No One Can Predict Riyeon (3)
"Hey. Are you really coming into my place?"
"Don't call me 'hey.' Use my name."
"Riyeon, I usually dump all my cleaning on the weekend, so the place is a total disaster..."
"Want me to buy you a robot vacuum?"
"A what?"
"Robot vacuum. The new ones even come with arms."
"Don't lie to me."
"It's true. Look."
It was true.
On the phone screen Riyeon held out, a video played of a round, disc-shaped robot vacuum whose center sprouted a little claw hand that was picking up socks and the like.
It looked so exactly like the cartoonish image I'd imagined that I almost laughed.
Well, humans made it—of course it had its limits.
"Holding your phone with one hand must be awkward. Want me to let go?"
"No, I don't want to. I want to keep holding on."
We had been holding hands since the subway.
When people started shoving their way in before anyone could even get off, I'd grabbed her hand and pushed through the crowd so I wouldn't lose her.
I'd expected her to let go naturally when we tapped our cards at the gate, but after going through first she'd simply waited and taken my hand again like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Oppa."
"Yeah?"
"I used to wonder why people in comics made such a huge deal out of holding hands. I mean, you just grab it, right? You already know you like each other—why not just do it?"
"I used to think the same thing."
"Oh yeah? Then you go first."
"Go first about what?"
"Never mind. I'll go first."
Truth was, from the moment we left the station our palms had started sweating pretty badly.
I couldn't tell whose sweat it was—mine or Riyeon's—but either way it was hard to ignore.
"Holding hands feels so good. Like I could just float away."
"R-really?"
"My chest gets this little electric tingle, and it's this... I don't know, this satisfied feeling that's totally different from anything dirty? Like our hearts are connected through our hands."
"I see."
I snuck a sideways glance.
Riyeon's face was overflowing with emotion.
The soft curve of her lips and the smile in her eyes proved exactly what she'd just said—she looked completely secure and content.
"What about you, Oppa?"
"...I like it too."
"How do you like it?"
Her expectant eyes were pressure.
For someone as blunt and unromantic as me, it was a tough order.
I wished she'd just understand without me having to spell it out, but that kind of logic would never fly with Riyeon.
She liked honest, open conversation.
"How I like it is... kind of hard to put into words."
"Come on~. Try. I did it."
"I also... feel connected, and... similar stuff."
"That's what I already said! No copying!"
"Imitation is the mother of invention."
"That's not imitation—that's plagiarism."
"Ugh..."
This was hard. Really hard.
It felt good—like I was flirting while holding hands with a beautiful girl—but underneath that was the fear that no matter how far we went after this, someone might one day deny that these moments had ever happened and force us back to being nothing at all. That fear made talking about it almost impossible.
"Even the clammy sweat on our hands right now—I like that too."
So instead of explaining how, I told her how much.
Wow. First time for this.
I've never told anyone how I feel, how deep it goes.
This is basically an SOS. Will she pick up on it?
"That is not romantic at all!"
But Riyeon just scrunched up her face and complained.
Even so, she squeezed my hand tighter—ironic as hell.
"Still, I get how much you like it. And this is probably my sweat, by the way. I was actually super nervous."
"You? The girl who just does whatever she wants?"
"I'm a softie on the inside, okay!"
Riyeon swung our joined hands back and forth.
"So even if I mess up, look at me like I'm cute."
That part wasn't hard at all.
She already was cute. And pretty.
A little over ten minutes' walk from the station and you reach my place.
You leave the main road, wind through a maze of alleys, and eventually hit a single villa building tucked among other villas. My monthly rental is the unit stuck somewhere around the second floor of that building.
One-room studio. One desk, one tiny fridge, a bathroom—that's the whole inventory.
There's a sink and an induction cooktop, but they're crammed right next to the front door, so if you actually want to cook you have to put your shoes back on.
Not that I ever cook, so it works out fine.
A bed is pure fantasy.
Every week when I set up the drying rack for laundry, the already tiny space shrinks by half again.
All I can do is unfold the blanket I keep folded in one corner and sleep on the floor.
"What? It's clean. Why'd you make such a big deal about needing to clean?"
"It smells stale. There's dust. Hair and stuff."
I wasn't sure pointing out every flaw in my own home was the right move, but if it got Riyeon to leave sooner I was willing to try anything.
Holding hands had been nice. The way we'd pressed together on the subway and the conversations that kept crossing the line had been nice too. But I wanted us to reset the distance between us just once.
Because words that run this hot burn out and die young.
Yeah. Deep down, I wanted this thing with Riyeon to last a long, long time.
At least until I was okay again.
"No, no, I barely do housework either. This is fine."
"You said even your own place felt small. Mine's basically a hole in the wall."
"I actually like that it's small?"
"You like it?!"
"Yep."
Riyeon slipped off her shoes, went inside, propped a pillow against the wall like a cushion, and sat down leaning against it.
"Because it's small, we can stick close together. Like on the subway."
"It's not that small!"
An adult man could roll over five times in here, easy.
Not that it was even in my name, so getting worked up was pointless.
I gave up and sat down next to her.
I hadn't put a pillow down, so my lower back immediately started complaining.
The second I sat, Riyeon scooted right up against me.
Her hip—generously curved—pressed into my side.
For reasons I couldn't name, the place we touched felt hot.
