Chapter 9
About One Cup of Milk Tea
The milk tea that had gone cold left streaks of milk film along the inside wall of the coffee cup. One, two. As more streaks appeared, our conversation grew deeper.
I had planned to spend only as much time as one cup of milk tea. Exactly that much. But the man sitting across from me did not seem to have any intention of letting me go easily.
“Theodore Ashford.”
“Hm?”
Although he was not a mind reader, he was just as perceptive as one.
“Be honest. You didn’t know my name, did you?”
“…How did you know?”
“When I went to the jukebox just now, you tried to call me from behind, but then you grabbed my arm.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. It suits you. But from now on, call me Theo. I’m secretly kind of hurt by things like that.”
At cafés, in college dining halls, and even here at this bar. Whenever people gathered, they talked about romance. Who they had gone on a date with and what happened, who was cute, who they disliked. Things like that.
Until now, I had thought that the reason people were so obsessed with relationships with others, and the reason they spent so much emotion on other people, was because they were addicted to the stimulation that human relationships provided.
Getting dopamine from intellectual stimulation, like the satisfaction of achievement, was difficult. So they became addicted to easy stimulation, like junk food.
During the amount of time it took to drink one cup of milk tea, my impressions of Theodore were surprisingly varied.
His intelligence and common sense were only slightly better than my younger brother’s, but his communication style was similar.
Theodore’s main interests were sports, stories about things happening inside the college, and, naturally, economics and popular psychology topics like MBTI.
“Sarah. Do you know Schrödinger’s cat?”
“Hm?”
“Like a cat inside a box, I want us to keep watching our relationship for now. Until we open the box, there are still possibilities, right?”
I assumed he had said this to find common ground with me because I was a philosophy major, but I almost fainted after hearing it. I had no idea where or how to correct him.
“You’re looking for a muse for your graduation thesis? What’s the title? The Corruption of the Body?”
“On the Construction of Corruption and the Body, and the Discursive Structure of Desire. I’m setting up a Kantian hypothesis that desire is mainly shaped by social discourse, and I’m trying to prove it…”
“Ahahaha. You really are a total weirdo.”
And yet, strangely, I enjoyed this low-level conversation. Perhaps it was because of his charm. He expressed his emotions openly and naturally, and kept closing the distance between us.
I hadn’t even drunk alcohol, but I felt drunk. The world seemed to spin around me. Before I knew it, even the bottom of the teacup had developed a ring of milk film.
Even after finishing the tea, we continued talking for quite a while before leaving the bar.
It was already almost eleven at night. Three hours had passed since we met.
Ever since I was nine and started attending a school for gifted students, even when I went to a café with my mother, I couldn’t sit there for more than an hour.
Because I got bored.
But I had talked for three hours with a man who was practically a stranger. Was this what people meant when they called someone an unfilial child?
Theodore deliberately walked me all the way to the front of my dormitory. I dragged his large sneakers along as I walked. Strangely, I did not feel the same awkwardness I had felt when walking with Elias during the day.
It was November. In Korea, it would have been a bitterly cold winter, but it wasn’t like that here. I deliberately breathed out, hoping to see my breath, but unfortunately, no mist appeared.
Theodore, who had been quietly looking down at me, spoke.
“I row.”
“Rowing? As in rowing a boat?”
“Yeah. The rowing team is having an end-of-year party this time. Want to come?”
I suddenly snapped back to reality.
The rowing team. Wasn’t Theodore that guy? The bastard who was constantly the subject of girls’ gossip in the lecture halls, dining hall, and library.
I stopped walking and quietly looked up at his face. He stopped beside me, and his expression instantly turned cold.
“Why? Is it because of the rumors about me?”
“Uh… yeah. I heard you date a lot of girls.”
“That’s true. I date a lot of girls. But why is that a problem? We’re still young.”
He was right. Theodore was twenty-one years old. He was at an age when he should make every effort possible for the sake of reproduction.
I was the same, anyway. I simply needed a subject for my research on sexual desire. When I was treating people as research subjects, there was no need to worry about things like true love or having a firm sense of ethics.
In this kind of situation, what a man wanted from a woman was obvious. Probably sexual gratification.
Come to think of it, hadn’t the girls told me yesterday? Asking someone to watch a movie meant they wanted to sleep with them.
If that was the case, then there could be nothing better. I needed to experience sexual desire and find out what sex felt like, since I needed to understand why people went crazy over it.
“Right. Now that I think about it, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.”
I nodded vigorously as I answered. Perhaps my response satisfied him, because Theodore suddenly began laughing loudly.
“You’re really driving me crazy, Sarah.”
Hearing that he rowed made his appearance make sense. Those chocolate abs in his profile picture.
“When’s the party?”
It wouldn’t be the attitude of a researcher to throw away an opportunity like this. I immediately accepted his invitation.
“Let’s go together. To the end-of-year party.”
“Great. Then I’ll text you…”
“Sarah.”
Just as we were about to make plans, a man’s voice behind me cut me off.
I turned my head.
A pair of bright blue eyes was looking at me.
It was Elias.
“Mr. Elias? Why are you here?”
Elias did not answer my question. He simply gave a small nod.
“Good evening. Could you spare me a moment?”
“Elias.”
The one who answered his greeting a moment later was not me, but Theodore.
The two of them were different in their departments, colleges, and courses. So how did they know each other?
“Theodore? Long time no see.”
Come to think of it, Theodore had said he was twenty-one earlier. Elias was twenty-one too, wasn’t he?
“You two are friends?”
Instead of answering my question, Theodore’s hand came toward me. He gently pulled my arm and immediately put his arm around my shoulders. I was so surprised by the sudden physical contact that I nearly fell over.
Elias walked straight toward us. Theodore followed him with his eyes and whispered into my ear.
“The guy you were trying to lure with perfume is Elias?”
“Yeah. Do you dislike him?”
“No, no. I really like him. Really.”
Theodore shook his head and continued.
“I like him very much.”
His words were full of hidden meaning.
Elias soon reached us with long strides. He looked back and forth between my face and Theodore’s, then waved.
It seemed like he was greeting us happily, but even this felt awkward. He really was an interesting person. His words, expressions, voice, appearance, and gestures never seemed to match each other at all.
“Good evening, Theodore. I’d like to speak with Sarah. Could you give us some space?”
The two really did seem to be friends. St. John’s College, was it? Then Theodore must also be the son of a fairly influential family.
Being caught between the two of them felt like being in The Truman Show. Except I was the only middle-class person in a world of the upper class.
“We’re busy right now.”
Theodore looked down at Elias’s face and lied.
I was puzzled. What were we busy with? We were on our way to the dormitory.
“I was planning to go back to my dorm now. I’m not busy.”
I slipped out of Theodore’s embrace and stood beside Elias. Theodore’s face twisted into a complete mess.
“See you next time, Theo.”
“Hah.”
Theodore gave a hollow laugh at my farewell and abruptly turned around. Then he walked back alone the way we had come. Judging by how he messed up his hair as he walked away, he seemed angry.
Why was he angry? He was the one who had lied.
“Sarah, if you don’t mind, let’s go somewhere quiet.”
As if he didn’t care about Theodore’s feelings at all, Elias only talked about what he wanted to say.
“What do you need to talk about that we have to go somewhere quiet?”
“I’m sorry to say this.”
“What on earth is going on?”
At my question, a vertical wrinkle appeared between Elias’s eyebrows, which normally looked like those of a plastic doll.
It was the same expression he had made when I grabbed his arm.
“My penis is erect. Because of you.”
