A Normal Family Dinner
Min-ah and Arin.
The meeting of those two.
What I'd feared most was Min-ah's rejection. Until now, my daughter had been unmistakably wary of me seeing other women. It all came down to her former mother — the wife who'd abandoned her. The memory of a mother who threw her away. The fear that a new one might do the same. That was probably it.
But looking at Min-ah's reaction now, it didn't seem like there would be any real problem. She was as bright and cheerful as ever.
"I wonder what Dad's spicy pork stir-fry tastes like when someone else makes it?"
She clung to my arm, delighted. A faint unease flickered through me, but I told myself it was just my imagination.
We stepped into the kitchen. Arin was holding something connected to a butane canister.
"Arin, is that…?"
I must have looked startled, because she smiled a little.
"It's a torch."
She adjusted the attachment on the canister, and a fierce jet of flame roared out of it.
"You can't really wok-toss at full blast in a home kitchen, so this is how you get that fire-kissed flavor."
A searing hiss filled the room. The torch's hard flame licked across the well-stirred pork, and that delicious sound rose as the taste of fire sank into the meat. I swallowed. My mouth had watered on its own.
"That's pretty professional."
"When you've been living on your own long enough, you end up putting real care even into a single dish."
Arin didn't glance my way at all. She was wholly absorbed in laying that fire flavor into the stir-fry, and that only made her look more beautiful to me. If she'd been doing it simply to impress me, I would have been a little disappointed.
I looked at Min-ah. My daughter was watching Arin cook with complete concentration. Right. She'd liked seeing her like this, too.
With a rich, sliding pour, Arin tipped the stir-fry into a large bowl she'd prepared in advance. A patter of sesame seeds. A few shakes of pepper. Then a slow, generous drizzle of sesame oil to finish.
"Ta-da! Arin's special spicy pork stir-fry is complete!"
Min-ah and I went straight to it. On a white round plate, the vivid red pork gleamed, the sesame oil lending it a beautiful sheen. The savory collaboration of pork fat and sesame oil mixed with the gochujang sauce until the smell alone made me want to grab a piece and eat it on the spot.
"Hmm… it's a little different from Dad's…"
For Min-ah, comparing it to my version apparently came before actually tasting it.
"Dad thinks this one looks even better. Especially this smell… what is that?"
"Ginger."
"Ginger?"
"If you pound ginger and add it, you can kill any gaminess the pork might have, and it gives the whole thing a clean, bright taste."
"Now that you mention it, I only ever used garlic. I never put ginger in…"
Min-ah went to the table in a flash and picked up a pair of chopsticks.
"Unni, can I try this?"
"Of course you can."
Min-ah picked up a piece of the stir-fry, brought it to her mouth, and bit down. She chewed slowly, eyes closed, savoring it. Her face was serious. You could see the will in it — she meant to analyze Arin's spicy pork stir-fry with painstaking care.
Don't tell me she's about to say it doesn't taste good, just to pick a fight…
A spike of worry hit me. I'd heard the stories. A daughter who doesn't like her new stepmother, finding fault with the food. If Min-ah tried to reject Arin that way… then what?
"It's delicious!"
The admiration burst out of her.
"It's almost the same as Dad's, but… how do I put it… yes! The ginger and the fire flavor go together so, so well!"
She looked at me with a face of pure happiness.
"It's way better than Dad's!"
Those words. The ones Arin and I had both so wanted to hear. Arin had been wearing something like a natural smile, but she'd been tense underneath — and at Min-ah's reaction, I felt that tension go slack all at once.
"Oh, really? Thank you! That's exactly what I wanted to hear."
"Is it actually that good? Then let me…"
"Dad, say ah~."
Min-ah picked up another piece with the chopsticks she'd just used and held it out to me.
"Thanks."
I took the bite she'd offered. For a split second, I felt someone glaring at me — but I couldn't tell who. The sensation flared and vanished just as fast.
A burst of fresh ginger slammed into my mouth, and then the aroma of fire rode up through my nose and melted into the well-rendered fat of the pork. A new taste. No — not merely new. A better one. It was cooked well enough to make another cook jealous.
"What is this…? Why is it this good?"
"I told you. I'm a good cook."
Arin lifted the bowl of stir-fry.
"Excuse me, dear guests? The rest of the food isn't ready yet. I've still got a few things to finish, so could you wait just a little?"
"Yes, Unni!"
My daughter caught my arm.
"Let's go out so Unni can cook, Dad!"
"Uh… okay!"
I looked at Arin. She winked, signaling that it was fine.
"Just relax in the living room and a feast will appear all on its own, so look forward to it."
