She said she knew the way and bounded toward the escalator. The round decoration attached to the back of her cardigan bobbed wildly, looking just like a rabbit’s tail, and a laugh escaped me before I knew it.
“Baek Sihyeon.”
“Hm? Why—ack.”
Without warning, Baek Hyeonwoo swept me up and trapped me in his arms. He lightly bumped his forehead against my head, then whispered into my ear.
“Do you like that woman that much?”
“……I only met her today. It’s not like I can already like or dislike her.”
“You look completely smitten.”
His gaze was not merely intense. It was practically blazing. I instinctively started to cover Baek Hyeonwoo’s eyes, then remembered that he was carrying me while walking and pinched his nose instead.
“Of course I’m happy to see someone after not meeting another person for so long.”
“It’s more than that.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is, so control yourself. Don’t make your brother jealous.”
Wasn’t it less that he disliked me becoming close to Moon Seyoung and more that he disliked Moon Seyoung being kind to me too?
I swallowed the words that had risen to the tip of my tongue and silently snickered. Even when the genre was flipped, the female and male leads still found a way to meet and fall in love.
“Why are you laughing like that?”
“I wasn’t laughing.”
When I feigned innocence and shrugged, Baek Hyeonwoo opened his mouth and bit down hard on my ear.
“Ah!”
A scream burst out at the sudden pain. Afraid the sound might draw the zombies, I hurriedly covered my mouth and glared at him. Baek Hyeonwoo pretended not to notice and turned his gaze away with the same innocence, as though getting revenge.
“Is something wrong?”
“Ah, no.”
Moon Seyoung, who had been walking ahead, asked in a puzzled voice. I hurriedly waved one hand through the air and rubbed the ear he had just bitten. It felt uneven beneath my fingers, so he must have left a deep set of teeth marks.
“Brother, are you insane? Why are you taking it out on me?”
“Hmph.”
“Hmph?”
It was only natural for a male lead to meet the female protagonist and start doing things completely out of character, or acting like an entirely different person, but I had not expected it to start this quickly.
It was not merely awkward. It was almost frightening.
“Are you going to keep hurting my feelings?”
“That’s my line.”
Even if I could not use my hands right now, who bit their younger brother’s ear because of it?
I kept grumbling as I watched Moon Seyoung’s back ahead of us.
She looked far more delicate than even me, and I was too weak to run. It was still hard to believe that she had eliminated all those zombies without getting a single drop of blood on herself.
“……Do human skulls get weaker after becoming zombies?”
“Even if they did, they would not burst like water balloons.”
I had asked cautiously just in case, but Baek Hyeonwoo answered coldly, as though telling me to say something that made sense.
Well…… that was probably true. It took considerable force just to smash a watermelon.
“Why? Do you want me to show you?”
“Huh?”
“I told you I could do it too. If our youngest wants to see, I can burst as many zombie heads as you like.”
He lifted his chin proudly and squared his shoulders. Even though he had not done anything, he looked like a smug cat, and an incredulous laugh escaped me.
Normally, I would have assumed he was bluffing, but Baek Hyeonwoo was not the kind of person who lied, so all I felt was cold sweat.
Just how did this world work?
I had decided to live without thinking too deeply about anything, but was this really all right?
“What kind of scent do you like? Citrus? Musk?”
I was staring blankly into space, troubled by my thoughts, when Moon Seyoung approached and suddenly held out several bath products.
With a bewildered expression, I pointed to a cute one shaped like a lemon. She said, “Sounds good!” and began placing it and several others into a paper bag.
“Our baby has sensitive skin, so I don’t think we need to include a scrub.”
“Really? Then I’ll just choose shower gel.”
Baek Hyeonwoo went even further.
He acted as though this situation were completely natural. I simply watched Moon Seyoung seriously choosing shower gel and said,
“I’ll take the orange one next to it.”
“Then wash up and come upstairs!”
Moon Seyoung smiled brightly and ran up the stairs.
I could not even manage to answer before she disappeared. I merely opened and closed my mouth, then turned to Baek Hyeonwoo with a dazed expression.
Even he, who always treated everything as though it were no big deal, looked slightly bewildered.
“……Should we go in first?”
Still, the hand guiding me was perfectly natural.
We pushed aside a long hanging curtain, took off our shoes, and turned the corner. A sight I had only ever seen on television appeared before me.
Rows of tightly packed lockers, a wide raised platform, and a small shop in one corner selling bath supplies and refreshments.
Right.
The place Moon Seyoung was staying in was a public bathhouse.
No, to be exact, it would be more accurate to call it a jjimjilbang building.
