With My Sister's Boyfriend (5)
Isn't being embarrassed the weird part, she says. For someone talking like that, she seemed to be the more embarrassed of the two.
I read the messages she'd sent and stared at my phone, face gone carefully still. It was all well and good that she'd bitten the sloppy bait I'd tossed out on a nothing-to-lose whim, but...
Lee Jiyoon.
Hadn't something in her shifted, subtly, ever since she pulled that strange stunt in the karaoke room yesterday? The thought wouldn't leave my head.
"Hm..."
The brief DMs we'd traded yesterday were the same, and so was the text just now. Why was she acting so playful all of a sudden? People don't just change for no reason. And if there was a reason, the only thing that came to mind was what had happened in that karaoke room.
Love, sprouting?
Bullshit.
Friendship, blooming?
Yeah. That one, maybe. She might've decided, in her own way, that we'd gotten close enough, and started in on the teasing she'd been swallowing all this time. But the feeling had been too full of something bittersweet — a shade off from friendship — to wave aside that lightly.
What was I even supposed to call a feeling like that?
"This is tricky..."
Well. Meet her today, and I'd probably pick up a thread of it.
The infirmary, after Lee Hayun had gone — she'd been stealing glances at me all day, more than usual. I was leaned back in the chair, mid-stretch, when my eyes drifted toward the phone buzzing with another fretful whine.
"Don't you have any other clothes?"
"Why?"
"Wear that jumper every single day and you're going to get sick of it."
"I won't."
"It's got fleece inside, and it's baggy enough to look warm, I'll give you that.... Hmm."
"...Comfortable and warm is enough. Stop being a pain..."
"It doesn't smell, does it?"
"You wanna die? ...It doesn't, so it's fine. I only wear it when I step out for a bit anyway."
The evening was steeping itself the color of caramel.
Playing it cool as she batted his words back, Lee Jiyoon sat with her arms folded beneath her chest, staring a hole through her empty coffee cup. For now she was managing to keep the idle chatter going as if nothing were the matter — but before long, she was going to have to do that sort of thing with Woojin.
Well. Doing that sort of thing was only advice, so it didn't matter. The question was whether the location she'd spent some five hours agonizing over during her shift today was actually the right answer. Her head was past tangled and well on its way to bursting.
"You don't go out, normally?"
"Where would I even go besides work and the convenience store?"
"Hm. Meeting friends, or something?"
"Don't have any. Real-life friends."
"...Why not?"
"Too much of a hassle."
"Ah. You mean you were too busy gaming to make any."
"......That's not it."
Right. Think it through.
A motel. Outdoors. And a karaoke room. She would never set foot in places like that with Woojin, not even with a knife at her throat. Which left his place, or her own. That was the end of the list. So which looked more natural — a woman invited into a man's house, or a man invited into a woman's?
She'd been turning those two choices over, taking the drink orders that kept rolling in, when a thought struck her out of nowhere. If she was really going to put herself in Unni's place and help Woojin — if she was going to pin her restless, uneasy heart down with the assurance that I'm only doing my very best to help him —
"......"
— then of course she ought to be helping him practice in Unni's room. That kind of thought.
"......"
There had been a minor accident afterward, a finished drink dumped across the floor, but anyway. Unni finished her shift and came home after eleven. It was 7:10 now. The house would sit empty for about four hours, so even if some suspicious smell lingered in Unni's room, somehow...
...Th-that is. Not a weird smell. Woojin's scent. Or, um...
"Should we get going?"
"H-huh?"
"Let's go. We've been sitting a while, haven't we? About thirty minutes."
"...Yeah."
While Jiyoon was still groaning under the weight of all that, Woojin picked up his empty cup and stood. She got up a beat late to follow, nodded to the closing-shift part-timer who'd happened to be looking their way, and the two of them slipped out of the cafe.
And then—
"Then, my place..."
"First, my place..."
Her voice overlapped with Woojin's. He'd gotten a step ahead of her on the way out.
The awkward quiet lasted only a moment. Jiyoon tipped her cap up slightly, met his eyes, and spoke.
"We're going to your place?"
"Yeah. You said not to tell Hayun-noona, right?"
"So? What does that even have to do with—"
"I figured it'd be a problem if we left any trace."
"Wh-what?!"
"Why are you so shocked?"
"It's just practice, why would there be any trace, you crazy bastard...!"
"There could be, though. No?"
"There won't!"
Traces? Just how far was he planning to take this practice? The only trace Lee Jiyoon had accounted for was smell, and even that was nothing but body scent. But the moment Woojin brought it up unprompted, the rest came spilling through her head — socks, semen, the smell of sweat, bedsheets mottled with the both of them, the beep of the door lock because they'd been too far gone to watch the time — scene after scene she'd only ever seen in those bad videos. Which was why she was drumming a tightly clenched fist against his arm.
