A Recipe for Disaster
93
Instead of answering, he gathered up the onion slices he’d already diced into curry-sized cubes and cut them into thin strips.
Since everything that needed slicing was done, it was time to make the sauce.
Fortunately, he’d already watched that part briefly when the manager handed it over earlier.
There had definitely been mirin, chili flakes, and sugar in it... along with a few other things. Probably.
He picked up the mirin and chili flakes that were right in front of him, then reached for the salt, but Cheon Sa-yoon took it first and handed it over.
"Here you go."
Inside the clear glass jar, which had no label at all, was a fine white powder.
If Go Young-in had been a game character, wouldn’t a giant question mark have appeared over his head?
"Ah... thanks...."
It was a live broadcast, so it was hard to suspect him of some hidden motive.
Just in case, he checked inside the jar again. It really was salt, not sugar.
What is this? Didn’t Cheon Sa-yoon say earlier that he was supposed to be unable to tell sugar from salt?
He’d said he couldn’t cook, too.
Leaving salt and sugar aside, how had a guy who didn’t know he was supposed to add salt here, and who couldn’t cook in the first place, figured that out...?
Cheon Sa-yoon was smiling brightly. It had to be a coincidence.
He gathered the rest of the sauce ingredients Kyeon In-woo called out and set them in one place.
Holding the phone that was playing the recipe with marked indifference, Kyeon In-woo looked at the spread-out ingredients and recited the next step.
"If you’ve got everything, just dump it all in the bowl."
Was that really how you were supposed to say the recipe? No matter how little Go Young-in knew about cooking, he understood that dumping everything in at random would leave him looking exactly like Kyeon In-woo.
"What? Why are you staring at me in the middle of cooking?"
"Doesn’t the recipe say how much of each thing to use? How much mirin are we supposed to put in?"
Kyeon In-woo picked up the plate of prepared vegetables from the corner of the table and set it down next to the burner.
"Just throw in a rough amount. Who cares."
"In-woo, we have to taste this."
"Two tablespoons of mirin."
"Okay."
Two tablespoons of sugar, five tablespoons of soy sauce, oligosaccharide syrup... Kyeon In-woo obediently spilled the measurements for the rest of the ingredients, too.
Watching that made him feel like he understood how someone could turn sauce ingredients into slime.
He couldn’t fully trust those numbers either, but surely Kyeon In-woo wasn’t so incompetent that he couldn’t read Arabic numerals properly.
Everyone in the fandom was already speaking as if the cooking would fail.
Maybe they had sharp eyes, because just from the early steps, they already seemed to know how this was going to go.
After that, he added the sliced meat to the mixed sauce and tossed everything together.
"Done? Then pour some cooking oil into the pan and toss in all those leftover scallion bits."
"Ah, yeah. Then the olive oil—"
"Yes."
Cheon Sa-yoon handed him an ingredient before he’d even finished speaking.
Not olive oil. Oligosaccharide syrup...
No one said he’d handed it over correctly.
Its name was written in huge letters on the bottle, so wasn’t that easier to tell apart than sugar and salt sitting in an unlabeled glass jar?
Go Young-in looked at Cheon Sa-yoon with suspicion. Cheon Sa-yoon responded by cupping both of his cheeks and turning his face back forward.
"You can’t mess around when you’re standing by the stove."
It felt as if the rest of the sentence—what exactly do you do if you can’t even learn something this basic?—had been spoken automatically in the air.
Go Young-in quietly slid the oligosaccharide syrup aside, picked up the olive oil, and poured it into the frying pan. ...Probably not.
"What next?"
"Dump in the rest of the vegetables and the seasoned pork all at once."
Through trial and error, Go Young-in had now learned that Kyeon In-woo freely reinterpreted recipes however he liked.
"In-woo, does it say to add everything at once?"
"No. But I just combined it all."
"Why...?"
"It tastes the same anyway. Says to put it in the pan and stir-fry."
"What says to put what in first?"
"The meat."
"Right."
Good thing he’d asked.
He stir-fried the seasoned meat, then, at Kyeon In-woo’s urging, added the remaining ingredients one by one and worked them over with the spatula.
And yet it didn’t seem to be frying at all. The meat was soft, the sizzling was weak...
"Go Young, is this even frying right?"
"I don’t know... Why is it like this?"
"Mine burned almost immediately when I did it earlier. Why’s yours moving so slowly? Does it take after its owner?"
Kyeon In-woo picked a fight as naturally as if he were breathing. What a bastard.
Go Young-in and Kyeon In-woo leaned over the frying pan together, lost in thought.
"You did what I told you to do, right?"
"Yeah... I followed the order."
He didn’t know. Maybe he’d misheard the recipe when Kyeon In-woo read it out. There was no way Kyeon In-woo would have intentionally called it wrong.
Huh. Cheon Sa-yoon, too, pretended to think it over and rubbed his chin before shaking his head slowly.
Go Young-in decided to use the comments as a lifeline.
As he scanned the flood of live chat scrolling by, everyone except him and Kyeon In-woo seemed to know exactly what the problem was.
"Did the video say what heat to use, too?"
"Yeah. Medium heat."
Fuck, why didn’t you say so earlier—
"..."
Instead of snapping at him, Go Young-in turned the burner knob to medium heat. It was partly his own mistake, after all.
I should’ve just looked at the recipe myself.
"...Could you show me the video once? Or even just the audio?"
"Then it wouldn’t be fun."
"I’m saying this because I’m worried it’ll fail. What if it does?"
