Kimchi and Old Wounds
After the promotional team staff left, Seong Jiyeong—who had hauled every last jar of her kimchi back to the dorm—loaded them into the fridge and disappeared into her room. The atmosphere suggested she was nursing a pretty serious wound. Losing to Yu Hana’s half-baked kimchi with that kind of kimchi must have stung. Yu Hana’s batch wasn’t bad, sure, but comparisons are always relative. Who could possibly understand their beloved ShaX bag being sold for less than a Dongdaemun knockoff?
Meanwhile, Yu Hana and I were busy filling the other half of the fridge.
“There are more varieties than I expected.”
“Mhm~ You’ve gotta enjoy kimchi in all its forms.”
Yu Hana had prepared five kinds in total: classic napa cabbage kimchi, plus young radish kimchi, mustard leaf kimchi, dongchimi, and kkakdugi. Seong Jiyeong had brought napa cabbage, young radish, bitter greens, white kimchi, and water kimchi. Apparently, five varieties was just standard for kimchi enthusiasts. Most people stopped at one or two, yet these two were stacking entire fridges full. Truly impressive.
“So, how do you think this’ll sell?”
“Sell?”
“Yeah~ These are actually our company’s upcoming products.”
“You started a kimchi factory?”
“Why? Does that sound weird coming from me?”
Of course it sounded weird. Yu Hana and a kimchi factory? That combination was bizarre no matter how you looked at it. Unless…
“Those people who came to help yesterday—were they factory workers?”
“Something like that.”
“No way. You’re telling me those guys actually work at a kimchi factory?”
“That’s what I said. Don’t tell me you were imagining something weird again, Yeri~ We’re just running a perfectly legal business.”
I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. People who looked like they’d ferment humans into salted seafood were supposedly just making kimchi? Their cleanup had been suspiciously thorough, too. Even though I’d caused a massive scene yesterday, there wasn’t a single mention in the news or papers. In a world where villains killing each other was common, a pile of corpses and a big fire should have made at least a brief report. The fact that everything stayed quiet meant the cleanup had been flawless—and that wasn’t something just anyone could pull off.
“Oh, right. About yesterday. Some of them got away from the scene. If they cause trouble later, it’d be annoying, so I had it handled.”
“You’re right. I didn’t even think of that.”
“It wasn’t difficult.”
See? Even offering after-service like that. What part of this was a “legal business”? Honestly, this was my mistake. I’d been wearing a mask, but Ji Seoeun hadn’t. I’d overlooked it because I thought the Space Battleship Villain was just an innocent victim. But since she was the one who’d sold guns to villains, it made sense that any witnesses needed to be dealt with. If I’d known Ji Seoeun’s identity back then, I would’ve gone after the escapees first.
Wait—how did she even know to clean up after them?
“Yu Hana. Did you know that Ji Seoeun—”
“What? Ah, that Ssseo made and sold guns? Of course I didn’t. It was a coincidence. Pure coincidence~”
“Then how did you find out? I didn’t even know at the time.”
“Easy~ I just caught the ones who ran and asked them. Why are you so curious about something so amateurish?”
“…Seriously?”
“Of course~”
Ha. Whatever. She’d gone out of her way to handle the mess, so I’d let it slide. I already knew she was strange. One more weird thing wouldn’t change anything. Better to ask something more constructive.
“By the way, you seemed to know something about Seong Jiyeong.”
“Ah, that. Yeah, Jjyeongjjyeong’s pretty famous.”
“Famous?”
“You should hear the details from her directly. It’s personal.”
“Then at least tell me about today. You and Seong Jiyeong and the kimchi—there’s something going on, isn’t there?”
The Seong Jiyeong I knew wasn’t that petty. She was the type to coolly accept defeat even in unfair situations. Getting this worked up over fridge space felt off. She clearly had kimchi pride, but refusing to yield even an inch of refrigerator real estate was strange.
Yu Hana gave me a meaningful look.
“You pretty much guessed it already, right? I gave you a hint earlier.”
“Yeah, roughly. Does Seong Jiyeong have a serious oyster allergy or something?”
“Mhm~ That part’s pretty bad too. Good job noticing, Yeri~”
“Skip the obvious stuff. There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
I’d already noticed the oyster allergy. But that alone wasn’t enough. Oysters were obvious in kimchi—if you looked, you could tell. Someone as serious about kimchi as Seong Jiyeong would definitely notice. Yet she hadn’t even tried Yu Hana’s kimchi. Even if she only ate her own, refusing to taste the other side’s offering at all was suspicious. Yu Hana’s batch clearly had no oysters, so there had to be something else.
“Heh~ You caught that too? What do I do now… Hmm. Well, fine. If you want to get along with Jjyeongjjyeong, you should know this much. When she was younger, she got really sick after eating kimchi a friend brought.”
