Spicy Flavor
I had already walked quite a distance after leaving the center.
Then, all at once, I remembered the medicine bag still clutched in my hand.
……Ah.
Only then did it hit me. I had come all this way to deliver the medicine, and yet I had walked straight out still holding it.
Caught up in the resentment and jealousy that scene of happiness had stirred, I had fled as if escaping, and in the process completely forgotten the one errand that actually mattered.
"……Wait. I think I need to go back."
"What?"
Kim Seol-ah, walking beside me, turned with a look of pure bewilderment.
"The medicine. Han-gyeol's medicine. I forgot to hand it over and just left."
Seol-ah's face twisted into an expression of pure disbelief. The girl who moments earlier had looked as if the world itself had ended now wore a look that clearly said, Where did that go?
The person who had just marched out of the center with such grim resolve was now saying he had to turn around because he left the medicine behind a few minutes later. Even I had to admit it looked ridiculous.
"……You can go on ahead. I'll be right back."
I muttered it awkwardly and retraced my steps toward the center.
Fortunately I didn't need to go all the way back into the rehab room. Handing it off to the nurse at the desk would be enough.
"Excuse me—sorry."
I held the medicine bag out to the same nurse from earlier.
"Could you give this to patient Woo Han-gyeol? It's supposed to be taken after meals, but I forgot to deliver it."
"Ah, yes. To Miss Han-gyeol, right?"
She took the bag. Only then did the tightness in my chest ease. I gave a brief nod of thanks and turned away.
"Harin! Come help with this for a second!"
A senior nurse called urgently from the back to the one sitting at the counter.
"Yes, coming!"
The nurse stuffed the medicine bag into the desk drawer for the moment and hurried inside.
The drawer slid shut with a soft click.
Lee Ji-an was already walking out of the center without seeing any of it, perfectly certain the medicine would be delivered as it should.
When I stepped back outside, Kim Seol-ah was still standing in the same spot. She hadn't left.
Even though I told her she could go ahead, she had waited anyway.
The moment she spotted me she finally let out the laugh she had been holding in.
"Pfft. You, seriously……."
She clutched her stomach and laughed.
"A minute ago you walked out looking like the world had ended. Then you go scurrying back because you left the medicine—it's actually hilarious."
"……Is it that funny?"
"Yeah. Completely funny."
After laughing for a long while she wiped the corners of her eyes and caught her breath.
It was strange. Only moments earlier the shadow of heartbreak had hung thick over her face. Now it had lightened quite a bit.
Maybe this absurd little detour had scattered the heavy air, even if only for a while.
"……Ah, whatever."
After the fit of laughter she suddenly raked her fingers through her hair in irritation.
"I feel like crap, so let's just go eat. You don't have anywhere else to be either."
"Eat?"
"What, you don't want to?"
"……No."
I hesitated a beat, then nodded.
Going home would only mean an empty room. And honestly, right now I didn't want to be alone.
She was probably the same.
"……What are we getting?"
As we walked I asked, and after a short pause she gave an unexpected answer.
"Something spicy?"
"Spicy?"
"Yeah. Super spicy, the kind that burns. Enough to make your insides tingle."
She said it like someone who had already made up her mind.
At those words I somehow let out a short laugh.
"Why are you laughing."
"Nothing. I was just craving the same thing."
In my previous life I had been someone who rather liked intense, stimulating food.
And for a very long time I hadn't been able to put any of it in my mouth.
I couldn't sit there eating spicy food alone in front of someone with a weak stomach, and the thought that she might copy me and get sick made me stay away entirely. After twenty years of that kind of restraint, spicy food had quietly vanished from my table.
But right now that tingling heat felt strangely, desperately necessary.
We stepped into a small snack shop nearby and ordered whatever looked the spiciest on the menu.
Once the order was in, an awkward silence settled between us.
Come to think of it, this was the first time we had sat across from each other alone for a meal.
We were classmates, but until now it had only ever been chance encounters and a few exchanged words.
On top of that we had both just walked out after seeing scenes we never wanted to see. Even with our mouths shut, those images kept circling through our heads.
The two of them smiling so brightly even with a cast. Her and me, who had turned around without ever being able to step into that picture.
A landscape so complete that just the two of them seemed like the only protagonists in the world, and I felt like nothing more than a foreign object or impurity. Her thoughts were probably not so different from mine.
