Relationship (6)
"Um, teacher."
"Ah? No. It's not that I want to do it again."
"I think I twisted my ankle a little earlier."
"No, no. You don't have to stick a friend on me to help. I can go by myself. It's not like I fully sprained it. It just zings a little every time I take a step."
"Yes. I'll come straight back here once the treatment's done."
"...."
"...Well."
"I'm only asking, just in case."
"What if there are a lot of other people in the infirmary right now?"
"If I end up waiting, the timing might get a little awkward...."
"...Ah."
"Yes, yes."
"Thank you."
"Teacher."
The treatment was finished.
This patient was a guy who'd shown up draped in shredded rags that might once have been a gym uniform, looking for all the world like he'd been jumped by a whole crowd. Bruises packed his back and shoulders, and under those sat fractures and lacerations. He'd probably just gone hard in a spar somewhere. Honestly, it was none of my business. I traded a little idle chatter with him—if you were an ordinary person, you'd be headed for a funeral home, not here—and sent him off with a smile.
The treatment was finished.
This patient was a girl who'd come to the infirmary with a right arm swollen tight, as if the bone in her wrist had cracked. Her face wasn't bad. Which is another way of saying it wasn't good, either. Her figure was harder to judge. Whether she simply liked her clothes baggy or had some other reason, a gym uniform with pink trim hung wrinkled over her and hid the shape of her body. I watched her for a long while, wondering if she might be one of those heroes with a promising future, but maybe the staring made her uncomfortable. All I got was the sight of her flinching and dodging my eyes. Not a face I remembered.
Final tally.
Fail.
Treatment done, I saw her off the same way as the last one, a smile fitted neatly onto my face.
"Thank you...."
"Don't mention it. It's my job."
After that, all sorts of people came and went through the infirmary. A boy who, thankfully, offered only a light greeting, got treated in silence, and left. A girl who knocked on the infirmary door over a wound so minor I caught myself thinking, for this? And, though not a student, one teacher who'd been hurt in the middle of class and come looking for me. I met every one of them with a smile and sent every one of them off with a smile.
Not, of course, because I harbored some saintly notion along the lines of I just love healing the wounded.
One. A little image management.
Two. ...Because it lowered the odds of some nuisance walking in and interrupting me.
I was in a good mood.
"Come in."
Knock, knock, knock.
I closed the laptop at the sound of knocking, and a familiar face edged halfway through the gap in the infirmary door. Hair pure white, nothing at all like her older sister's. And yet, the longer you looked, eyes of the exact same deep green. Lee Jiyoon, staring straight at me with those pretty eyes. For a while she held the staring contest, and then, instead of walking in, she started glancing around the inside of the infirmary.
...How to put it.
The way she was acting was strangely cute. Sisters, after all—Lee Hayun kept overlapping with her in my head.
"What are you doing over there. You gonna come in or not."
"...Is anybody here?"
"No. And why would that matter. You said you wanted me to treat your headache."
"...."
It did matter, actually. If someone were standing right there, I couldn't do anything strange with her. But fucking the second we met, or telling her she'd had enough and to get lost... that was no different from how I used to handle the onaholes I kept around for practice. Those things didn't need me burning through my feelings just to treat them nicely.
Her, I had to handle with care. So she wouldn't break too quickly. So she could break properly, little by little. With care.
"Not in your uniform today?"
"...First time seeing a gym uniform? You said plenty of patients come through the infirmary. No way you haven't seen one by now."
"Not the first time. It just looks good on you."
"......"
"Ah, did you wear one in here once? ...Or was it Hayun-nuna who came in wearing one...."
"...Drop it. Dumbass."
I'd only been sitting there with my chin in my hand, being obnoxious, for a moment. When an insult from Lee Jiyoon—one I felt like I hadn't heard in a while—landed, I was grinning, and she slipped in through the gap and carefully shut the door behind her. From the sound of it, she hadn't locked it.
