40화 40, 데이트 코스
A sidelong glance.
Walking down the street—
Another sidelong glance.
Strangers' eyes found them now and then. Fleeting looks from people passing by. Whenever laughing, chattering couples crossed their path, those gazes snagged on the two of them and held.
Mild admiration. A peculiar shade of envy. Seong A-rin could feel every emotion boring into her.
And she knew exactly where those feelings came from. She turned her head for a moment and looked at the man walking beside her.
"……"
Lee Se-won was frowning slightly, as if the sunlight stung. Even that scowl looked valuable from where she stood.
The atmosphere that rolled off his looks was more than enough to pull people's attention.
Earlier she had talked about "class," about the uncrossable wall between the popular crowd and everyone else.
Seong A-rin felt that same wall with Lee Se-won—only higher than the one around the popular people strolling past them.
He carried an air that made you want to approach and, at the same time, made you afraid you would get cut if you did it carelessly. Honestly, she still could not quite believe he was walking right next to her.
It felt like a dream. Happy the way dreams are happy—and anxious the way a mirage is anxious, as if it might vanish at any second.
She let that feeling hold her for a moment, then shook her head hard and scrubbed the thoughts away.
Just enjoy this for now.
Stewing in anxiety would only wreck her nerves.
Right now she meant to focus on one thing: making sure he had a good time.
She had prepared enough. She had searched online over and over, mapped out a whole date course, and even bought tickets to a movie that was supposedly popular with guys these days.
If they just followed the schedule, the hours would melt. Once night fell, they would part ways. That was the plan.
If we can do more than that…
If they spent the night together too…
The thought alone made her face heat.
Bare skin flooded her mind in every shade imaginable.
"Ahem…"
Clearing those thoughts was going to take a while.
Downtown on the weekend was always packed. Modern people ground down by society—or students worn thin by school—poured into the streets the moment Saturday arrived.
They burned off a week's stress by playing hard for a day. Active. Healthy, even. A solid way to blow off steam.
Honestly, I liked hanging out too. What I did not like was crowds.
Walking the streets felt uncomfortable, and when the weather turned hot, the heat radiating off all those bodies made the temperature feel twice as bad.
Uncomfortable and hot. Irritation rose on its own after that.
That was exactly how I felt right now.
Of course the weather had to be gorgeous today. Not a cloud in the sky, the sun roasting my skin with real enthusiasm.
And every time people on the street stared for no good reason, a pointless discomfort prickled under my skin.
Honestly, I'd rather just go to a motel like this…
I decided to hold off for now.
Looking at her, it was obvious she had put a lot of work into this. Playing along did not seem like such a bad idea.
We were still awkward with each other, after all.
Even if things had somehow escalated all the way to sex last time, we barely knew anything about one another.
We did not have many topics we could actually talk about. We did not even know each other's personalities.
If relationships between men and women went A-B-C, we had skipped past A and B and rocketed straight to C.
A seriously bizarre dynamic.
In that sense, today's meetup was perfect for sanding down the awkwardness. I could let myself be led around for a day.
"This way."
The first stop was a shop lined wall to wall with claw machines.
"W-we can kill some time here first, at least."
I followed her tense guidance inside.
Every machine was stuffed with piles of aggressively cute plushies.
Soft. Pink. The whole place radiated that energy.
I was impressed.
"Oh…"
I already want to leave.
A space this cutesy? Even if you turned me inside out, I would never match it.
What were you even supposed to do with a useless plush? Sure, they looked adorable, but leave one of those sitting around the house and people would start calling you all kinds of names.
Ah. Right. In this world, most people already were that kind of guy.
Fuck.
"Noona, that one's so cute! Can you get it for me?"
"Oh, sure! Leave it to noona!"
Nearby, one of those guys was bouncing on his toes while staring at a plush. He looked so precious I had a violent urge to flick him hard in the forehead.
So it was not just sexual morals that had flipped. Not a fact I particularly wanted to know.
Come to think of it…
Claw-machine shops were one of the popular crowd's classic date spots.
Mostly places where the "girls" showed off their claw skills for partners who liked cute things. Of course, the humans who actually thrived here were a tiny handful.
Not everyone was into the ultra-adorable aesthetic. It was an absurdly narrow way of looking at the world.
While I was thinking that, Seong A-rin asked with an awkward smile,
"Is there a plush you want? I'll win it for you."
"……"
A little disappointment settled in—but still. It was not like I could not play along.
I looked around for a moment.
