"
"Yeah. Gas."
What would even be different, if it were induction?
I could cook. I just wasn't any good at it, so I had no idea. I nodded anyway.
Then Hayun was off, deep-green eyes glittering as they darted over the aisles, and she slipped a frying pan free of the shelf. She compared the fine print and the prices from every angle, and dropped one into the basket without ever telling me why.
Well. Even if she explained it, I figured I wouldn't understand. I let it pass without a word.
"Spatula? A little sauce dish? Airtight containers? Spoons? Is a bowl about this size all right?"
"..."
Right. That aside.
I'd only meant to stick close, tease her, and enjoy the shopping. But Hayun was tearing through the Daiso in earnest, and it was wearing me out more than I'd expected. This was nudging the plan off course, just a little.
A glance around showed shoppers passing here and there. Not many. Not few, either. Five or so on the floor, the two of us included. All of them looked like they'd stopped for something on the way home from work.
Me, in a stiff gray jacket that barely covered my waist, and a single black T-shirt. That was the whole of it. Hayun had a slouchy oversized hoodie thrown on over her academy uniform and was deep in the business of choosing things. I took a moment to wonder what anyone would think, looking at the two of us.
"What is this—why's this bowl already chipped."
Carefully, I laid an arm around Hayun's waist.
No. Not laid an arm around. Touched was the better word. All I'd done was stand beside her and set my forearm across her waist.
"...Mm. ...Uh...."
"..."
And just like that, Hayun went quiet. As if that weren't enough, she started making sounds with no words in them, like something in her had broken. She looked at the bowl in her hands. At my face. At the bowl again. Then she set it back where it had been and blinked, slow, over and over.
Cuter than I'd expected. And this, after last night, when we'd kissed until we were trading spit.
"What?"
"..."
Those sparkling deep-green eyes creaked over to me. Then back to the display. Without an answer, Hayun picked up a new bowl. Looking closer, it was the same one she'd just put back.
"That one's chipped, like you said, Noona, so leave it. I think this one's better."
"...R-right? Then that one...."
"Shouldn't you check? I don't really know."
"I-it's a bowl, what is there even to... look at...."
The feeling at her waist must have been new. She kept fidgeting with my blameless right arm where it lay against her waist and stomach. From the way she kept poking at it, she seemed to want me to let go already.
What do I do. I want to see you flustered a little longer.
"Then this bowl it is. What was next? Did you say it's good to have a few batteries on hand?"
"...Yeah.... D-door locks still run on batteries."
"Mm. This is the kitchen section, so we'll have to head down. We can grab a few towels on the way...."
"..."
I put strength into the arm around her waist. Her shoulders jumped, but she followed, docile. Her eyes kept sliding toward the people around us. I pretended not to notice, and went down the stairs with a Hayun who had gone very quiet.
As the shopping wound down, I finally took my forearm from Hayun's waist, and we came out of the Daiso carrying bags heavier than I'd thought. I wasn't sure of the price. The payment had gone through, and that was enough. How expensive could anything here be.
The shopping had been a way to lure her out, but the things themselves were things I actually needed, so once I got home, putting them away would have to come first. Judging by the amount, it'd take a solid half hour.
"We can just grab the seasonings at a convenience store.... Thanks for making time today, Noona. Next time I'll buy you dinner."
"..."
"Noona?"
"..."
Maybe the cars tearing past had swallowed it. She was right beside me and still didn't answer. I called her once more. Same result.
I drew my jacket tighter against the winter wind and looked down at her. She was walking with the look of someone whose soul had stepped out.
Hmm. And all I'd done to Hayun, at most, was put an arm lightly around her waist. So even a person who could talk to herself for minutes at a time, if you left her alone, could short out like that.
I stood a moment with the Daiso bags, thinking, then turned and stepped into the path of Hayun, who was walking in a daze. Only then did her eyes go wide, and she stopped where she was. There was a bit of a height difference, so her nose ended up right in front of my chest.
"Noona."
"...H-huh?"
"Thank you. For helping today. You must have been short on time."
"Ah.... It's nothing. I'm not even working today."
"That's a surprise. I really thought you did nothing but part-time, all week."
"As if. All week? ......When I went to the infirmary earlier to pick you up, I texted the owner at the convenience store. Said I was too tired to come in."
"..."
"So he said he'd cover through the evening today."
Hayun answered with both hands stuffed in her hoodie pocket, and swallowed.