"Thank you, Unni! Come on, Dad, let's go already!"
The pull on my arm grew stronger.
"You don't need any help?"
"Don't you know men aren't supposed to come in the kitchen? Go sit with Min-ah and take it easy."
"See! Dad! Hurry up and go. Unni, thanks for doing this!"
"Mm!"
And so I went out to the living room with Min-ah.
"Ah…?"
"What's wrong?"
I had the feeling someone was glaring at me. But behind me, Arin was smiling with her eyes curved into little crescents. It wasn't her.
"No… it's nothing…"
"You're worried, aren't you."
"Huh…?"
"Because you've always been the one in charge of the kitchen, sunbae."
Right. That was it. My evenings had always been spent preparing dinner with my daughter. And now, for the first time, I was in my own house handing that dinner over to someone who wasn't family.
Arin's fastball, thrown right down the middle. A declaration of war: she would become my wife and claim this house's kitchen as her own. I looked at her. There was an ease on her face — probably thanks to Min-ah's generous verdict on the stir-fry she'd made. A prickling tension spread from my throat. In an instant, this comfortable home felt like it had transformed into a martial world thick with assassins. I glanced carefully at Min-ah.
"Then I'll leave it to you, Unni!"
Huh? Min-ah's reaction was far softer than I'd expected. There wasn't a trace of rejection in it. Knowing her personality, it was strange — far too strange. But I couldn't ask.
"Dad! Then let's go rest! Unni's going to cook!"
There was a dissonance I couldn't put into words. And I couldn't express it, either, because it was something my sixth sense was picking up, and my head had no way to explain it.
"R-right."
It might have been nothing. I couldn't keep stalling here over something like that. Everything was a green light. Arin and Min-ah were both satisfied with the situation as it stood. There was nothing to worry about. I was just taking it too sensitively.
"Then I'll be in the living room. Call me if you need a hand."
"I'm grateful just hearing you say that."
Arin smiled. It was a happy smile. Right. I could do this. A family. A wife. A normal family, with a daughter in it. I found myself thinking it might be all right to dream of that again.
"Dinner's ready!"
Min-ah and I had been in the living room trading idle bits of school gossip when Arin's call sent us running for the kitchen.
"Wow…!"
Min-ah's eyes went wide on their own.
"When did you even… prepare all this?"
My mouth had fallen open just as far. A table for four, packed so full of food there was barely room left. The spicy pork stir-fry, made new by that ginger. A rich doenjang-jjigae, the soybean-paste stew simmered thick with Cheongyang chilies and beef. Napa cabbage kimchi, sliced as neatly as a restaurant display. Seasoned spinach and chwinamul. A bright radish salad. Poached eggs. And even a pot of bean sprout soup… It was perfect to the point of excess.
I looked at Min-ah. She was just as stunned — the face of someone who'd witnessed something wondrous.
"Here, sunbae, sit down."
Arin came up beside Min-ah and pulled out her chair. A move calculated, quite plainly, to score points with her.
"You sit here too, Min-ah."
"Thank… you."
My daughter accepted Arin's kindness with a slightly flustered look. Even so, it wasn't awkwardness, and it wasn't rejection.
"You too, sunbae. Here we go~."
Arin pulled out my chair. Her hip bumped against my groin. A thoroughly deliberate move.
"Please sit."
She looked at me with a smile so full it could have belonged to a wife who loved me beyond all reason, and a smile rose to my own face in answer.
"Wow, this is so good!"
Min-ah's cry startled both of us out of looking at each other.
"This is good too…! And that is too…! Woooow!"
My daughter had started tasting her way through the spread, spilling admiration as she went. It felt a little over the top… but she was just happy, right?
I sat down. Home cooking I hadn't made myself. It had been so long.
"Eat well, sunbae."
Arin said it with a smile. An emotion I had never once felt from my ex-wife. Love. Steam rose in soft, tumbling curls from the food she'd laid out. Every last dish had come from her hands. Not one of them was something you threw together lightly. These were dishes you could feel the care in.
I'd never gotten this feeling from a table my ex-wife had set. Instant food, start to finish, and an attitude like we should be grateful she'd even bothered to serve it — and then feeding that to Min-ah, the child who'd come from her own body. I'd been furious.
If I'd been with Arin from the start…
The regret cut deep. A catastrophe born of my having no eye for people. But the chance had come around again. Late as it was, I wanted to start over. And she was trying, too.
I looked at Min-ah. She was eating Arin's cooking with real pleasure. Family. Yes. This was a family dinner. I was happy. I wished days like this could last forever.
I picked up my spoon, a happy smile on my face.
"Thanks for the meal!"