A 90% chance of rain. Contrary to that 10% hope, rain was pouring down hard outside the window, exactly as the forecast had said.
It was, in every sense, the worst possible weather for going out.
Normally, I would have spent the time rolling around in bed or sitting at my computer, but an appointment I couldn’t cancel had me by the ankle.
If I said now that I didn’t want to go because of the rain, it would be obvious I was lying.
After hesitating for a moment in front of the front door, I picked up the large long umbrella standing in the corner.
I stepped outside. Even though it was daytime, perhaps because of the rain, the sky was gloomy.
On the way to the subway station.
I tilted the umbrella far forward, hiding my face.
My gaze naturally fell to my shoes.
For some reason, the ground felt a little closer than usual.
The last street I remembered had definitely been covered in soft white snow.
Before I knew it, the season had changed without a sound, and instead of snow, cold rainwater had pooled on the ground.
Splash, splash.
Every time I took a step, puddles splashed up with an unpleasant sound.
I walked while blankly watching the hems of my pants gradually stain from pale gray to dark gray.
The way to the subway station was a short distance that normally wouldn’t even take five minutes.
At times like this, I couldn’t help thinking that living near a station really was the best.
Though, since I rarely went outside, I had almost never fully enjoyed that benefit.
At last, I arrived in front of the subway station ticket gates.
Taking a deep breath, I folded my wet umbrella and gripped it tightly in my right hand. In my left hand, I held my card.
I strode confidently toward the gate and stretched out my left hand, placing the card against the reader.
Beep!
A cheerful signal. I stepped forward with a familiar rhythm.
Thud!
“……Huh?”
A dull impact struck me near the navel. The hard plastic barrier had mercilessly blocked my way.
Flustered, I hurriedly twisted my body and tried tapping my card again.
[Already processed.]
What?
After stepping back, I tried again.
But the barrier still blocked me.
Cold sweat ran down my back.
‘What the hell, why isn’t it opening? It definitely beeped.’
Feeling my face burn, I tapped the card against the reader over and over.
Beep, beep, beep!
[Already processed.]
[Already processed.]
[Already processed.]
The card had definitely gone through. I had enough balance, too.
“Ugh……”
I was mortified. Through the ticket gate to my right, people were passing by without a care.
What were those people thinking as they walked past?
They must be wondering what I was doing.
“Hoo…… Hoo……”
My breathing grew ragged. It felt like every gaze around me was crawling over my body.
I could almost hear the snickering of people fiddling with their smartphones in the distance.
With my thoughts brought to a halt, I just kept mechanically holding out my card.
“Excuse me, is something not working?”
A deep, heavy voice came from behind me.
Startled, I turned my head and saw that a station attendant had approached at some point and was looking at me.
“Ah… Yes, yes?! Ah, no! It’s, um…!”
I answered, flapping about like someone who had committed a crime. Perhaps finding my state amusing, he smiled faintly and pointed at the card reader with his finger.
“Student, if you tapped your card on the left, you have to go through the gate on the left. Why are you trying to go in on the right?”
“……Ah.”
Only then did I understand the situation.
The card reader on subway gates was usually attached to the right side, and when you tapped your card, the door on that right side opened.
But I had been holding my card in my left hand, and without realizing it, I had tapped the reader to the left of my body.
In other words, I had been ramming my body into the right-side gate, the one I hadn’t tapped my card for.
“Ah…… I-I’m sorry……”
“No need to apologize~”
Apologizing in a voice that seemed to crawl into the ground, I moved the card to my right hand.
The left ticket gate opened for me easily, without offering any resistance.
A world where the overwhelming majority were right-handed.
The reader was placed on the right side of the passage for easy card tapping, and the design naturally guided people into the gate to its left.
What an engineering marvel. As expected, everything in this world had a reason.
My grip tightened around the card.
In the distance, I heard the sound of a train arriving.
While straightening out my wet umbrella, I ran toward the platform as if fleeing. The entire time I was descending on the escalator, I couldn’t raise my head.
But it seemed today was simply not my day.
[The doors are closing.]
The moment I stepped onto the platform, the subway doors shut tight with a heartless warning chime.
“Ah, no……!”
The train disappeared without mercy, and as the noise faded, only silence remained on the platform.
I barely managed to sit down on the edge of a bench and stretched out my legs. To think I’d missed the train just because I couldn’t even pass through a single gate properly.
A wave of misery surged up inside me.
* * *
Seong Siu was flustered. Baek Eunhae had become a woman.
