12. Back to School (2)
"…Hmm."
Was this how you were supposed to do it…? Should she have asked while Seo Woojin was still around…? Then he really would have given her hell for never having run a washing machine in her life, wouldn't he…?
"……."
She had no idea.
Every last piece of laundry came out of the machine. In its place, Lee Jiyoon stuffed the comforter in, poured a generous glug of that glaring blue liquid detergent, and shut the washer. She didn't really understand what any of the settings changed, but switching it from Standard to Bedding was done. Hit start and wait, and the wash would probably finish itself.
Once she heard the water come rushing in, Lee Jiyoon closed the balcony door and went back to her room.
If she wanted the crime to be a little more perfect, she ought to have an empty drink bottle ready too….
No, no. A crime? That was a slip of the tongue. Not a crime….
…….
…Well. Anyway.
She let the thought that had popped up out of nowhere fizzle into nothing, then vacuumed the floor with the cleaner she'd hauled in from her sister's room. That took care of Seo Woojin's hair as well. She'd bundled up and left the window open to air the place out, so the airing-out was done too. All that remained was this trash can, which hadn't even been empty for a few hours.
"…Crazy bastard. Seriously…."
On top of the pitch-black mask Seo Woojin had peeled off, nearly ten peach-colored condoms were piled in a heap. The moment Lee Jiyoon saw them, the ugly words jumped out of her mouth on their own.
No wonder she was sore. You insane piece of shit. She'd read online that guys couldn't manage it past twice, that it wore them out—so what the hell had he done? Did none of that matter because he was a Healing Transcendent?
"Haa…."
Whatever the reason, this had to disappear before her sister saw it. Wearing a complicated, hard-to-read expression, Lee Jiyoon fidgeted the municipal trash bag off the bin. She was about to march it straight out and toss it into the garbage pile in the corner of the alley….
…Before that.
"……."
She quietly slipped a hand inside. Just because. Because she was curious. Curious how much semen a man actually let out in a single climax. The last time Seo Woojin had made a mess of her stomach, it had splattered every which way, and she'd been too flustered to measure the exact amount. The very first time—when he'd pounded into her, hard and relentless, right in the middle of a Discord call and come—she'd been so tense about destroying the evidence that she'd dropped it in the toilet and flushed at once. The load he'd buried in her throat and dumped there, she'd been too busy gulping it down to check the volume.
She was curious. For no reason other than that, Lee Jiyoon drew one slick scrap of rubber out of the bag.
"…Fuck."
The curse came first. A condom, its tip swollen blunt and heavy with semen, had appeared right in front of Lee Jiyoon's tightly narrowed eyes.
"……."
The one she'd thrown out in the bathroom earlier had felt something like this, but it was a little off from the "used condom" she'd pictured. She'd imagined something more like a shed snakeskin than this stuffed, swollen thing. And there were nearly ten of them in the bag. Even so, Seo Woojin's cock had stayed rigidly hard right up to the end. If they hadn't used condoms, all of this would be, by now….
……That….
……Fuck….
The further the thought ran, the hotter Lee Jiyoon's ears burned.
"…Did he come like he meant to knock me up. Perverted bastard…."
After a thirty-second staring contest with the used condom, Lee Jiyoon glanced at the clock and quietly brought it up in front of her face.
"…Sniff. Sniff…."
…Last time she'd seen people online saying they smelled like fruit. This one was nothing but rubber. Apparently every condom had a different scent. Or maybe the smell all burned off after sex….
Her knowledge had increased.
"……."
It had increased, sure, but where the hell was she supposed to use any of it. At the entrance ceremony the day after tomorrow, while she was making friends?
Bitten late by a wave of self-loathing, Lee Jiyoon chewed her lip and dropped the condom back into the pay-as-you-throw bag. What she pulled out instead—
"…It's a little damp."
It was the pitch-black mask Seo Woojin had thrown into the trash at the very start. Damp with each other's spit, with each other's breath, soaked in all the various fluids that had clung to the condoms. The pitch-black mask.
"……."