"I don't think we should leave something like a guy's hair lying around."
"...Ah, th-that's what you meant..."
"Why? What were you thinking?"
"...Shut up. Please, just shut up."
She struck his solid shoulder a few more times, then let it out, small.
"D-don't say weird things. Just shut up and follow me."
"So we are going to your place?"
"Yeah. Why? You don't want to?"
"It's not that I don't... It's just, is it really any different from my place?"
"...There is. Something different."
"And earlier today you said if we got caught having sex at your place, you'd kill me."
"S-se..."
How could he just blurt that out on the street?
Jiyoon swept a quick look around, then went on, quieter.
"...What we're doing now isn't sex, dumbass."
"It is sex practice, though."
"It's not sex practice either! This is just..."
"Just?"
"......Advice."
"......"
"A guidebook. Telling you how to do it when you pounce on Unni...?"
"...What's the difference?"
"That's... um..."
This wasn't working. At this rate, it felt like they'd just stand in front of the cafe having this conversation forever.
"Anyway, we're doing it at my place, so follow me and behave...!"
Jiyoon jammed her cap down low again, spun on her heel, and headed for home.
"H-hold on a second."
"Why?"
"Just in case. One second."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Making sure Woojin couldn't see, Jiyoon punched the code into the door lock and opened it, then checked the shoes in the entryway first. All that met her gaze was two pairs of dainty slippers.
Good. Unni isn't home.
"...Come in."
"Excuse the intrusion."
"D-don't bother with pointless greetings. There's nobody here except you and me anyway."
A house with only the two of them. Today, unlike her usual routine, Jiyoon didn't make straight for her own room. She angled off to the side as she spoke, and while Woojin was slipping off his shoes she stole a look into Unni's room.
It was just as cluttered as ever. A black polka-dot pajama set flung so it draped halfway off the bed, underwear spilling over the lip of a drawer, a blanket shoved into a corner instead of folded, and plushies of every color — the kind that come out of capsule machines — rolling around the floor.
She worked so hard at the housework. Why wouldn't she clean her own room? The sort of laziness that sent a chef home unwilling to cook. Something like that, probably. Show Woojin Unni's unvarnished self and he might be quietly disappointed. Better to straighten up at least a little.
Jiyoon took off her cap, hung it on the doorknob for the moment, and started roughly folding the rumpled blanket.
"What are you doing?"
"Unni slept in today, so her room's a wreck. I'm cleaning it for her."
"...I get what you're saying. I'm asking why you're doing it now."
"You're the one who asked me to help you practice."
The moment the bedding was folded, she turned right around and planted herself in front of him. She looked up at Woojin, steady, and said it.
Hands shoved deep into the pockets of her khaki jumper — as if daring him to try, as if she, unlike him, wasn't nervous in the slightest — and yet unable to hide the faint tremor in her voice.
"Here?"
"Yeah. Hurry up."
"This is Hayun-noona's room."
"I'm playing Unni right now, aren't I? So obviously we have to practice here."
"......"
"If it starts feeling wrong, I'll tell you to stop, so do what you want. You'll mind the line yourself."
"...You mean that?"
"You're not gonna? Oh — you can't?"
Haah. Coward. Called it.
Well, of course. If he'd just pounced on Unni the moment she told him to, they wouldn't have needed this practice in the first place. Relieved she wasn't the only one secretly tense, Jiyoon pulled her hand from her pocket and seized his wrist.
And then.
"......Here. Grab about here, and just push me over. It's not a big deal, is it?"
She laid his hand over her own slender wrist, so he could seize it this very moment and force her down onto the bed. A belated worry flickered through her — what if he notices my pulse hammering? — but one look at his face, sunk in thought with her wrist caught in his grip, and it seemed he hadn't.
"I'll stay loose, so give it a try."
"...You really want me to?"
"You're the one who said let's do it."
"No, I mean are we really doing it here? Not your room. Hayun-noona's room."
"Yeah. I'll act like Unni as hard as I can, so...... ...Ah, wait."
Right. If she was going to act properly, she ought to match this too.
Jiyoon glanced around, found the cup of hair ties on the dresser, and drew out a single jet-black elastic. Her hair wasn't long like Unni's, so tying it back was about all she could manage, but...
"There. Do I look a little like Unni now?"
She gathered her snow-white hair into a ponytail and offered Woojin an awkward smile.
...Like the ones she sometimes watched. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely not ones she watched often. Sometimes. Really — only sometimes. Like a certain bad video.
Pretending to be Unni.
In front of Unni's boyfriend.
Behind Unni's back.