Going Out, Sure Enough
I let out a long, heavy sigh. How on earth had things come to this?
Getting into a quarrel on a delivery run to the Billiard Hall was the sort of thing that could happen any day. The problem was that it hadn't ended there. I'd gone and piled more on top.
A come-on turned into a war of nerves. The war of nerves turned into an argument. The argument turned into a volley of filthy curses. And the curses turned into a fight.
Calling it a fight was generous, really. I'd beaten him one-sided—and with a cue, no less.
In the end the owner, unable to watch any longer, called the police. Which was how we'd arrived at the present.
"You're lucky he wasn't badly hurt. A cue is dangerous enough to be used as a weapon, so you must never do that."
"Yes... I'm sorry..."
"If the victim hadn't agreed to settle amicably, this could have gone all the way to a lawsuit."
I had nothing to say for myself. The pass he'd made was one thing. The one who had clearly crossed the line first was me.
Still, perhaps it counted as a small mercy that I'd been delicate about it, laying into him just carefully enough that he wouldn't be seriously hurt. Either way, I had no choice but to pay a settlement in the name of medical expenses.
It didn't matter if I ended up a criminal. What I could not allow was Sua's shop taking the damage for my mistake.
...Not that saying so changed anything. The damage was already done.
I was too ashamed to even lift my head.
"Thank you! Thank you so much for going easy on us!"
To drag a girl who was nothing more than a high schooler all the way to the station and make her bow her head, just because she was the one running the shop—how was that any different from repaying kindness with spite?
Fortunately, it passed without turning into anything worse. By the time we stepped out of the station, a good stretch of time had already slipped away. Evening had soaked into the street, dressing it in vermilion.
There was something wistful in the air, something that ached like longing. Had I seen a scene like this before?
"...I'm sorry."
"Hm? For what?"
"For dragging you all the way to the station because of me... You even had to close the shop..."
"Unni."
Sua answered as if none of it bothered her in the slightest, smiling bright and clear.
"You did great! Guys who paw at you like that only come to their senses once they've been hit. Gramps always said so."
"Thanks."
"And someone as pretty as you, Unni, ought to be with someone way cooler. You deserve to live a lot more splendidly than that."
"......"
Only then did I understand why a memory washed in sunset light had felt so familiar.
Gender, age, face—every one of them was different. Even so, what Sua had just said brought back my older brother, smiling as he told me he hoped I'd live happily. A fragment of the past that had gone faint somewhere amid all those crossings between life and death found its color again, sharp and clear.
I stopped walking, sunk in the memory, and Sua tilted her head.
"Unni? What's wrong?"
"...Nothing. I'm just grateful."
"Pfft. Boring."
The kindness I owed her really was too much. If I didn't repay it somehow, I wouldn't even be able to sleep easy. But now that I'd returned to the real world, did I have anything worth offering? Here, in the end, I was nothing more than one ordinary person.
I was turning that over when a voice beside me cut the thought short.
"The shop's closed anyway. The rest of today is free. Why don't you go out somewhere and have a little fun?"
"Forget it. Nowhere to go, and I'm not in the mood."
"Hmm. Won't you be bored if you just stay home by yourself?"
The question came out of nowhere, so I turned it back on her.
"Where are you going?"
"Mm. I was going to stop by the hospital."
"Ah..."
She didn't mean she was going because she felt sick. She meant a visit to her grandfather.
I thought for a moment, then said it without making much of it.
"Then I might as well come with you."
I'd already met Sua's grandfather a few times. Sometimes he came out of the hospital and stayed at the house for a few days; other times I'd gone along to see him. Gramps, if I had to put it in a word... a little ornery, maybe. Not that he was a bad person by nature. Never that.
At that, Sua shook her head, firm.
"No. Not today."
"Why?"
"If he sees your face right now, he'll blow up and ask why you even came."
"Huh? My face...?"
"Right now you look really... hmm. Complicated. It's not just that you're angry. It's like every feeling is all mixed in together...?"
So that was it.
Thinking about it, it wasn't a strange thing to say. The anger from that bastard at the Billiard Hall was still piled up in me, and the memory of my brother, sprung on me out of nowhere, kept circling. The guilt toward Sua, and the rest of it. It was true that all kinds of feelings were crossing at once.
She was right. Going to see him before I'd even sorted out my own heart would be a little strange.
"Go out and clear your head while you're at it. Honestly, Unni. You've been holed up in your room this whole time, haven't you?"
"Jabbing a sore spot like that is rude, you know. Now I can't even argue."
