I Went and Did It
A small yawn slipped out of him. Haahm. Seo Woojin rubbed his eyes for a moment, then roughly added a little more to the memo on his phone, setting down whatever he could still remember.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
A biting winter wind was moving through the afternoon. I stood in front of Lee Hayun and Lee Jiyoon's place, and I hadn't even managed to ring the bell more than a time or two before the rapid thud of running feet came from inside.
"Y-you're here?"
"Yeah."
For all that desperate sprint, Lee Jiyoon only edged her face through the crack of the door. Her hair was gathered up and tied the way it had been yesterday, and the greeting she offered was a careful one.
Sisters, no question about it. The distance she'd kept the first time I saw her in the infirmary was nowhere to be found, and this business of playing innocent — pretending nothing at all was going on — resembled her older sister so closely it was almost funny.
Lee Hayun was a puppy who flung her heart wide open if you got even a little close. Lee Jiyoon was a puppy who took her time, but once you were in, carefully showed you her real face one piece at a time.
Hold sisters like these in the same bed at once, and how electric would that be. Hayun, with Jiyoon right there, trying somehow to swallow her moans and act like a proper older sister. Or Jiyoon, while Hayun had her face shoved into a pillow and was whimpering into it, kissing me slow and sticky behind her sister's back.
...I'm going to lose my mind.
I packed every wicked intention, blooming by the armful, tight behind the mask, and spoke.
"Run like that and the people downstairs don't yell about the noise?"
"...They're at work, probably. Dumbass. It's only about five."
"You know who lives below you?"
"...No idea."
Figures.
How would anyone these days know all their neighbors. I don't even know who lives on my own floor.
"What if it's a student loafing around on winter break, like you. Or somebody unemployed."
"It's not like I kept running, I only ran for a second.... A-and just come in, before somebody sees."
"Why. They not allowed to look?"
"Because I can't have weird talk getting back to my sister!"
"Weird talk?"
"...If a guy comes over when my sister isn't home, i-it's obvious, isn't it."
"You're the one who said it was only getting it wet and sex practice. I distinctly remember asking if you weren't ashamed in front of Hayun-noona."
"...Sh-shut up..."
Bring up yesterday, and she slipped a little behind the door — cuter than I'd expected. Her neighbors almost certainly didn't know who lived here either, and still she worried this much. Jiyoon.
I smiled like it was nothing, took hold of the handle, and stepped inside.
And what met me was this.
"...What are you looking at."
"Your clothes."
"...Are they weird?"
"Not weird, exactly. More like..."
They were the white polka-dot pajamas I'd seen when we drank beer last time. Even then I'd thought they were awfully thin for winter sleepwear. Now, with no one here but the two of us, it landed harder.
"They're pajamas."
"So?"
"Just thinking they might be the kind of thing you'd be embarrassed to show a guy outright."
"...You saw them last time. What's there to be embarrassed about."
"Still. Wouldn't ordinary clothes be better than pajamas?"
"...We're taking them off anyway. What does it matter."
Jiyoon pressed her mouth shut. Her deep green eyes flicked, down and up, down and up — dragged low, mostly, then stealing little glances upward, as if she were checking my face for a reaction. When none came, a faint flush rose in her cheeks and her gaze slid away.
A line she'd prepared while she waited, most likely. The aim, probably...
Get her sister's boyfriend hard.
Of course, it might have been nothing but my imagination.
"...Why, what, why aren't you saying anything...!"
"And what am I supposed to answer to that?"
"Th... that..."
"...Like, I see... or something...?"
"I see."
"Don't copy me, be a little creative...! No, forget it. What's the big deal about pajamas."
Too flustered to finish the argument she'd started, she gave up and stalked ahead into the room. A faint hair-mist scent came off her — faint, and for that very reason, considerably blatant. I caught it for only a moment.
A short laugh escaped me as I followed her in, and the barren scene I'd expected spread out in front of my eyes.
A bed easily big enough to lay one Jiyoon down on. A computer. A hanger with a few outfits dangling from it. And that was the end of it.
If it was Jiyoon, of course there'd be nothing but a computer. I'd expected as much. Seeing it for real, though, I had to wonder whether this was truly the room of a twenty-year-old girl.
