Get Used to It (2)
As soon as we came out of the Great Rift, we hurried to the car and got in.
Kang Juhyuk, seated in the passenger side, had started dozing off before the evening had even fully set in. He looked like he was fighting to stay awake as hard as he could, but there was only so much a person with ordinary stamina could do after walking nonstop for twenty hours. If it had been Choi Eunho, I would’ve looked over at some guy nodding off beside me and gone, “Are you out of your mind?” before chewing him out on the spot.
"I’ll wake you when we get there, so just sleep."
"Ah, n-no. I shouldn’t... "
"You need to listen to me. We’re not in the middle of sex."
"...Yes. Understood."
Maybe it was maternal instinct, or maybe I just couldn’t stand watching him force himself to stay awake like that. Either way, after I’d told him to stop resisting and sleep, I drove Kang Juhyuk all the way to his studio apartment.
I had wondered if I’d need to carry him inside, since he’d been half asleep in the car, but thankfully the little bit of rest he’d gotten on the drive seemed to have helped.
Kang Juhyuk kept thanking me as he got out of the car and went inside.
"Thank you, Nuna. Tomorrow, in the evening, right?"
"Yeah. You look half-dead. Go in and sleep."
"Y-yes. Thank you."
I’d actually been thinking about asking whether we could handle this paycheck and tomorrow’s meal at his place, too, but he looked so wiped out that I never even got the chance to bring it up, and I just went home.
Walking with a limp was infuriatingly distracting.
Going home. Even if I’d wiped myself down with a towel in the middle, there was no way I was clean, so the first thing I did was take a shower.
After tossing all my clothes into the washer-dryer, I looked for something else to put on.
Now that I’d finally gotten out of the sexy underwear, I could at least go back to something plain and...
Plain, huh.
Come to think of it, this stuff was kind of tacky. If a woman I’d been seeing back when I was Choi Eunho had been wearing this... I would’ve stripped it right off her.
Given this body, it was probably still obscene just to have it on at all, but honestly, to my eye, it still felt insufficient.
No, no.
Hah. What did it matter? It wasn’t like I was showing it to anyone. Kang Juhyuk?
Well, sure. He had said he wanted to see me in sexy underwear more closely.
But why would I bother showing it to him? That guy gets turned on by whatever I do. I don’t need this on top of everything else.
Still... maybe I could use it as bait. As a reward or something.
I didn’t really have anything I needed him to do, but if the thought ever came to me, I could use it then.
With that in mind, I put on the plain underwear and turned on my smartphone.
I opened a delivery app and started searching for what I should eat. I had nothing else to do, anyway.
Back when I was Choi Eunho, whenever I had time like this, I’d go out, find a woman first, and if the mood got right I’d have dinner; if not, I’d just have sex right away.
Honestly, my body was never all that dependent on food in the first place. If I wanted to eat, it was more of a matter of wanting to than needing to.
The energy I got from the Blessing was practically limitless, so I could feed it straight into my body.
Originally, I’d been planning to take Kang Juhyuk to one of the restaurants I used to go to for moments like that—somewhere with beef, pork, and chicken, where he could choose whatever he wanted, whether it was lunch or dinner.
I wanted to talk about the allowance, too, and tell him that I was always coming to places like this, so now that he was part of my party, he should learn to keep up. I’d explained it to him more than once, but it still hadn’t really stuck, and his thoughts were still painfully small. It was frustrating to watch, so I needed to toughen him up. Besides, the fact that it dragged up old memories for me irritated me, too.
After this—after we ate tomorrow and settled up—I thought it’d be best to forget about Kang Juhyuk for about five days. For one thing, I should overlap my period with the buildup of lust... so that I wouldn’t be at the mercy of it even during that time.
Yeah. That would be best.
In the end, what I ordered was chicken.
The only annoying thing about this place was that when you ordered, you had to give the code for the front entrance, or else the delivery guy couldn’t get in.
I ordered a box of boneless fried chicken and had them leave it at the front door.
Delivery food after so long was... well, fine.
It’s not like I’d ever been some refined gourmet to begin with.
I’d never had a reason to hate that punchy, sweet, artificially addictive sauce.
