My Younger Sister Was My First Love - My Younger Sister Was My First Love chapter 77
77. Should I Cut Ties?
I finished studying with the academy people at 10 pm.
After leaving the people who wanted to study until dawn, I arrived home, and it was almost 11 pm.
There was still time left after Jihee finished her studies.
The living room lights were on, but I couldn’t sense my younger sibling’s presence.
I put down my bag on the sofa and knocked on Jihee’s door.
“I’m here.”
-Tap, tap, tap, tap-
The door creaked open with a loud noise.
“Why are you so late!”
Jihee was holding a practice test book, waving it around with her hand.
“No, I told you I’d leave school at 10.”
“That’s late, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, sorry.”
I gently ruffled Jihee’s hair with my palm.
“Were you studying?”
The practice test book on her bed didn’t seem like it had been there all along.
“……Yeah.”
“What wind blew in today?”
Jihee never studied privately outside of her schedule, unless it was the day before a mock test.
I didn’t have any complaints about that either.
Studying for over 10 hours a day isn’t easy, and it’s likely that her focus would be off if she did more than that.
“My score isn’t enough.”
“Score?”
“The score to get into Korea University.”
Jihee opened the practice test book and showed me a page with red pen marks.
“I don’t understand this.”
“Do you want me to explain?”
“Are you busy?”
“No, I’ll do it. Wait.”
I promised to take a quick shower and change before helping her.
As I washed my face in the bathroom, I felt a strange sensation.
Studying until this hour?
The conversation I had with Minju earlier overlapped in my mind.
[But if it’s like this, getting into Korea University will be tough.]
It wasn’t that I was belittling Jihee’s abilities, but it was a comment that downplayed her possibilities.
A certain sense of rejection, which had been dormant deep within me, began to stir again.
I dried my face with a towel and headed straight to Jihee’s room.
Today, Jihee didn’t turn on the lights in her room.
The only source of light in the room was the desk lamp.
“If I do it like this, my eyes will get worse.”
“But this way, I can focus better.”
“Okay, let’s take a look.”
The problems Jihee brought out were quite difficult.
Those were practice questions, so I naturally solved them too.
As I wrote down the formulas, I explained how to approach the problems to make them easier to solve.
“Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I do. Ah, I should have started with the functions from the beginning.”
“This type always starts with drawing. Even if it looks impossible, you have to draw it anyway.”
“Got it.”
Have they studied a lot?
Or is it just that there are a lot of questions today?
“Done?”
“Yeah, done.”
Before I knew it, it was already past 12 pm.
“Ugh… it’s hard…”
Jihee got up from her chair, took a few laps around the room, and then buried her face in her bed.
“You’re doing well, really.”
I followed Jihee’s lead, getting up and looking down at my little sister with a gloomy face.
“Can’t we see each other every day during the break?”
Her face was still buried in the pillow, so Jihee’s voice was slightly muffled.
“Yeah, during the break.”
It was a conversation I had been planning to have anyway.
Jihee slowly sat up and looked at me.
“Yeah, why?”
“I think I’ll get a part-time job.”
“A part-time job? Do you have to? You have Dad’s credit card.”
As expected. As expected.
The response I had imagined came back.
“But I don’t want to just stay at home all the time. You’ll probably just study at home anyway. It’s better to do something during that long time.”
“Hmm… as long as it’s not too long, I don’t really care.”
Somehow, our conversation was more like that of a married couple than siblings.
“But where will you work? Do you have something in mind?”
“A cafe part-time job.”
“Where?”
I picked up my phone from the desk and showed her the link Minju had given me.
“Here.”
“It’s close.”
“Minju introduced me to it.”
As soon as I mentioned Minju’s name, her eyes started to narrow.
I knew this would happen, so I immediately pulled out my insurance card.
“Yeah, but it’s not like I’ll be working with Minju. Minju just introduced me to the store.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The owner is looking for people, so Minju asked me about it. We won’t be working together.”
“Did Unnie not work there?”
A slightly softened tone.
I told her exactly what had happened.
“I told Unnie that I didn’t want to work at the same time as her.”
“……Oppa?”
“Yes.”
Jihee didn’t ask why.
She just tapped her seat beside the bed.
I sat down as instructed.
“Oppa.”
Her body language was like a wild beast’s.
Jihee seemed to have been waiting for this moment, and she immediately jumped onto me.
My center of gravity was disrupted.
My upper body was stuck in an awkward position, leaning against the wall.
“Why. Why suddenly?”
“Wasn’t that what you meant when you said that just now?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you mean something like ‘Little brother! I took care of the bad guy, so quickly praise me!’?”
Bad guy, indeed.
I’m not sure, but it seems Jihee has that kind of image in her head.
“I just said that you and Unnie are together, so don’t get nervous.”
Maybe she came as a surprise, and you and Unnie were together.
I could predict that Jihee would turn the house upside down.
“But Unnie is also very stubborn. Didn’t Oppa say that he didn’t care?”
“No. What. It seems like there really weren’t enough people.”
“That can’t be. You just want to keep Oppa by your side and take a look, right?”
Jihee raised her hand and stroked my cheek.
“But what about this? Our Oppa likes me.”
“Ah. Get down. Now.”
As I tried to force myself up, Jihee exerted her weight, pressing down on me.
“Ah. I don’t want to. Just stay like this for a bit.”
“You’re uncomfortable.”
“Then let’s just lie down together for a bit?”
“Jihee.”
“Study hard, okay……”
In that short moment, she poured on the charm and coquettishness.
Honestly, it was really cute.