I wasn't hoping for cute dolls set out the way they were in Hayun's room. But she could have made it a little prettier, couldn't she. A big cushion printed with some cute character's face. A small, tidy mood lamp. Something along those lines.
Still... at least she didn't live in a wreck. That was something. The villain girls I'd slept with had, every last one of them, turned their own places into garbage dumps.
"Nothing here but a computer."
"...So what."
"Feels like I walked into a guy's room, not a girl's."
I gave her the honest impression, playful about it, and the eyes of Lee Jiyoon — seated in the computer chair with one knee drawn all the way up to her chest — blinked. And blinked again.
Not a word. Only her eyelids, moving.
Strange. A little off from the reaction I'd predicted. I'd been sure Jiyoon would fire back with a so what do you want me to do about it, so why was she wearing a face like I'd struck her?
Had I misspoken?
I traced it back, carefully, and a possibility crossed my mind. I hadn't said anything like this when I went into Hayun's room yesterday. Maybe, inwardly, this felt like a loss to her sister.
I ran the numbers fast in my head, stepped in close, and spoke.
"Not interested in decorating? Like Hayun-noona."
"...Waste of money. Why would I."
"Hayun-noona's room felt like a girl's room the second I walked in. This one, I could believe it if you told me it was mine. That's all."
"Ha, please. People who like games all have rooms that look the same, that's why.... A girl's room, what.... I don't do that stuff."
Compare her to her sister on purpose, and a curt answer came straight back. A little more muted than the reaction I'd been hoping for.
Well. This was probably enough.
Roughly satisfied, I put on a soft smile.
Jiyoon, jealous of her sister. Jiyoon, wanting to take me completely behind her sister's back. A future where the three of us simply got along and fell into a threesome would be nice too, but that other version seemed like its own kind of fun. I left every ending open, and went on.
"Anyway. Jiyoon."
"Hey, wai—!"
Without asking, I planted myself on Jiyoon's bed and immediately dragged her chair in toward me. An unsteady posture, and then a sudden pull on top of it — her body swayed, precarious. I caught her easily in my arms and set her down on the bed without a single caress.
And then—
"What kind of practice are we doing today?"
"......"
"You said there was something you were too embarrassed to teach me yesterday."
"......"
Jiyoon had gone silent in an instant. I took the space above her as if I'd pounced — and spoke.
"No way they're dating."
Han Chaejun muttered it while staring a hole through Lee Jiyoon's profile, sitting there in a flat gray glow.
Of course, there was a chance Seo Woojin was her boyfriend. He had never once seen Jiyoon game with an actual friend from real life, and suddenly she was gaming with a guy? Suspicious enough that the conclusion slotted in without any effort at all. This bitch is gaming with her boyfriend.
But the claim was just as easy to knock down, if you wanted to knock it down. Why had she introduced him to Han Chaejun himself as a real friend, and not as a boyfriend? If she'd opened with he's my boyfriend, actually, then not only him but every thirsty bastard who'd been panting after Jiyoon would have backed off on their own. So in the end, the odds that Seo Woojin was the boyfriend did drop, hard. And yet...
"Jiyoon's probably masturbating right now, I think."
Was that really a joke you tossed around with a mere real-life friend? Wasn't that the kind of line that only came out between childhood friends? And he'd even called himself the side dish — as in, he was what she was getting off to?
...Anyway. This, too, was fine. Up to here, he could force himself to let it pass. Maybe that was just how the popular crowd joked; he didn't fucking understand it at all. Whatever.
But writing it off as a joke the way that guy had said, and moving on — that didn't work either. Because it had actually been fucking hot.
Jiyoon's voice, scurrying into the Discord room.
"If there'd been an auto-record or something, fuck..."
Han Chaejun tipped his chair back as far as it would go, stared at the ceiling, and called up Jiyoon's voice from last night. That rude bitch who only ever clicked her tongue in a low, irritable tone — different from usual, a little hazy, swallowing, pacing her breath. He'd thought he was going to die, trying to game with his dick standing straight up.
"Haa..."
Had she really come into the Discord room in the middle of masturbating?
Staring at Jiyoon's profile, Han Chaejun turned yesterday over in his head again and again. He reached a decision, and was just bracing to pull back—
"......?"
A green light had come on in Jiyoon's profile.
What?
She stayed up all night every Thursday. Right now ought to have been when she was asleep.