Morning Hangover Cure
Riyeon's wallet wasn't hard to find.
Since I was the one who'd called the taxi, I phoned the driver who'd picked her up through the app. He said he was holding onto the wallet for her.
He told us we could come by just before lunch, so Riyeon and I headed out at a leisurely pace to grab some morning ramen instead.
There was a gimbap place that opened early not far from the office.
"I'll take the cheese gimbap and ramen. What about you, Riyeon?"
"Heh heh~."
I needed to place the order, but this troublemaker was just grinning at me like she was having the time of her life.
When I asked again in a grumpy tone, the corners of her smiling eyes narrowed even further.
Tch. She's pretty.
Then again, a beauty smiling at me counted as a super-rare lucky event, so I could let her have this one turn.
"Why are you just laughing?"
"Oppa, you're already talking casually to me like it's nothing?"
"I cleaned up after your mess and I'm buying you ramen. Of course I have to act like an oppa."
"Oh? Not a friend—oppa?"
Damn it, the way she said "oppa" sounded way too good!
I wanted to snap back with something sharper, but my face was already starting to soften on its own.
"There's an age gap. Friends wouldn't work."
"That's some childish logic."
You're one to talk.
You're the one acting like the biggest kid here.
"Fine by me. From now on, if you agree to talk with me about anime and manga—especially until I've overcome every last bit of NTR—I'll treat you like an oppa."
Ah, I want to push back.
I want to throw a middle-school-syndrome tantrum and refuse like some edgy teenage boy.
Being around Riyeon made me feel younger too.
I had no desire to return to those twisted, judgmental days of my childhood, so I reluctantly nodded.
"So you're my oppa from now on?"
"What's with the 'my'? If it's oppa, it's just oppa. We're not family."
I was about to push the menu toward her when something flew into my field of vision and stopped me cold.
Riyeon was pointing a pair of metal chopsticks straight at me.
"You're my oppa. If you go getting friendly with random people I haven't approved of, or if you make some bitch start calling you oppa too, I'll dig your eyes out."
I stared at the chopsticks, then picked up my spoon and smacked her on the forehead with it.
Thwack!
"Ack! You actually hit me!"
"Snap out of it, you idiot. You're over twenty. Stop throwing tantrums and running your mouth like a brat."
"Ugh, you meanie…"
She looked ready to protest the injustice of it all, but when I put real force into my eyes and voice, Riyeon wilted.
I'd scolded her for saying something as rough as digging out eyes.
Her claim of ownership over the role of "my oppa" and the duties that came with it actually made me a little happy, so I didn't call her out on that part.
In fact, I decided to check whether this was a case of double standards while I was at it.
"You're one to talk. You're an otaku who'd turn any guy into a friend-oppa as long as he listens to you rant."
It was less fact-checking and more of a probe.
Even I tended to get less honest the closer I got to someone.
Wait… am I actually close with Riyeon?
"As if! And why are you automatically assuming it'd be a guy?"
"Why did you automatically assume the person I'd get close to would be a girl? Does that mean a guy would be fine?"
"I hate it."
Riyeon's answer was fast and absolute.
"I hate it no matter who it is."
"You hate it unconditionally?"
"Unless we both okay it, I hate it."
"So if it's someone we both mutually agreed on, it's fine?"
"Oppa."
Riyeon lifted the metal chopsticks again.
I raised my spoon in response, and she flinched before quietly lowering hers.
The hierarchy between oppa and little sister seemed firmly established.
"You know better than anyone how much I hate NTR."
"So if I get close to someone without mutual consent, it's basically the same as you getting NTR'd?"
"Isn't it? Flip it around. If I started getting close to some other guy on my own and spent more and more time with him, how do you think you'd feel?"
"Well… I'd feel like I was missing out?"
"Not missing out—it'd bother you! It'd bother you, but since it's my private life you couldn't say anything and would just have to watch. It'd stick in your throat like a fishbone, and you'd want me to spend that time with you instead, but you'd be walking on eggshells worried I'd get sensitive about it. Then the rumors about the guy I'd gotten close to would start sounding bad. So after holding it in forever you'd finally tell me, and I'd get mad. Then you'd get mad too and tell me to do whatever I want—only for word to reach you much later that I'd been treated horribly by that guy and was left broken in body and mind. How do you think you'd feel then?"
That's a textbook NTR cliché!
I wanted to argue that things like that don't just happen so easily in real life, but her eyes were far too serious.
And novels never beat reality anyway.
There must have been real-life inspiration for it to become such a common plot device in fiction.
Not that I could really say that—I had more than enough experience of my own.
Tch. Completely owned by my little sister.
"I'd feel really sad… no. I'd just fucking hate it."
"Right?"
"What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yeah. Switch the roles. What if it were me?"
"I'd beat the crap out of you, get ridiculously angry, and cry my eyes out."
"So you'd still forgive me."
"Of course I would."
Riyeon pulled out a napkin and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
"Because you're my one and only friend and oppa."
"Oh? So if another oppa or friend showed up, you wouldn't forgive me?"
"That would be NTR from the start, so don't even say stuff like that."