If she'd come in here with her head full of plans to do it, she would have done one of two things: locked the door outright, or locked it quietly enough that I wouldn't notice. Apparently she hadn't planned on going that far. Still, she seemed to think weird noises coming out of a locked infirmary would be a problem.
...Unlike you, your sister had sex in here making all kinds of cute noises.
Ah. If I let that slip later, once we'd gone a little further, maybe next time she'd lock the door before she even stepped inside. I carried on, pleasantly occupied by the thought.
"Quit standing there and sit."
"......"
She was so quiet I wondered if I'd actually upset her, but she gave the chair in front of me a little push, then came over in a fidgety walk and set her butt down. Usually she gave off a catlike feeling, but between peeking her head through the door a moment ago and how docile she was being today, she was starting to feel a little like Lee Hayun.
A cat-dog, maybe. She wasn't wagging her tail like crazy the way Hayun did, but this had its own charm. A girl who usually snapped at everything, moving with a quiet sort of initiative.
If this weren't the infirmary, I might have gotten to see her nag me to hurry up and wash, or meow at me to forget the shower and just take my clothes off already. Or... glance sideways at a condom I'd gone to the trouble of putting on, and peel it off without a word. A little disappointing.
"So what seems to be the trouble today, Student Lee Jiyoon."
"...A headache. You already know."
"...For real?"
"...."
"Your head hurts? Right now?"
"...."
I asked it with a grin, and Lee Jiyoon only scrunched her brow into tight little folds. I met her eyes and let out a snicker, and earned a Jiyoon-kick to the shin for it. Sure, there was a slim chance she really was in pain. But if she'd actually beaten those odds, then when I asked if she was serious, something like You think I'm faking, moron? should have come flying out. I'd asked a second time, and all she did was fidget her fingers in silence....
I missed that clumsy, grade-school way of showing affection. So I closed the distance, playful about it.
"You just wanted to skip class with me, huh, Jiyoon."
I already knew. I was the one who'd handed her the "headache" excuse over text in the first place.
Squeak.
I dragged the chair in until the tips of our shoes bumped.
"But what am I supposed to do. I get paid to work here."
"...."
"If I get fired, you gonna support me?"
"You're loaded anyway.... Shit...."
"Prejudice. Pure prejudice. You think every Healing-type is rich? You saw me living in a studio yesterday."
"Yesterday...."
Since the opening was there, I brought up yesterday for no real reason and watched Lee Jiyoon with a smile in full bloom. What kind of face would she make. The Jiyoon I knew would probably get embarrassed for nothing and blow up at me. And then how would it be most fun to play with her. Just pull her into a hug without a word and see how she reacted? Or bring up every bad thing we'd done yesterday, one by one, and watch?
Lee Jiyoon, under that look, was simply red. Red all through her cheeks, avoiding my eyes. As if she were remembering what had happened last night.
"Jiyoon."
"...What."
"Your face is insanely red. Right now."
"S-so what...."
Lee Jiyoon, who'd done nothing until now but fidget her fingers, drew her right hand up over her chest. Then she caught the gym-uniform zipper dangling under her chin and yanked it up to hide her face. ...Even then, all she could cover was her lower face. Cheeks, ears, all of it still showing. Seriously. Today she was acting exactly like her sister. It was going to drive me insane.
"...Hey. Seo. Seo Woojin."
"What?"
Maybe I really ought to get up and lock the door myself. I was tapping the desk with a finger, turning it over, when Lee Jiyoon—still clutching the zipper—edged a few words my way.
"...Yesterday. You know."
"Yeah."
Her voice was curled in on itself, nothing like usual. None of the coldness, none of the bluntness I was used to feeling when I dealt with her. ...And yet there was Lee Jiyoon, blushing in front of me, only mumbling.
Just that, and little by little, blood started rushing to my cock.
"We... did it, right? ...A lot."
"Yeah."
"A lot..., that, a whole lot of.... ......sex.... When we had sex."
"...."
"The things you said to me. Do you remember?"
"We weren't even that drunk. Why wouldn't I remember."
