Oppa, How Did You Know?

I looked over the bundle of old clothes I’d packed, lost in thought. I’d worn every one of them for four years or more on average, and between the pilling, the stretched-out collars and everything else, they’d been headed for a clothing-donation bin before long anyway.

What on earth is Sia planning to use these for?
She could have just asked me for an outfit instead.

Since I wanted to give her something that actually felt like a gift, I’d also put together a safe, ordinary housewarming present of my own, separate from what Sia had asked for: rolls of toilet paper (the textbook housewarming gift), a blanket that would come in handy in all sorts of ways, and the little odds and ends anyone living alone could use, like instant rice and ramyeon.

Is there anything else worth giving her?

Sia had no doubt decked out the lair nicely enough on her own, but as her boyfriend I still wanted to look after her a little more than that.

If I had more time, I’d at least run down to the mart in front of the building.
It’s my girlfriend’s housewarming, of all things. Is there really nothing else I can give her?

There is one thing I thought of.

If my guess about why Sia wanted my old clothes was right, I had a feeling she might be happy with this sort of thing too. Then again, anyone else who heard about it would think I’d lost my mind, no question. And on top of that, you could argue about whether it even counted as a gift.

…Still, I had nothing to lose. If I read the mood and it felt wrong, I just wouldn’t give it to her.

I’d stowed the extra things away in subspace and was straightening my clothes when…

“Oppa!”

I felt Sia’s presence from far off. She could teleport anywhere she pleased, and she’d come to pick me up in person. The instant our eyes met, she squealed with delight and hugged me tight.

“I thought I’d go crazy from missing you!”
“Me too. It had me wondering whether a week was always this long.”

We’d spent hours on a video call only yesterday, yet we clung to each other as fiercely as if we’d been apart for months instead of a single week. Sia kept squeezing hard enough to cut off my air, though, so I choked out a cough.

“Khk, khk. Sia, I can’t breathe.”
“Ah.”

She gave a start and let go of me.

“O-Oppa, are you okay? I was so happy to see you that before I knew it… Sorry!”
“No, no, I’m fine.”

No exaggeration: a little longer like that and my ribs might have snapped, but…

Thankfully, Sia bounced right back to her usual energy.

“Oh, right. What about the thing we talked about yesterday?”

A little sheepish, I pointed at the heap of old clothes stacked in the corner of the room. The moment she saw it, the corners of her eyes lifted in open delight.

“Wow, look how many there are. Thank you, Oppa! I’ll put them to good use!”

For the life of me I couldn’t work out what she wanted those old clothes for, but she clutched the bundle like treasure.

“Honestly, giving you only that felt kind of bare, so I got some other presents ready while I was at it.”
“Aw, that alone is plenty, Oppa. I’m really fine.”

She waved it off, but her face, brimming with anticipation, gave her away.

I showed her the other presents I’d been keeping out on the veranda, and she broke into a huge grin.

“Wow, what’s all this?”

She hadn’t expected me to go this far for her, she said, looking thoroughly moved.

“Do you like them?”
“Of course I like them! Thank you so much, Oppa!”

Humming to herself, she tucked my presents neatly away into subspace one by one, then kissed me on the cheek to say thank you. With everything stowed, she took my hand and teleported us straight to the lair, and the scenery I knew from the other side of a phone screen spread out before me.

“Ta-da! This is our lair!”

Sia had given me an online housewarming tour here and there during our video calls, but seeing it in person really was different. It didn’t feel much like a dragon’s lair at all. If anything, how to put it, it looked closer to an upscale detached house. Charming, expensive-looking furniture filled the spacious rooms, and the interior was so modern and clean you’d never guess someone had bored it out of the inside of a mountain.

What caught my eye was the crowd of picture frames hung along one wall. Every one of those big frames held a photo of Sia and me together. A while back she’d asked me to send her our photos; so this was what she’d wanted them for. Seeing myself blown up this big and framed on a wall left me oddly embarrassed.

As I stood staring at the frames, Sia pressed up against my side and slid an arm around my waist.

“What do you think, Oppa?”

Her voice fluttered a little, maybe because she was hoping for praise.

“It feels like walking into an exhibition of just the two of us.”

That seemed to please her, and she broke into a bright little smile.

“I like that, an exhibition. We’ll have to take lots more photos from now on. If we want enough of them up to actually call it an exhibition.”
“Of course we do. They say photos are the only thing that lasts in the end.”

After that, Sia showed me around the other rooms. The whole time I kept thinking that the lair was so enormous I might well have gotten lost without her as my guide.

“What do you think, Oppa? Do you like it?”
“I wish this were our newlywed home.”

I doubted a more perfect newlywed home existed, but sadly, the way things stood, we couldn’t set up house together. We both knew that perfectly well, so neither of us bothered to bring it up.