"If it fails? Hmm... then you’ll be less fun, too. It’s not like we have anything else to do anyway."
Ha. Kyeon In-woo was exactly that kind of guy. Even if he’d said more, he would have gotten the same answer. Half resigned now, Go Young-in gave in quietly.
"All right..."
"Hey, hey, I’m serious. Fail? What fail? It’s already done. Uh, what was it—stir it until the onions turn translucent. When it’s cooked, turn off the heat, then drizzle on sesame oil."
Suddenly, Kyeon In-woo hurriedly changed his tune and began rattling off the rest of the recipe. In the blink of an eye, he’d gone from one extreme to the other.
I don’t know anymore either.
Just as Kyeon In-woo had said, the onions had turned translucent. All that was left was to turn off the heat, drizzle on the sesame oil, and move everything onto a plate.
But then Kyeon In-woo suddenly added another condition.
"Hey, Go Young. Let’s put fried eggs on top too."
"I like mine half-cooked."
"Anything less than fully cooked is trash. You know that, right?"
As soon as Cheon Sa-yoon jumped into the conversation, Kyeon In-woo refused to be outdone and came out as a hard-boiled-egg loyalist.
Like I care about your egg preferences. These guys really didn’t have a single thing in common.
He hadn’t even agreed yet, but Kyeon In-woo was already waiting there with a mini frying pan and eggs in hand. Go Young-in accepted both.
The answer was already decided; all he had to do was follow it.
Suppressing a sigh, Go Young-in poured oil into the frying pan. Fortunately, frying eggs was at least something he could do.
"The salt—"
As he glanced over the table for the salt while cracking the eggs into the hot pan and seasoning them, something was placed into his hand.
"Is this right?"
Cheon Sa-yoon had put the sugar container into his hand.
...He got it wrong again.
From the way he usually acted, he didn’t seem to have a bad memory, and there was no way he’d forgotten what he’d handed over earlier.
Even some viewers who knew how to cook had caught on and were laughing and crying at the same time.
...Could it be?
Should he make him do one more thing? For some reason, if he asked just once more, he felt like the truth would come out.
Just then, the sesame oil and perilla oil sitting on the table caught his eye. Had they been arranged here on purpose to confuse people?
While Go Young-in hesitated for a moment, Cheon Sa-yoon said in a voice tinged with amusement, "Young-in hyung."
"Yeah?"
"Do you need anything else?"
Translation: If you’re curious, just ask. Don’t try to train people like some disgusting little mutt, thanks.
"...No, this is enough. Thanks, Sa-yoon."
Translation: Nope.
So the bastard really could cook and had just lied that he couldn’t.
When he’d said he’d be unable to tell them apart, he hadn’t meant it figuratively at all; he’d meant it exactly as written.
It didn’t seem like he was trying to market being bad at cooking as some kind of selling point, so why had he gone out of his way to do this?
If that were the case, he wouldn’t have made Go Young-in cook; he would have volunteered to cook himself, deliberately shown a sloppy side, acted embarrassed, and then grinned all bright and innocent.
In any case, Go Young-in would never have to eat food made by Cheon Sa-yoon, so he decided to keep pretending not to know for the rest of his life.
The fried egg was finished, awkward shape and all.
Once the instant rice had been heated too, the cooking was more or less complete. He rummaged through the drawer looking for a bowl to serve it in.
"Why move it into a bowl at all? What’s the point of dressing it up?"
"It’s not for plating, it’s just..."
Go Young-in glanced around for no real reason, then asked quietly, "Can we all eat from one pot?"
With Cheon Sa-yoon? You? Meeting his eyes with that meaning, Kyeon In-woo immediately stopped searching the drawer and started digging through it earnestly in Go Young-in’s place.
"Here’s a bowl."
Kyeon In-woo must have caught the unspoken meaning, too, because his attitude changed in an instant.
Just then, the door to the mini studio swung open with a clack.
"What the hell. Maknae, what brings you here?"
Kyeon In-woo announced the unexpected guest in a voice full of surprise.
It was Pyo Jae-ho. Go Young-in, pretending nothing was wrong, was nearly fainting inside.
Pyo Jae-ho on a B-app live stream? Excluding the official group broadcast, this was the first time since debut.
When he looked over at the manager, Kwon Je-won was making an okay sign with his hand.
It seemed Manager Kwon had contacted the other members earlier, too. He wasn’t the type to come just because someone called, so Go Young-in had no idea what wind had blown him here.
The fans watching the broadcast seemed just as shocked, and they welcomed Pyo Jae-ho’s appearance with explosive enthusiasm.
"I was called here."
Go Young-in immediately looked over at Manager Kwon Je-won.
I called him. Please smooth it over by saying you two invited him.
As soon as he saw the sign, Go Young-in delivered the line managers most often leaned on in situations like this, exactly as requested.
"I called him. Since he’s here, we might as well all eat together."
But Pyo Jae-ho’s brows twitched almost imperceptibly.
He still had the same expressionless face as always, and maybe it was just Go Young-in imagining it, but he somehow looked irritated. It wasn’t a word that seemed to fit Pyo Jae-ho, but the feeling was strangely there.
He usually just lets it go when I say things like that... Why is he reacting now? Don’t tell me it’s because of earlier?
"Hyung didn’t call me. Why are you making up things that didn’t happen?"
He’d been about to brush it off as a coincidence, but Pyo Jae-ho magnificently proved that it wasn’t.
Hm. It looked like Pyo Jae-ho simply didn’t feel like cooperating today.