Chapter 3
After brushing my teeth, I slipped into my room to avoid my sister, who was fuming.
It was a bare, empty room with nothing but a bed in it.
“First, I should bring over some clothes… A charger, a power strip, what else do I need?”
I’d be living here for the next year, so there were lots of things I needed.
I started thinking through the basic necessities I’d need right away.
Knock, knock-
“Come in.”
“What are you doing, honey?”
“Could you not call me honey when it’s just the two of us?”
“Why! It’s on your big sis’s bucket list, too!”
“What is?”
“Opening the door while my husband’s in his room and asking, ‘What are you doing, honey?’”
Her bucket list was surprisingly specific.
“So, what were you doing? Busy? Something important?”
“No, just thinking about what I need to bring over.”
“Then come out to the living room for a sec.”
“Why?”
“We’re going to be living together, so we have lots to decide~ And we need to make a plan for what we’ll do first!”
“Hmm… Okay. Let’s go to the living room.”
I meant for her to go ahead, but once again, my sister clung to my right arm.
Then she raised her right hand high, pointed toward the living room, and shouted.
“Let’s go!”
……”
There was no need to nitpick every little thing she did and pull her off me…
I went to the living room with my sister clinging to my arm.
“I think I know why you’ve never had a girlfriend.”
“You want a divorce?”
“Ah… N-no, sorry.”
“So why? What’s the reason?”
“You’re so cold! You really take after Dad.”
I’d heard that a lot since I was little.
That I was taciturn like Dad, while my cheerful sister took after Mom.
“Like father, like son, right?”
“Right. But there’s another saying, too.”
“What saying?”
“A daughter ends up with a man like her dad, and a son ends up with a woman like his mom.”
“Did you just make that up?”
“It’s a real saying! Anyway, sit here.”
My sister sat down on the sofa first and patted the seat beside her.
The moment I sat down, she grabbed my right arm again, grunted as she lifted it, and tucked it under her head as a pillow.
“Is this on your bucket list, too?”
“Hmm… It’s more comfortable than I expected. I should do this more often.”
She had the nerve to make that decision without asking the arm’s owner. I doubted she’d inherited that from Mom.
“Then first… the wedding!”
“Right, the wedding.”
Just hearing the word wedding made me a little uneasy.
And it was a wedding with my own sister… Ugh.
“We should pick a day you don’t have work, right?”
“Probably.”
I work part-time at a restaurant in the department store food court every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
There are hardly any troublesome customers, and the pay’s decent, so I’m pretty satisfied with it.
Work… Speaking of work, something suddenly came to mind.
Something the manager used to say all the time.
‘Don’t get married.’
‘Why not?’
‘I said don’t, so don’t…’
“What are you thinking about?”
“No, nothing. Go on.”
“The wedding will be Thursday! So… Thursday, April 9.”
“Isn’t that this week?”
“The sooner, the better.”
She had a point.
We’d already had the proposal and started living together, so there was no reason or need to put off the wedding.
“Today’s Sunday, so you work tomorrow… We’ll pick out a dress Tuesday, then have the wedding Thursday!”
“Got it.”
“So, the dress and wedding are settled. Next…”
“What’s next?”
“I have tons of things I want to do, so maybe we should start with the basics?”
Was she talking about rules we’d have to follow while living together?
Of course we needed those. Even if we were siblings, being different genders meant there’d be things we’d clash over.
“Go ahead.”
“First, your big sis is unemployed now, right? So when I’m bored, you have to keep me company, honey.”
“Are you a kid?”
“Hey! That’s something you can’t say to your wife. Point deducted.”
Maybe she didn’t want to get married so much as star in a sitcom.
I was starting to suspect as much.
“But even when we hang out, we can’t go on long outings.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re sick.”
I’d almost forgotten.
My sister’s life was like a candle, flickering precariously on the verge of going out.
It just didn’t show on the outside, but even at this very moment, my sister’s time was running out.
“No long walks. And obviously, no running.”
“Then we’ll just stay home.”
“That’s no good either! We have to go on dates, dates.”
There sure were a lot of things we couldn’t do.
…Not that I was complaining.
“So we should focus on indoor dates whenever possible, right?”
“Like what?”
“The easiest thing is probably a movie! Uh… a movie?”
She stopped mid-sentence, rested her chin in her hand, and fell into deep thought.
A few seconds later, she snapped her fingers and looked at me.
If this were a comic, stars would be sparkling in her eyes right about now.
“Want to go see a movie?”
“Now?”
“Mm-hmm. Right now.”