Once I finished the delivery food...
there was nothing left to do.
Even if I wanted to text Kang Juhyuk and say, “Just come to my place tomorrow and we’ll eat delivery and talk about what comes next,” there was no point. He’d be asleep by then anyway, so I wouldn’t get a reply no matter what.
I didn’t want to play the pathetic role of sending messages to someone who couldn’t even read them.
...I’m bored.
Without my hobby—without one-night stands—there was nothing left to do.
Since my body didn’t react to women, I couldn’t even have lesbian sex. When I first ended up in this body, I’d wondered if I’d have to rely on that at least, but even that wasn’t happening.
What shocked me most was that looking at Ha Yujeong’s body hadn’t turned me on at all. Now, if I saw a naked woman, I might flinch just from remembering that.
And I had absolutely no intention of going around hunting men like some slutty Chae Haeun.
Choi Eunho had never had many people he could really call acquaintances, but even the few he had were cut off when I became Chae Eunha. The only person who even knew anything about me and was worth talking to now was Ha Yujeong.
It felt empty.
Was it loneliness?
I was bored.
I had nothing to do.
If anything, I wished a mission would drop in my lap. A gate opening in the middle of the city, a monster suddenly appearing—something, anything.
Would I have been less bored if Kang Juhyuk had been here?
...Well, he would’ve been fun to tease, at least.
I lay down on the bed. There was no reason I should’ve been tired, but the time just wouldn’t pass. It was better to sleep through it, since there was nothing for me to do during this in-between stretch before I got my original body back.
Until Kang Juhyuk recovered, until my period ended, until the situation was right for me to go back into the Great Rift...
Maybe it was because this body itself was weak to loneliness.
Either way, it was still my body for now.
So...
Yeah. It’s a little lonely.
—Ding.
...Look at this bastard.
"What are you doing if you’re not asleep?"
"I lay down to sleep, but then I started thinking about you, Nuna. Would it make you uncomfortable if I said that?"
"You said you liked me. What’s so surprising about that?"
A guy who’d never really dated a woman, no experience to speak of, and whose only sex partner was me.
In a situation like that, it was only natural for him to start getting attached to the only woman who was giving him her body. That was pretty much the standard shape of an early flame.
At least until this fire died down, he’d probably follow my lead.
After that, I’d lean on loyalty, then money, and use him as my dildo until I got my body back.
"Did you have dinner?"
"...Yeah. I ate something."
"What did you have?"
"Delivery. I couldn’t be bothered to go out."
Unlike before, there was no reason for me to go out and do anything.
I’d been thinking that, since I was bored, I might call Ha Yujeong—the only person who knew my situation—but...
We weren’t close, not even slightly; if anything, we’d spent most of our time disliking each other. If I called her without any reason, it would just make the atmosphere weird.
Ever since I became Chae Eunha, she didn’t seem quite as uncomfortable around me, but that woman really did seem like she was crazy about women.
"Delivery food... sounds nice."
"Why? Order some."
"Delivery for just one person feels too wasteful because of the shipping fee."
"Hah. You’re saying it’s nice because you’re worried about a few thousand won? How did you even eat dinner?"
"I heated up some leftover side dishes from the fridge and ate them with instant rice."
"Just eat whatever you want. I’m going to cover that kind of money anyway. If you want home-cooked food, eat home-cooked food. If you want delivery, eat delivery. If you want to go out, eat out."
"But it’s better to save money, isn’t it?"
"When you get to the point where money keeps piling up no matter how much you spend, you stop thinking about it."
As I said that and stared up at the ceiling, his voice suddenly cut off.
What, did he fall asleep?
"You asleep?"
"No... I just realized, all of a sudden, that you’re really a distant person."
"What’s that supposed to mean, all of a sudden?"
"Ah, no, no! It’s not that I suddenly started disliking you or anything, I swear."
I couldn’t exactly say, I don’t give a damn about that... even though, honestly, it had gotten under my skin a little.
"It’s just that rich people really do live a life where they don’t have to worry about wasting money. In the Great Rift, you said you’d collected things like cars and then just sold them all off for a pittance."
