When Dee and SoYoon opened their eyes again, it was nearing 10 o’clock. The moment they woke up, Dee whined for food, and SoYoon headed to the kitchen.
Wondering what she should make, she opened the fridge and found eggs. She reached for a frying pan when Dee interrupted from behind.
“I’m not eating fried eggs. Or boiled ones.”
Twins were a handful. Dee only liked meals that were complicated, and that gave her a high chance of messing up. SoYoon contemplated what to do with the egg in her hand and decided to steam it.
Trying to recall her hazy memory of her mother’s recipe, she beat the eggs and seasoned them, Dee suddenly came over and leaned on her shoulder, which caused her to dump a bunch of salt into the egg mixture. She stared down at it for a moment but then went on to put it in a pot and over the induction.
The steamed egg she made was a failure. Dee complained about its saltiness, the burnt taste, and the hardened texture but continued to take large spoonfuls and shove them in his mouth.
“Be thankful it’s us that’s eating it. If it were anyone else, they would never eat…”
Dee smiled all of a sudden. His expression revealed his embarrassment as he glanced over at SoYoon.
“Hey, is it true that in Outhouse, everyone gets married? Dum told me that if you do, then you have to live together forever.”
In Wonderland, marriage was rare. Everyone was too busy taking care of themselves to be bothered by someone who could potentially become a threat or a burden. For someone from Wonderland, and the slums no less, the word “marriage” probably came up only in books.
SoYoon turned her attention toward Dee. He had been observing her for a response, but when their eyes met, he hurriedly pretended to be doing something else.
“I mean, I’m not saying I want to do it or anything.”
“Twins.”
SoYoon put down her utensils. Nervousness passed through Dee’s blue eyes. He looked too sensitive to be just Dee, so SoYoon knew that both Dee and Dum were listening.
“Today’s the last day of your request. You know that, don’t you?”
“…What are you talking about? There are still two days left.”
If you calculated one week from the time that Twins had told her how long she had to stay, then they were right. SoYoon counted from the first day that Twins put in their request, however.
She didn’t bother explaining all this and stared at Twins instead. As she did, Twins slammed their utensils loudly on the table.
“F*ck, you don’t have a grain of attachment, do you?”
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve had a lot of other requests I need to get to. I’ll get going now.”
Twins grabbed her as she got up from her chair and headed to the living room. They pulled her in and hugged her. She ended up on their lap as they squeezed her tightly.
“Don’t go.”
They buried their face in her neck and rubbed their cheek onto hers. SoYoon pushed them away and got off their lap, but they grabbed her arm and pushed her hard into the wall.
SoYoon sighed as they put their hands inside her shirt and roughly touched her. She grabbed their collar and twisted her body.
Slam! Their position switched as she smashed Twins into the wall. Having hit their head, their vision blurred for a moment, and SoYoon said to them, “I’m not your mother.”
If she had said this even a bit more nicely, Twins would have felt satisfied. However, she had no intention of doing that because that would be good for neither her nor them.
Twins turned white in shock as they removed their lips from her.
“It’s not like that.”
SoYoon looked up at them silently. Her crystal brown eyes had soaked up the morning sun, and bits of silver danced within them. But they were not the nice fairy dust they had previously imagined. They were like broken shards of weaponry, cold and sharp. Looking at that, Twins sank into darkness.
“Don’t judge me.”
Their initial feelings toward her may have been true to her assumptions, but they weren’t that now. Twins heard their heart thudding in their ears. When their hands grazed hers, their heart would beat like a drum. Whenever they saw her lips, they didn’t want to bite them but instead wanted to caress them.
They lowered their head. Her hands were strangling them, but they didn’t care. They kissed her lips. They hadn’t said anything, but they expected SoYoon to say, “You would never do this stuff if you actually felt that way.”
SoYoon also knew that she did not have a single drop of blood relation to them; they were total strangers. No one could say with certainty that their feelings were 100 percent maternal.
“Marry me, and let’s live together.”
