The Dining Table
It was early morning, the sunlight just beginning to drive the winter dawn away, and Lee Suho — lying there wide-eyed — was going through his own private hell.
Song Gaon had handled everything herself, from assembling the computer to getting the internet connected, but the blinds she had loudly declared she would order had yet to arrive. Then there was the furniture store. He had taken it for granted that she would buy a bed of her own — it was so obvious he hadn't bothered to say it out loud — only for her to stroll right past the bed section, declaring that her old one was roomy enough and the two of them would simply keep sharing. For no reason he could name, he resented her a little for that.
They had shared the bed for two nights now, and each morning, as the light began to creep in, Song Gaon would unconsciously burrow toward the wall to escape the glare.
— a soft, muffled thump.
Which was how the present calamity had come to pass. Her slow, sleeping breaths were a problem. So was the feel of her pressing closer against his back. With the wall in front of him and Song Gaon sealing off the way behind, he had lain wide-eyed in her arms for the better part of an hour.
Suho, young and still growing, stayed caged in her embrace, barely daring to breathe. Yesterday he'd had work waiting, so he had gritted his teeth against the drowsiness and endured until it was time to leave — but today was the weekend. There was no office to escape to.
And the softness pressed against his back was an unbearable temptation.
"Should I wake her?"
Tonight, Song Gaon was scheduled to hold her return-and-apology broadcast. The basic setup was finished; all that remained was to wait for the appointed hour. But beyond the apology notices to be pinned to each of her works, he needed to drill her on the questions most likely to come up and make sure she had answers ready.
He was the one who had sweet-talked her into doing the broadcast in the first place — and yet the face she would be turning to the camera belonged to a strikingly beautiful woman in her twenties. The problem was that the bulk of the novels she'd written were adults-only, and littered with humiliation content at that.
Even the people who would come to hurl stones at the apology broadcast of Song Gaon — a woman the internet already thoroughly loved to hate — would, if they were real readers, feel as though these were stories she had told them personally. The way they had felt to him.
'The troll bastards who'll try every kind of sexual harassment and get their accounts banned..'
He didn't need to watch to know how that would end. The fault was Song Gaon's, true — but if only to protect the viewers who would end up banned through no real fault of their own, he had to have her rehearse the likely questions in advance and prepare her answers.
"Noona. Wake up."
"Mmmgh.. 'm up already.. tired.. jus' a little more.."
She did not get up in the slightest. If anything, he went rigid and held his breath as her soft body pulled him into an embrace.
"Haa.. Noona."
"An hour.. gimme an hour.."
'If this was how it was going to go, I should have just slept on the couch.'
He envied the sheer audacity of Song Gaon, who had skipped right past the customary five minutes and boldly requested a full hour.
"Noona. Keep that up and you'll get eaten."
He knew her tastes inside and out — well enough to own bound copies of every single one of her novels. Fiction or not, every word of it had come out of Song Gaon's own head, so it wasn't as if anyone could claim she had no such tastes.
Ah. The problem was that she had ended up on the receiving end of it all. Still, it was something she herself had enjoyed writing, so Lee Suho figured it couldn't be all that different — and he squirmed around, turning halfway over in her arms.
There was a scene that recurred across Song Gaon's works. Fondling a heroine in her sleep; taking a woman who said she hated it even as she secretly wavered, slathering her in condensed milk, and taming her.
Most of her catalog had been the kind where someone full of pride came slowly undone — but she hadn't written that sort of content from the beginning. At least at first, they had been sweet love stories. Then, all at once, she had pivoted to a completely different genre, and from there she had poured out humiliation-centered work as though she had fallen from grace.
The novels Lee Suho had read through his own long illness — at first, he had only kept reading to put his dimming eyesight to use. But like an unrequited love that swelled a little more each day, the moment he caught himself lost in the world she had painted through her own eyes, that world vanished.
Before long, another world had filled the space the old one left behind. And in that world, he found her again — gazing out over everything with those same eyes.
Once, there had been a time he lost track of her entirely. The hollow dread of those days could still make his hands tremble — though to be fair, whenever he set his sights on finding her, he had never truly failed.
Whenever she released something outside her usual content or genre, he had even felt as though she were cheating on him. He had felt betrayed by her more times than he could count.
And yet he understood that she must have had her own real-world reasons. He knew the symptoms shared by nearly all ASCS patients; by any reasonable measure, Song Gaon's behavior deserved condemnation. But he couldn't bring himself to condemn the person herself.
Not when she was the noona who had first taught him what love was.
"Mmm.. so warm.."
Lee Suho, who had sworn never again to lose the person he had only just finally obtained, drifted — entirely without meaning to — back to sleep in her arms.
"Suho. Come on, get up."
"Ughh.."