Was something like this even possible?
When that guy first called me to his studio apartment, there had been a strange woman I had never seen before in my life lying on the bed.
In a trembling voice, that woman claimed she was Baek Eunhae.
Upon hearing that, Seong Siu was so flustered that he ended up blurting out, half serious and half joking, that he was jealous.
What followed was a burst of bitter crying. A very bitter one, at that.
Seeing Eunhae sob while wiping away tears with both hands, I realized just how anxious he was.
The truth was, Baek Eunhae had no friends.
I didn’t know whether he did it on purpose or if it was his innate disposition, but he never contacted anyone first.
If I contacted him first, he would welcome it gladly, but whenever that happened, a strange doubt would arise in me.
‘Am I the only one who thinks we’re close?’
Even so, the reason we had remained friends until now was because I simply couldn’t leave Eunhae alone.
It was the kind of relationship where, if I didn’t reach out first, we would slowly lose contact.
It wasn’t a bond I had forced into being. When we were together, it was enjoyable enough. Our hobbies matched, and we liked similar things.
But in all the long time I had known him, this was the first time I had ever seen him expose his emotions so rawly.
He was the kind of guy who called himself a T and didn’t bat an eye no matter how sad a movie was.
Even when I recommended an anime I had watched alone and cried over, he would just leave behind a dry comment like, “Oh, that was sad,” and move on.
That same guy was now sobbing sorrowfully in front of me, shoulders trembling.
After seeing that, how could I possibly leave him be?
Of course, what I understood with my head and the information my eyes accepted were two different things.
I didn’t let it show, but when that woman kept her mouth shut and stayed still, I couldn’t find a single trace of the gloomy Baek Eunhae I knew.
If I had seen the photo sent to my smartphone on social media, I thought I might have absentmindedly pressed like.
[Baek Eunhae: I’ll be there soon]
My smartphone rang. It was Eunhae.
Taking a deep breath, I resolved myself once more. Treat him like usual, as if nothing had changed as much as possible.
Ding-dong.
At the sound of the doorbell, I opened the door. But what entered my field of vision was only the empty air of the hallway.
‘Ah, right.’
Suppressing my momentary confusion, I lowered my gaze. As if nothing was wrong.
Around the height of my chest was Eunhae’s face. He was craning his head all the way back to look up at me.
“L-Long time no see……”
Eunhae awkwardly waved his hand.
* * *
Siu’s Adam’s apple bobbed noticeably up and down.
“Uh, you’re here? It was raining a lot. You should’ve come tomorrow.”
“Then you should’ve told me in advance…!”
At my grumbling, Siu let out a chuckle.
“Come in.”
As I passed through the entrance and stepped into the room, the fragrant scent of a diffuser tickled my nose.
Was it lavender? I didn’t know exactly what flower it was, but it was a very familiar scent I smelled every time I came to Siu’s room.
When I breathed in deeply, an unpleasant intruder mixed in among that fragrant floral scent.
The smell of cigarettes.
When I sniffed, Siu tilted his head as if wondering what was strange and asked,
“Does something smell weird?”
“No, well… It smells a little like cigarettes…”
“Huh? Cigarette smell? That can’t be.”
I strode up to Siu, snatched his hand, and brought my nose to it.
A strong cigarette smell hit me at once. Mixed with the artificial scent of the diffuser, it was so bad it almost felt nauseating.
“Wh-What are you doing?”
Siu’s voice trembled slightly, but I paid it no mind and frowned.
“Your hand reeks of it, though?”
Siu yanked his hand out of mine, then sniffed it himself and looked flustered.
“They say you can’t smell your own scent…”
“A-Aren’t you just too sensitive?”
“Well, maybe… I don’t really care if it smells like cigarettes…”
Answering half-heartedly, I flung myself onto Siu’s bed. Going out really was exhausting.
The soft bedsheet touched my cheek.
Exercising what little consideration I could, I kept my legs straight up so that the hems of my pants, slightly damp from the rain, wouldn’t touch the bed.
“I’m tired…”
“It’s only natural to be tired from going out on a rainy day. I’d be annoyed too.”
Siu had already sat down in the chair in front of his computer, and he spun it around to face the bed.
“What do you want to eat?”
“I haven’t really thought about it… Just get whatever you want. It’s up to the person paying.”
At my words, Siu rested his chin on his hand and fell into thought.
“Hmm. Then should we go out and eat?”
“No. Let’s order delivery.”
I said firmly.
“I figured you’d say that.”
Siu laughed in disbelief.