The basic side dishes came out first — long-cut raw carrots and cucumbers — along with a cold bottle of soju set on the table. As a compliment from the house, a bowl of fish cake broth with a few pieces of fish cake was brought out alongside them. Hyeonho cracked the soju bottle open with a sharp twist and nodded toward Huiwon.
Is he telling me to hold out my glass?
Huiwon tentatively slid his soju glass forward, and Hyeonho lifted the corners of his mouth and filled it. Then he filled his own glass to the brim right after.
“The first glass is supposed to be a toast.”
“It’s fine.”
Hyeonho had been holding his glass up toward Huiwon, but as if he’d expected exactly that response, he showed no sign of embarrassment and simply tipped the soju straight into his own mouth.
Huiwon watched Hyeonho throw his head back smoothly and followed suit, tipping the soju into his own mouth — only to scrunch his face almost instantly.
“Ah, fuck, this is so goddamn bitter.”
The alcohol heat rushed up hot, and the bitterness lingering in his mouth left him at a loss, just flicking his tongue around — so Hyeonho quickly pushed the fish cake broth toward Huiwon.
“Have a spoonful of this.”
“…….”
“Go on.”
Huiwon ignored him and looked around the table for water first, but there was no water — and the unpleasant bitterness spreading through his mouth was hard to bear. With no other choice, he spooned up some of the fish cake broth Hyeonho had pushed toward him. The rich stock, steeped long enough to be deep and full, diluted the taste of the alcohol. That helped a little.
“I thought you drank quite a bit……”
“That’s when it’s good alcohol.”
“Soju is good.”
Is he insane. Huiwon muttered it loud enough to be heard, but Hyeonho paid no mind and filled his glass again, tipping his head back once more. Ahh— Hyeonho let out a breath laced with alcohol, then picked up one of the cucumber side dishes and took a big bite. It seemed he hadn’t been lying about soju being good — this was different from the way he’d drunk at Deep Red.
While Hyeonho was working through half a bottle on his own, a freshly made udon, stir-fried sundae, and chicken gizzards arrived at the table one after another. The moment Huiwon saw the food filling up the table, he wrinkled his face and pulled only the udon bowl toward himself.
“Want another drink?”
“No.”
He refused without even glancing up. He was planning to eat fast and head home, so he loaded a big chopstickful of udon — but Hyeonho sitting across from him somehow looked like he was enjoying himself. Even while pouring his own drink alone, he was humming quietly.
“You seem in a good mood.”
“It’s nice. The weather’s warm, people are lively.”
As Hyeonho said, the pojangmacha was loud. Everyone was talking over each other. The table across from them had a group of middle-aged men who seemed to be complaining about work — trading insults like that bastard so-and-so, son of a bitch, disgusting. The table next to them had a man and woman sitting face to face, passing drinks back and forth with flushed faces.
Huiwon took a wide look around the pojangmacha and looked back at Hyeonho. Hyeonho had been lifting his glass alone but paused, meeting Huiwon’s gaze with a look of mild longing.
“This is what the real adult life tastes like.”
“I’m an adult too, you know. Does drinking soju automatically make you an adult?”
So someone who can’t drink stays a minor forever, does he? What a standard for adulthood. Huiwon lowered his head to go back to eating his udon when he heard a soft snicker from above. He snapped his head up immediately — and came eye to eye with Kang Hyeonho, who was covering his mouth with his soju glass as if trying to hide a smile.
“What’s that laugh about?”
Hyeonho widened his eyes as if he hadn’t laughed at all, knocked back the drink in his hand, and then broke into a warm smile. He genuinely looked like he was looking at a small child.
Did he get drunk off those few glasses? Huiwon checked the empty soju bottle on the table.
“I laughed because it’s funny watching a kid insist they’re an adult.”
“A kid? Want to see my ID?”
Actually ready to show his ID, he set down the wooden chopsticks he’d been holding and reached back toward his rear pocket where his wallet was — at which point Kang Hyeonho waved him off, saying there was no need for that.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
Huiwon rolled his eyes briefly and threw out a number that roughly matched Hyeonho’s age range — he didn’t want to seem young in front of him. If he said twenty-six, Hyeonho would be the same age, and Huiwon also planned to use banmal for the rest of the meal.
