You Can't Die of Awkwardness
Dying of awkwardness is nothing more than empty, exaggerated rhetoric.
It is the idle amusement of carefree people who have never tasted the kind of social agony that might actually kill a person.
I can guarantee it: no one has ever died of awkwardness.
Even if you wanted to, it could never be pain fierce enough to smother the brain’s instinctive scream to stay alive.
“Honestly, bold of you.”
And right now, I was feeling that pain.
Cha Seeun turned the wheel with fluid grace, murmuring in a voice so soft it barely reached me.
“I never expected to get a confession while grocery shopping.”
I kept my flaming face pressed hard against the window and continued playing dead. I sincerely wished a heart attack would take me on the spot.
But there was no chance the merciless Cha Seeun would simply release me now that she had me in her grip.
“Did you choose the place on purpose?”
“S-Seeun… let’s just stay quiet… and drive. Focus on the road.”
“Quiet? How quiet do I need to be? Should I speak at the volume you used when you confessed?”
Yes—people cannot die of awkwardness.
Dying of sheer embarrassment, however, is entirely possible.
To prove it, I rested my hand on the door handle.
Reality is not a movie. Jumping from a moving car might actually kill you.
Clunk. Clunk.
That was why I pulled the handle—yet real cars possess a cruel streak that refuses even the mercy of escape.
Cha Seeun snickered at the sight of me and glided smoothly into the parking garage.
She kept snickering at me the whole way, the few groceries cradled in my arms. Every time I glanced over at the sound, she was holding a perfectly blank expression, lips trembling as she forced them into a straight line.
“Seeun, be careful.”
“Careful? Ah, right. I should be careful.”
She nodded and stepped into the elevator.
The little box rose so smoothly it felt as though every surface of this fine building had been greased. Everywhere I looked glittered, which only made the red of my face beside the particularly pale Cha Seeun stand out more painfully.
Before we had even unpacked back at the officetel, Cha Seeun stood casually in the living room and turned to face me.
It was the same face as always, yet somehow the faintly excited air around her grated on my nerves.
“Should I be careful here too?”
“Of what.”
Even at my sulky reply she simply stared at the furrow between my brows the way a teacher regards a kindergartener’s tantrum.
“The confession. I was telling you to prepare yourself in case I hear you say you like me again.”
“Kyaaak!”
I could not hold it in any longer and let out a strangled scream.
I can’t take it. I really can’t. If you’re going to tease someone, at least give them a little time first.
And what is that blank face while you stab someone else’s heart over and over with an awl? People are not supposed to be this cruel!
“Seeun, do you know how terrible your personality is?!”
“I know. But you know you like that terrible-personality woman, right?”
My mouth snapped shut.
It was true, and it was something I myself had said.
Cha Seeun undid the top button of her shirt and disappeared down the right-hand hallway.
“I’m hungry. Make dinner.”
I stopped mid-escape and frowned.
“Why me?”
“You said you would.”
Everything that came out of Cha Seeun’s mouth today set my teeth on edge—especially the fact that it was true, so I could not argue.
Besides, I could hardly defy the landlord and the one holding the purse strings.
I obediently turned around and took my place in the kitchen.
Looking down at the ingredients I had brought, I fell into thought.
What should I make?
Do I even know how to cook in the first place?
I could not very well walk over to Cha Seeun—who was waiting for her meal with the leisurely air of a noble from a grand house—and ask something as stupid as “Do I know how to cook?”
At the very least, if I served something inedible she would meticulously explain, point by point, why it qualified as food waste.
Yet as I began prepping the ingredients, my hands did not feel awkward at all.
Green onions finely chopped, bacon cut into bite-sized pieces. I shook the gleaming frying pan like a stage prop, and before I knew it a perfectly respectable fried rice had taken shape.
Then, with hand movements I could not even explain, I cracked eggs with a crisp tap-tap, and a neatly plated omelet rice that looked ready to sell sat finished before me.
“Hmm.”
I set down the ketchup I had automatically picked up to draw a heart and instead took a moment to admire my own work.
“Was I a chef?”
It was a strange feeling. I had moved half on instinct, without any real plan, and the finished product was flawless.
I felt a quiet pride at having discovered something I could do.
I set the plate down and knocked on Cha Seeun’s door.
“Seeun, dinner’s ready.”
“Already?”
Cha Seeun had good proportions and was tall for a woman, yet still a little shorter than me. Whenever I faced her I had to lower my gaze just slightly.
Naturally my eyes drifted to the collarbone visible between the three undone buttons of her shirt.
Cha Seeun quietly fastened them again.
“Aren’t you stuffy?”
