A Mannerly Man
To prepare for her date with Kim Hyunsoo, Shin Yuna had actually done something she never did: study. She'd pulled out her phone and searched the internet for date courses that men enjoyed. The web was full of information, and buried in it were plenty of tips that proved genuinely useful to her. She'd been sitting in her room, buzzing with excitement as she planned out the perfect itinerary with Hyunsoo.
"Foods men like... tteokbokki, pasta, malatang...?"
None of it really suited her, did it? Shin Yuna wasn't the type to pick at noodles and rice cakes — she was a meat person through and through. Picking daintily at food like men supposedly did was never her style. Still, holding back tears on the inside, she searched for famous restaurants near the movie theater that men supposedly loved. It didn't matter if she didn't like the food herself. As long as Hyunsoo enjoyed it, that was enough. She eventually settled on malatang and pasta, then fretted over what would happen if he disliked both.
"You want bossam?"
Well, that figures...
"Yeah, Noona. Bossam's good, isn't it? I've been craving a nice hearty bossam meal for ages."
For Shin Yuna, this was music to her ears. Malatang, tteokbokki, pasta — none of those were things she particularly cared for. She mentally wiped away the entire date course she'd painstakingly built. If Hyunsoo liked bossam, then obviously that was what they were eating. Her face lit up as she turned to him.
"There's a bossam place here that Noona loves! Let's go there!!!"
"Okay! But you don't have to hold my hand like that, you know."
Shin Yuna had been clutching Kim Hyunsoo's hand at every opportunity. She could have made excuses — that he might get swept away if the crowds thickened — but the streets weren't nearly busy enough for that. Ignoring his protest with heroic determination, she kept hold of his hand and dragged him off toward the bossam restaurant.
"One order of bossam, the medium, please."
"Noona, can you actually finish all that? Wouldn't a small be better?"
Shin Yuna was footing the bill either way, but it still felt a little wasteful to leave food behind. Kim Hyunsoo mentioned it to her as delicately as he could. Yuna just shrugged, as if to say don't worry about it.
"It'll be plenty, so don't sweat it!"
"Well, if you insist..."
From where he sat, Hyunsoo had no reason to argue. Comfortably, as if it were second nature, he set out the utensils and filled the water glasses.
"I'm... I'm moved..."
Watching him, Shin Yuna clapped a hand over her mouth. She had never once seen a man lay out the spoons, chopsticks, and water cups himself. She'd always understood that to be something women did first. Sure, she'd heard that across the sea in Japan, men set the table — but still...
Wasn't this that 'concept man' thing she'd only ever seen on the internet?
"This is Noona's favorite regular spot. Their bossam kimchi is out of this world."
"Really?"
Kim Hyunsoo replied with a decidedly indifferent face. How good could kimchi possibly be? He knew the kimchi mattered when you ate bossam, but he'd never encountered a particularly special one. To him, one bossam joint was pretty much like any other. Then along came a platter of bossam that shattered everything he thought he knew.
"One medium bossam, here you go~ Enjoy your meal!"
The server set the platter down on the table. Glistening slices of meat that looked like they'd been lightly brushed with oil, beside kimchi so fresh it might have been pickled that very morning. Seeing it, Hyunsoo decided he might as well go the extra mile for Yuna while he was at it.
"Noona, you have some first."
He picked up a slice of the bossam with a bit of kimchi in one motion and brought it to Yuna's lips. At the sight of this, Shin Yuna seemed struck by a feeling on an entirely different plane from before. Her eyes glistened with welling tears.
"Hyunsoo...! Is this really for me?"
"Of course. I wanted to watch you enjoy it first."
"I'll eat it well!"
It was, after all, a good deed done on someone else's dime. The service ethic of the men in this world left much to be desired. Even now, glancing at the couples around them, it was the women who fussed over their men and fed them — never the other way around. Some of the men nearby even made their girlfriends sit on the hard wooden chairs while they themselves sank into the cushy ones.
Hyunsoo, naturally, was sitting in a cushy chair too — but that was only because Yuna had insisted, and he'd had no choice in the matter. He'd actually tried to take a hard wooden seat, only for Yuna to nearly shriek at him until he gave up and sat down properly.
"It tastes even better when you feed it to me yourself, Hyunsoo!"
