Our eyes met.
The other person was a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties.
An awkward current passed between us.
Perhaps realizing my situation, the woman cleared the table and made a place for me to sit.
She even smiled and gestured for me to hurry over and sit down.
‘If I ignore her and leave in this situation, that’ll be a problem in its own way.’
Since things had already turned out like this, I resigned myself to it and sat down.
The seat I chose was diagonally across from the woman.
It was a seating choice that carried the intention of, let’s not talk to each other, just eat moderately and part ways when the timing feels right.
“…”
“…”
How many minutes had passed as I mechanically ate, keeping my eyes fixed on my bowl because I didn’t have the courage to meet her gaze a second time?
Despite the awkwardness of sharing a table with a stranger, the food was so good that I had already emptied a whole bowl.
After spending a month on the first floor eating nothing but fruit with Dingdong, it was only natural that my eyes would spin at the sight of luxurious food.
‘Hehe, next is dessert time~ I’m going to devour cake, macarons, and cookies!’
Unable to suppress the little laughs leaking out of me, I grinned and prepared to get my next food when I felt an impure gaze from somewhere.
‘First, let’s take a deep breath.’
“Huuup!”
I consciously lowered the corners of my mouth and checked the source of the gaze out of the corner of my eye.
As expected, the woman at the same table was staring at me intently.
And not just staring—she was gazing at me with an utterly pleased, fatherly smile.
‘This won’t do. Let’s make a run for it.’
Sensing something ominous, I tried to hurry away, but her mouth was faster than the sluggish movements of a ten-year-old girl.
“Little one, what’s your name?”
“…”
“Won’t you tell this big sister?”
The “little one” the woman mentioned was probably referring to me. Everyone here aside from me looked like an adult.
And in the first place, I was the only person she could be talking to.
“I’m Jeong Seha.”
I barely managed to keep my composure as I spoke.
“Okay, Seha. My name is Lee Sol. My surname is Lee, and my given name is Sol.”
“Yes.”
“Seha, you came here after being separated from your parents at such a young age. Is there anything you’re having a hard time with?”
“No, I’m fine.”
‘What is this person trying to say that she keeps dragging things out like this? I wish she’d just get to the point.’
No matter how short my answers were, talking to people consumed a considerable amount of energy.
Just as my patience was nearing its limit, she opened her mouth once more.
“Then do you want to go to the food corner with me?”
There was no reason for me to refuse this proposal.
Earlier, the food I wanted had been on a shelf at shoulder height, so I’d struggled to get it out and eventually gave up, bringing something else instead.
If I asked her, I’d be able to eat a wider variety of dishes.
When I nodded in place of an answer, her eyes lit up as if she was slightly surprised, then she smiled with her eyes and stood up.
Then, in the blink of an eye, she came over beside me, extended one hand as if escorting me, and waited for me to get up from the chair.
No matter how much I had become a girl now, making physical contact with another woman wasn’t easy.
Especially physical contact with a young and pretty woman was even more of a problem.
‘Still, with this body, maybe light skinship is fine?’
To someone who didn’t know, we’d surely look like an ordinary mother and daughter.
Grab.
Lee Sol snatched up my awkwardly hovering hand in an instant, and before I knew it, I was pulled along by her strong grip and had arrived in front of the food.
I picked up whatever dishes I wanted as soon as I saw them, only to find that everything on my plate was dessert, like macarons.
Lee Sol glanced at my plate, then looked at me with an expression that blatantly revealed her inner thought of, “Well, children are like that.”
‘Please just insult me as a socially inept hikikomori instead. Being treated like a kid by a woman who only looks like a college student is way too embarrassing.’
At that moment, as I desperately wished that inwardly without being able to say it out loud, a certain food entered my eyes.
The food that captured my gaze was a strawberry cake that looked incredibly sweet.
Whipped cream and bread layered elegantly, and on top of it, a lone strawberry standing proudly.
Just imagining putting one bite into my mouth, that supreme sweetness melting away softly, made my mouth begin to water.
