Foods Good for a Man's Body
A warm ray of sunlight tickled my eyelids.
How long had I slept? What time was it now?
Those thoughts meant nothing in the face of my drowsiness.
“Haaam…”
When my eyes fluttered open, the first thing I saw wasn’t some romantic scene with Han Yeeun like you’d find in a novel. It was just the wall.
I rolled over and looked at her.
The small girl was still fast asleep.
We were too unstable to call ourselves lovers, yet too… intense to call ourselves friends.
‘Way too intense.’
I’d done so much that my mouth still carried a completely different flavor.
Beep beep beep beep…
There was no heavy fatigue weighing me down. On the contrary, I felt so refreshed I could have leaped out of bed at any second. But the languid afterglow had completely shut down my brain functions.
For example…
Creak.
“…What the hell are you doing?”
Even though I clearly heard Seo Eunha come in, I stayed lying there, pulling Han Yeeun closer and closing my eyes.
“Chaeeun! That’s only because you left the bed…!”
But Seo Eunha’s gaze wasn’t on either of us. It was fixed somewhere else.
She ran her fingers over my collarbone.
Gulp…
“Do you need to suck and bite even while sleeping?”
“That’s… um… it’s not what it looks like…”
I hung my head like a guilty boyfriend who’d been caught cheating.
Wait. Why am I the one getting scolded?
“Chaeeun.”
“What.”
“Why am I getting scolded?”
“What?”
“For sleeping in your bed?”
Technically it was my bed, but she had claimed it months ago, so I no longer thought of it as mine. Even if she had taken it, the owner had left it empty for a whole day. Was it really that big a deal?
Maybe it was because Seo Eunha disliked Han Yeeun.
“Are you seriously asking because you don’t know?”
“Sorry. I knew you hated Yeeun, so letting her sleep in your bed was out of line.”
But even my sincere apology failed to soften her expression.
“Do you really think I’m mad about something that trivial?”
Weren’t you?
Ah.
I suddenly remembered what Seo Eunha had said before.
‘I said I wouldn’t tell you not to look at other girls, but who said I wouldn’t get jealous?’
Even if she was only my ward, it must be unsettling when the one person who takes care of her starts getting cozy with someone else.
And I hadn’t even realized it…
“Ugh… When did my sister-in-law get here…?”
She was still wearing the same oversized clothes from yesterday. Aside from the bedhead, she looked exactly the same. The only difference was the vivid kiss marks on her neck and collarbone—large, obvious, impossible to miss.
Whoever left them had done an excellent job.
Han Yeeun rubbed her eyes and nuzzled her face into my chest. I couldn’t tell if she was still half-asleep and oblivious or doing it on purpose.
Every slight movement made the vivid marks of my possessiveness peek through her clothes.
“Ha, seriously. Your arm was wrecked yesterday, but your mouth worked just fine? What are you, a vampire?”
“No, Chaeeun. It’s not like that. Yeeun coughed up blood yesterday while protecting me, so I was checking to make sure she was okay.”
“You checked her mouth, found nothing wrong, and then stamped her neck like some quarantine officer?”
And then Han Yeeun dropped a completely unhelpful line.
“Still, Oppa and I aren’t dating! I got properly rejected! Even I think it’s more of a problem that we’re not dating after all this. At least getting rejected after confessing is pitiful, but rejecting someone after zero confessions just makes you a jerk! To do all that and then turn her down…”
“I get it, so get the hell out of my room already!”
Bang!
Thankfully, Seo Eunha left without pressing the issue any further. Han Yeeun, meanwhile, was grinning like she’d won the lottery.
“Puhaha, when we go to the Management Bureau later, I’m totally going without covering these~”
My vision went completely dark!
“It’s proof of the love Oppa left inside my body, right?”
Please choose your words more carefully.
Even so, the way she smiled at me was so lovable I couldn’t describe it any other way.
Chu.
“U-uh?”
You kissed me senseless yesterday. Why are you flustered now?
“I’ll leave more next time, so please cover them up just for today.”
“Okay!! If they fade, you have to engrave them again!”
That might be a little problematic…
“Hurry up and come out!!”
““Yes!!!””
The few days after Han Yeeun left passed uneventfully.
That was only natural. Seo Eunha had been the one who said she wouldn’t mind, so she had no grounds to complain. She had even declared with her own mouth that she wouldn’t care if I met other women and that she would destroy anything that tried to ruin my happiness.
“Hayoung said she’s coming over for dinner tonight. Is that okay?”
Twitch.
Seo Eunha flinched visibly.
“Do whatever you want.”
She said it like she didn’t care, but if it had been any other magical girl she would have glared at me and demanded, “Why is she coming here?”
She must have really liked the food last time.
“But why is that mutt coming over?”
Yeah, not completely to your liking after all.
“She just said she wanted to cook for us. The food she made last time was delicious, remember?”
“Tell her to cook and leave.”
“She said she was coming to hang out.”
