First Failure, The Start of the Rampage
The egg rolls at this place were no ordinary egg rolls.
A sweetness that operated on another plane of existence, a soft and fluffy texture, and yet a clean finish that went down without a hitch. It was so good that I once watched a whole party who had been scolding someone for ordering egg rolls of all things end up apologizing to the person who ordered them after taking a single bite.
The aged sashimi was also in a class of its own compared to other restaurants, but the real shock was that mere egg rolls—egg rolls, of all things—had climbed into the ranks of true gourmet food.
I had found this izakaya by pure chance. I had always known it was there, but for some reason my feet never quite made it through the door until one day I finally worked up the courage. From that day on, it became the place I came whenever something good happened, or whenever I needed to put myself back together.
Maybe Riyeon would become someone like that too.
I had known she existed in the seat next to mine, but from the moment she worked up the courage to speak to me—starting with the Mizuki Drug Bulgogi Incident—we had a real chance of becoming pretty solid friends.
It was a vague hunch, but I trusted it enough to bring her here, a place that sat comfortably inside the best five of my personal treasure list of restaurants.
"Thank you so much!"
Riyeon beamed as she offered her thanks.
"Mm. Meaning thanks for bringing you here?"
"That, and more!"
So there was another reason. I decided not to dig deeper. Pandora's box had a way of killing cats. Wait—that was subtly off from the version I knew. Looks like the alcohol was getting to me, too.
"Thank you for being my friend."
"……."
"If I'd been alone, that whore Jeonhannan would've made me rot from the inside out."
Rot from the inside out. That was a pretty old-fashioned turn of phrase. Watching Riyeon, who kept bobbing in and out of focus with a highball glass in her hand, I felt something strange. After the way I had snapped at her earlier, I almost found it cute that she might be watching her step around me now.
"Cheers?"
I raised my glass first, and Riyeon, wearing the reckless grin of some hero-party mischief-maker, clinked hers against mine.
"Cheers!"
If you scold someone, you have to feed them something delicious afterward. That was the carrot and the stick.
Riyeon had been happily chewing on egg rolls when she suddenly yanked me back down to earth.
"In the end, we never really dug into the root of why NTR is so unbearable. It just felt like I was shouting 'I hate it for this reason!' over and over by myself."
"Still, doesn't it mean something that you tried to face a giant evil head-on instead of looking away?"
"It's better right now because you're here and because we're eating something delicious. But the second I go home, the second the weekend hits, the second I'm alone again—it's going to keep coming back. Over and over."
"I guess time will have to take care of it, then."
"It will, eventually. But we don't know how long it'll take until it does."
"Then the real question is how we shorten that time."
Riyeon opened her mouth. This time I slipped a piece of flounder sashimi into it. She picked up her chopsticks in turn. Taking whatever she offered without thinking, I registered the texture and umami and realized it was the flounder's fin. Handing over something that precious meant I was earning a fair amount of trust. Haha. No pressure.
And then she just stared at me.
"Is it good?"
"Huh?"
"I thought it was good."
"Yeah, yeah. Me too."
"Was it good?"
"It was good."
"Heehee."
The way she asked those empty little questions like a child, double-checked the answer, and then lit up over it didn't make my heart race so much as ache. She looked like a baby bird that had lost its mother, and before I knew it I was deploying the trademark nosiness of an HR manager.
"Riyeon."
"Yes."
"Are you having fun being here?"
"Yes! I'm having so much fun!"
"This is the first time I've seen you enjoy yourself. Is it because I've only ever seen you at the office?"
"The office is for working. And I don't have anyone I'm close with there. Though there is someone I want to get close to."
"Who?"
Don't tell me it's me? The second the thought formed, Riyeon pointed straight at me without a second of hesitation. It really was me. Direct. Convenient, even.
"Because I'm your otaku friend?"
"That's part of it, but I'm also a pretty good judge of people."
Surprising. So was I—except only when it came to office life.
"You're someone I want to be friends with, Injae."
Wanting to be friends at our age was almost embarrassing. At the same time, it was a relief. By calling us friends, Riyeon had drawn another clean line between us as a man and a woman. Friends were fine. If one of us eventually got a partner, we could naturally drift apart, show up at each other's weddings, and gently let the relationship dissolve. That was the plan I was going with.
"We share the same wound, after all."
"If you dress up the wound that whore Jeonhannan gave us that poetically, it just makes me flustered."
"Are you saying NTR is no big deal?!"
"Volume! Volume!"
"It's adultery! It's cheating!"
"Anyone listening is going to think both our partners actually cheated on us."
"It might as well be the same thing!"
"Volume!"
"Our girlfriend had her first time with a Geumtaeyang!"
"Wording! Wording!"
"And after that she did a gangbang with a bunch of random guys!"