“You…”
The brief satisfaction of having left her speechless lasted only a second. At the look she shot me, my spine folded of its own accord into a soft, apologetic curve.
“Hide your eyes a little.”
“What am I supposed to do about what’s right there?”
“Should I put a blindfold on you?”
With a line that sounded entirely serious she brushed past me and headed for the table.
Steam still rose from the freshly made omelet rice.
“How is it?”
Cha Seeun did not even sit. She simply let her gaze fall onto the plate, the way someone might look at a long-lost object suddenly rediscovered.
She stayed like that for a long while before finally speaking.
“Still only knowing how to make this one thing, I see.”
“…What?”
The hand that had been reaching for a spoon froze.
Cha Seeun seemed to realize her slip a beat later and chose silence.
“Shall we eat before it gets cold…?”
“Yeah.”
In the end we both began the meal as though nothing had happened.
Even I, who could rev into overdrive at the slightest brush of contact, was not stupid enough to crack a joke in this atmosphere.
The soft clink of spoons filled the space above the table instead.
“It’s good.”
From Cha Seeun, that level of praise was high praise. For all that, it was simply an ordinarily delicious omelet rice.
After the quick dinner I silently cleared the empty dishes.
When I had turned the brand-new kitchen into something that looked lived-in and stepped back into the living room, Cha Seeun was already sitting alone, pouring a brown liquid into a glass and drinking it.
It was nothing more than that simple scene. Yet the way her features caught the seeping evening light made me think, unbidden, of something aesthetic.
I quietly claimed the seat beside her on the sofa and asked,
“Is that alcohol?”
“It’s tea.”
To anyone looking it was the picture of someone pouring strong whiskey and washing the day away with loneliness as a side dish.
“Why do you drink tea like that?”
Cha Seeun tilted the glass without concern.
“I run hot.”
“Really? Can I check once?”
Despite the claim of running hot, Cha Seeun was the sort of person who made the air around her turn chilling.
I demurely folded my open arms onto my knees.
Instead I glanced at the glass and asked,
“Then is there no alcohol?”
“I don’t drink.”
I tilted my head.
“Why?”
“Conversely, what’s the reason to drink?”
“To disinfect the heart wounds that came from being so cold?”
Before my face could flush red again I held out my hand with shameless boldness.
“So give me the card so I can buy some alcohol.”
“No.”
Tak.
Cha Seeun set the glass down beside her.
And with the faintest lift of one corner of her mouth she finally went for the open wound.
“If you drink, you’ll just confess again.”
After all the trouble of handing over the card, what he came back with was a single can of beer and one bottle of soju.
Without even a side dish he simply downed the can in one cool gulp, and that was the entire performance.
“Seeunnn…”
Is he cursing me?
Cha Seeun propped her chin in her hand and watched the thrashing of someone thoroughly seized by alcohol.
Is this what it feels like to keep a pet? It was a surprisingly entertaining spectacle.
“Can’t I just call you Seeun noona?”
“No.”
“Whyyy?”
Then, without even waiting for an answer, he gulped from the glass again.
Cha Seeun did not stop him.
She had already poured every drop of the alcohol he bought down the sink; what Shin Ian was drinking now was water.
“Kuuu, I’m drunk!”
After that death-rattle of an exclamation his neck folded and his forehead slid gently against the table.
Cha Seeun was silent for a long while.
Then she let out a small sigh.
“I don’t think he used to be like this.”
He had never been someone who enjoyed drinking in the first place.
Of course, she had learned more about him from these two days of living together than from all the time she had spent with Shin Ian before.
For example:
The face that always went around smiling had been a mask.
The way he accepted everything without likes or dislikes had been preferences carefully adjusted for her sake.
…And the fact that that Shin Ian was gone now.
Cha Seeun slowly stroked the hair of the man collapsed on the table.
“I missed you.”
So when the same face and the same voice treated her the way they once had, she had gotten excited like a child. For a moment she had even smiled inside, thinking things might go back to the way they were.
She could not cry.
“So I’m looking at you.”
Because she was that kind of woman.
As she tried to pull her hand away from the familiar sensation—
Tuk. Her wrist was caught by Shin Ian, whom she had thought was asleep.
“Seeun… do you hate me?”
It would have been easier if that were true.
Suddenly she wanted to tell him.
All the things that would never have happened if she had hated Shin Ian.
The version of them that would never have had to come this far.
“You like me too, Seeun.”
Even drunk, Shin Ian would not let go of her sleeve. Relying on a drunkenness that would vanish the moment he woke, she opened her mouth just a little.
“That’s why it’s troublesome.”
The strength in the fingertips that had held her gradually loosened.
Cha Seeun looked at that face for a long while,
then quietly pressed her lips to his forehead.