Oh? A grin spread all over Hyeonho’s face as he asked back.
“So you’ll be twenty-six in six years.”
“……Are you investigating me?”
“More like prior knowledge. I saw your ID number back then. You write it on the statement.”
Ah…… Huiwon nodded, thinking back to that day. That was something he hadn’t thought of. So he’d known Huiwon’s age the whole time and still spent a while hovering around him using that clumsy formal speech. The fact that Hyeonho had been holding his personal information all along didn’t sit well with him.
“How old are you, then. It’s not fair that only I had to reveal my age, so tell me.”
“Me? Thirty.”
Huiwon’s eyes went wide. And he immediately added: “That’s ancient.” Seeing Huiwon saying things as if wanting to be heard, Hyeonho also muttered back as if wanting to be heard: “Like I had a choice about getting older.”
“Wow, you’re practically an old man.” Huiwon fired back without missing a beat — and satisfied with the dumbstruck look on Hyeonho’s face, he turned his attention back to his udon.
Old man. These days thirty doesn’t even qualify as old. Hyeonho, suddenly demoted to old man status, narrowed his eyes and fixed Huiwon with a sharp stare.
Undeterred by the look, Huiwon was eating away contentedly when he reached for a piece of pickled radish, and Hyeonho threw out a question he’d been sitting on since Tesoro.
“Oh right — why didn’t you sell the yellow cake to Jaeho hyung? If you’d put three in front of him, he would’ve bought all three.”
He’d been curious about it since the cake tasting. Huiwon had explained the cakes as magnolia, forsythia, and cherry blossom — which meant he’d had all three from the start — so he could have sold all three to Jaeho. He’d already confirmed the reaction was good, so Hyeonho was curious why he’d specifically kept one piece for himself. It wasn’t like he was paying separately for it.
Huiwon looked up and tilted his head.
“Jaeho hyung?”
“Earlier. The big guy who came in with me and bought the cake.”
“Ahhh. The one who looked like a thug?”
He gave a big nod as if it had just come back to him.
“The yellow cake…… I was worried it might have gone off. It was leftover stock.”
Huiwon answered flatly, then grabbed the udon bowl with both hands and drank down the broth in one go. When he set the bowl back down, it was empty enough to see the bottom.
Given how much Do Huiwon normally ate, there was no way one bowl of udon was enough. Sure enough, Huiwon licked his lips with a look of dissatisfaction and scanned the menu. But most of it seemed to fail to impress — the further his eyes went down the menu, the more his brow furrowed. He muttered under his breath about what on earth stir-fried shells were.
Watching that, Hyeonho felt a little bad for dragging Huiwon to a pojangmacha. Since he ate anything and everything, it had never crossed his mind that Huiwon might not like this kind of place.
He must be starving, having worked from morning all the way to the afternoon.
“Do you work a full shift from morning to afternoon? Isn’t that rough? You were closing up alone too. Is the owner paying you all your due wages?”
He was a little worried a bad employer might be pulling wage tricks on a young student. He knew the field well enough to help out if it came to that. Even at the worried question, Huiwon kept his eyes on the menu and wrinkled his face.
“Who said anything about working part-time.”
“Huh?”
“I’m the owner.”
Hyeonho stopped mid-pour, glass halfway full, and blinked. He’d just assumed on his own — he’d thought of Huiwon as just a hard-working student working part-time. It wasn’t exactly common for a twenty-year-old to go and open a café like that all on their own.
Come to think of it, they’d said the kids in that drug circle were from prominent families. He understood they’d already retained lawyers from well-regarded firms.
Only now did it start to make sense why Huiwon had turned up there so unexpectedly that day. Birds of a feather. The party had been the purpose from the start — so Huiwon, who hadn’t known anything about the drug use, must have walked in for what he thought was a simple social gathering and gotten tangled up in something messy.
While Hyeonho was piecing together the mismatched puzzle from that day, he noticed Huiwon had been watching him at some point — and their eyes met square on.
“……So then, school?”