We both felt equally hot.
"Whoa... I'm sleepy."
Riyeon naturally rested her head on my shoulder.
I glanced down and met her eyes looking straight up at me.
She smiled with her eyes—soft and sweet.
At this point I almost missed the vicious glare she used to wear.
"Riyeon."
"Mm..."
"Why do you always walk around the office looking so scary?"
"Oh, that?"
We were still holding eye contact while we talked.
"Those pieces of shit make their intentions so obvious. It pisses me off so much that my face just does that on its own."
"Obvious intentions?"
"That bastard of a team leader—you can tell at a glance he goes around poking every woman in the building, so of course he does it to me too. And the other team members pick fights and talk shit behind my back even though I haven't done a damn thing. It makes me fucking sick."
"Watch your language. If you swear too easily it sticks, and you start sounding crude."
"Aah~ I just want to kill every last one of them!"
"Yu Riyeon."
"Fiiine~. I'll listen to Oppa."
She grinned like, There, happy now?
She looked like she was listening while still not quite listening.
Every time she did this she felt more like a little sister than anything else.
Not a bad thing.
If she kept registering as a woman, I was going to be in trouble.
Then something else occurred to me.
"I was just doing my own work with zero ulterior motives. Why did you glare at me like that too?"
"Zero motives, my ass."
Riyeon poked my cheek with a finger.
"You walk around this shitty company with your face screaming 'Sitting at the same desk as these shitty bastards makes me want to die,' so of course I wasn't going to take it nicely."
Bullseye.
It hit so dead-center that I froze for a second.
I'd only taken the job because I needed living expenses. Company loyalty? Nonexistent. So yeah, that was pretty much all I'd been thinking.
My seat in the office still felt foreign.
The fact that the Management Support Team was mediocre from top to bottom didn't help either.
Even Riyeon, compared to the lazy teammates, was ridiculously diligent—but she wasn't exactly the type who worked smart.
"It was that obvious?"
"Extremely."
"Just to you? Or to everyone?"
"I'm good at reading people, so maybe that's part of it, but even without that the whole vibe was 'Do Not Approach.'"
"Hmm."
I hadn't planned on getting close to anyone.
Usually when you do, people start making little favors based on that fake intimacy.
That was just life in HR, and it got worse because other companies' HR people strutted around waving power they didn't actually have.
HR really has nothing.
Besides scrambling to follow the law, the only real job is grabbing whatever scraps you can to improve employee welfare.
"Now that I think about it, I'm kind of hurt? How could Oppa do that to me?"
You glared at me like you wanted me dead too, I almost said, but I'd been the one who started the cold-shoulder treatment, so I had no defense.
"Apologize."
"That was ages ago."
"Even if it was ages ago, it still hurt."
"Honestly, you weren't hurt back then. You just did your own thing at work."
"I remembered it after we got like this and now it hurts. And brushing something off just because it's in the past is really, really bad."
For some reason, ever since we'd gotten home I'd been getting systematically dismantled by Riyeon's logic.
Where did the girl who'd been getting scolded by me in the car yesterday go, and who was this functioning adult?
Ah—right. Showing up uninvited at a guy's place already disqualified her from "functioning adult."
Still, she wasn't wrong, so I put real sincerity into the apology.
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"For looking down on everyone at the company."
"Apologize only for what you did to me."
"I'm sorry I looked down on you at work."
"What are you going to do from now on?"
"What would you like me to do?"
"I'd like you to like me."
"I already do. Aren't we in a situationship?"
"Situationship?"
Riyeon stared at me blankly.
The longer the silence stretched, the more uneasy I got.
Well... our situationship could stay stuck in place for a very long time.
Attraction was one thing, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that neither of us had put all our cards on the table yet.
Until we confirmed that, we might just have to keep carrying this lukewarm flirting while talking about anime.
But even that only works if both people know it's a situationship.
Right now Riyeon's reaction was pure "What the hell is a situationship?"
Hey now, this feels familiar.
Uncomfortably familiar.
"Situationship means that, right? The stage before dating."
"Yeah. You... said it yourself. You like me but you don't want to date right away. You said you didn't want to look easy."
"Yeah, that's right. Oppa and I still don't know that much about each other."
Riyeon sank into thought for a moment, then a smile slowly bloomed across her face.
"I see."
The way she looked at me turned half-lidded and heavy.
Her lips pursed and relaxed in a way that was just as sticky as her gaze.
"So this stage of getting to know each other is called a situationship."
From everything I'd observed around me, "testing the waters" felt more accurate, but I kept my mouth shut. No point getting yelled at for nothing.
"That's right."
Riyeon hugged my arm and declared:
"We're in a situationship."
"Whoa."
"What's with that reaction?"
"No, just—same as when we held hands earlier. My chest just went all tingly."
"You too, Oppa?"
Even mid-yawn, Riyeon let out a soft little heehee.
"This is a first for me."
"Is it?"
Well, she'd been alone until now.
"Everything is a first for me. Feeling my heart race for someone, realizing and admitting I like them, eating together, holding hands, being in a situationship—all of it is brand new."
Same for me.
"So Oppa, even if I mess up, look at me like I'm cute. Okay? Everything I do with you is a first experience."
That part was easy, I keep telling you.
She was already past "cute" and into overdose territory.