8. Behind Unnie's Back (4)
Eight in the evening. Hours yet before Unnie would be home.
In one quick motion, Lee Jiyoon had flung off every stifling layer of the day and dropped into her chair in soft polka-dot pajamas. She had no real idea where Seo Woojin lived, but if she assumed it was somewhere nearby... He was a guy. Wouldn't he already be planted in front of a computer, faster than she was? It wasn't as if he had makeup to take off.
She booted the game in a hurry and checked the friends list first. Spotless. Nothing but the usual names marked Online. Not so much as a cute little friend request from the newbie.
Shame. He'd never even played a single legend, so she'd been thinking of at least carrying him through some ranked. If MMR made that impossible, she'd been ready to lean on an alt.
Jiyoon slid her hips to the edge of the chair and pouted. Right. He might still be in the middle of something else. Cleaning, cooking, laundry, a shower. Maybe he hadn't even made it home yet.
Still, before they'd parted she'd told him this counted as her thanks too, so he absolutely had to add her. He'd log on sometime today. It was just taking him a while. Her head felt clear. She might as well polish her aim while she waited.
She was just lifting the headset toward her neck when—
"......?"
A Discord alert chimed, the volume turned down low. She'd muted every channel she used for games, so it had to be a DM. Who?
Don't tell me it's that guy again.
Jiyoon hesitated, then moved the mouse as the notifications kept coming, one ding after another.
...Yeah. That guy.
She'd gone quiet on him recently, busy with other FPS games, and he'd apparently seen the game status light up on Discord and fired off a DM. Next time she was turning that status off.
The what a pain of it bubbled up and filled her head, but only for a moment. Jiyoon sent back a DM that was, in its own way, polite. If they'd only known each other one-on-one, it might have been different — but she had too many mutuals tangled up with him across every FPS going. He was fairly well known, too, among amateur players.
If he had any sense, he'd toss back a have fun, then and get lost. She hadn't been vague. She'd specifically said it was someone she knew in real life. He wouldn't shove his way in without reading the room.
...Or so she thought.
Right. If he had any tact, he'd have dropped the DM already.
Jiyoon stared at the Discord window the way you'd stare at a bug, and her fingers moved fast.
Ah. Fuck.
Brow furrowed, Jiyoon stared at Discord and let out a long sigh.
Guys being nice in-game just because she was a girl — that much she could take with a shrug. He's a guy. It happens. But dealing with this type made her skin crawl. She wanted to slam a string of curses right in his face. If he'd at least seen a photo, maybe. All he knew was her voice. So why was he like this?
Jiyoon swallowed the urge to block him on the spot. Then her fingers hit the keys.
She spent a minute picking music to listen to, letting the anger settle.
Once the DM was sent, she right-clicked and killed the notifications.
"......He's late."
Eleven at night. Around the time Unnie would be getting off work and heading home. Three hours of idly poking through YouTube, and Lee Jiyoon grumbled it out loud.
He could be eating dinner. He could be washing up. He could be in the middle of cleaning. But three whole hours of that was a bit much, wasn't it? And if she told herself Seo Woojin's place was farther than she'd thought, that felt wrong too. Last time she'd asked Unnie how the two of them had ended up meeting, the answer she remembered was a convenience store near home.
Had he forgotten the ID she'd taught him? He wouldn't have forgotten how to spell Jiyoon. Probably mixed up the birthday she'd stuck on the end.
She should have just gotten his number. She hadn't even thought—
"......"
Unnie's boyfriend's number.
Weird...
No. Not that weird. A little sister getting her older sister's boyfriend's number — so what. If Unnie can't be reached, I might need to contact him that way. Or if something else comes up. It's fine. I'm the one who keeps making it weird.
She was turning it over with the headset still around her neck when, right on cue, the door lock beeped from out in the hall. At the sound, Jiyoon hurried out of her room in short, quick steps.
"...Unnie."
"Hm? What's up?"
"It's, Un—"
Can I have your boyfriend's number.
Saying it flat out like that — that really would be weird, wouldn't it?
......No. Not weird at all.
"...Do you have Woojin-ssi's number?"
"You two still address each other like that?"
"Anyway. Do you?"
"I mean, yeah, I do. Why?"
"I forgot to get it when he treated me today. Can you give it to me too?"
"Oh, sure. Hang on."
Jiyoon asked while waggling her phone, and Lee Hayun scrolled. And scrolled. Jiyoon watched those fingers with something like horror until Seo Woojin's number swung up in front of her eyes.