I'd never been the outgoing sort to begin with. On an ordinary day I would have just stayed home, played games, and waited, but today I decided to do as Sua said. If I couldn't repay the kindness right away, the least I could do was listen.
Sua added the rest, as if it had nearly slipped her mind.
"Oh, right. Eat dinner on your own today."
"No. My jjamppong..."
"You really are something, Unni. You eat jjamppong every single day and you don't get sick of it?"
"One jjamppong a day is mandatory."
I changed in a hurry and was turned straight out of the house, almost as if I'd been chased.
As of now, I was a single stray hyena wandering the streets. I didn't even have a sense of where I was supposed to go.
I'd talked a big game, but I had not the slightest intention of eating something like jjamppong for dinner. If it wasn't the jjamppong Sua made, I wasn't interested.
A rough check of the time said it had just gone six. Give it a generous estimate, and Sua would need three or four hours to get to the hospital and back. She wouldn't only say hello. She'd sit and talk, and look after him besides.
She had ordered me to come home later than she did. In other words, I'd been handed a quest: stay out and amuse myself until at least ten at night. For me, as I was now, it was a quest of considerable difficulty.
I wasn't joking. I had lived cut off from civilization for a full five years, and I still hadn't completely adapted to this changed modern world. From a point of view five years out of date, there were far too many things I simply could not understand.
"Where do I even go..."
Spring or not, once the sun went down the air was still chilly. In nothing but a cheap black coat, I drifted the street with nowhere in particular to be. Everyone who passed, without a single exception, was busy letting their eyes linger on me.
Yeah. I knew.
How could I not know that my looks were above average—no, good enough to slap a celebrity across the face? Whether I liked it was a separate question.
Of course, I'd often caught myself staring, privately amazed at my own face. Right after the change, that had been constant. In the end even that wore off with time. Get used to it, and the thrill fades.
What remains after that is the discomfort.
Coldly speaking, the inconvenience was greater than anything I gained from the way I looked. Even today's beating at the Billiard Hall, if you dug into it, had started with my face, hadn't it? Unless I developed some interest in dating, none of this was going to change.
There was only one thing I wanted. To protect this hard-won, quiet everyday life.
"Um... could I maybe get your number..."
"I'm sorry."
I refused, flat, without so much as a glance. The moment I turned my face away and kept walking, he gave up just as easily.
I didn't want to go anywhere I'd stand out. Just somewhere I could kill time as quietly as possible. There was only one place like that that I knew.
I saw the name PC Bang cut large across the building's sign, and I went in.
Might as well play a game.
The PC Bang Part-Timer was hard at his shift again today.
The shop he worked was unmistakably a PC bang, and yet, somehow, most of what he actually did was cook. Ramyeon, fried rice, hamburgers, hot dogs, and on and on. Instant food or not, why did he have to spend the entire day in the kitchen, cooking and washing dishes? Since when had a PC bang become a restaurant?
He was sunk in that profound philosophical question when the automatic door opened and a customer came in.
"Welcome."
He tossed the greeting out of habit, and his eyes happened to land on the customer standing there. A woman beautiful past all describing. His soul left him on the spot.
Her clothes weren't flashy. If anything, that plainness seemed to suit her looks. Long straight hair had always been his type, and the moment he saw her, the ideal updated itself to a bob. Above all, skin so clear and white it nearly looked pale, and the mole beneath her left eye, drew a decadent charm out to the very fullest.
"Whoa..."
Only after his mouth had fallen open and the sound of admiration slipped out did he come back to his own sorry state. He clapped his mouth shut in a fluster and pretended to be busy with something else, but in the end his eyes had nowhere to go but back to her.
A first-time customer, at least for this hour. If she had come before, there was no way he would have failed to remember a face like that. All sorts of fantasies unfolded on their own, and a great many questions about her rose with them.
Of those, the one he most wanted answered was obvious.
A woman that pretty—what kind of game would she even play?
Looking up someone's personal information for no particular reason was, of course, something he must not do. From the counter of a PC bang, though, you could at least see what a given seat was up to. If a customer started something they shouldn't on one of the computers, you had to stop them at once. Which meant that whatever game she played fell, more or less, within a part-timer's authority to check.
So he waited until she sat down and turned the computer on.
Quite a long while passed before she logged in. She'd probably been signing up for an account. So it really was her first time.
Good thing she came in on my shift.
He meant it, from the heart.
Right after that, she launched a game without a shred of hesitation. The game she launched was—
"Eternal Battle?"
It was Eternal Battle.