Normally a place like this would have a few genuinely hot figures mixed in. Maybe because the world had flipped, every figure here seemed to have been reverse-gender-swapped too.
With no better option, I picked a fluffy lion plush.
Whirr.
A thousand-won bill slid into the machine, and a lecherous claw set out to violate the lion.
Seong A-rin concentrated so hard it looked like her soul had been mortgaged to the glass case.
Somehow the claw locked onto the lion and hauled it upward. Dangling precariously by a leg, the plush rose smoothly toward the top.
Color flooded A-rin's face at the sight.
Thud.
Only for a second. The claw—clearly rigged by the shop owner—let go the instant it cleared the pile and dropped the lion.
The cowardly little claw never did manage to claim its prize.
"Ah…"
A sigh slipped out of A-rin beside me. She looked genuinely disappointed. I offered a helpful comment for her sake.
"Wow, A-rin. You suck at this."
"……I still have a few more tries."
She pulled out another thousand-won bill. Something had lit a fire under her. People really did need a little provocation before their fighting spirit caught.
Her eyes locked on again like lasers. Judging by the aura, she looked ready to win one any second.
So I stood there and watched Seong A-rin play the claw machine.
In the end, she did get it.
"Niiice~ You got it~"
I dragged the ends of my words out halfheartedly and trailed after her.
After that light bit of amusement, we were wandering downtown again.
A small, cute lion plush now sat in my right hand. Soft mane tickled my skin.
The thing felt ridiculously squishy in my grip.
She had won it, sure—but she still looked faintly gloomy. I knew exactly why.
I needled her, just a little.
"Still, ten thousand won was kind of a lot~"
Because she had burned a full ten thousand won on this tiny plush.
Winning it had felt great in the moment, of course.
Nearly ten failures, then one success. How could that not feel good?
Even I had made noise and shown some joy then. I had grabbed her shoulders and shaken her.
That feeling did not last.
The second we stepped back out onto the street, the buyer's remorse hit. A mediocre-quality plush that barely filled one hand, for ten thousand won. Of course you started calculating value for money.
Wouldn't a steaming bowl of soup rice have been better? That thought was hard to shake.
Still—she had won it. Better a victorious sucker than a defeated one. She was a victorious sucker.
"We've still got some time left, though… What should we do?"
"Drop the formal speech."
"Ah—what should we do?"
I kept teasing her as we walked, and she asked the question. Claw machines really were terrible for efficiency.
They ate money and barely ate time. As a result, we still had a solid stretch left before the movie.
I could see her panicking at the sudden empty gap in the schedule.
Had she seriously planned to burn the entire wait with claw machines alone? The clumsy date course almost made me laugh.
I thought for a second, then said,
"Well, it's not like there's anything else to do. Want to just walk around?"
"Is that okay?"
"I don't mind."
It was not as if we had hours and hours until the movie. Killing the time with aimless wandering did not sound half bad.
If something fun turned up while we walked, we could stop and play. Simple.
So we started walking with no particular destination.
Seong A-rin on the left, me on the right, side by side.
Conversation did not exactly flow.
"The weather's nice today. R-right?"
Neither of us had an especially lively personality to begin with. The occasional silence was inevitable.
Seong A-rin must have found those silences pretty awkward, because she kept tossing out useless lines like that.
Still hard to deal with, huh? Watching her fidget made the urge to mess with her well up all over again.
I glanced around. Weekend downtown was full of couples, as expected. Men and women walking in pairs were everywhere.
Back in the day, the sight would have made me start cursing under my breath. Now I did not feel much of anything.
Ah. Maybe because I had already hit C myself.
I watched for a while longer and realized most of the couples were holding hands as they walked.
A fun idea struck me. She was already this awkward—what would she do if I took her hand right now?
Curious, I just grabbed Seong A-rin's hand.
"!"
She flinched hard. I ignored it and said,
"We might get separated. Let's hold hands."
"……"
Seong A-rin only nodded without a word. Ah. I had been hoping for a more colorful reaction.
Still, I had turned her face red, so I decided to call it a win.
Warmth traveled through my fingers. A soft touch wrapped around my hand.
It was a pretty comfortable afternoon.
"Ah."
After we had walked a little longer, something occurred to me and I asked her,
"Come to think of it—what movie are we seeing?"
"Ah, it's called The Unspeakable Secret Garden… It's a romance."
"Aha…"
Wait.
"What genre did you say?"
"A romance movie."
She smiled brightly, as if that were the best possible answer.
I was impressed.
"Oh…"
And then I thought to myself,
Seong A-rin has absolutely zero talent for planning a date course.