The longer the silence stretched, the more those heavy thoughts kept pushing their way up.
Unable to stand the atmosphere any longer, I finally spoke first.
"……Do you like spicy food?"
It was a completely ordinary question. But the moment it left my mouth I realized it was the first real question we had ever asked each other about ourselves.
Until now she and I had only ever talked about wounds. We had never once asked what the other actually liked.
She looked at me with mild surprise, then answered slowly.
"……I do. Though I haven't been able to eat it much."
"Why?"
"Because Yu-jin oppa can't handle spicy food."
She kept her gaze on the table as she continued.
"Whenever we ate together I always matched him. Mild stuff, nothing spicy. After a while I just stopped eating it myself."
I nodded quietly.
"……You? Do you like spicy?"
This time she asked back.
I paused a moment before answering honestly.
"I used to. But I couldn't eat it."
"……Same here."
She gave a short, dry laugh.
"Both of us couldn't even eat what we liked because of someone else."
At those words I couldn't help laughing along with her.
She who liked it but couldn't eat it, and I who had liked it but couldn't eat it. Slightly different, but ultimately the same thing.
Stories of setting aside what we wanted because we were busy matching someone else.
"……But you're really unexpected, you know."
A little later she propped her chin on her hand and said,
"You always stuck to Han-gyeol like gum, acting like some personal guardian. I figured you were the type who didn't even have tastes of your own."
"……What exactly do you take people for."
"No, for real. Do you even have anything you like?"
At that question I was briefly at a loss for words.
Things I liked. When I tried to call them up, nothing came readily.
I had lived too long without the space to think about such things. Her condition always came before my preferences, her well-being before my enjoyment.
"……Books. Reading books."
After a long while I finally managed to dig one up.
"Ah, right. You said that at the library."
She nodded as if recalling the day in the school library.
"So you actually like books. What kind?"
"This and that. Lately I haven't been able to read at all, so I don't even know what's popular."
"……That's the same as me."
She muttered it quietly.
"I'm the same. It's something I like, but I could never really enjoy it because I was always watching other people's faces."
"Right. You—romance novels."
The moment I brought up what happened in the library her face went scarlet.
"……Why bring that up again."
"It's not like it's something to hide. I already saw everything."
"Shut up. ……I couldn't even read those freely either."
She pouted and added,
"If you say you read that kind of stuff everyone calls it childish. And I didn't want to get caught by oppa either. So I always covered the cover and read them in secret."
I could picture it without any trouble—always gauging the room first, never able to open even one thing she liked without looking over her shoulder.
The more I thought about it, the more we resembled each other.
We looked at each other and smiled for a moment.
Strangely enough, this trivial talk felt good.
It wasn't digging into the wounds head-on, and it wasn't handing over some grand speech of comfort either. Just ordinary things—what food we liked, what books we read.
Yet those nothing-special conversations seemed to gently soothe something inside.
Maybe what we needed wasn't grand consolation at all, but time like this.
Time to sit across from someone in the same situation, trade silly talk, and smile for a little while—ordinary, and warm.
From the kitchen a spicy scent began to drift over.
Soon a dish completely blanketed in bright red seasoning was set on the table.
Just looking at it seemed enough to make a tongue tingle. Without either of us going first we both reached for our chopsticks.
"……Let's eat."
"Yeah."
The moment I put a bite in my mouth an intense heat flooded everything.
"……Hup."
At the long-forgotten stimulation my breath caught without warning. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes and sweat beaded on my forehead. This body, it seemed, didn't handle spice particularly well.
The girl across from me was no better. Nose scrunched tightly, she kept gulping water.
"Spicy……."
"Really, spicy."
"Hey, are you crying?"
"……It's sweat. You wipe your own runny nose."
Both of us red-faced and panting, yet neither of us stopped moving our chopsticks.
It was strange. Clearly it was painful and burning, yet somehow my hand kept going back for more. As if pouring out everything we had held back for so long, she and I threw ourselves into that tingling heat.
"……Hey."
After swallowing another mouthful of water she suddenly spoke.
"Doesn't eating something this spicy make you feel a little more alive?"
I let out a short laugh.
"……Yeah. Feels like it's clearing everything out."
Whether the tears stinging my eyes were from the spice or something else entirely—I decided not to bother sorting it out.