“And that kimchi had oysters in it. But Seong Jiyeong wouldn’t have missed that… Was she very young?”
“Not that young. Just young enough. And she’s been a kimchi maniac since she was little.”
“Really? Then it’s weird she wouldn’t have noticed. Kimchi with oysters smells different.”
“Why wouldn’t she notice? Because the other person hid it, obviously.”
“Hid it? They fed her kimchi with oysters on purpose?”
“And it was someone she thought was her closest friend.”
“…If the allergy was that severe, that’s basically attempted murder.”
“The other person even knew how serious her allergy was.”
“That’s premeditated. Why would they do that? Jealousy doesn’t explain something this extreme.”
“Right. Because it was basically an assassination attempt from the start.”
“Assassination?”
Seong Jiyeong’s family was famous enough that everyone knew the name. She was the eldest granddaughter. Those kinds of households often had their share of dirty laundry, and apparently someone in the family had plotted to get rid of her entirely. I didn’t know the full details—Yu Hana hadn’t gone that deep. But if it was true, she’d experienced betrayal at a young age. Her life had been rougher than I’d thought.
Of course, there were questions. A family that famous should be among the top ten chaebols, yet none of the chaebol families I remembered had the surname “Seong.” Still, Yu Hana wouldn’t lie to me about something like this. Seong Jiyeong clearly had more secrets than she let on.
“If something like that happened, you’d think she’d hate kimchi itself, but she still loves it. That’s strange too.”
“Ah, kimchi is a food with memories for Jjyeongjjyeong. In that sense, maybe we’re a bit similar?”
“You?”
“Mhm~ Our kimchi recipe is basically something my mom left behind.”
“Oh, really?”
Yu Hana’s late mother hadn’t been particularly skilled at cooking. The only dish she could make decently was kimchi. She used to joke that she should open a kimchi factory someday. When Yu Hana came of age, she’d playfully left behind the recipe, saying Yu Hana should run the factory as president. Shortly after making that remark, she passed away suddenly, turning the joke into something like a final wish. So Yu Hana had opened the factory, planning to start operations properly next year when she became an adult.
“That’s…”
“You don’t have to make that face. Honestly, being comforted with family stories feels a bit off, doesn’t it?”
“Everyone has their own sorrows. There’s no ranking them.”
No wonder she’d been so genuinely happy about winning a simple kimchi contest. It was her mother’s recipe. And Seong Jiyeong had similar memories tied to kimchi—meaning she had her own hidden story too. Probably something involving family.
“Anyway. You want to get along with Jjyeongjjyeong too, right? Then you should start by appealing to her this way. She’s got her own fence, so she’s hard to approach, but once someone’s inside it, she trusts them easily.”
“Really?”
“Mhm~ Especially sharing food together counts as a pretty high level of closeness. You saw it earlier, right? How she wouldn’t eat the kimchi I gave her.”
“Yeah, that was weird. But if something like that happened in the past, I can understand it a bit.”
“In that sense, you earned some points today.”
“Points?”
“Mhm~ You were the only one who complimented Jjyeongjjyeong’s kimchi.”
“Just for that…? I was just saying what I honestly thought.”
“Maybe that’s why you scored more points? Plenty of people would’ve just said nice things to her face.”
“If she really is from a famous family like you said, maybe. But you knew that and still went after her like that?”
“What does it matter? The one I want to get close to isn’t Jjyeongjjyeong—it’s you, Yeri~ Besides, I can’t forgive anyone who insults my mom’s recipe~”
Yu Hana really was something else. Most people wouldn’t have the guts to provoke someone suspected of being a chaebol heiress like that. And I still didn’t understand why she was so determined to get close to me.
“Well, it’s not like I got nothing out of it either~ I got a solid sample survey done before the factory really starts running. And if we get famous, that video we shot today will blow up too. If people find out the kimchi in it is mine, that’s free publicity, right?”
“You were calculating all that on top of everything else?”
“So if you want to get close to Jjyeongjjyeong, you should use your head a little too.”
“I don’t particularly want to get that close, but… I get what you mean.”
I figured I needed to maintain a decent relationship with Seong Jiyeong for smooth operations, but I didn’t want to scheme my way there. She seemed to have her own scars too—did I really need to go that far? Still, if I acted naturally like today, we could probably keep things civil. Besides, idols were basically a business group. Did “friendship” even mean much?
“By the way, food with memories, huh. I’ve got something like that too. Hmm…”
Maybe that was why the part about kimchi being tied to memories for both of them resonated more than the idea of forcing a friendship with Seong Jiyeong. I definitely had something like that too. Since things had turned out this way, maybe I should just cook lunch at home today. That could be my way of paying for hearing their old stories.