"Rating! Rating!"
"Uwaaaaaaah!"
The silver lining was that she had lowered her voice a lot—but the content and the intensity of what she was saying had completely gone off the rails. Riyeon covered her face with both hands, let out a strangled scream, and then grabbed me by the collar.
"It hurts! It hurts, okay?! My stomach flips over several times a day! My brain has melted into sludge, and that disgusting sludge keeps replaying the Mizuki gangbang scene on loop! I'm over here desperately trying to talk to you, and you just ignore people because you're 'working'! It's too much—it's too much!"
Riyeon's voice was climbing again.
"I can't do it alone. No way, no way! I need a comrade to get through this with me. Even now my chest is burning up. Please…!"
People were starting to look our way.
"Please accept my feelings!"
Among those stares was the terrifying female owner's. Her gaze was indifferent, but it had locked onto us with perfect accuracy. Glancing to the side, I saw a shaggy-haired male employee shaking his head in pity. He must have overheard us. If possible, I wanted him as a witness for the defense.
"Don't look over there! Look at me!"
Both of my cheeks were seized, and my neck was forced sideways. There was an ominous grinding sound as bone scraped against bone.
"Ghk—! W-wait… my neck…!"
"Only look at me!"
"I am looking…! I'm looking…!"
"I'm telling you it has to be you, so why do you keep looking everywhere else?!"
"I get it! I get it, so just ease up on my neck…!"
"What did you just say? You get it?"
"Kh—!"
"You said you get it, right? That's what you said, right? Right? Right? So we're finally connected, right?"
The sharp scent of plum and alcohol hit my nose. These were definitely the eyes of a living person, and yet her pupils were somehow unfocused. Even those unfocused pupils were pretty—but they also let a pure sample of loneliness and obsession show through.
Only after I confirmed the more-than-five highballs sitting in front of Riyeon's place did I realize all of this was the result of heavy drinking.
"Today is day one for us. Got it?"
"First, my neck…!"
"Say yes!"
Ah, hang on… is my vision getting a little blurry? With my neck bent and crushed like this, oxygen wasn't getting through. Hey, this is dangerous. This is actually dangerous. My field of vision was about to black out completely.
"Customer."
That was when my savior appeared—expressionless, brows deeply furrowed.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the owner here."
"Hello!"
"Not a good one."
"I'm sorry!"
"And being sorry fixes everything?"
"No!"
Hey, no! No! Don't do that to the owner! This is a restaurant I actually treasure!
But the owner proceeded to enforce a law that was far too cruel on me.
"Your table is far too loud. I really can't have this, so would you please leave?"
"Huh…?"
"Not 'huh,' you. Get out."
"I'm sorry!"
"Don't yell 'I'm sorry'—just get out. And let go of your companion's neck. His face has gone completely white."
"Ah?"
Riyeon looked at me again.
"You'll be my friend… right?"
The terrifying single-mindedness she poured into achieving her goal nearly made me lose it. I nodded for all I was worth, and Riyeon released me with a radiant face before turning to the owner and giving her a thumbs-up.
"Don't give me a thumbs-up—get out."
"Ehh~."
Swaying, her eyes still unfocused, Riyeon looked at the remaining sashimi and egg rolls and flipped her raised thumb upside down.
"Can we get this to go?"
"Get out!"
We were thrown out.
My personal restaurant. My little treasure. For someone who mostly survived on eating out and delivery, it was the place I only visited on truly good days, or on days I needed comfort—the izakaya where the egg rolls were strangely delicious and special. Mukashino Tomo.
"Don't ever come back. Even if you do, we won't take you."
Permanently banned.
"I-I'm the victim here, though?"
"…If you're a man, don't abandon your woman. Take responsibility for her to the end."
On the absurd charge of joint liability, I was permanently banned as well.
The sliding door rattled shut without a shred of warmth.
"……."
"Injae~. Wait, no—Injae. We're friends, so I'm dropping the honorifics, okay?"
Rattle!
The door opened again. Hoping they were giving us a second chance, I looked up full of expectation—only for the black-haired, shaggy employee to hold out a paper bag.
"I packed up what was left for you."
"…Thank you."
Mercy that wasn't quite mercy still made my heart ache. I was staring at the paper bag in both hands with a complicated expression when Riyeon cut in from the side.
"Ooh~ snacks!"
Here I carefully confess something. In truth, the observational eye I deploy in my daily life of reminiscing has one blind spot.
"Injae~ second round?"
It cannot gauge a person's alcohol tolerance—or their drunk behavior.
"Heehee. Friend, second round at my place?"
Gam Injae: ordinary face, a body gone soft from quitting smoking, a precarious twenties life he fully intended to slim down soon—and for the second time in that life, the urge to hit a woman surged up inside him.