Chapter 19
We first headed to a bingsu shop inside the mall to pass the time while eating bingsu.
Maybe because it wasn't quite midsummer yet, there weren't many people around, and the place felt fairly quiet.
“Hyunwoo! Hurry up!”
“Yeah, yeah….”
I wanted to taste some sweet, refreshing bingsu as soon as possible, so I urged Hyunwoo along.
“Have you decided what you want to eat?”
“Of course!”
I said that while pointing at the bingsu I'd had in mind ever since we made our bet.
“Mango bingsu. One, please!”
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“Your bingsu is ready.”
After waiting a little while, our mango bingsu arrived, topped with large chunks of mango and a scoop of mango ice cream.
“Thank you for the food!”
I immediately picked up my spoon, scooped up a large portion of bingsu, and put it in my mouth.
The mango's sweetness melted across my tongue, while the bingsu's coolness refreshed my mouth.
“It's delicious…. Hehehe….”
This time, I scooped up the ice cream on top and tried it.
It was a completely different flavor from the bingsu, and it delighted my tongue.
“You sure are enjoying that….”
“Of course! It's not my money!”
The bingsu would have been delicious even if I'd bought it normally, but the best part was eating it with someone else's money instead of my own.
Is this the taste of victory…? Hehehe, it tastes sweet….
“Aren't you going to eat?”
Unlike me, who was eating happily, Hyunwoo merely watched me and hadn't even picked up his spoon.
“It's fine. You eat as much as you want. You seem to like it a lot.”
“Really? Then I'll eat it all!”
Thanks to Hyunwoo's generosity, this sweet, icy, irresistible food became entirely mine.
Hehehe…. Mango bingsu, you're finished today!
======
“Ueeeh…. My head hurts….”
“That's why you should've eaten more slowly….”
A few minutes later.
The mango bingsu had defeated me.
I had wolfed down the delicious bingsu so quickly that I ended up with a brain freeze.
In the end, I finished all the bingsu, but then I collapsed with my head on the table, clutching it with both hands.
Hyunwoo looked at me in exasperation and spoke.
“How can your head hurt just because you ate something cold, when you're a Snow Woman?”
“What am I supposed to do about it….”
It was ridiculous that a Snow Woman who controlled ice was writhing in pain because her brain had frozen, but the bingsu had been delicious, so I decided that was what mattered.
“Ugh…. Next time, I should eat more slowly….”
“Do that.”
Finally freed from the pain, I lifted my head from the table and managed to sit up.
“So what should we do now….”
“Beats me….”
We had finished all the bingsu, so we had to leave the shop.
The problem was that there wasn't really anything to do after we left.
“We can't just sit around mindlessly fiddling with our phones until Haru and Juhyeok finish shopping….”
I was muttering that while looking out the window to see what was around.
Then I spotted an arcade flashing with lights.
“Hyunwoo, do you want to play there for a while before we go?”
I immediately pointed at the arcade and suggested that we play there before leaving.
Hyunwoo apparently didn't have anything else to do either, so he nodded in agreement, and we promptly left the shop and headed to the arcade.
There were quite a lot of games in the arcade.
There was air hockey, which was good for making bets, rhythm games where we had to match the beat by stepping on the panels, and even a candy crane game that particularly caught my eye.
It looked like the perfect place to wait for Haru and Juhyeok to finish shopping.
We immediately went to the cash exchange counter, exchanged our money for tokens, and then looked around while deciding what to play.
“Then maybe I'll shoot some zombies….”
Hyunwoo apparently wanted to play a shooting game, because he took the money and went over to where the shooting games were.
A shooting game, huh…. Maybe I should try that too?
“...Huh? What's that….”
Just then, something suddenly caught my eye.
It was a very simple game where you threw darts at balloons to pop them and win prizes.
-the free ice cream coupon among its prizes.
“I can't resist free stuff!”
At a glance, the balloons weren't very far away, and they were fully inflated, so it seemed like I could pop one even if I threw the dart carelessly.
“Mister, how much is this?”
“It's 3,000 won, but students are cute, so I'll let you play for 2,000.”
“U-uh…. Th-thank you….”
The word cute gave me another case of goosebumps, but I put up with it and thanked him when I heard about the discount.
Everyone keeps saying I'm cute. Am I really cute…?
...More importantly, he called me a student. He didn't mistake me for a middle schooler again, did he?
All sorts of thoughts ran through my head, leaving me feeling uneasy, but for now I decided to focus only on the ice cream and handed the bills I'd exchanged earlier to the man.
Then I took the darts he gave me, stood on the line on the floor, and concentrated.
The ice cream coupon I wanted was the first-place prize, which required hitting all five balloons.
There was no wind indoors, and the distance was about 3 meters…. I can do this!
“Go!”