"You realized that while we were talking about delivery food? The protector you wore was worth several cars."
"I guess... it’s a matter of reality, sort of. If the numbers are too big, they don’t really feel real."
"Yeah, yeah... you said you’d become a man who could buy me things like that someday. So are you going to make it?"
"Ah, not yet, so... I think it’s okay if I worry about it a little, isn’t it?"
Pfft.
I hadn’t exactly been expecting much.
"It’s just... honestly, once I started succeeding, there were a lot of things I wanted to try. Then I started wondering if you’d already done all of them, Nuna."
"Really? Go on."
"It’s nothing huge. Like, going to an expensive restaurant with my older brother."
He’d said Park Geon was like a parent to him.
So you did have someone like that after all.
I didn’t really have anyone like that, so... I’d just gone with women instead.
"I’ve done that."
"And then, right, spending a night at a hotel that costs a million won. You know, a little staycation. Ordering room service there and eating good food. In the morning, going to the dining room? Somewhere like that."
"Done that too."
"Renting a seaside villa and hanging out... or one of those places with a rooftop pool..."
"A rooftop pool? That’s too crowded to be comfortable. If I wanted it to myself, I’d have to go through the Association, which is a pain. Not my thing."
"Haha, I guess you really weren’t that different from what I imagined."
Those were all things I’d done before.
They were all one-off experiences, though. It wasn’t like I needed to maintain some kind of image or dignity.
Once the process became a hassle, it lost its meaning.
I didn’t even have a family, after all.
"Why stop there? Why not rent a yacht and take it out on the water? Or go do a circuit-driving experience?"
"Mm... I hadn’t thought about those. Have you done them, Nuna?"
"Once or twice. Not really that fun."
It had started when I suddenly had money.
I wanted to make up for all the things I’d lacked, to compensate for the life I’d been denied.
I’d tried doing things I’d never even had the chance to try, things I’d never cared about in the first place.
In the end, I’d just realized they weren’t my taste... that they were nothing special, no different from ordinary amusement.
And if they were all just forms of entertainment anyway, then I might as well just have sex.
"When... could we go together?"
"Together? Go somewhere?"
"Yeah. If I save up money... if I ask you to travel with me someday... would you go with me, Nuna?"
...
I hadn’t thought about it.
During my period, I had no intention of seeing him.
And when I wasn’t on my period, I planned to focus entirely on conquering the Great Rift.
So... this kind of leisure time? I’d never even considered it.
No—more than that, there was no way I’d go. Why would I go with you...
You and I are just sex partners. That’s all. More than that, we’re not even partners—we’re a dildo. Something I use when I need to, when I want to.
I had no intention of doing something as annoying and skin-crawlingly intimate as playing house.
Once my business was done, we’d cut ties. And by then I’d be a man again, so he wouldn’t be interested in me either.
And I didn’t want to entertain disgusting thoughts about going on a private trip alone with another man, either.
"...Would that not be possible?"
Haa.
I’d told him, hadn’t I? I told him not to get his hopes up like that.
My pride wouldn’t let me say, Don’t give up. But I couldn’t let myself be tempted by it, either.
That money was given for a reason. It was compensation for the time he couldn’t date anyone else during this period when I couldn’t meet other women.
"There’s no way."
I couldn’t answer easily because the maternal feeling in me was surging so fiercely.
But that didn’t mean my mind had changed.
My body was telling me not to disappoint him, to soothe him, but that was one thing and this was another.
You should start accepting it.
And you should get used to it, too.
Our relationship doesn’t need to be man and woman. Employer and employee is enough.
"Forget about weird ideas... about tomorrow evening, though."
"...Yes."
"I was thinking we could eat delivery at your studio apartment."
"...Huh?"
"I don’t feel like going out. That’s why."
"Isn’t coming to my place... the same as going out?"
"Just shut up. So, do you like it or not?"
"I-I like it. Yes. I’d be happy to! Um... would that be okay?"
Because it was bothering me that your feet had blisters.
Because I felt bad making you walk, I was saying I’d buy dinner at your place.
Could I really say something like that out loud?
Get over it already. Seriously.