Well, Yeah, But...
Living in such stifled silence without anything particularly noteworthy to do left me utterly exhausted.
I could always duck out somehow—games, drinking with friends. But for Song Haneul, who had neither friends nor any real hobbies to speak of, it was nothing more than time she had to spend restraining herself.
She'd said she needed to write a new scenario to replace the portfolio she'd scrapped, yet she couldn't focus properly and just kept groaning through it.
"I have plans today, so I'll be home late. You two go ahead and eat dinner without me."
The day Mom left the house for a while.
As if she'd been waiting for this exact moment, she slammed open my door like it was her own room and walked right in.
Knocking? She'd thrown that courtesy to the dogs. A true gentleman, that one.
"Song Hamin, what're you doing?"
"Looking at clothes. Why?"
"You? Clothes?"
"You told me to dress up before, and now you're giving me shit for actually doing it?"
"No, no. It's just... unexpected, that's all. You never listened when I said that before."
Song Haneul waved her hands dismissively as she slowly approached.
"Get lost."
"Looking at winter clothes, huh. Makes sense—it's been cold lately. Hard to leave the house."
She shrugged, as if she hadn't even heard me tell her to leave.
She clearly had no intention of listening, so I couldn't even bring myself to laugh.
"Like you ever went out much to begin with."
"Ha, please. If I'd been busy, I wouldn't even have had time to talk to you."
"So that's why you're here?"
I let out a hollow laugh and flicked the mouse around.
She'd been the one to get all self-absorbed and try to needle me first, yet somehow the reprimand came flying at my head.
"Don't grab my hair."
"Why, afraid it'll fall out?"
"Yeah. Let go."
"Okey-dokey. Precious cargo, acknowledged."
It wasn't at a stage where I needed to worry yet, but ever since I'd seen a buddy in the military whose hair had already started thinning out, I'd decided to be careful.
If you didn't treat it carefully while you still had it, it seemed like it might just vanish without a trace.
I smoothed out my mussed hair.
Song Haneul, as if she had zero interest in any of that, leaned her upper body in to look at the monitor. Her loosely dangling breasts rubbed against my forearm.
Before, I'd just let it slide, but remembering what I'd once tucked between them made my head go hot.
"But why winter clothes? Wouldn't it be better to start with spring stuff?"
"Once I move out and re-enroll, I'm gonna be hanging out with my classmates again, right?"
"And now?"
"Right now the timing's still off."
"That so?"
I had a friend who'd enlisted around the same time, gotten out together, and planned to graduate with me.
Once that guy re-enrolled too and we started going around meeting people together, I figured I'd get used to things pretty quickly.
It was almost November already, so in just two months I'd already be twenty-three...?
Counting my age again made it feel like time had just flown by.
I'd only been in school for a year, but spending about a year and a half in the military had completely wrecked my sense of time.
"You're not going back to school?"
"...Yeah, not planning to. Expulsion or whatever, I don't care."
"I thought having a diploma would be nice at least."
"Doesn't matter—my major's my major. It doesn't match where I'm trying to go."
"If that was the case, you should've aimed lower from the start."
"Hey, I didn't know back then. Song Hamin, you picking a fight?"
"Ow, don't pull my ear."
She grabbed my ear hard and yanked it up, making my head snap sideways.
The sudden tug startled me so much it hurt even worse.
"What should you wear? What do you like?"
"I was just gonna buy a puffer jacket?"
"Ah, a puffer... You're not getting a coat?"
"A coat? I dunno."
"You could wear a sweater under it or something."
She poked at the monitor with her finger.
Her nails looked a bit long, which somehow bothered me for no reason.
"If you wreck my monitor, you're paying for it."
"How much is a monitor that you're making such a fuss?"
"I paid about five hundred for it."
"Okay, fair enough to fuss."
The price must have been higher than she expected—her finger curled back.
Anyway, even if it was annoying, since Song Haneul was here and she probably knew better than I did, I started asking her about things one by one.
"How about this one?"
"That one's pretty good."
"This?"
"If you change up your hairstyle a bit."
"That one too?"
"No, that one's a hard no. The second you picked that, your eyes went crooked."
There were some cutting remarks thrown back at me, but somehow I managed to get things into the cart.
Since things had gone this far, I considered buying spring clothes for the new semester too, but given the season, they were still hard to find.
Apparently even when they sold summer stuff cheap, they rarely put out spring clothes yet.
When I forced myself to dig around, all I found were classic prices with no discounts, and my hand just wouldn't reach for them.
"Guess I'll have to buy the rest next time."
With nothing to earn besides allowance, and reluctant to blow through my savings in chunks, I wrapped up the shopping.
After closing the site halfheartedly, there was nothing left to do, so I naturally drifted back to gaming.
"Gaming again? You're addicted."
Her eyes had been sparkling just a moment ago, but the second the game screen came up, they went all droopy.
"Why don't you learn a bit yourself? What do you even do at home? You said you were writing a portfolio, but I've never once seen you write anything."
"What am I supposed to do when the inspiration won't come? And with Mom around, I was so busy watching my step I couldn't do anything."
