Redefining the Relationship
Morning—no, dawn.
It had already been dawn when I got home, and the next time I opened my eyes, it was still dawn, barely any time later.
I felt like I was going to die.
"Round two! Let's go!"
Even after that, Riyeon had kept badgering me like a maniac about going for a second round. She'd been grinning and babbling that the world was spinning—Wow! Wow!—and then she'd lock eyes with me dead-on and keep tugging my arm, insisting we go back to her place for more.
I shut her down hard, of course.
I would have done the same even if she hadn't been drunk.
Go to a woman's house and then what—exactly what kind of disaster was I supposed to walk into?
And getting tangled up with her privately was a hard pass.
"But we're friends! We're friiiends—!"
Friends or not, if she actually considered me one, she shouldn't have been acting like this.
"Hiiiing—!"
"Stop it."
"…Round two?"
"We're not going. I'm not having fun."
"Why aren't you having fun…?"
"Because you're drunk."
"But I'm having fun."
"It's more fun when everyone's enjoying themselves. And if you ignore the signals your body's sending that you're wasted, tomorrow is guaranteed not to be fun at all."
"I don't know about that. It's been way too long since I drank."
"When was the last time?"
"First time since I graduated high school and drank with my dad…."
She didn't even know her own alcohol tolerance.
And we'd already drunk together yesterday—what was this "first time today" nonsense?
A sigh slipped out of me on its own, but moments like this were exactly when you had to stay calm.
"We both have to go to work tomorrow."
"I hate work~!"
Same.
But we were office workers.
If we didn't show up, we didn't get paid. No money meant no life. I couldn't even cover the izakaya bill I'd swiped on the card while we were getting kicked out.
"Come on, we've already drunk two nights in a row. Let's just go home, sleep it off, and tomorrow at work we can trash-talk Trashy Inversion Guy together again and chat about nothing."
"That sounds good. Yeah! I like thaaat!"
Calm down, fist.
People get simple when they're drunk. Some even regress to childhood. Most of them make a break for home on pure instinct—Riyeon just happened to be the opposite type.
The kind who drinks more when she's already drunk.
"I'll call a taxi."
"Let's ride together~."
Crack.
For all practical purposes, my memory cut out right there.
It wasn't a full blackout, but the fuse in my head had blown. My face was radiating cold air while my brain felt hot enough to cook itself.
I asked for her address, called a taxi, loaded her in, and then called one for myself and headed home.
A flood of texts poured in from Riyeon the whole way. I ignored every single one.
After that not-even-really-an-ordeal, I got home at half past one in the morning.
I closed my eyes, opened them again, and it was six.
I hadn't even washed up—just collapsed into bed—and it was already 6 a.m.
A curse rolled out of my mouth on pure reflex.
Still.
I had to get up.
I was a proud office worker of the great Republic of Korea, after all.
I took the fact that today was Friday as my greatest consolation and kicked the blanket off.
Bzzzt~.
My phone vibrated.
Just in case, I checked the screen while setting the alarm for when I'd need to leave.
Ha. Like you would have slept well in my place.
I got to work absurdly early.
I'd taken a long, hot shower, gotten dressed at a leisurely pace, and still arrived a full hour before official start time.
Just how much did I love this company?
To be honest, though—every morning when I walked in and headed for my desk, I couldn't shake the feeling that my seat at this company wasn't really mine. Even though it was clearly the space where I sat and did my work, it always felt like I was just borrowing someone else's desk for a little while. I simply couldn't get attached to the place itself.
"Ah…."
To my surprise, the company security system was already unlocked.
Wondering if someone had beaten me in, I opened the door—and locked eyes with Riyeon.
She stood up from her seat like she meant to say something, but I didn't have the energy to respond.
I set my bag down on the desk next to hers, the one all the way at the back, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Did you… get home okay yesterday?"
Riyeon asked, watching my face carefully.
What to do.
Should I give her a sharp word about last night, or just let it slide?
If I chose to let it slide, that also meant I intended to keep any further involvement with her to the absolute minimum.
No matter how beautiful she was, if imposing on other people was her default setting, that changed everything.
Imposing on me was one thing—but if it spilled past me and started affecting other people? Even worse.
There was no law that said last night couldn't happen again.
"Riyeon."
"…Yes."
"Do you remember what happened yesterday?"
"…Yes."
She hung her head, both hands fidgeting with the hem of her skirt.
Damn it, she looked pathetic and cute.
The fact that a beauty like her was frozen stiff in front of me was unbearably exciting.
It wasn't sadism.
I was excited because she remembered everything and still wouldn't spit out the words she needed to say.
"What exactly did you do yesterday?"
"……."
"Riyeon. You need to say it out loud if you want this to be over quickly."
"…Y-yesterday."
She started and stopped.
Still, I waited calmly.
"Yesterday I… had fun, though…."
Calm, my ass.
This woman was clearly testing my patience.
Maybe she was my guardian angel for blood pressure management.