“When we finally get to live together here, how about we buy a little plot nearby and try our hand at growing tangerines? Nothing fancy.”
“That sounds good. Or the lair’s huge, so let’s put a greenhouse inside it! Then we could harvest the tangerines we grew ourselves together, and…”

That future was several years off at the very least, but Sia’s imagination had already run away with her into a happy daydream, as if it had all come true.

“Sia.”
“In winter we could sit under the same blanket and eat tange—”
“Sia?”

“Ah, look at me, where’s my head.”

How deep in her imaginary world did she have to be not to hear me? I had no idea what she’d been picturing in there, but her face had gone redder than before.

“This is no time to be standing around. Oppa, let’s hurry up and go make tteokbokki!”

Our first date at Sia’s lair. We’d spent days wondering how to make the most of such a meaningful date, and in the end we’d settled on making tteokbokki together. It was her favorite food, and more than that, she liked watching me cook. And though we’d cooked for each other a few times back when she was human, oddly enough we’d never once made tteokbokki at home. With all that in mind, I’d been the one to suggest it, and Sia had agreed at once, calling it a great idea.

Before we went off to cook, though, I had one more thing to give her.

“Sia.”
“Hm?”
“Actually, I’ve got more presents than just those.”

At the mention of more presents, Sia clasped her hands adorably and looked up at me with shining eyes, even though only a moment ago she’d been telling me the presents were plenty as they were. Remembering how cute she’d looked saying it brought a smile to my face before I knew it, and I drew the things I’d secretly prepared out of subspace.

I’d called them presents to her face, but in my head they were just things, because, as I said before, they were far too embarrassing to call presents.

“You asked out of nowhere for my old clothes as a present, so I thought about why you’d want that.”

They’re old clothes, and the wrong size besides, so she can’t even wear them.

After turning it over, I’d landed on a conclusion: she wanted the feeling of living with me, even if only this way. With traces of me left here and there around the lair, she’d be able to feel as though we lived together, however far apart we were.

And so.

“So I got some other things ready besides the old clothes.”

I took the items I’d set aside out of subspace: the cologne I always wore, my old shoes, and then, though I’d gone back and forth over whether bringing it was really okay… even a pair of underwear I’d worn. It might be a bit mortifying, but wasn’t this the more realistic way to go about it?

As I laid out the extras, I watched for Sia’s reaction. The thought had just begun to creep in that maybe I’d jumped to conclusions all on my own, when…

“Oh my.”

The corners of Sia’s eyes curved like drawn bows. She took the things I held out ever so carefully, as though they were priceless treasure, and gathered them to her chest.

“How does our Oppa know my heart so well?”

Uh…
Was this what she wanted from the start?

The day before the date.

At the time she asked Minjun for his old clothes, Sia had been secretly worried.

Well, wouldn’t anyone be? Lovers or not, asking your boyfriend out of the blue for clothes he’d worn for years wasn’t a normal thing to do. And as a present, no less.

What if Oppa thinks I’m weird?

There were plenty of perfectly decent presents out there, so why specifically the old clothes he’d worn? He might wonder that. Or he might get the wrong idea and think she had some strange fetish, a thing for clothes or the like. Once her thoughts had run that far, her face went scarlet with embarrassment.

But it’s not like I can tell him the truth!

Of course she couldn’t: she’d asked Minjun for his old clothes so that whenever she missed him, she could breathe in his scent from them. Saying that out loud was far too mortifying. Breathing in the scent soaked deep into the fabric, or secretly slipping those old clothes on and feeling as though she and Minjun had become one… just the thought of it…

“Pwah!”

Even she thought the plan was a little perverted, but there was no helping it. As she saw it, this was the best method available right now for coping with how much she missed Minjun when she couldn’t see him often.

…Oppa has no idea I’m thinking things like this.

He probably didn’t know, and he must never find out. Anxious as she was, she still secretly hoped he’d bring a big pile of old clothes steeped in traces of him.

And then Minjun brought not only the old clothes she’d asked for but the shoes he’d worn and the cologne he used, even his underwear, and then he said this:

You wanted the feeling of living together, right? I figured you’d need this sort of thing too to really get the feeling, so I brought them along just in case.

In truth, even as he said it, Minjun had been on edge, wondering whether he’d guessed right. Sia, for her part, was in no state to notice. The shoes and the cologne Minjun always wore hadn’t even occurred to her. And on top of that, the underwear he’d brought…

#$%$%^@%@#$

…drove her to shameless imaginings she could never have spoken aloud.

“How does our Oppa know my heart so well?”

Worried she might look like a pervert to him, Sia held down her boiling emotions as hard as she could and carefully stowed the things he’d handed her away in subspace.

“What a relief. I was worried I’d barked up the wrong tree.”

And in fact, strictly speaking, Minjun had barked up the wrong tree. He likely had no idea, not even in his wildest dreams.

And it was probably better that he never found out.