How did I end up falling for her like this?
Having a sibling like Jihee was a disaster, but having a sibling like her was absolutely not easy.
“Now I should sleep. If I sleep late, it’ll be pointless to study until late.”
“If we sleep together, I’ll really fall asleep right away. I’m not joking.”
“I can’t sleep. It’s not me. Are you the only one who’s nervous?”
This side was also nervous.
“Why? If we sleep together, I’ll get too nervous?”
As Ji-hui’s body language, careless and relaxed, made me want to push my younger sibling away immediately.
“I’m nervous. I’m so nervous I think I’ll die, so send me off now.”
My younger sibling was half-rejected but burst out laughing.
“Okay. Since you’re nervous, I’ll send you off today. Sleep tight. Oppa.”
“You too.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Ji-hui got into bed with a straight posture, poked her head out, and showed me a smiling face.
“Goodnight.”
I closed the door behind me, wiping away the sweat on my forehead.
My still-racing heart.
No matter how I thought about it, being in the same space as the person I liked wasn’t helping at all.
* * *
“10 minutes left. 10 minutes.
The teacher’s announcement made me pat my chin unnecessarily.
Ah. I’m sure I did this before.
I’m sure I attended the class, but the concept didn’t come to mind.
In the end, I submitted the last question with a bit of guesswork, feeling ambiguous.
After submitting my answer, I came out to find Ji-hui’s friends waiting.
“I’m honestly satisfied with this.”
“Yeah. It’s still a C+.”
“How about Jun-ho hyung?”
“He’s doing okay.”
“Want to grab dinner?”
“No. I’ll eat at home.”
After parting ways with the kids, I boarded the bus heading home.
5:30 pm.
It was exactly when Ji-hui’s evening study session would be ending.
Should I buy something to eat?
Or should I buy more ingredients to cook with?
As I hesitated in front of the supermarket building, I saw the sign saying they had a sale and entered the store.
Onions, garlic, and other vegetables.
Pork neck and mackerel.
I filled my vinyl bag to the brim, thinking it would last for three days, and even got an ice cream, but…
“No. Why did you come all the way here to cause a scene?”
At the extremely familiar voice, my head automatically turned.
“Hey. Are you really doing this to us?”
The next thing I heard was a man’s voice.
“We’re saying the same thing.”
I could tell even from a distance.
The girl in the black t-shirt standing there was my younger sister.
And standing opposite her was…
“Ah, Jihee. Don’t you know I’m not like this all the time? Just once. Okay?”
He had a tall and imposing physique, with a body that seemed to have been honed through intense exercise.
The man with the thick, black hair was undoubtedly a possessor of superior looks, no matter who saw him.
Jihee wasn’t looking my way, so she didn’t seem to be aware of my presence.
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I couldn’t move any closer and just stood there, watching the two of them.
“You’re going to call Sehwa.”
“Yeah!”
As Jihee reached for her phone, the man’s hand moved to grab her wrist.
That’s when my paused footsteps started moving again.
“Jihee-ya.”
I called out her name in a louder voice.
“Oppa?”
Jihee finally looked my way.
Of course, her wrist was already being held by that man.
“What’s going on? Who is this?”
My gaze met the man’s.
His eyes seemed to be saying, “You’re interrupting our private time.”
I didn’t avert my gaze from his.
“Yeah, say hello. We’re family.”
“Are you the one living with her?”
“Yeah, we’re family. Say hello properly.”
It seemed that Jihee’s friend was indeed telling the truth.
“I’m Lee Junho.”
“I’m Lee Seho.”
Seho, that guy, nodded curtly and immediately ignored me.
“So, just tell me straight out. Are you going to do it or not?”
“Ah, shut up! Anyway, since Oppa’s here, I’m leaving now.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Seho’s hand reached out to touch Jihee’s neck, and…
“That’s enough.”
I blurted out, and it was a reaction that wasn’t like me at all.
It was as if I had blocked a shot in basketball, and I grabbed Seho’s wrist with a loud thud.
The air was filled with an awkward silence.
Seho gazed at me as if asking what I was doing, and Jihee’s pupils gradually expanded like a gradient.
“Ah, you know, my younger sibling did something, so just tell me about it in words, okay?”
The bold moving and the ment were ridiculously clumsy.
“Ah, yes, okay.”
Seho made a face as if he was embarrassed and held out his hand.
The situation ended there.
“Hey, Jihee, let’s talk more about it later through text.”
“There’s nothing to talk about with you.”
“Ah, if you want to receive it, then receive it.”
Seho bowed his head and walked past us.
We just stared at his retreating figure for a while.
“Friend?”
I could finally speak to Jihee.
“Yeah.”
“Did he call you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Jihee subtly moved to my side and slipped her arm into mine.
“It’s not like my oppa would care about that.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he’s always like that. Let’s go home.”
Jihee tried to move naturally, but I couldn’t.
“Jihee.”
“What?”
“What’s the exact relationship between you and that friend?”
“You just said it yourself, oppa. We’re friends.”
Her nonchalant reaction made me feel like I was being twisted inside.
You and I are like siblings, and you’re saying it’s nothing.
Are you saying that you and I are just drawing a vague line?
No. But I remember you telling me that you don’t have any close male friends.
The uncomfortable feeling lingered.
“Oppa.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you worried?”
Jihee released her arm and turned her body 90 degrees to look up at me.
Neither denying nor affirming the situation.
She nodded very slightly.
“Okay, then.”
Jihee put her hand deep into my pocket.
“Are you going to cut ties with me?”
I couldn’t express this despicable joy.