"You're not supposed to write a portfolio while watching for cues."
"...Well, yeah, but."
She seemed to have something she wanted to say, sticking right next to me and not pulling away.
I needed to move the mouse, but she was plastered to my right arm, making it hard to even move.
It felt like she was deliberately protesting against me playing games, so my eyes slid over to her.
"When are you gonna get off?"
"Play or don't. Your call."
"Aren't you uncomfortable?"
"Not even a little."
She was leaning against my body while I sat in this awkward half-crouch—what a lie.
"If you've got nothing to do, go out or something."
"Is there something to do if I go out?"
"No?"
"What the hell."
Her voice sounded incredulous, but what could I do?
It wasn't like I'd gone around looking for things to do with her outside.
"Go to a café or something."
"Maybe. Want me to check what I should wear?"
"—Sure, whatever."
I'd meant to refuse, but twisted it into agreement.
Remembering what had happened before made me self-conscious about how I looked right now.
It was Song Haneul who'd gotten her number asked for, yet somehow I was the one left feeling scratched up.
When it was her, it might end at just being annoying, but standing next to her, I felt like I hadn't even been treated as a man.
Even if we were siblings, we didn't wear name tags—other people might not know.
If that was the reaction even with someone standing right next to her, did that mean I was just... irrelevant?
Unlike Song Haneul, I was starting to lose a bit of confidence in myself.
"How about this?"
"Is that okay?"
"Looks fine to me."
Song Haneul naturally rummaged through and held it up against my body.
She squinted one eye shut and stared hard, then nodded.
I had no idea what criteria she was judging by, which made me anxious.
"...It is okay, right?"
"Yeah. You don't like it?"
"No, just..."
It stung a little inside, but I didn't want to tell Song Haneul that, so I mumbled something vague.
"Try it on."
"Aren't we going out?"
"What, between us?"
What kind of relationship is that supposed to be.
I was momentarily speechless, but I thought I understood the feeling, so I just put it on.
Once I was dressed, Song Haneul's head tilted.
"Come here. This looks better."
She yanked my upper body down like she was grabbing me by the collar and started fussing with my hair.
Washed hair dried out and came loose right away, so she put a little wax in to set it.
Looking in the mirror, my hair—which had grown however it pleased—now had direction and gave off a clean, sharp impression.
"Better, right? You go around looking all scruffy, that's why you can't even go on department blind dates."
"I went on those sometimes in freshman year?"
"Huh?"
"What."
"Oh, really? Is that so? Well, I didn't know."
In freshman year our schools were different, and our schedules were even less likely to match, so we rarely ran into each other.
Because of that, we didn't know how the other had been living.
Add the military on top of that, and it had been a really long time since we'd seen each other.
Even if I'd told her, it was enough time to forget.
"Not like there was much to say about it."
"So, when you go to those, you meet people from other departments?"
"Yeah, usually?"
"How was it."
"Just went to drink, basically."
"Don't people normally go to date?"
Song Haneul kept stroking and fussing with my hair over and over.
She seemed determined to keep going until she got the shape she wanted—her hands had no end.
With my head half-bowed, her large breasts sat right in front of my eyes.
There was nowhere to look away, and closing my eyes tightly would have been just as awkward, so I stayed still.
"Just going doesn't mean you start dating. Does that even make sense?"
"...Don't people usually try to meet right away?"
"No—I was thinking about enlisting. Why would I meet anyone? I just went to fill a seat. They said they were short on people."
"You live getting treated like that out there?"
Needling me again, gently.
Is that Song Haneul's specialty?
"I told you I don't go much."
"Right, 'cause of the military~"
"Let's just drop it."
Her tone was a little teasing.
Something about it made my insides simmer, so I squeezed my eyes shut.
"You've been staring at my chest so long you got hard?"
"...You did that on purpose, didn't you?"
"Yeah, you just figure that out?"
Song Haneul giggled.
Keeping her hands in my hair so I'd keep looking at her chest until I reacted down below—impressive, really.
I'd thought she was just innocently fixing my hair.
"Enough. You put some clothes on too."
"You were all careful watching your step, and now you're pent up again?"
Ever since Song Haneul had helped me out with her chest that time, we hadn't done anything.
With Mom home the whole time, I didn't want to show any weird signs, so we'd naturally had to keep living in abstinence.
A life where even jerking off felt like something to be careful about was a bit barren, honestly.
"It wasn't even like this originally—why are you acting like you're going crazy over it?"
Late-blooming thieves never know when dawn breaks, or whatever the saying is—I had no idea how deep she was planning to fall into this.
At this rate, how was she even planning to hold out?
"You like it too."
"No."
"No?"
"Well... yeah, but."
Is this really okay? I kept thinking it over and over, but I didn't know anymore.
Once that sensation got lodged in my head, it became experience and lingered faintly.
The problem was that just looking at Song Haneul's chest now brought back that feeling.
After hesitating a moment, I tried to fix my wavering eyes somewhere else.
"Got any condoms?"
I'd never bought any, so I didn't have any.
Song Haneul seemed a bit troubled too, pursing her lips.
"No?"