But if I picked the cake too, it was obvious Lee Sol would treat me even more like a child, and in the first place, the shelf was higher than I was, so I couldn’t take it out on my own.
Even if I strained and reached toward the shelf, it was no use.
‘This is what they call pie in the sky. Or would cake in the sky be the more accurate expression?’
Thinking, ‘It’s not like today is my only chance,’ I turned around to look for something else.
“Hic.”
When I turned, Lee Sol was crouching right in front of me.
Her completely unexpected appearance startled me so much that I even hiccuped.
Lee Sol gave me a light smile and spoke calmly.
“Seha, did you want that strawberry cake?”
“…”
I shook my head from side to side with the firmest expression of intent I had shown so far.
‘I’ve already shown such an embarrassing side of myself. If I obediently admit that I want to eat strawberry cake too, I’ll die of shame.’
“Then I guess there’s nothing we can do~ This strawberry cake looks delicious, but I’ll have to eat it myself.”
She spoke as if teasing me and placed the strawberry cake on her own plate.
Even now, I wanted to say, “Sol, actually, I like strawberry cake too!” but my last remaining pride wouldn’t allow me to take back my claim that I didn’t want it.
This must have been exactly how Zhuge Kongming felt when he wept as he executed Ma Su.
To hide even a little bit of my kid-like behavior, I took a cup of coffee and returned to my seat.
As I sat down where I had originally been, still lingering over my regret for the strawberry cake, Lee Sol, who had followed behind me, sat down right beside me.
“Huh?”
She had definitely sat diagonally across from me at first, hadn’t she?
When she changed seats to be beside me so naturally, I stared at her in disbelief.
“Why? Is there something on my face? Or did you fall for my face too? Oh my, oh my. You’re too young to be a face-con already.”
Having nothing to say, I started eating again.
‘I guess this is just the atmosphere between women.’
Since I had almost never gone outside, and even when I did eat out, I ate things like gukbap or hamburgers, I had no way of knowing what meals between women felt like.
Beside me, she asked whether my hair color was dyed, praised my hair for being nice because I was young, and chattered about whether she could pull my cheek just once. I answered appropriately while finishing my meal.
Of course, I naturally refused the question about whether she could pull my cheek.
One unfortunate thing was that, perhaps because my body had changed and my stomach capacity had shrunk too, I ended up leaving a bit of the jeyuk-bokkeum and tangsuyuk I had brought.
Of course, in accordance with the saying that there was a separate stomach for dessert, I ate all the macarons and cookies.
Lee Sol, who had barely touched her own meal and simply watched me, asked me a question.
“Seha, how did you escape from the first floor?”
At that question, my expression began to darken slightly.
Thinking of the unidentified achievement, the clear whose reason I couldn’t even understand, and Dingdong, whom I had left behind without even saying a proper goodbye, made one corner of my heart feel heavy.
“Sorry. I asked something too harsh. That was my fault.”
“No. It’s just that the coffee is bitter.”
Since the coffee really did taste extremely bitter now that I had become a child, it wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Bitter coffee goes well with cake. Do you want to have one?”
When I looked closely at her plate, there were two slices of the strawberry cake I had been eyeing earlier.
‘It’s not that I absolutely, definitely, unquestionably want to eat strawberry cake, but when someone is being this considerate, it’s only proper to accept.’
I quickly moved my chopsticks and brought the strawberry cake over to my plate. I should express my gratitude to such a benevolent benefactor.
“Thank you for the strawberry cake.”
I lowered my head with a slightly unnatural smile.
‘I’ll have to give Lee Sol three praise stickers in my heart.’
The strawberry cake tasted even sweeter than I had expected.
***
I thought she was an unusual child.
When I first moved to the plaza, everything was chaotic in so many ways that I could hardly see straight, but even so, that child alone entered my sight clearly.
In a plaza mostly occupied by adult men, it was only natural that a cute little girl with sky-blue hair would draw attention, but I had another reason for noticing her.