It was somewhere I had promised myself I would visit at least once after my health improved. I had never imagined I would come under circumstances like these.
I wanted to act calm, but the corners of my mouth kept twitching upward.
While I undressed and looked around, Baek Hyeonwoo went to the shop area and brought back drinks along with several other things.
He seemed to have already adjusted to the situation.
Or perhaps he had simply decided it was not worth being unsettled over.
“Let’s go in.”
When we opened the glass door and entered the bathing area, warm air enveloped us.
The bubbling water and spotless floor made it feel as though we had come to a bathhouse early in the morning.
It feels like we rented the whole place.
The moment I muttered that, Baek Hyeonwoo casually tossed the bath product into the hot pool.
Can you put that in there?
I almost said it aloud, but merely wrinkled my nose once and relaxed it again.
Come to think of it, Moon Seyoung had said there was an enormous bathtub.
She must have said that because this was allowed…… but for some reason, I felt like a terribly inconsiderate customer.
It was strangely cathartic too…….
“What are you doing? You need to wash.”
“Mm.”
After showering and entering the pool, a groan escaped me naturally.
“Ah, this is nice.”
When I muttered that, Baek Hyeonwoo swept back his wet hair and asked,
“Should we build one of these too?”
“That would be nice.”
I played along with his ridiculous joke and giggled. Baek Hyeonwoo looked at me and laughed too.
“But it really is incredibly clean. Do you think she cleaned it separately?”
“Most likely. Water would be more important than almost anything else.”
“Would it?”
Cleanliness was important, but would she really go so far as to clean the men’s bath too while staying here?
I tilted my head, then decided it was probably nothing and let my body relax.
The bathtub—no, the pool—was so large that the water did not change color much, but the fragrant lemon scent rising from it was still pleasant.
“There’s a steam sauna over there too.”
“Do you want to try it?”
“Yeah.”
We did not come out until two hours later.
We had gone into the sauna, swum in the cold pool, and fooled around in the scrubbing area. By then, we were hungry enough that we had no choice.
When we came outside, our fingers were wrinkled and our faces were smooth and glossy.
Anyone could tell we had thoroughly enjoyed the bath.
We kept snickering as we dried each other’s hair and changed into the jjimjilbang clothes piled in the corner.
“This really feels like we came here on vacation.”
“We came to someone else’s home, so I suppose we did.”
“Does that count?”
There was a staircase leading directly up to the jjimjilbang, so I climbed while sipping the iced tea my brother had brought.
The farther up we went, the cooler and more comfortable the air became.
The moment we reached the final step, Moon Seyoung, who had been lying on the floor and rolling around, abruptly sat upright.
“You’re here! How was it? Nice, right?”
“Yes! It was amazing.”
Since the building had been made for this purpose, the jjimjilbang was also absurdly, impossibly spacious.
I nodded repeatedly and approached her. Baek Hyeonwoo’s lips twitched several times before he finally gave a reluctant nod.
“It wasn’t bad.”
Not bad, my ass. He had enjoyed it even more than I had.
“I’m glad. Aren’t you hungry?”
Moon Seyoung must have enjoyed an excellent bath too, because her cheeks were lightly flushed.
She had braided her loose hair into two pigtails and fashioned two rounded shapes on top of her head with a towel, making her look incredibly adorable.
“A little.”
“I thought so, so I made seaweed soup. Come this way.”
“Really? When did you even have time to make seaweed soup……?”
“Hehe. Actually, I only heated up a ready-made one.”
Moon Seyoung firmly took my hand and gently led me away.
Baek Hyeonwoo said something beside us, but I did not hear a word.
'Even the female protagonist’s hands are really soft…….'
It did not feel like holding a person’s hand. It was closer to touching the soft paw pads of a newborn animal, or stroking delicate fur.
I was not exaggerating. Her hand was genuinely so soft that I almost squeezed it without thinking.
My fingers had already begun to tighten, and I only managed to stop myself after firmly reminding myself not to be rude.
“Ta-da! What do you think?”
“……Wow.”
Despite modestly claiming that she had only heated ready-made food, the moment we entered the dining area, I saw dishes filling the entire table.
Seaweed soup, ribs, japchae, grilled short-rib patties…….
There was no other way to describe it than a feast.
“It’s not just the seaweed soup. Everything here was store-bought and reheated.”
Seriously, this brother.
Even when Baek Hyeonwoo openly picked a fight, Moon Seyoung did not seem offended in the slightest. She merely gave an embarrassed smile and said,
“I’m not very good at cooking.”
She truly was an angel.