If I spoke honestly, Choi Seol would probably walk away without a single backward glance. But seeing the way he was acting just now, I had a feeling that might not be the case either. Either way, there’d be no taking it back once it was said. I was hesitating, unsure how to put it into words, when—
Grrrowl.
“…..”
“…..”
Good timing or bad, I immediately clutched my stomach at the sudden sound of hunger. But the moment I registered the noise, a vicious hunger came rushing in. Come to think of it, I really hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I glanced furtively at Choi Seol.
“Should we get something to eat first?”
“I’ll go buy us something.”
Our words overlapped at the same time, as if we’d both been waiting for the chance. We both paused for a moment, looking at each other. I was the first to come to my senses.
“Let’s just go out and eat together.”
“You still need about thirty more minutes for the IV drip to finish.”
“I’ll just stop here. It wasn’t anything serious anyway, you said so yourself. I’m fine now.”
I deliberately straightened my back and put on a bright expression.
A good idea suddenly occurred to me.
“Let’s go eat tteokbokki.”
We went into a snack bar near the hospital.
“What do you want to eat?”
“Pick whatever you want.”
“Okay. Then I’ll order whatever I like.”
I quickly scanned the menu and went up to the counter. By the time I finished ordering and came back, Choi Seol wasn’t at the table. It wasn’t a very big place, so I easily spotted him filling a cup at the water dispenser. I found myself staring, momentarily lost in thought at how unchanged he looked, the same now as ten years ago, when Choi Seol came back.
“I mixed it half and half, so it should be lukewarm.”
There was no further explanation, but I could tell it was thoughtfulness on his part. I sat down beside him and took the cup in my hand. The cup felt slightly warmer than lukewarm, like it had been heated with hot water at some point. Or maybe it was just that my body temperature was still running high.
“Still the same as ever.”
“…..”
I felt Choi Seol’s gaze at my murmur. I asked, putting on an unbothered smile.
“Do you remember? You took me to a snack bar exactly once. Said it was a place that made good tteokbokki.”
“I remember.”
Thankfully, Choi Seol’s reactions were quicker than they’d been at the hospital.
“I think back then you actually ate more sundae than tteokbokki.”
“I eat it better than tteokbokki, comparatively.”
“So that means you don’t actually like it. Is there anything you do particularly like to eat?”
“I just eat whatever I’m given, mostly.”
“That’s surprising.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. You’ve always been someone who’s clear about what you like and dislike. So I figured you’d be the same way about food. Or maybe you’d be the picky young-master type.”
Choi Seol frowned, asking what that was supposed to mean. Just then, the gimbap—the fastest item to come out of our order—arrived. I reached for the utensil holder, but Choi Seol was faster. He pulled out a tissue and laid it down in front of me first, setting a spoon and chopsticks on top of it, and only then did he start getting his own.
I found myself curious. Was this kindness something left over from his seventeen-year-old self? Or had Choi Seol always been like this with other people, all throughout these past ten years?
“Everything else, yes.”
While I was lost in thought, Choi Seol picked the conversation back up where it had paused.
“Like you said, I’m pretty clear about what I like and dislike in other things. But when it comes to food, I don’t really care much.”
“Hm. In other words, you don’t have much of an appetite for indulgence?”
“There are things I dislike, of course.”
“Like what? Sweet things, maybe?”
Choi Seol’s hand, which had been picking up a piece of gimbap, paused. At the look on his face asking how I knew, I let out an exclamation of admiration.
“You’re totally the male-lead type.”
“Male lead?”
“You know, that thing. The male leads in romances or novels or dramas. Cool, tall, great body, handsome face, rich, perfect at everything, but doesn’t care much about food and definitely can’t eat sweet things—that kind of setup always shows up.”
“…It’s not that I can’t eat them.”
“Either way, you don’t really like them, that’s what you mean. I’d bet my chocolate cake that the fridge in the house you’re living in right now only has mineral water and beer in it.”
Choi Seol, who’d been listening to everything I said like it was nonsense from outer space, raised an eyebrow. As if to refute me, he added,
“As far as I know, there’s no chocolate cake at home.”
“Just think of it as a grand wish living in my heart.”
“No need to go as far as a grand wish—you could just buy one when you go.”
“The bakery here doesn’t taste good. Still stuck in that nineties fresh-cream style, I’d say. There’s a reason I’m being forced to get healthy out here in the countryside.”
I muttered glumly. In a countryside where you had to drive nearly thirty minutes just to reach a mart to buy a single snack, snacking was basically something you had to give up on. Naturally, food delivery wasn’t an option either. As an alternative, I sometimes ordered half-prepared meals online to cook at home, but there was an obvious difference between that and eating fresh on the spot or having something hot delivered straight to your door. The taste was fine, sure, but it just didn’t feel the same, somehow.
“So that’s exactly why I need to eat what I want whenever I get the chance like this. Let’s get burgers too after this. There’s a new place that opened up next to the mart recently. Oh! The tteokbokki’s here.”
Following the gimbap, tteokbokki, fried snacks, sundae, and ramyeon were laid out on the table one after another. I swallowed hard and quickly picked up my chopsticks, grabbing a piece of rice cake to eat. It was the ordinary taste you’d expect from a chain restaurant, but on an empty stomach with only a few pieces of gimbap in it, anything tasted heavenly.