Yuna said it deliberately loud, and she didn't miss the envious stares from the women around them. But the moment didn't last. It was promptly crushed by the men sitting across from them.
"Hey. What do you think you're looking at?"
"I... I'm sorry, Minsu!"
Shin Yuna wore the smile of a victor. Kim Hyunsoo, observing all of this, simply dug into his bossam. The place's reputation as a famous restaurant was well earned — the meat was exquisite, practically melting on his tongue with every bite.
And so the dinner date wrapped up without a hitch. Yuna didn't have a car, so when it was time for Hyunsoo to head home, she flagged down a taxi for him instead. He protested that it wasn't necessary, but she was firm. The sun was beginning to set, and who knew what wolf-like woman might pounce on him otherwise? Watching Hyunsoo's taxi pull away, she turned and headed home herself.
Shin Yuna sat in a chair, dressed in comfortable pajamas. Stacked on the desk before her was a pile of bills.
"This is my living expenses for the month..."
Her expression was blank as she counted out the notes. The stack wasn't very tall. Some people would look at it and ask how anyone was supposed to live a whole month on that much. It didn't matter to Yuna, though — the church provided her food and clothing free of charge.
"And this is my dating-with-Hyunsoo fund..."
She swept every remaining bill on the desk into a single pile. Then, slowly, one at a time, she began stacking them. Before long, the bills rose in a tower as tall as the Eiffel Tower — a height more than twenty times that of her living expenses stack. It didn't matter. Ever since she'd met Hyunsoo, she'd discovered how fun dating could be. There was no going back to the Shin Yuna of old, the one who never dated. She was like a primitive man confronted with the wonders of a new civilization.
BANG!
At that moment, the door to Yuna's room flew open without so much as a knock.
"Wh... what the—!"
"Shin Yuna!"
In the doorway stood Shin Sia, the nun in charge of overseeing her. She was ten years Yuna's senior and had her utterly immobilized — because ever since Yuna had first arrived at the church, Sia had been the one helping her through everything.
"Sia unnie, what's wrong?"
"Where exactly have you been running off to these days?"
"Oh..."
A long tail was bound to get stepped on eventually. Someone as famous as Shin Yuna, who'd even appeared in the newspapers, couldn't walk around outside without word getting out.
"Just... out having fun?"
Yuna tried to dodge the question as smoothly as she could. But Sia, watching her squirm, pulled out decisive evidence: a photo posted on some internet site.
"It's not that I mind you having a sweetheart, but... why were you out with a man?"
"Well..."
Yuna told her story with a few choice seasonings added — that she'd simply been bored and tried out this 'rental boyfriend' thing. But Sia, it seemed, had already done her homework.
"Honestly, now that you've turned twenty, I didn't want to meddle in your love life. But this boy — he's nineteen, isn't he? Isn't that a minor?"
"Yeah..."
"I was fully prepared to look the other way if it were two adults dating. But that's not the case here, is it? What if something went wrong while you were seeing an underage boy? You haven't done anything... improper with him, have you?"
"Of course not! I have standards too, you know. What would I even do with a kid? We just eat together and hang out, that's all."
"Haah... well, that's a relief, then..."
Shin Yuna hated the way people looked at that one-year gap. It was only a single year, but the distance between nineteen and twenty was enormous — because that was the legal line dividing minor from adult. That was exactly why she hadn't been able to have a drink with Kim Hyunsoo.
And because Hyunsoo was a minor, his evenings were off-limits for now. It would be possible if he set his mind to it, but Hyunsoo generally wrapped up his rental boyfriend work by six in the evening.
If Yuna had been twenty-one and Hyunsoo twenty, Sia probably wouldn't have made much of a fuss. Cheonshin Church was hardly some backward religion that forbade its Holy Maiden Candidates from dating. Quite the opposite — its doctrine actually encouraged romance. That was why so many of the men and women who attended the church married each other every year.
What worried Sia was the thought of her little sister falling into ruin over a mishandled relationship with a minor. She knew nothing about this boy called Kim Hyunsoo, and that uncertainty gnawed at her. If something went wrong, there was no telling what consequences might follow.
"In any case, I won't stop you from dating. Just be careful for this one year. Wait until he's an adult before you touch him."
"Thank you, unnie!"