"S-so. I can help a little more."
"You can?"
"O-of course, next to you treating me for free, it's nowhere near enough, but...."
Maybe the wind was sharp. Head lowered, she muttered to herself—to make up a debt like that, her hourly wage would have to be two thousand... three thousand.... She stole a glance up at my face.
"...Your place. Where is it?"
"..."
"I-I'm only coming to help you organize. Just organize. That's all...."
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
"..."
"..."
"That'll be sixteen dollars. Need a bag?"
Once we had the last of the seasonings, we dropped them into the Daiso bag and headed for my place.
Being able to make good money hadn't meant throwing it around on a nice place to live, so the neighborhood wasn't any better than Hayun's. An ordinary neighborhood. The kind with more two-bedrooms and up than studios. Still, unlike her neighborhood, people here kept the social contracts—bought the city trash bags and followed the rules. No stray cats tearing into the garbage, either.
"I'm on the second floor."
"...If the first floor's the parking garage, right above it?"
"No. Counted that way, it'd be the third."
"Ahh...."
I pressed the call button, opened the ground-floor door, and went up to the second floor with Hayun.
...A little nervous, after all.
I'd only ever thought it to myself—that I wanted to fuck a hero. Actually going through with it was a first for me, too.
Calm down. Don't get so worked up you wreck it from the start.
I'd already practiced plenty. How far a woman could hold out, her first time. Past what point she came undone. How fast to climb the steps so she'd be dragged along before she had a chance to get her head straight. I'd run through it again and again with villains whose faces and bodies were only just worth a look.
I settled my mind and tapped the door lock. Beep. Beep.
Beside me, Hayun glanced over, curious, but I had no intention of hiding it. If our genders were reversed, maybe. As it stood, if Hayun took that code, opened the door, and walked in, it meant she wanted me to fuck her.
"It's nothing much, but come in."
"A studio like this doesn't seem like nothing much...."
A studio thick with the smell of a male. Into it, slowly, Hayun's fresh scent began to mix.
A shame. If I'd known, I would have cleaned a little harder. I wasn't a tidy person to begin with. Basic cleanliness was as far as it went. The blanket on the bed was bunched up any which way, and on the table in the middle of the room a pizza box still sat—from before, from before the regression—a meal I'd eaten and never cleared. Bottled water lined up on the floor, too. Embarrassing, once someone else could see it. Should have put it away.
"...Nice. Place."
"It looks nice to you?"
"Aren't studios usually smaller than this...?"
"It's about three hundred and fifty square feet. Not small, but not exactly big, either. There are bigger ones. Four hundred. Four-thirty."
"Then I must've only been looking at the small ones."
Thump, thump—Hayun toed her shoes off and stepped in, and at once started peering all over my place. Exactly the feeling of a country pup, delighted to be somewhere new. If she'd had a tail, it would have been whipping back and forth right in front of me.
"You've got a computer, too."
"Name a place that doesn't have a computer."
"No, I just thought of Jiyoon. She likes games. Shooters."
"Hmm.... Not really my thing."
She'd been playing when I went over yesterday. A hobby, then. I filed it away, cleared the pizza box off the table for the moment, and started unpacking. From the frying pan on down, the things we'd bought at Daiso spread across the floor in a tight clutter.
"Hand me that vinegar we bought? A new frying pan has to be washed once."
"Ah, I can do it."
"It's fine. I'll do it. I'm the n-noona, so...."
"Then I'll leave it to you."
She said it as if she'd truly come only to help put things away, and walked to the kitchen without a single glance at the big bed.
Hmm. I'd been watching her. I set spoons in one of the new bowls and went over.
I hadn't thought we'd be having sex right away. Still, seeing her actually act like that, it was a little disappointing.
...Fine. There's time enough anyway.
Spend enough of it with Hayun, and the opening would come. And so, when I came up close beside her—
"Noona."
"H-huh?"
Hayun, quietly running water into the frying pan, jumped so hard her shoulders shot up. She must have been blank for a second.
"Why so startled. Here. I brought the bowls, too. Figured these need washing."
"R-right. I'll do it. I was just.... You came up next to me all of a sudden...."
She said that, and drew long lines of dish soap across the rinsed pan.
"..."
"..."
Ears dyed a fierce red. Pretending not to know. Pretending she had no interest in anything lewd.
Squeeze.
Squeeze.