Fishing Cafe (2)
Fishing Cafe (2)
"What are your friends doing these days?"
"They'd be in their third year of university this year, right?"
Well, we were 22, so they'd all be university students.
Probably because A-ra's entertainment career made it hard to match schedules,
it seemed like she hadn't seen them in a long time.
"Then you can meet them once you graduate. How about going on a trip together when things settle down?"
"Can I?"
"As long as the friends you're thinking of aren't men, it's fine."
"Oh dear... so men aren't allowed? How cute..."
A-ra smiled brightly and stroked my cheek.
Then she lightly pinched my cheek and started stretching it.
"Are you jealous that noona might have friends besides women?"
"I-It's not exactly jealousy."
"But Seong-hwan, you're friends with Eun-ji."
"Noona introduced me to Eun-ji. And she's a member of your group, too."
"That's true. Eun-ji is a kid I can trust."
A-ra had a stronger possessive streak and jealous nature than one might expect.
Still, whenever something happened to me,
she'd mobilize people like Eun-ji or Yeji to come get me.
"So even if I've never met them, if they're noona's friends, I can trust them on that point."
"But you said men aren't allowed?"
"Never. Not even if I died."
"Hehe..."
Men were absolutely out of the question.
Never forgiving it. Absolutely.
I shook my head firmly. It was out of the question.
But at that, A-ra's smile only grew brighter.
She didn't even notice the tip of the fishing rod trembling—
inside the dark indoor fishing spot, she was too busy rubbing her cheek against mine.
*
"Wait... just a little longer... now!"
I lifted the rod at the moment A-ra told me to,
and a small fish was hooked.
It looked about half the size of the fish A-ra had been hauling in one after another.
It wasn't even a horse mackerel...
"What did it feel like when you lifted the fish?"
"The way it thrashed... it felt heavier than I expected..."
"That's what people call the 'hand taste.'"
So this was the hand taste.
Even in a calm tank, it felt this intense—
how transcendent would the hand taste feel, reeling one in from the crashing waves of the ocean?
It was hard to even imagine.
A-ra scooped up the fish with the landing net, shook it loose,
and laid it down on the floor to remove the hook.
She was a skilled angler after all...
She slid something like needle-nose pliers into the fish's mouth, twisted once,
and the hook came loose.
"It's so tiny."
"It really is."
"Seong-hwan is big, so why did such a tiny fish come out?"
A-ra whispered quietly into my ear.
Maybe because she'd blown air into my ear at the end, goosebumps rose from somewhere deep inside my skull.
She did this knowing my ears were a weak spot.
"Hah... noona... we're in public..."
"Huh? I was blaming the Dragon King for sending such a small fish to our big-hearted Seong-hwan?"
She looked at me with a sly expression, asking what on earth I had been thinking.
Anyone could figure out that A-ra wasn't talking about my 'heart' but about my, well, you-know-what.
But the moment I said that out loud, I'd have lost.
And I'd be branded a pervert.
A male pervert, at that.
"Keuk..."
I had no choice but to quietly keep my mouth shut.
A-ra was simply too strong an opponent for me to handle.
"Let's catch a bigger one this time."
"I'd like to catch a fish as big as noona's body."
I wouldn't say what that meant, but one thing was certain: I had successfully launched a counterattack.
***
They say fishing is like fishing for time itself, and it seemed our ancestors' words were never wrong.
A-ra, who had been pulling out fish after fish earlier,
was slowly starting to get no bites.
Perhaps the fish had some learning ability,
and they had realized that if they went near A-ra, they'd get caught and eaten.
"Even so, it looked like everyone else was having pretty poor luck too."
Looking around, older sisters and middle-aged women had their arms crossed and were tapping their feet impatiently.
A pretty noona who had been pulling up fish at a rate similar to A-ra earlier
was now just vacantly staring at her phone.
"Is there just no fish...? That doesn't seem right, though..."
The tank still had about as many fish swimming around as before.
"Maybe they're full?"
"Hmm... I wonder if someone scattered bait."
"Want to try moving to another spot? Like the side with the lobsters."
"Yeah. Let's catch just two lobsters as a finale, go home, and make stew with them."
And then, licking her lips,
A-ra began gathering up the fishing rods and caught fish.
Unless I had misheard, she definitely suggested making stew with lobsters.
Is there even a stew dish made with lobster?
"Couldn't we just make it like blue crab stew?"
"Would it taste good...?"
