Comic Cafe (2)
Comic Cafe (2)
He stepped out of the room, recalling the book title A-ra had recommended.
"Phew... it's nice and cool out here."
Though that little room had its own air conditioning vents,
it was nothing compared to the open area directly cooled by several large units—the temperature difference was striking.
As expected, there's no substitute for turning on the AC in summer.
There was no point in avoiding it with excuses about acclimating to the summer heat.
Especially now that he had a car.
When he stretched his arms up high, several men glanced at him and smiled.
They'd just come out of their own little rooms, too.
Was it a sense of shared experience?
He gave them a wry smile in return
and then headed to the front desk first to return his empty cup.
"One large caramel macchiato and one large cafe latte, please. Both iced."
"Sure, I'll ring you up."
The part-timer tapped his phone against the card reader,
then pulled out a clean white sheet of paper and a pen and held them out to him.
"Um... just an autograph..."
In that moment, his hand flew to his face,
startled to realize he wasn't wearing his sunglasses or mask.
Like an idiot, he'd taken them off inside and completely forgotten to put them back on.
Not that it mattered much, since he was still inside the manga cafe rather than outside,
but the fact that he'd insisted on disguising themselves and then blanked on it entirely
was mortifying.
At this rate, he was just some guy with celebrity syndrome.
"Excuse me, if it's not too rude, may I ask you one question?"
"Sure, one question..."
"If you have 10 million subscribers, how much do you earn per month?"
For the record, his subscriber count had passed 10 million not long ago.
With so many different guests appearing on his channel, he'd absorbed their fandoms as well
and was growing into a mega-sized Qtuber.
Admittedly, he only uploaded two videos a month.
"I don't upload many videos, so I'm not exactly sure. I wouldn't know the details, but... around 20 to 30 million won?"
"Wow... that's all you get? Maybe it's because you've got an MCN attached..."
Their MCN had a reverse slave contract with a 10:0 revenue split,
so the video earnings were entirely his.
But still, was that all?
At his age, with a monthly income like that, surely it wasn't just 'all,' was it?
He already had enough money in his bank account to live on without ever working again...
but 20 million didn't seem small at all.
For a channel with fewer than twenty videos
to pull in that much income was more astonishing than anything.
"I'm sorry. That was a really rude question to ask.
I've been interested in the tax side of things, so..."
"Ah."
"Well then, enjoy your time."
He said goodbye to the part-timer, who bowed her head deeply,
then picked up his drinks and headed back to the room where A-ra was waiting.
"You're late."
The moment she sensed his presence, A-ra puffed out her cheeks at him.
She looked exactly like a hamster with its mouth crammed full of food.
"Who was it that said a date is ruined if you don't wear sunglasses and a mask, hmm?"
"Ah... sorry. I completely forgot... Are you sulking, noona?"
"I'm not sulking."
She said she wasn't sulking, but her arms were crossed. He sat down beside her,
one hand stroking her side while the other poked gently at her puffed-up cheek.
At that, she instantly sucked in the puffed-up cheek and puffed out the opposite one.
"Noona, shall I give you a nickname?"
"A nickname?"
When he offered to give her a nickname, a spark of interest appeared—
she uncrossed her arms and turned to look at him.
Her eyes were glistening a little too...
Was she actually looking forward to it?
"How about Hamster? Jjiik-jjiik."
"......"
He brought his hands up to his cheeks and made little motions,
the way toddlers do at a talent show, and A-ra's gaze instantly sharpened.
What was this?
Was she mad?
True, it might not matter if you called a guy that,
but calling a woman hamster-like wasn't great.
Maybe she'd have preferred a beast like a tiger or a lion.
But A-ra didn't have that kind of vibe at all... well, no...
When she pounced on him, wasn't she a total beast?
"Uh... A-ra noo...!"
He pressed closer to A-ra to apologize,
when suddenly she kissed him on the lips.
It wasn't forceful like a deep kiss, nor shallow like a peck—
it was a sweet kiss with just the right amount of tongue, leaving a strong impression.
It felt less like she was trying to devour him and more like she simply couldn't contain a surge of emotion,
using the kiss as a way to express it.
Still, even a kiss like that was deeply arousing to someone like him with a strong libido,
and he began to get excited.
"Mmph..."
"Shh, quiet."
A-ra pulled her lips away and pressed her hand over his mouth, telling him to be quiet.
At the same time, her other hand was stroking the space between his thigh and groin,
and for some reason her hand movements looked extremely dangerous.
She really shouldn't be doing that in a place like this.
First, he reached down and pinched A-ra's groin just as she was about to lose the last thread of reason.
