Jiyu's Comic Book
"Ah... ah!! Not there, it's sensitive...!"
"Hana, quit squirming!"
"Ah!!! No!!!"
"Hup!"
"I don't waaaant to!"
I let out a sharp scream, but I couldn't fight off Yumi's hands as she pressed in close against me. Her fingers moved so deftly that even I — an adult — had to admire them.
Creeeak.
The door opened, and I had no choice but to step out in a monkey-shaped pair of pajamas. I stuck my lip out, glaring at the onesie Yumi had shoved at me. It wasn't fit to touch the hem of the dinosaur pajamas I had at home. A monkey? It didn't suit me in the slightest. The only pajamas that suited me were dinosaur ones.
"They look great on you, Hana!"
Yumi and Jiyu were already dressed in animal pajamas of their own, as if this were routine. Yumi wore an adorable cat onesie that made you want to throw a nya-punch at it on sight, and Jiyu was dressed as a puppy.
"Why am I the only one in a monkey onesie?"
Were there no cute ones left? Monkeys just didn't match me. Wouldn't a sparrow, or a penguin — something actually cute — have suited me better?
"If you lose rock-paper-scissors, you wear it quietly!"
Jiyu said it while still in her puppy pajamas. Honestly, the puppy looked like it would have suited me better...
She dragged a desk into the middle of the room, unfolded it, and announced herself.
"Board games! Let's play board games!"
From who-knows-where, she produced a box stuffed with board games. It was surprising to find games like that just sitting around a house. Didn't most people go to a board-game café for this sort of thing? Was this what they called a generation gap?
"Board games first!"
It was the classic real-estate game — buy land, claim it as your own, then slap merciless rent on anyone unlucky enough to land there. When I was little, I used to wonder whether Korea had made the thing, because Seoul was always the most expensive property on the board. Thinking about land prices these days, though, it was oddly accurate. Seoul real estate was incomparably pricier than anything out in the provinces.
"I've played this before, and it was so much fun!"
Jiyu and Yumi started setting up the board like excited kids. Just as they said, board games got better the more people you had. But these two had picked the wrong opponent — badly. I'd lived more than twenty years. I wasn't so sloppy that I'd lose to kids who hadn't even made it to ten. Tonight, I was going to show them an adult's seasoned skill.
Before I knew it, the setup was done. I picked up the dice and smiled a confident smile. Time to show them the gap in power.
"I'll go first!"
With that, I tossed the dice in my hand onto the board. It was starting now.
"Waaah!"
All I could do was watch my piece get ruthlessly reduced to a beggar. There it stood, on Jiyu's land — Seoul, no less, with a hotel built on top of it. Even if I handed over every property and every bit of cash I'd scraped together so far, I still couldn't pay for landing on Jiyu's tile. I was out far sooner than Yumi.
I sat there frozen, unable to move. Jiyu, as if she couldn't stand the sight of me like that, swept up every last asset and property laid out in front of me.
"Hana, you're really bad at this! Is today your first time?"
Yumi scratched at my pride without mercy. I'd played this game so many times... When the mobile version came out, I'd been passionate enough to dump a whole month's salary into it. But whether my dice luck had abandoned me, or my skill had always just been money talking, I got cleaned out without pity.
I collapsed onto the floor. My piece had vanished from the board ages ago. It had met the wrong owner and ended up a pauper.
"My character..."
In real life I was rich enough that I never had to worry about money, but my board-game piece was flat broke. It didn't even have the strength to pay. I sat quietly and watched Yumi and Jiyu play on. In that fierce contest, the winner was Jiyu. People really did each seem to have their own special talent. In Jiyu's case, that talent appeared to be board games.
"Jenga! Let's play Jenga!"
The next game was Jenga — stacking wooden blocks and pulling them out one by one. I was confident about this one too. Time to show off the touch I'd honed on retreats. I helped stack the blocks, stoking the fire in my heart.
"Ugh... ugh, please!"
But the gods didn't seem to be on my side. I reached for a tower that looked ready to topple at any moment. My delicate, artistic touch as I tried to ease a block free did nothing. I'd drawn it about halfway out when the tower, unable to bear the shoddy construction, came crashing down in a heap. The end of a tower built without proper rebar.
"Aaah!"
I shrieked at the sight of the collapsing tower. The fallen tower did not put itself back together.
"Hana's really bad at board games!"
This couldn't be! How had I ended up treated like this? I didn't feel like the person who'd won all those minigames on the retreat. I wore a gloomy face as I put the Jenga away. The loser cleaning up afterward was the etiquette of this duel.
While I tidied with that sunken expression, a voice called from outside the room — Jiyu's mother, telling them to clear the table and bring in the tasty snacks she'd mentioned earlier. I shot up to go, but Jiyu and Yumi stopped me.
"Hana, you're the guest today, so just relax in the room!"
They were probably treating me specially because it was my first time at Jiyu's house. Not having to deal with the annoying dishes, or go fetch the snacks, made me happy. The gloom from losing at board games earlier eased a little.
Once Jiyu and Yumi left the room, I stayed seated and looked around. A third-grader's room was cute. Pink wallpaper, and a pretty character decorating the bookshelf — I couldn't tell which anime she was from.
I leaned against the bed and reached for my phone. But the hand I'd briefly slipped underneath bumped into something. This feeling... a book?
Curious, I reached under the bed and felt around. The gap was so narrow my arm barely fit. If I'd still had an adult's body, it wouldn't have gone in at all — a crack even a vacuum cleaner would have trouble with.
I pulled the book out from under the bed. It looked as if it hadn't been tucked away for long: not a speck of dust, perfectly clean. Clean enough that I could have believed she'd just bought it. On the cover, two women stood holding each other's hands.
A comic book?
I had a feeling this was something I wasn't supposed to see. But curiosity kills the cat. I boldly set the book on my knees and slowly turned the pages.
There wasn't much time, so I flipped through quickly, checking only the pictures. And little by little, something felt off. Two women appeared. At first they seemed to be fighting — and then, all of a sudden, they were getting along?
Right. You grow by fighting!
The problem was that they got along a little too well. The two women looked at each other, and one planted a deep kiss on the other's cheek. By then, even I realized this was no ordinary comic. Face burning red, I hurriedly put the book back where it had been. If it was this kind of book, shouldn't the cover have had a red adults-only sticker on it?
I was an adult, so I knew books like this existed. Finding one in a friend's house was a different matter. Jiyu probably had some unusual ideas about romance. In my view, a woman was meant to end up with a man. I was the exception, of course. A case like mine probably didn't exist anywhere else in the world.
Since I'd changed into this body, I hadn't felt romantic interest in men or women. And I probably never would, not for the rest of my life.
At school they'd said Jiyu was reading weird books, and to think it was this. Was this what she meant when she talked about comics? There were plenty of comics on the bookshelf in her room, true. But judging by the titles, they were just ordinary, unremarkable ones. And yet she'd hidden away a comic packed full of her own desires.
I shook my head, deciding to brush off the lingering heat from a moment ago. What kind of era was this? An era of freedom of expression. People didn't roll you up in a straw mat and beat you the way they used to. And it might just be a passing phase. Kids changed from moment to moment. Someday she might look back on this and file it away as dark history.
I had plenty of dark history myself, so I could understand. I'd done plenty of things too embarrassing to say out loud. I hadn't known it when I was young; I only realized once I got older.
Anyway, maybe because my head was still hot, I didn't notice that I'd put the book back in a slightly different spot from where it had been.