"Here. If it starts hurting again, contact him yourself. Woojin even texted about that."
"Texted? What'd he say?"
"Something like, a full cure might be hard. He's not exactly a specialist, so he doesn't really know the cause."
That much didn't matter. All she had to do was meet him for a bit and endure those few shameful seconds, right? In a few days, once she enrolled at Miren Academy, she could get treated in the infirmary without worrying about anyone's eyes on her.
"......"
The treatment from a few hours ago flickered through her mind, and then Unnie's voice went on.
"You ate dinner, right?"
"I grazed so much at work I didn't bother. I'm not even hungry."
"Yeah? Then I'll rest too. Ughgh... Don't game too much. You'll ruin your eeeyes..."
"What are you even saying. I've still got 20/13 in both eyes."
"You never know. Haaah..."
With a tired, groaning stretch, Unnie walked off and vanished beyond the square of her door. Jiyoon gazed after her, then, for no particular reason, fidgeted with her pajamas and looked down at her phone.
...She really had it. Seo Woojin's number.
A strange, taut feeling brushed the nape of her neck. She was only going to get treatment. At most she'd game with him a little. She had no intention of doing anything else.
Mm.
Ah, screw it. Whatever. This is all that creep CZ's fault. She didn't know what connection there was, but anyway. It was.
Jiyoon went straight back to her room and threw herself onto the bed. Then, for the first time, she filled the empty chat with words.
Mmm.
She'd tried to write it so it wouldn't be awkward, and yet it felt subtly awkward anyway. Unnie always tacked on this and that beyond the actual point. Should she have added something too?
Clutching the blanket, Jiyoon glared at the chat in dissatisfaction. Then the little 1 beside the message disappeared.
...She swallowed. Hard.
...So there had been a reason. Whatever the reason was, that was secondary. He hadn't needed to apologize, though. Hm.
It had been the same at the cafe earlier. Apologizing just seemed baked into him. Meanwhile some people heard a girl's voice, went into heat, and kept being obnoxious with zero sense of tact. If that guy were even half the man Unnie's boyfriend was. Sigh.
Sprawled on her stomach, Jiyoon drummed the mattress with the top of her foot and tapped at the screen.
Wait. For real?
He'd bought the pad right away? She'd been sure he'd brush it off as a waste of money. To think a newbie this obedient and praiseworthy actually existed...
How was she even supposed to name this feeling? Touched? That one leaned too sad. A lump in the chest? Her heart racing? Whatever it was, the strange sensation deep in her chest felt good.
Honestly, railing a newbie...
......
No. Not railing. The... what was it. Hold on.
Ah.
Raising a newbie.
She'd honestly wondered what was fun about that. Now that she was doing it, she got it.
Jiyoon kept the chat with Seo Woojin going, the word newbie-railing scrubbed from her mind. Under the monitor, the Discord icon glowed orange. Her eyes stayed fixed on the phone.
"I'm telling you, with a voice like that, there's no way she isn't pretty."
"Nah. You'd be surprised how many of them sound fine and turn out fat and ugly."
"Maybe your ears are broken. The bitches I've had were mostly pretty."
"That's just luck, fuck. Anyway, if it's not working, you're dropping it, right? Girls who are actually gonna put out answer Discord easy. They even slip you their info."
"She doesn't answer, so you wanna liquor her up and fuck her. Dumbass."
"...That what it is?"
"Those Valorant kids are starting to lock in a meetup, I heard. They keep hopping into other games together too. Some of them already met up on the side and fucked."
"Yeah. But the one you want isn't coming."
"Just invite her. There'll be plenty of girls, so she might feel safe enough to show."
"Hmm..."
"Oh, and I heard last time she's twenty. Freshman. Ask her to meet once before she gets busy."
"Yeah, yeah. I get it, so don't get your hopes up."
...What is this.
"......"
Right before sleep, looking over the meetup time and place that had come in on Discord, Lee Jiyoon let out a lukewarm sigh.
Figures. They'd played one RPG together recently, and she'd had a feeling it would turn out like this. Honestly, she didn't want to go. It wasn't that she didn't want to see people. She just didn't want to waste the energy. Go all the way there, drink, humor someone's drunken nonsense, and if anyone got wasted and started retching, clean it up. Hauling even one Unnie around was hard enough. Nearly ten people doing that — how was she supposed to cover it?
Just picturing it made her dizzy. Jiyoon closed her eyes and gave her head a light shake.
With that refusal left behind, Lee Jiyoon pulled the blanket up and drifted off to dreamland.