Instead of a scream, something more like a moan came out,
but A-ra seemed to snap back to her senses.
Apparently embarrassed that she'd momentarily surrendered to lust,
she covered her face with both hands and blushed.
"Noona, you can't do that in a public place."
"Uh... yeah... you're right..."
"Why did you suddenly do that? Was last night not enough?"
"No... it wasn't that, it's just you suddenly did something so cute that I..."
Apparently, his impression of a rodent had been the problem.
Seeing that, she'd been seized by the sudden urge to just pounce on him...
"Anyway, not now. Let's do it later when we get home."
"Okay... I'm sorry."
"No, I mean, there's nothing for you to be sorry about."
He knew full well that A-ra had a strong sex drive,
and since he did too, you could say they were a well-matched couple.
"Then I'll go get the books."
"Okay, go ahead."
He'd meant to go get the books, but had come back with only the drinks,
so he stepped out again.
***
"Seong-hwan-a, should we start heading back?"
"Shall we? Look how late it's gotten already."
They'd spent the whole day glued to each other reading manga, and the clock was already pointing at five.
They'd even skipped lunch to keep reading,
so A-ra had an expression that said she was at her limit from hunger.
As far as he could remember, A-ra had never once skipped a meal.
She normally always ate properly, and while she sometimes substituted meals with other things,
she'd never actually skipped a meal entirely.
So today was a monumental day—
the first time A-ra had ever missed a meal.
"Want to eat out today?"
"No, let's eat at home today. You don't mind?"
Ever since he'd started making home-cooked meals for her,
A-ra had shown no desire to eat out.
That was both endearing and gratifying.
It meant she thought his cooking tasted better than eating out, didn't it?
There was no higher compliment for someone who cooked.
"Mind? I'm happy to. So... should we stop by the mart first and do some shopping?"
"No, noona ordered something by delivery yesterday, remember? It should have arrived by now."
"Huh? What did you order?"
"I ordered some expensive wagyu. Let's grill it up."
So that was why a smile had been blooming on A-ra's face for a while now.
And expensive wagyu at that.
For reference, his concept of 'expensive' and A-ra's concept of 'expensive' were worlds apart.
Once, when he saw a menu at a barbecue place charging about 100,000 won per serving,
he'd thought, 'That's insanely expensive,' while A-ra's reaction had been, 'That seems reasonable?'
To make A-ra think something was 'expensive,'
it would probably have to be around 300,000 won per 200g serving, wouldn't it?
"How much per 100g?"
"Umm... I don't remember!"
And then she beamed brightly.
To A-ra, a million or two million won was practically pocket change,
so she never bothered to remember the exact price.
"That's not it—it was ordered dry-aged, so I placed the order quite a while ago, you know?
And it just arrived now."
"Ah... and here I was thinking my wife's sense of money had been utterly destroyed."
"It's not that bad, you know?"
He supposed not.
A-ra didn't throw money around carelessly, except on her hobbies.
Though when it came to those hobbies, once her eyes flipped over,
she did spend staggering amounts of money, which was a problem if you wanted to call it one.
But still, once she bought something, she used it until it broke or got lost.
She seemed to have been using her phone for quite a while too...
Even though there'd been terrible static during calls recently.
It seemed about time to replace it for her.
That aside, meat...
Just grilling it in a frying pan felt like a bit of a waste.
Was there some more interesting method?
As he walked toward the parking lot, he kept imagining in his head.
What had been the most satisfying meat he'd eaten lately?
Meat... wagyu... Japan...
Ah.
Come to think of it, they'd grilled meat on a little brazier at the ryokan.
"Expensive meat should be eaten with atmosphere. Shall we buy a shichirin (Japanese brazier) too?"
"That thing we saw at the ryokan? Don't you have to order that online?"
"These days they sell them at local marts too, you know?"
"For real? The world really has gotten nicer."
He chuckled at A-ra, who was only 22 years old and yet acting as if she felt the generational gap.
With the proportion of solo diners steadily rising,
sales of mini shichirin for grilling meat alone
were apparently growing in Korea too.
There was no need to light charcoal—you could grill with solid fuel,
so it was convenient and produced hardly any smoke,
making it the optimal method for grilling meat alone, and the trend was spreading.
"Let's buy two of those and head up."
"Let's do that. So, which mart shall we hit first?"
"Hmm... should we go to that mart we used to stop by and do our shopping?"
"Whatever you want. As much as you want."
They'd been chatting for a while in the driver's seat,
and by now the cold AC air had kept the interior at a comfortably cool temperature.
It would be hot when they got home, so he'd have to turn the AC on there in advance via IoT.