"Then, that...."
The voice that had been trickling out of her cut off for a moment. And then, one line. She'd been gazing at my face, and she eased the gym uniform she'd stiffened up to cover her lips, and asked.
"...Do you like me?"
"...."
"You said it first, when we were having s...sex. Asked if I liked you too...."
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I pressed my wrist hard against a heart that felt ready to just burst, and got the words out. Do you like me? The words themselves weren't strange. They were just... how to put it. Just a way of checking how the other person felt. The kind of thing the restless one might blurt out in the middle of some ticklish almost-relationship, or the kind of thing you might say after being told, out of nowhere, to come meet someone alone—before they could launch into a whole speech.
But. If that someone was your older sister's boyfriend, the meaning shifted. Just a little. And if you'd already had a ton of sex with him behind your sister's back, the meaning got a little dangerous.
"Yeah. I like you."
"...."
And if that someone went and confessed that he liked his girlfriend's little sister, then a hollow ending like Ah, so it was a misunderstanding.... A dopey piece of nonsense like Ah, shit.... He meant he likes sex. Likes sex.... A fizzling dodge like Th-that never happened? ...Ah, it's fine. I thought maybe I misheard.... All of those became impossible. The meaning got dangerous.
"I wouldn't have sex with a girl I don't even like in the first place. Idiot."
"Ah. Ah...."
But maybe he liked the fresh, awkward air from a moment ago better than actually having this dangerous conversation in earnest. Still wearing that playful smile, Seo Woojin poked my forehead with his index finger as he spoke.
"I already liked you well enough. Then you pulled that weird stunt, saying you'd let me practice sex, and tempted me, so I got tempted. Satisfied?"
"S-stunt...? I didn't mean it like that...."
"You tied your hair up, copied Hayun-nuna, wore her clothes, and gave me a thighjob. If that isn't a stunt, then what is it, idiot. And you even sucked my dick so carefully, calling it getting it wet."
"That's because you kept acting like an idiot in front of my sister, and it was frustrating...!"
"So frustrating you handed your virginity over to your sister's boyfriend?"
"...."
"Don't tell me you didn't have feelings for me too?"
"...."
Reading a hard no as a yes is logic full of holes, but a long silence is usually a yes. I'm not saying that because I read it in some psychology experiment. I'm saying it because I've been that way plenty of times myself. ...For example, a situation just like this one. Yeah.
"Haa.... Never mind. It's not like you've only lied once or twice. You've been nothing but lies from back then all the way to now."
"...."
"If you're too embarrassed to answer out loud, put your hand here. Right hand for yes. Left hand for no."
"...Where am I supposed to put it...."
"Right in front of you. I already held my hand out."
"...Oh."
I'd been scanning every corner of the infirmary out of sheer embarrassment, and when I dragged my eyes back, there was Seo Woojin with his hand held out to me. ...But, how to put it. I knew it was a perfectly natural way to hold a hand, and still, palm up like that, it felt exactly like the way you'd deal with a dog instead of a person. Laying my hand on it, just like that... I didn't love the idea. A pervert like Lee Hayun might actually be into it, but a normal girl feels the refusal first.
"...Woojin."
"Yeah."
"Right hand is yes? ...Right?"
"Yeah. If you want to switch, say so. Left hand as yes is fine too."
"Idiot. Why would I switch that...."
...Endure it. It wasn't even a big deal. Just a coincidence. Woojin probably hadn't meant it that way, either. Mm-hm. Lately I'd been masturbating too much, and filthy thoughts kept surfacing out of nowhere; I set them aside and slowly started to move the right hand that had been clenched around my gym-uniform zipper.
That was when.
"Um...."
"Ah. Nuna."
"...!"
"If you're going to call me n-nuna.... ...Ah. It was Jiyoon...."
"...."
The moment my sister appeared without knocking, soaked in sweat from whatever she'd been doing until just now. The moment I, still hesitating, snatched back the right hand that had briefly touched Seo Woojin's. It was right then.