Lee Suho, who had fallen asleep before me last night, looked inexplicably worn out. By the time I had slept a good long while and cracked my eyes open, it was already well past noon — late enough that the sun no longer poured down on the window.
I was startled to find myself wrapped tight around Lee Suho, but I didn't let it show. If our eyes met while I was still holding him like that, even I would have felt uncomfortable.
'Two men, asleep tangled in each other's arms — isn't that just a little too grotesque?'
A chill ran down my spine. Suho would be every bit as flustered waking up to this, so I carefully slid the arm holding him free and, with the hand that remained, gave his head an awkward little pat.
'So soft.'
"Suho, let's get lunch going. I'll head in first and start, so up you get."
"Uh.. yes.."
After ruffling his hair one more time, I stole a glance at him stirring upright, then headed for the kitchen.
While I'd been home alone, I had paged through the cookbooks I'd been leaning on and made up a batch of braised side dishes — the kind that keep for ages.
'And here I am breaking into them already.'
They were meant to be emergency rations, stashed away for days when work piled up or the writing flowed too well to stop — days when I'd have no spare moment to feed him.
'Well, technically this is an emergency, so it can't be helped.'
I had a commitment in a few hours. There was a broadcast test to run, and my talking points still needed polishing. I'd gone and lost the entire morning without meaning to — no, a good chunk of the afternoon too — so I had to get food into him in a hurry and get myself ready.
"Noona."
"Hm? Hey, go wash your face first. What, are you dating that eye crud? Aigoo.."
I ran a finger lightly over his eyes as I said it, and Suho blinked, then nodded.
'Why are his cheeks so red these days..?'
I'd have to check whether I'd left the heating cranked too high. With autumn sliding into winter, the days were pleasantly crisp, but the nights were cold. I'd probably need to buy a thick winter quilt, too. Lee Suho slept under a single thin blanket, and being still young, he'd be fine — but I felt the cold aching clear down to my bones.
'Then again... I don't think I've actually felt that bone-deep chill lately.'
Late at night and in the early morning it wasn't all that cold, but still — better to turn the heating down and buy a heavier blanket.
I heated up a pack of instant rice and tipped it into a proper bowl. Eating it straight from the container would have been fine, but I wanted to make a little more of an occasion of it.
'This is my second meal at home with Suho, after all.'
The first had ended in tragedy — the day I learned exactly what his cooking was capable of — but today was different. Rice steaming fragrantly, braised quail eggs, pickled perilla leaves. Worried the spread was nothing but braised dishes, I'd hastily pan-fried some tofu, and I tore open a pack of seasoned seaweed to lay casually on the plate. It was a veritable parade of pickles and banchan, but at least it beat the delivery food you take one bite of and abandon forever.
"Noona. When did you make all these side dishes?"
"Hmm.."
To check whether it was just water in his eyes, I braced one hand on the table, leaned down, and studied his face.
"Mm.. you pass."
"Wh..wh..what did?"
"Your tooth-brushing seemed hopeless, but you washed your face just fine. And these are the side dishes I made yesterday."
I'd walked him through brushing for ages while he fumbled and stammered along, so seeing him come out this freshly scrubbed — clean enough that I wondered if this was really the same Suho — put me in an even better mood.
"Ah.. uh.. you worked hard."
His out-of-nowhere compliment nearly dragged my mouth into a grin, but I kept my voice level.
"You're the one who asked me to cook for you. You didn't think it was just for today, did you? I'll be doing it the whole time, so quit worrying and eat."
"Mmph.. uh.. I will. Thank you for the meal."
"Why are you doing deep-breathing exercises in front of your dinner? Is my cooking really that untrustworthy?"
"N..no, it's not that. Noona, stop hovering and come eat with me."
I took his cheeks in both hands and pressed him, holding his gaze — and he just shook his head side to side, flustered, so I let go and settled into my seat.
"Noona, aren't you eating?"
"I am. I'm eating."
I stared blankly at Suho's face for a moment, then ducked my head.
'How long had it been since I last sat across from another person and shared a meal..?'
My chopsticks, contrary as ever today, kept slicing away at the poor defenseless tofu.
I had left home like a fugitive. A son who might turn into a daughter — hardly the child my hard-driving parents had in mind. I'd slipped out like that and drifted through life ever since, and now, only now, the loneliness I'd assumed I'd never once felt in all those years was making itself known.
'So eating alone was never as easy as I'd made it look.'
Even the meals I'd once enjoyed solo would taste better now than they ever did back then.
"Is it good?"
"Yes. It's even better because you made it, Noona."
'Grinning like that, he looks just like a little kid.'
"You don't have to say that — I'm cooking either way. Quit flattering me and eat. If you want more, I'll get you more."
For no reason at all, I felt my cheeks go warm. Even after the contract ran out, it wouldn't be so bad if he kept coming around for a few more months to share a meal.