This time Lee Jiyoon started a staring contest with the mask instead of the condom. Her fidgeting lips brushed the far side of it, then drew back. Like an indirect kiss. Just barely.
"……."
A hiss, and her face went red. A mortified wail flooded the tiny room.
After the brief commotion, still flushed, Lee Jiyoon shoved the mask into the drawer under her desk, snatched up the bag full of condoms, and bolted out of the house.
Sunday, March 1st. A day that felt like a pure loss, with no substitute holiday to make up for it. To Han Chaejun, who had always cared more about the day off than the history behind it, a freshly opened box of tissues came with a hummed little tune.
The day before yesterday had been the same, when he'd happened to overhear the sound of someone masturbating, and so had yesterday, when both Seo Woojin and Lee Jiyoon had shown nothing but a gray offline light. She'd said she needed to buy a new headset and hadn't played, so today she was bound to log in. This time he'd even gotten a recording program ready, so he wouldn't miss a rare chance. Now all he had to do was wait for Lee Jiyoon to let that lewd voice out again, the way she had the day before yesterday….
"Hoo…."
Honestly, he hadn't thought he'd sink this low. Those morons on the forums with their eavesdropping catalogs and all that pathetic shit—I never thought I'd be the one doing it. He'd assumed it was just a bit, that they only slapped names like that on random folders and files. Apparently not. Part of him was ashamed. Part of him was relieved that there were other idiots like him out there.
Han Chaejun quit the game he'd been playing so he'd be free at the end of Lee Jiyoon's shift—more precisely, the hour she logged in every single day—and waited for her alone. After another fifteen minutes or so of delay, a green light came on under Lee Jiyoon's Discord profile.
…Seo Woojin still wasn't on.
Was this his chance? She probably wasn't about to get home and masturbate on a call with him the second she walked in, though. Should he wait? But if he waited and Seo Woojin showed up, he wouldn't even get a chance to talk to her alone.
Arms folded, Han Chaejun kept turning it over, and in the end he waited quietly for Lee Jiyoon in the Discord room where the three of them usually gathered. A short while passed.
"…Hello."
Lee Jiyoon appeared on Discord with her voice subtly changed. Probably the headset. The calm tone was the same, but the femininity seeping out of every corner of her voice was far thicker than before. Put crudely, she smelled like a female in heat. Maybe it was because he'd heard her masturbating last time…. Personally, he liked this much more than her old voice. Would she sound like this in person, too? He wanted to know.
"Oh, Jiyoon. Looks like you bought a new headset."
"…Yeah."
"How much was it? I heard the one you used before was just some random pair you grabbed at a superstore."
"It's the same one. I don't remember the price."
"…? Huh. All right…."
No game rewarded gear harder than an FPS. Even an ordinary person had a rough idea how much a mouse or a mouse pad mattered, and a keyboard for counter-strafing and a headset for sound play were extremely important too… and yet. Well, whatever. Familiar gear had its own merits. Stranger than that was how her voice seemed different from before, while she was using the exact same headset as last time. She had no reason to lie about something this trivial, so his brain was probably just fooling him after he'd heard Lee Jiyoon panting like a dog. He hoped he could hear that voice again today.
Han Chaejun clicked the program so he could start recording at any moment, and went on.
"Is Woojin running a little late? I thought he usually logged in around now, too."
"Ah, that's…. …He'll be here soon? Probably."
"Soon, huh…. Then I just have to wait a little longer."
So she'd been with that guy again today and only just split. Picking up the nuance well enough, Han Chaejun answered with a lukewarm snort. Too ambiguous to call him her boyfriend, but he was certainly her sister's friend, and Lee Jiyoon's. And judging by how they saw each other every day even on winter break…… maybe they were working part-time at the same place. Something like that.
"……."
From what he'd heard second- and thirdhand, Lee Jiyoon had a café job. …A male café part-timer. Wasn't that something only genuinely good-looking guys got to do? If it was some tucked-away neighborhood café full of middle-aged regulars, the bar dropped a little, but that part nagged at him anyway. Still, when he'd been shown a photo last time, he'd said the guy was nothing special. And Seo Woojin being a café part-timer was only a guess. No need to let himself get cowed by some guy whose face he hadn't even seen.