She couldn't be a demon—demons were the fox-faced pretty type. At best she was a cat, and right now she looked like a rabbit.
"But I made it so… you weren't having fun."
"And why wasn't I having fun?"
"Because I… I… raised my voice and got us kicked out of the place… and even after we got kicked out I kept forcing you to keep going…."
Riyeon let the sentence trail off and shot me a sideways glance.
No. Absolutely not.
"Riyeon, you need to finish your sentences properly if you want this conversation to end."
"Uuu…."
Ugh—her nose tip had gone pink.
But I wasn't cutting her any slack.
"Don't cry."
"I'm not crying!"
Contrary to my expectations, Riyeon roughly scrubbed at her tears with her sleeve.
She still sniffled, but her usual fierce glare snapped back into place as she shouted at me.
"I know better than anyone that crying doesn't solve a single thing!"
"Oh, impressive. All right then—tell me what you did wrong."
"Uuu…!"
You said you weren't crying!
Look at her immediately sticking her lip out and getting watery-eyed!
"…Yesterday, I got drunk and caused you a lot of trouble."
"What kind of trouble, specifically?"
"Uuuu…."
"Answer."
Don't cry—answer me, damn it.
"I made a loud scene at the restaurant… and even after we left I kept pressuring you to drink more and made it hard on you…."
"……."
"……."
"Huh??"
"Yes??"
"That's all?"
"That's everything?"
"There's nothing else?"
"Nothing else."
I was flabbergasted.
The way she seemed to think we were doing a little banter now and the smile was starting to creep back onto her face was flabbergasting. The way her tears vanished so she could tilt her head and insist the damage was only those two things was also flabbergasting.
"Really nothing?"
"Nothing?"
"What do you mean nothing! Look at this!"
In the end, I exploded—all the anger I'd been holding in since last night.
I pulled out my smartphone and opened the chat.
There were exactly ninety-eight unread messages waiting for me.
The texts had started the moment we got in the taxi.
From the middle onward she kept texting that she'd arrived home too.
And then, all of a sudden, the typos vanished—which had actually given me chills.
That was around when I got out of the taxi.
So I'd reluctantly sent one reply.
I hadn't looked after that.
I'd tossed the phone on the bed, stripped, and passed out.
Then in the morning it had been "Did you sleep well?"—and after that, Riyeon's texts had just kept coming all the way until I left for work.
Right.
Riyeon's imposition was still ongoing.
"What's wrong with this?"
"What's wrong with this—what's wrong with this??? Are you serious right now?!"
"Why is sending texts a problem?"
"How many texts did you even send?!"
"Because you weren't answering!"
Bam!
Riyeon slammed the partition and jabbed a finger at me.
"We're friends! I can send a few texts! More importantly—why didn't you answer me!"
"How am I supposed to reply one by one to a drunken spam barrage!"
"I wasn't drunk! I sobered up and sent them properly!"
"You think you're in any position to talk big in front of me right now?!"
"When it comes to the texts, I am!"
"Then first of all the list of yesterday's offenses isn't finished yet, so put your head back down!"
"Yes…."
Riyeon drooped and hung her head again.
Was this person for real?
"Before that, let's settle the texts first."
"Yeah! Why didn't you answer! I'm actually hurt! You said we were friends—was it just me? Was I the only one who meant it? Does it make you happy, playing with people's feelings!"
"No no no, I was wrong. The imposition stuff comes first, so that should be first. You're right."
"Yes…."
What kind of human relationship was this—switching attitudes item by item like electronic document approval?
A hypothesis took shape inside me.
A hypothesis about this woman named Yu Riyeon.
A woman who had been a loner for a long time, a total romantic zero, and whose entire drinking history consisted of one time right after high school graduation.
But who was also a beauty.
I decided I needed to study Riyeon based on that hypothesis.
And right now, I was going to take the first step.
"Riyeon."
"You can just call me Riyeon. Injae."
"I'm at least two years older than you!"
"Yes, Oppa. But if I call you Oppa, that means we're not friends."
"If you're giving me casual speech, then fine—we're friends."
"Okay. You talk casual too."
"Haa…."
I was going to lose my mind…!
But I swallowed every single one of those detonators and forced the question out.
"Riyeon, since when have you not had friends?"
"I have a friend. You—no, Oppa, you."
"Before me. How long had it been."
"I…."
Riyeon thought for a moment.
"Since second year of middle school."
I see.
Her social skills had frozen in the second year of middle school.
Ahh. It all made sense now.
All the fight drained out of me at once.
"Riyeon."
"Yeah."
"Does your head hurt?"
"It throbs a little."
I pulled my wallet out of my bag.
"Let's go get hangover food. Ramen sound good?"
"You're buying, Oppa?"
At that, I put the wallet back in my bag.
"You're buying. After the mess you pulled yesterday."
"Uh…."
"What?"
"I lost my wallet."
I took the wallet back out.