With an energetic shout, I grabbed a dart and threw it.
The dart flew toward the balloons, then fell to the floor.
“Huh, wha…?”
Flustered by the dart lying on the floor, I threw the next one.
This time it hit a balloon, but the sharp tip hadn't struck it properly, so it didn't pop.
“Hah!”
I missed.
“Ta-ha!”
It hit the wall.
“Hyaah!”
I barely managed to pop one.
“Here, this is the doll prize for one balloon.”
Instead of the ice cream coupon I would have received for hitting all five, I got a doll.
I stared blankly at the doll I'd received, then looked back at the balloons and whispered.
“If I secretly fired ice at them to pop them…. I'm out!”
“Don't. You'll be a nuisance.”
I secretly reached out to fire a piece of ice, but Hyunwoo, who had appeared without me noticing, stopped me with a chop.
Ouch….
“What are you trying to get so badly?”
In response to Hyunwoo asking why I was trying to cause a disturbance, I silently stared at the ice cream prize coupon.
“Over that little thing…. I'll try it, so don't shoot ice.”
Apparently thinking I really was about to cause a disturbance, Hyunwoo said he would try it and stopped me from making another attempt.
He says he'll try it himself…. This is harder than it looks, you know? Even you should have trouble….
Pop-!
“...Huh?”
Contrary to my expectations, Hyunwoo popped a balloon in a single throw.
“That was easy.”
He then kept popping balloons with the next three darts as well.
He made me, who had only managed to pop one, look incredibly pathetic.
...Then what does that make me?
“Oh.”
But even Hyunwoo apparently couldn't pop them all, because he missed with his last dart and stopped at four balloons.
“Aw…. What a shame….”
I was devastated that a single mistake had cost him the ice cream coupon.
Ugh…. My ice cream….
“Young man, you're pretty good. Here, a snowflake hairpin for four balloons.”
Praising Hyunwoo's skill, the man took out the prize hairpin and handed it to him.
It was a strange-looking hairpin with a fluffy, snowflake-shaped puff and a long string hanging down.
He won a prize, but it was still just a hairpin…. Hyunwoo had bad luck too….
No matter how I looked at it, it was a cute hairpin that clearly didn't suit a man.
Hyunwoo accepted it since it was a prize, but he looked bewildered, unsure what to do with it.
“...Seolhwa, do you want this?”
Then Hyunwoo suddenly handed me the prize hairpin and said that.
“I thought it would be more useful to you than to me.”
It was true that hairpins were generally worn by women rather than men, but….
Even if my body looked like this, I was still a man….
“Why don't you give it to your older sister? You said she'd be coming to Korea in a few months.”
“My sister wouldn't wear something like this even if I gave it to her. You know what she's like.”
“That's true…. She's not the kind of person who would wear such a cute accessory.”
“So take it. It's not really useful to me.”
In the end, I had no choice but to accept the hairpin Hyunwoo was offering me.
What am I supposed to do with this….
I couldn't exactly throw away a gift he'd just given me right in front of him….
But if I put it in my pocket and took it home, the fluffy part looked like it would get damaged….
“...You don't have to take it if you don't want it. Don't think so hard about it.”
Seeing me continue to agonize over the hairpin, Hyunwoo finally spoke up.
However, his words didn't register at all because I was still focused on figuring out what to do with the hairpin.
In the end, after much deliberation, I decided how to take it with me.
“...How is it?”
My choice, since throwing it away or carrying it around both felt awkward, was to wear it.
I put the hairpin on the left side of my hair and asked Hyunwoo what he thought.
It was a little embarrassing to show it to him, but I wanted to ask whether I'd put it on properly.
“...Oh, you really did it?”
“Didn't I give it to you for that?”
“No... I just didn't think you'd really do it...”
Hyunwoo looked down at me with a bewildered yet fascinated expression.
“Ah, forget it. I put it on because you went to the trouble of giving it to me….”
I had humored him by wearing it, and that was the response I got, which put me in a bad mood for no reason.
Looks like he gave it to me just to tease me….
I frowned and reached up to yank the hairpin from my head—but-
“Kyaa-! So cute! Seolhwa, what's that?”
right then, I heard a familiar woman's voice behind me.
S-surely that was Haru…?
“Can I take a picture? I can, right?”
“...Wow, it's only been a few hours since you said you were a man, and now look at you dressing up. Pfft….”
“Don't be so mean. It's cute, so what's wrong with it?”
“Ah… Ah… Aaaah…!!”
Juhyeok was laughing at me while Haru tried to take pictures with her smartphone.
The moment I saw the two of them, my face flushed bright red, and embarrassment began creeping over me.
“S-see you next time!”
I fled the arcade as though running away and went home.
With the hairpin in my hair fluttering behind me.