"……."
…No need to get cowed. Honestly, he was a little curious.
"So, um, Woojin."
"Huh? Ah, yeah."
"By any chance…."
Whether he worked with her. How tall he was. Whether he was handsome. The moment he was about to sound Lee Jiyoon out—
"Ah. Ah. Can you hear me? Sorry I'm late. Of all days, every crosswalk on the way home was red."
Han Chaejun shut his mouth as if nothing had happened.
The game went fine. Seo Woojin played as badly as usual. Lee Jiyoon and Han Chaejun played as well as usual. That was all. Nothing happened. Not a trace of the sound of Lee Jiyoon masturbating that he'd heard last time. Thinking about it, that was only natural. A live broadcast of someone masturbating with two guys and one girl on the call—what kind of crazy bitch would do that?
"……."
Except, if he had to name the one fucking thing that had been grating on him this whole time.
"Ah. Jiyoon. Your sister said she was worried. That you'd fail to make friends again and end up drifting on the outside."
"…I'm choosing not to."
"Get the distinction right. You can't make them. Can't."
"I said I'm not making them!"
"Got any friends besides me?"
"…I do. Like three."
"You don't call someone a friend just because you exchanged a few words, right?"
"…Th-then is that not allowed…?"
The point being that Han Chaejun felt like he'd been hired as the actual bus driver—the third wheel hauling the couple around. Of course, from the moment he'd first been dragged in here, he'd been told to let himself be used that way…. Fucking sucks was still fucking sucks. It wasn't even just the two of them on Discord. There were three of them, and still these conversations he knew nothing about kept popping up.
Naturally, Han Chaejun kept his mouth shut and just listened. Spot an enemy, and the talk would break for a moment so they could focus on the callouts; then the private, lovey-dovey conversation he wasn't part of would pick right back up. How was he supposed to put this feeling accurately….
This fucking sucks. It really fucking sucks. It fucking sucks so bad. He couldn't think of a single expression besides this fucking sucks.
"I, uh, bathroom for a sec."
Lee Jiyoon, having just won another round, stepped away. Chugging water through a strange irritation, Han Chaejun spoke to Seo Woojin the moment she was gone.
"Woojin."
"Yes?"
"That thing you mentioned last time."
"What thing?"
"…That you'd heard Jiyoon masturbating on a call."
"…Ah, right. I did."
It wasn't a line he'd put through any deep thought. One: the only people left in a Discord that had included a girl were guys. Two: he'd been sick, for a while now, of that bastard needling him like he was somebody. Three: he wasn't the only one who knew about that masturbation anymore. So it was just… male pride.
"I heard it too. Jiyoon masturbating."
He threw it out like that.
"I mean, isn't Jiyoon just a pervert? The day before yesterday she called me and did the exact same thing."
"……."
"She even let me hear a little of that wet squelching…. And the moans, like she was in heat or something."
"……."
Now he felt a little better. Tipping his mic aside for a moment, Han Chaejun snickered at Seo Woojin, who had finally shut up.
Thought you were the only one who'd get to hear Jiyoon masturbating, huh? Dumbass. Is this what they call NTR? NT… whatever the hell it is. Still, they'd only just ended up on the same line. No. If he really broke it down, he was still a little behind. But if she was already letting him hear her masturbate, she'd be giving him her number any day now…. See you then. I'll record plenty of Jiyoon panting on that bed and send it to you.
"He says he even heard the squelching."
"You were pounding me that hard, of course he heard it, you idiot!!"
"I thought you deafened the headset right away, so he couldn't."
"Fuck…. …Anyway, you talked about that while I was gone? You perverted bastards, seriously…. I want to kill you…."
"I was just sitting there. He brought it up first."
"What if the rumor spreads…!"
"It was the sound of sex practice. So what."
"Shut up, please, shut up…."
"Today, too. You blew me in the entryway of your house, saying there might be something like this with Hayun later."
"……."
"Jiyoon?"
"……."
"…What. She hung up."