My sister was actually a pretty methodical person, despite appearances.
But she was also impulsive.
Right. She just did whatever she wanted.
“…What do you want to see? Is there anything playing right now you want to watch?”
“Anything romantic! Romance, romance.”
Her love of romance—books, movies, anime, dramas, whatever the medium—hadn’t changed.
Had she learned about love from those things and ended up with weird romantic ideals about marriage?
“Wait a sec. Let me check…”
I pulled out my phone and checked the showtimes at a nearby movie theater.
Maybe because it wasn’t that late yet, there were quite a few movies we could book tickets for and watch right away.
And of course, some of them were romance movies.
“There is one. A romance.”
“What is it, what is it? What’s it about?”
“We’re going to see it anyway, so let’s just go.”
“What are you talking about! Part of the fun of romance is hearing the synopsis and imagining what happens next, you know?”
There she went, the romance expert.
Still, I gave her a quick rundown of the movie’s short synopsis.
“It’s a Japanese movie. A teen romance. They date briefly in high school, then go their separate ways when they head off to college…”
“Oh… O-oh. That already sounds delicious!”
“…What does?”
“Japanese romance stories are all about that soft… soft, ticklish feeling. It’s perfect.”
I couldn’t understand her at all.
Still, I’m glad the movie I picked happened to be to her taste.
“Should we go to Japan sometime?”
“I don’t speak Japanese. Do you?”
“No?”
“…But didn’t you say we were going to make a plan?”
“We did, just now. We can figure out the rest as we go.”
Excited at the thought of going to the movies, my sister was already getting up from the sofa and grabbing her coat.
She threw on a light jacket and looked at me, beckoning for me to hurry up.
The way she flapped both hands looked just like a penguin flailing around on slippery ice.
“Let’s go!”
“Let’s drive. I’ll take us.”
I’d said it wasn’t good for her to walk for long.
It’d be much better to drive, even if it was only a short distance.
“Ah… R-right! That!”
“What now?”
“You know how movie theaters have those things? Couple seats!”
I knew what she meant.
At the back of the theater, there were seats that joined two seats together as one.
Obviously, they were meant for couples or married people, not siblings.
“Let’s sit there! They’ll have them, right?”
“It’s late anyway, so there won’t be anyone around. We can just…”
“Sss… Are you talking back to your wife, who’s like the heavens to you?”
She suddenly pretended to get angry. It wasn’t scary at all, anyway.
Still, was an angry penguin… kind of fierce?
I didn’t know. I’d just give in.
“Yes, yes. As you wish.”
“Heh heh heh… Good.”
Having calmed down in three seconds, my sister headed for the front door first.
It’d been a long time since I’d watched a movie with my sister.
The last time was probably when we went to the theater with our parents in elementary school.
I got up from the sofa, grabbed my coat, and headed for the front door, when—
My sister, already wearing her shoes, was on the phone with someone.
“Yeah, yeah. I ate and took my medicine. Yeah.”
“Who is it?”
“Mom.”
Yikes.
“Mom, Hyunjun’s here. Want to talk to him?”
Please. Please.
“Here! Mom wants to talk to you.”
Ah.
“Hi, Mom.”
‘What are you doing with your sister? I guess you’re a little worried about her, since she’s your sister?’
“Uh… y-yeah.”
‘Then be good to your sister, okay? You live close by.’
“I am.”
‘Don’t be a bother to a sick person. Do everything she asks you to!’
I already married her—what more do you want me to do?
“I said I am. I even cooked for her.”
‘You? Well, when you were little, you used to follow your sister around everywhere, trailing after her-‘
“Sis. Mom wants to talk to you again.”
It was true that I’d followed my sister around a lot when I was little.
Most siblings probably did. It wasn’t an embarrassing memory, but I didn’t particularly want to think about it.
“Mm-hmm, Mom. Of course! I’m fine~ Yeah, yeah. Will you call again?”
My sister took the phone back, chatted a little more with a smile, then hung up.
Thank goodness. She hadn’t said anything weird.
“What did Mom say?”
“Huh? Just asked if there was anything I wanted to eat and how I was feeling~”
“Pretty normal.”
“She asked if my husband was treating me well~ and told me to tell her if I wasn’t happy with him~”
“She’s my mom, too, you know.”
“Oh… right? My own mother is my mother-in-law, isn’t she?”
At least, from the weird things she was saying, she seemed to be feeling fine.
She had her shoes on, and she was all ready to go out.
Mom had just told me to do everything my sister asked.
So I’d do one thing for her now.
A movie date.