“So then why’d you come to the countryside?”
I’d just dipped a fried gimmari roll into the tteokbokki sauce when he asked. I lifted my head, my mouth full and puffed out, chewing. Choi Seol still hadn’t even picked up his chopsticks. I answered only after I’d chewed and swallowed everything in my mouth.
“Just, I wanted to rest a bit.”
“…..”
“My family went bankrupt when I was a sophomore in high school.”
I could see Choi Seol’s surprise plainly. Though all that amounted to was his handsome eyes widening slightly.
Feeling like staying silent here would only deepen the misunderstanding, I picked up a piece of sundae and added kindly,
“It’s nothing dramatic, just a common enough family story. Things got difficult at home because of my father’s business, so I worked part-time while going to school, that sort of thing. Because of that, I bombed my college entrance exam and ended up retaking it. At first, I thought, what’s the point of college when we don’t even have money, so I figured I’d just work instead, but my parents were dead set against it. My uncle happened to offer to cover my first semester’s tuition if I went to college, so I ended up studying again after all. Maybe I got lucky, because the following year I got into a pretty decent school. Though once I actually started, I regretted it.”
“Regretted it?”
“My uncle covered the tuition, but I still had to earn my own living expenses. And the tuition support was only for one semester, so from the next year on, I had to take out student loans and pay interest on top of everything. Needing money in so many ways, I had no choice but to keep working part-time jobs constantly. Short-term, long-term, manual labor, whatever I could do, I did it. The locations weren’t fixed either, so during breaks I’d travel all over the country for work. Trying to keep up with studying on top of all that, eventually I couldn’t even rest when my body got sick.”
Honestly, I never thought I’d end up telling Choi Seol something like this. In my early twenties, pride alone would have made this impossible to say. Even now, my feelings weren’t all that different. You always want to show your first love only your better side, after all.
And yet the reason my mouth had gone loose today, of all days, was probably because of that same steady gaze of his that never showed pity at my story. Just that quiet look that seemed to say I’m focused on what you’re saying right now, and somehow my story kept going without end.
“And so before I knew it, I was a senior, and that’s when I had my breakdown. My body was sick, and as for studying, I’d tried, sure, but nothing had changed at all between freshman year and now. So I started wondering what exactly I was even doing here… So I ran away into the military. And after coming back, I switched to a regular leave of absence and came straight down to the countryside. That’s the reason.”
I deliberately spoke lightly, smiling brightly at Choi Seol.
“So? With a track record like this, I’d say I’m pretty good at making eye contact and talking with you now, don’t you think?”
Choi Seol’s eyes wavered slightly. I’d never really thought about it before, but it was unexpectedly fun, realizing that a single word from me could make his expression shift and waver like that. If that’s the case, then how about this.
“You remembered that book, didn’t you?”
“…..”
“The one with the little wizard on the cover. You’re the one who lent it to me.”
There was no way someone as sharp as Choi Seol wouldn’t remember. To me it was ten years ago, but to Choi Seol, it would have been only a few months back. Choi Seol left a brief pause before opening his mouth.
“I thought it might not be my book.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Didn’t you lose the library book you’d borrowed, and we agreed you’d return mine instead, in its place?”
Just as I thought. He’d known all along and pretended not to, back at the house. So why would he suddenly change his attitude and start talking about proving memories like that?
“I just didn’t return it because I wanted to give it back to you properly. No matter how I looked at it, that didn’t seem right. Either way, thanks to you I got to read through to the end of a book I liked, so I was grateful, and…”
I wrapped both hands around the cup of water Choi Seol had brought me. There was still a faint warmth lingering in the glass.
“You might want to look back on that series again someday, who knows. I figured you’d be annoyed if volume one was missing when that time came.”
If I told you now that the real reason was that I hated the thought of that book, soaked in your scent, being touched by some stranger who didn’t even know you—what would you think? No matter how dense a person might be, there was no way they wouldn’t recognize that as a confession. There was no way they could.
I’m a man who shares the same gender as you. This was a feeling that had to stay buried forever. And yet, the reason I’d brought up the book first was that I didn’t want to create a situation where we might misunderstand each other.
“Then if you wanted to give it to me, why do you still have it?”
The words that had been flowing so smoothly came to a halt right there. Of course they would. To explain that, I’d have to bring up what happened that day. The day I’d tried to return the book to you was the closing ceremony, when the scent of winter still lingered in the air.
“It just turned out that way somehow. I never really got the chance to give it to you.”
“…I see.”
Anyone listening would have known it was a half-hearted excuse, but Choi Seol didn’t press further. I quickly changed the subject.
“Like I said before, I think I can understand to some extent why you said what you said back at the house. I wasn’t really thinking straight at the time, but hearing you say you were going to leave home, back at the hospital, it brought me back to my senses.”
“That’s—”
“So let’s go together.”
At my sudden suggestion, Choi Seol’s eyes went wide. Worried he might misunderstand, I quickly added,
“The address written on the documents your sister gave you, when you go there, I’ll go with you. There’s no way you’re not anxious going alone, right?”
“…Are you serious?”
“As long as you’re okay with it. I want to.”
“I’m, I…”
Wavering, flustered—every emotion that had been hard to find on him all day was flickering across Choi Seol’s face now.