The others were expressing a sense of victory at having fought and defeated the vicious first-floor boss, or fear from having their lives threatened, or at the very least, there were even people gasping for breath and complaining of pain in their legs after apparently running away with all their might.
While everyone was intensely expressing their own emotions, that child alone was different.
A child who looked like she might not even be ten years old was standing alone, gazing into empty space with a lonely air.
‘If I get the chance, I’d like to talk to her.’
I couldn’t tell whether the reason was curiosity or pity.
Fortunately, it didn’t take very long for me to meet that child.
While I was eating in the dining hall, I happened to see her passing in front of me.
The way she walked alone with her shoulders drooping, so forlornly, made her look like a kitten, and it was incredibly cute. If I’d had a phone, I would have wanted to record it as a video.
At a glance, she looked like she was wandering because there were no seats, so when I hurriedly gestured for her to come over, she hesitated a little, then scurried into the seat.
Then she picked up her utensils and immediately started eating.
‘Did she starve somewhere all day? How can such a tiny body eat that much?’
I wanted to say something, but the girl was so serious about eating that I couldn’t find the timing to speak.
‘Still, this sight is cute too. I might understand a little why people watch eating broadcasts.’
I focused on watching her for a moment, and in the blink of an eye, her tray had been emptied.
‘Goodness. It’s not as if anyone’s chasing her, so why is she in such a hurry to eat?’
She was preparing to stand up with her tray.
If I let her go like this, I wouldn’t know when this chance would come again, so I got a little greedy.
“Little one, what’s your name?”
‘Come to think of it, don’t kids get angry if you call them little? She doesn’t seem to mind at all.’
The answers that followed after that were only short replies, but the fact that we had at least communicated made me feel as though the emotional distance between us had closed a little.
In particular, the sight of Seha becoming captivated by the strawberry cake was cuteness on the level of a national treasure.
Her mouth said she wasn’t interested, but her gaze was firmly fixed on the cake.
If I had lifted the cake and moved my arm up and down, Seha’s head definitely would have moved up and down after the cake. Like a cat chasing a laser pointer.
Of course, if I did that to someone I had just met, she might never forgive me for the rest of her life, so I restrained the urge to tease her with superhuman patience.
Maybe I was too excited after that. When I couldn’t hold back my curiosity and asked Seha how she had escaped the first floor, the atmosphere turned chilly, and I snapped back to my senses.
‘I knew Seha had some kind of story, yet I still asked about a sensitive subject. That could have gone terribly wrong.’
Fortunately, giving her the strawberry cake I had picked up earlier made her happy again right away.
On the way back home with Seha.
Of course, since people of the same gender had been gathered into the same building, our destination was the same.
At that moment, a man suddenly popped out and spoke to me.
When I was startled and took a guarded stance, the man stepped back as if he hadn’t intended to scare me.
After lowering his head slightly in apology, he disappeared after saying that there would be a meeting among the survivors in the plaza after lunchtime the next day, and that we should attend if we had time.
“Seeing how he only said what he needed to and disappeared in an instant, he looked busy for some reason. Right?”
The only answer that came back was Seha giving a small nod.
After that, I made some small talk, starting with MBTI and going as far as favorite foods, and before we knew it, we had arrived in front of our home.
“Let’s go eat together tomorrow too! Make sure you lock your door properly.”
This time as well, Seha silently bowed politely and closed her front door.
‘Still, for a first meeting, did I manage to ease her wariness fairly well?’
It would be rude to compare a person to this, so I only thought it in my heart, but Seha was like a stray cat abandoned somewhere.
She avoided excessive contact or communication with people, and rather, when someone else took one step closer, she retreated that much farther.
‘It might simply be that she dislikes me, but if that were the case, she wouldn’t have responded to me so well.’
The expression that darkened when I asked Seha how she cleared the first floor seemed to be related to whatever story Seha carried now.
“Even if it’s hard right now, I hope someday she can live comfortably, like an ordinary girl.”
Since I was the only adult around her, I unconsciously whispered to myself with the thought that I should try to become a slightly more reliable adult.