"All crustacean flavors are pretty similar, really."
"If people who love crustaceans heard that, they'd foam at the mouth."
Maybe if you boiled or steamed them together, there really wouldn't be much difference in taste.
But the inherent, unique flavor each one has is clearly different.
If that weren't the case, there would be no explanation for why king crab or lobster were so expensive.
"Noona, do you prefer putting whiteleg shrimp or flower shrimp in your spicy fish stew?"
"Flower shrimp, obviously. The depth of flavor is different."
"Wouldn't king crab and lobster be similar in that way?"
"Hmm... is that so...?"
A-ra's face took on an expression that said she didn't quite get it.
Maybe not wanting to overthink it, she smiled brightly.
Since things had come this far, I'd just have to go home today, make both blue crab stew and lobster stew,
and show her the difference in taste.
We gathered up our things and moved to the tank where the lobsters were swimming.
Maybe because catching lobsters with hooks was somewhat difficult,
there was no one sitting at this spot except for one slightly older lady.
"Wow..."
I approached, thinking she couldn't possibly have caught a lobster,
but her net held three of them.
And they weren't small ones, either;
they seemed to have pretty substantial bodies.
"They look delicious, don't they?"
As I peered inside, the lady who was fishing for lobsters struck up a conversation with me.
Talking to someone I'd just met was a little intimidating,
but not answering would be rude.
"They'd be great steamed. How long did it take you to catch these?"
"A little over two hours, maybe?"
"Two hours..."
Just because the creatures were in the water didn't guarantee they'd be caught,
so it was hard to tell whether that was a good haul or not.
Since there were no fish in this tank, had they released the ones people caught, or was there some other system set up?
"Seong-hwan! Come over!"
"I'll be right there."
While I was busy gawking at the lobsters, A-ra had finished setting everything up
and called out to me from a little distance away.
Her face was full of an expression that said she didn't know what to do with herself, she wanted to catch a lobster so badly—
and it was brimming with anticipation for tonight's dinner table.
Seeing that, I loosened my body, which had grown stiff from crouching,
stretched, and walked over to A-ra.
*
"In the end, we didn't catch a single lobster."
"Yeah... it's such a shame..."
I gently stroked A-ra's head as she sulked over not getting to eat lobster stew.
Even after three hours since we'd started hunting, we hadn't caught a single one,
so we gathered up the fish we had caught and stood up from our spot.
It seemed the fish we caught cost 5,000 won each to clean,
so we left them all to be cleaned.
Places like this make their profits by selling services,
so if you don't use the services, you end up feeling a little sorry for it.
The fish A-ra had caught,
even if they weren't top-grade fish species, were the kind that would command a decent price at a seafood market.
"Hmm......"
It seemed she had been looking forward to lobster stew more than the fish.
A-ra was dejected, looking genuinely disappointed, and my chest stung a little for no good reason.
I always wanted my wife to be smiling.
"Let's go to a big mart, buy two live lobsters, and get some blue crab and shrimp while we're at it."
"Lobster stew... you'll make it?"
"If my wife wants to eat it, of course I have to make it. I looked it up, and the recipe isn't difficult."
When I first heard the words 'lobster stew',
I thought she was joking around, but there really did exist a haemul-tang
that included abalone, octopus, shrimp, and lobster together.
They said the deep, refreshing broth drawn from the lobster shells was exceptional.
The visual presentation wasn't bad either, so I thought filming it for Qtube might not be a bad idea.
"Shall we grill the rockfish?"
"Yeah, they say it's delicious grilled as if you were frying it."
"Still, this guy is the supreme fish for boiling spicy stew."
If you threw in a ton of water parsley and ate it,
couldn't it hold a pretty high rank within the realm of spicy fish stew?
It was cheap and tasted great.
It was like the blue-backed fish of the spicy stew world.
"My husband, there isn't a single dish he can't make..."
"You're supposed to say there's nothing I can't do."
"...Isn't there some other stuff you can't do quite as well as I'd thought?"
Again, she put on a sly face and started gazing down at my lower half.
That was just an unfortunate consequence of the sheer gap in stamina between A-ra and me...
"Tch. Fine, then I'll just dump a whole pile of sea squirts and boil the stew."
"Th-that's a bit... could you even call that seafood stew...?"
A-ra, whose body and soul had already been stolen by my cooking,
was always on her guard only when I was about to make something strange.
A spicy fish stew stuffed entirely with sea squirts... even I had a hard time imagining it, but...