After Dum learned that marriage in Outhouse was a good thing, they had wanted to say this to her for a long time. She pushed Twins away, however, letting go of their collar. Wherever she shoved them, they let their body follow its lead.
Twins’ outbursts always contained the truthful expectation of hearing, “I like you too.” To her, this naivete made her situation even more uncomfortable. That was the reason she had always chosen to ignore their previous confessions.
It looked difficult to do that now, however. Twins looked at her with an expression determined to hear an answer from her.
Just then, she could sense the presence of two familiar people beyond the door. Twins puckered their lips again.
“Don’t…” she said quickly, but it was already too late.
“I like you, I like you!”
The beautiful sky-colored eyes turned red and a clear teardrop fell. Twins wiped the tears away and muttered, “F*ck, why is this coming out all of a sudden?”
More tears fell than they could wipe away. And still they didn’t remove their gaze from her. Their straightforward approach at love made her admit defeat, and she sighed.
“All right.”
At that moment, the door crashed in. As Twins wiped their eyes, SoYoon looked toward the entrance. Heart and Mad Hatter looked around the interior with anger-filled eyes.
“Hey, Whitey,” Heart said.
“It’s been a while,” Mad Hatter said.
As was customary for each of their personalities, one smiled crookedly while the other smiled brightly. SoYoon, feeling uncomfortable, avoided both their gazes. The two of them came up to her and examined her body. They first checked the back of her neck and saw the kiss mark. They glared at Twins.
“The dog must have bit her,” Twins said sheepishly.
“That’s one bad-mannered dog.”
The two men looked to be getting along quite nicely with each other, but that was only for a few moments. Heart glared at Mad Hatter while he petted SoYoon’s arm and intertwined his fingers with hers.
“I recommend you get off,” Heart said to Mad Hatter, who had grabbed at SoYoon’s shoulder.
“I think you should be the one letting go,” Mad Hatter said to Heart, who was hugging SoYoon around the waist.
“Both of you, let go,” SoYoon said to the voices above her head. They ignored her. She escaped the two men by stepping hard on Heart’s foot and pinching Mad Hatter’s side. Dee watched all of this with his mouth open.
“Hey, Blondie, you, Heart…oof!”
Knowing that Dee’s assumption that SoYoon had a crush on Heart was wrong, Dum rose up and shut him up. Not knowing what the two of them had been talking about, SoYoon saw Twins walking toward her frowning.
“Huh? What is this?” Dee snorted.
The menacing atmosphere between the three men was suffocating. It was when SoYoon wondered if she should intervene that Twins exploded a small bomb.
“When should we meet next? You will cook for me then, too, right?” Heart asked.
The other two men froze. Their gaze looked first at Twins—currently he was Dum—then at SoYoon as if in betrayal. Their eyes seemed to be asking how she could do that to them.
She frowned as she scooped up a spoonful of steamed egg that was sitting on the table. Then she pulled on Heart’s necktie so that he leaned in toward her and shoved the spoon in his mouth. At first, he blinked in confusion, but then his expression changed to one that left him speechless.
Gulp. He was just barely able to swallow it, and then he looked down at SoYoon.
“Whitey, you…”
Heart tried hard to keep his cool, but his eyelashes danced up and down. She narrowed her eyes and looked up at him.
Mad Hatter asked her, “Wait. How come you aren’t giving it to me?”
“You’ll ruin your stomach.”
Heart had grown up in the slums and so had a strong stomach. Mad Hatter, however, had lived for several years on only vodka and vitamin capsules. If he ate something other than those things, she worried he would get severely sick.
Even so, Mad Hatter looked at her without flinching. Heart responded.
“What do you mean by that, Whitey? Then it’s okay if I ruin my stomach?”
That was not what she meant, but it was a bother to explain it all, so she shook her head. Twins were now pouting over the fact that she gave the food prepared for them to someone else. They demanded that Heart spit it out and glared at him as if they were about to punch him in the gut. SoYoon pulled them apart and directed them to the sofa.
“Everyone shut up and sit down.”