The napkin she'd used on her eyes was half soaked through.
"It hurts just talking about it, so don't make me imagine it."
"What exactly made you trust me enough to get this close?"
"I told you yesterday. You seemed like a good person. And you actually were."
"Me?"
I actually was?
I tilted my head, and Riyeon's eyes turned fierce.
"Don't play dumb."
"I really don't know."
"Then stay clueless. Being a 'good person' alone could never break through my guard anyway. You need full empathy for Even After Knowing Everything of You for that to even be possible."
"That's complicated."
"So be happy and grateful that I'm treating you like an oppa."
"Hmph. Then you be happy and grateful that I'm treating you like a little sister."
"Yeah. I'm super happy."
Riyeon relaxed the tension around her eyes and smiled.
She definitely looked better when she smiled.
The girl who laughed so brightly like this always seemed far too combat-ready in the office.
If I just corrected that a little as her oppa, she'd be fine.
That had been my goal from the start, after all.
"So what are you getting? Pick something already."
Even so, embarrassment made me sound brusque. There was no helping it.
After a moment of thought, Riyeon pointed firmly at the spicy hangover ramen and held the menu out to me.
"Can you handle spicy food?"
"Pretty well?"
"And gimbap?"
"Ramen's enough."
"Don't say you're still hungry after. Just order. It's fine."
"No, it's too much. I won't be able to finish."
I turned and called the order out to the owner.
I was genuinely grateful to the owner for patiently waiting on our order since opening time.
"Where are you going?"
"To get water. It's self-serve."
"Then me too."
"Sure."
I casually grabbed two cups and headed for the water purifier when Riyeon came up beside me.
She was holding a brand-new cup in her hand.
I asked in disbelief.
"What are you doing?"
"I wanted water too."
"I already brought two cups."
"Oh, so you brought one for me too?"
"One person can grab them. Why do both of us need to move?"
"Ah~. I see."
It wasn't sarcasm—Riyeon was genuinely impressed.
She put her cup back into the sterilizer and accepted the water I held out.
"Thanks, oppa."
When we returned to our seats, nothing had been set on the table.
While Riyeon just sat there blankly, I laid out the napkins myself and set the utensils on top of them.
"Oppa."
"What?"
For some reason, Riyeon's face had gone red.
"Why are you being so obvious?"
"About what?"
About what, exactly?
Riyeon gripped her water cup and pointed at the utensils.
"Taking care of me like this without making a big deal of it—isn't that flirting?"
Time stopped.
More precisely, my thinking stopped.
Inside that frozen timeline I rapidly, carefully combed through my common sense and everything I'd ever learned.
Then I reached a conclusion.
"How is this flirting? I just grabbed water while I was up and set out the utensils."
"But in manga, pure romance always starts when the heroine starts noticing little things like this… Ah! Ah! Put the spoon down! Put it down!"
"This is the only way to wake up a brain that's been marinated in manga tropes."
"You have to treasure your little sister! We only just became oppa and little sister!"
"You're way too much of a little sister for that."
A little sister with half her screws loose, at that.
More than half, actually. It's worrying.
"In the first place, how do you even define the relationships of oppa, little sister, and friends?"
"The most precious relationship after family."
Surprisingly close to the right answer.
But before I could dig into the details, Riyeon machine-gunned her thoughts at me.
"But I'm not close with my family, so it's a relationship more precious than family—one where we never betray each other no matter what. And by 'no matter what' I mean the level of pettiness that never crosses the line as human beings, as friends, as oppa and little sister. We have to be able to face each other without shame, and even if someone tries to drive a wedge between us we have to trust and follow each other even more, and even if we can't tell the truth right away we have to believe and wait, and then when the real story comes out at the right time we have to empathize and comfort each other like, 'That must have been hard.' But if someone goes and does the drug-fueled gangbang cheating thing like Mizuki and then comes back asking for forgiveness, I'll kill them. That's too extreme so set it aside, and if we're talking about everyday stuff…"
"Hey hey hey, wait, wait."
I had stared into the abyss.
It felt like I had just glimpsed the very edge of the abyss.
I tried activating my people-reading instincts.
Damn it. Wrong move.
Because she'd crossed into personal territory, it was hard to gauge what kind of person Riyeon really was.
For now… I didn't want to make careless judgments based solely on the big data I already had stored.
Still, I could tell she was trying to bind me to her.
Please don't tell me this is a fishing pond.
Getting close in a short time while trying to restrict my range of activity was setting off high-probability fishing-pond warning alarms.
"Your food is ready."
Right on cue, the owner brought out the gimbap and ramen.
Eat first, think later.
A brain running on empty can't do anything.
Living on rice power is my creed.
The moment I picked up my chopsticks, Riyeon quickly snagged one of the end pieces of my cheese gimbap.
"Oh, this looks delicious!"
"Hey! You—hey!"
I raised my spoon in protest, and Riyeon promptly stuffed the piece into her mouth, chewing with a grin.
"What? We're oppa and little sister~. Not allowed?"
The complete lack of malice in her eyes only made me angrier.
"Next time, ask before you eat it."
But she was too pretty for me to stay mad.
Just like she used to be.