“Tell her not to come.”
I couldn’t even guess how much Kim Hayoung’s cooking had appealed to her.
“Don’t you remember the way that bitch looked at Ahjussi? She was completely head over heels. If she’d met the other two at the same time, she would’ve been the first one to confess.”
…There had been a similar vibe with Sia, but I decided not to mention that. The kid would throw a fit.
“Did you do something more with another bitch?”
“Huh? No?”
Why is her intuition so sharp?!
Ding-dong.
Whoosh.
Look at how fast her head snapped toward the door when she claimed she wasn’t expecting anyone. You should greet me like that when I come home.
It’s normal for me to feel like Kim Hayoung is making her jealous, right? Right?
“Yes.”
The person who greeted me when I opened the door was Kim Hayoung—and the gigantic bag strapped to her back.
Hmm…
“You’re not moving in, are you?”
“It’s all ingredients! There are refrigerated items, so I brought them in an icebox. That’s why the bag is so big.”
A bit big? That thing was larger than your own 180-centimeter frame. And an icebox? What on earth did you put in there?
“Come in first. Let me take the bag.”
“No, it’s fine! It’s a little heavy, hehe.”
“It’s okay, I can’t let a girl carry—huh?!”
I forcibly took the bag from Kim Hayoung’s back, but the overwhelming weight made me lose my balance and nearly drop it.
No, I would have dropped it if Kim Hayoung hadn’t caught it.
What the hell? Is this bag filled with water?
“S-sorry! I brought something too heavy… Is your back okay, Oppa?”
“I’m fine. It’s not that heavy—I just grabbed it wrong…”
That was a lie.
It was insanely heavy.
Pure stubborn pride.
Also, did the bag just move on its own?
“As expected! I knew Oppa would be able to handle it!”
Please stop. This is embarrassing.
“Ah, you were here, uh…”
“Song Chaeeun.”
“Chaeeun!”
Seo Eunha maintained an attitude of perfect indifference, refusing to even turn around or answer.
But I already knew. She had been waiting eagerly the entire time.
“For someone who was excited about Hayoung coming over, that’s a pretty cold reaction.”
“Ah, who said I was excited…!”
Ah, that felt good.
“So what did you buy?”
“Oh right! I bought things to nourish your body. Hehe.”
Thud!
A small icebox emerged from the bag.
What was worse was that it was labeled “No. 3.” Did that mean she had multiple iceboxes at home and brought the third one? She didn’t bring three separate ones, right?
Thud!
“And this too!”
Icebox No. 1.
Thump!
“This as well!”
Icebox No. 2.
Every time Kim Hayoung set an icebox down, I could clearly hear water sloshing inside. The icebox itself was heavy, yet she had filled them with liquid on top of that?
“I wanted to bring more, but my oppas stopped me. I’m sorry…”
Sorry for what? What exactly?
What, because you didn’t bring a whole truck?
“No, no, this is more than enough. What exactly is inside?”
Clack.
“Eel and…”
Clack.
“Salmon and…”
Clack.
“Abalone and oysters, hehe…”
Inside the third icebox, two eels as thick as my forearm were wriggling around.
“Are you in your transformed state right now?”
“Huh?”
“Ah, never mind. I was just thinking out loud.”
It had been a sneaky test question, but she really was in her normal form. She carried all of this without transforming? For real?
“Oh, and just in case, I also brought cooking tools, seasonings, ingredients, and some bokbunja wine…”
Kim Hayoung began pulling even more things out of the bag. She said there was still more.
With her nearly 190-centimeter frame, she bustled around the house, neatly organizing the iceboxes and ingredients.
I’d heard she grew up with four older brothers. Maybe she hadn’t been babied after all. I thought she was a treasured only daughter, but she felt more like the daughter in a household full of younger brothers.
“Wait, Hayoung. This is practically a feast… Are we supposed to eat all of this?”
“Just in case, I brought containers for refrigerating and freezing leftovers too!”
She was completely useless in combat, yet the way she sliced fish without even looking while talking to me was first-rate.
“Okay, okay. Just please look where you’re cutting.”
I had never seen those particular containers before. I thought they might be imported, but foreign countries don’t really have the concept of banchan, so they were probably from somewhere in Asia.
“Heeeek…!”
“What’s wrong? What is this?”
Even Seo Eunha, who had rested her chin on my shoulder to look at the phone together, frowned.
One container cost 120,000 won? And there were five of them?
“Hayoung, what exactly does your family do?”
This definitely wasn’t something a rookie magical girl could afford. It had to be from her brothers or parents.
“My mother is the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, and my father runs a construction company. My oldest brother is a prosecutor, my second brother is a doctor, my third brother is a chef, and my fourth brother is studying to become a judge. I’m the only one who turned out like this, though…”
Both Seo Eunha and I were left speechless, mouths opening and closing without sound.
“…Oppa.”
“Yeah.”
“I won’t get jealous if you date that telephone pole girl.”