A Table Set for Two
Bubble, bubble… "Mmm…" The familiar, comforting sound after so long, and the feel of morning sunlight tapping against my retinas, coaxed my heavy eyelids open. I stared blankly at the apartment ceiling for a few seconds, no different from any other morning, before the bizarre events of yesterday finally flashed through my mind like a lantern show. After the monster came to our home, I had washed up hastily and dropped straight into sleep. She might have become my girlfriend, but a monster that had eaten human beings had been in the same room as me, and I had slept soundly anyway. In my defense, I had clung desperately to the thread of my sanity just to survive, but facing a reality too hard to accept, my mind had simply hit its limit. "Hah!" The moment that thought landed, I registered the contradiction of hearing sounds in the apartment besides my own — I didn't live alone anymore — and bolted upright in bed. "You're awake?" There she was — a woman walking in from the kitchen carrying a pot in her bare hands. Yoon Sung-ha. No — the monster. She wore nothing but my oversized white T-shirt instead of yesterday's mourning dress, and she set the steaming pot down on the table. "Isn't it about time you left for work?" The monster glanced at the clock, then laid a single set of spoon and chopsticks on the table. It looked like she'd set out breakfast for me before work, but I had to ask. "…Did you make this?" "I did." The monster answered curtly and lifted the lid off the pot. Steam billowed up, and as the haze cleared, a strange dish revealed itself inside. "…What is this?" The vegetables and side dishes from the fridge, an unidentifiable sauce, leftover fish from a few days ago — all churned together into one bizarre creation. "This woman has no memory of ever cooking. So I combined whatever was in the refrigerator, focusing on nutritional value." At that utterly unhinged explanation, I could only gape, lost for words. "Not eating?" I couldn't tell whether that colorless voice was a threat or an invitation. But still — this was the first meal anyone had made for me since I started living on my own. And it was, nominally at least, the first dish my girlfriend had ever cooked for me. Eating right after waking up was a bit much, but refusing felt impossible. I sat down at the table and picked up my spoon. Slurp. First I scooped up a big mouthful of the instant rice, then, with a somewhat trembling heart, took a spoonful of the soup. "……" "Bad?" "N-no, it's… f-fine, really…" "So it is bad." When the monster's face fell at my reaction, my eyes went wide with surprise. "I'm sorry. You provided me with delicious meals, and I cannot provide you with one in return." "No, it's… you've never cooked before, that's all, Sung-ha…" I scrambled to defend her against that listless voice. "It is still a sorry state of affairs. I will learn to cook from now on." Maybe it was just my mood, but with those drooping shoulders and that talk of wifely devotion, the monster in front of me felt more genuinely human than any human I'd ever met. What if… what if those human-like expressions and gestures were all an act? What purpose could she possibly have? But nothing came to mind. I wasn't rich, wasn't particularly handsome or well-educated, didn't have valuable connections. If the monster held Sung-ha's memories, she would know that as well as anyone — there was no reason for her to fixate on me. And even if I did possess all of those things, she could simply devour me the way she devoured Sung-ha and take everything anyway. Why bother with this cumbersome arrangement? We'd only just met yesterday, for the first time, so it didn't seem like some premeditated plan either. But… whatever the case — whatever purpose she had or didn't have — the being in front of me was, besides my parents, the only one on the entire planet who had ever set a table for me. For that, I was truly grateful. So I decided, for now, to simply say what I felt. "Th-thank… you." "For what?" The monster slid her eyes over from the mishmash stew, studying my words for meaning. "You made me a meal, whether it tastes good or not. I'm grateful for the thought alone." When I said it with what felt like real sincerity, the monster regarded me in silence for a long moment before slowly parting her lips. "Strange." "What is?" "You are clearly a good man. Then why did this woman foolishly devour you? I cannot comprehend it." When she called me a good man point-blank, I had no idea how to respond. But the monster didn't seem to want any particular reaction from me; she simply fell silent again and watched me eat. Being stared at that intently was getting a little awkward, so I murmured, "You… don't eat, do you…" "Does it bother you?" "No, no… it doesn't bother me… but doesn't it get to you, just watching me eat? You could be doing something else." "It doesn't matter. Observing a human consuming food is meaningful, and watching you eat never grows tiresome." "R-right…?" At that point, there was nothing left to say. "If it's hard to finish, you don't have to. Humans have a system for delivering food, don't they? I will make use of it." The monster spoke while gazing helplessly at the stew she'd made. "No, it's fine. It's really edible." Half of that was a lie, but it was also true that it wasn't so bad as to be inedible. "…I see." Faintly — and only for a fleeting instant — I imagined I saw something like a smile touch the monster's lips. "Thank you." She looked at me as she said it, and I couldn't tell what she was thanking me for. I didn't press the question.
"What are you going to do?" I asked as I changed into work clothes, addressing the monster sitting quietly in her seat. "I will go home first and show my face to my parents. University is on break, so there's no need to go there. I'll stay at the house for a while and come back here around the time you get off work." "So you're going to keep coming to our place?" "Am I a hindrance? As I said yesterday, I need to clean your home. And I need to feed as well." At the word feed, the events of last night surfaced in my mind. My face flushed hot without my permission — and then another thought occurred to me. "Hey…" It was a blunt question, possibly a dangerous one, but also one I knew I couldn't avoid asking forever. "You don't kill humans, right?" "I can kill them." "What?" The monster rose abruptly from her seat and casually peeled off the T-shirt she was wearing. "You truly are a bashful man. I told you it was fine to look." When I flinched and spun my head away, the monster continued. "If any human learns my true nature, I must kill them. For my own survival." "Well, sure, I get that but… then what about me?" Even as I asked, my body curled in on itself with an anxious little what if. "You are special." The monster pulled on her underwear and drove the point home, utterly unbothered. Special. It was the first time in my life anyone had ever told me I was special to them. "Because you're my boyfriend." Just one sentence, but somehow that single line carried an array of meanings I couldn't argue with. "I won't eat humans. I'll say it again: my sustenance is the semen of human males. But if my survival were ever truly in peril, I could eat a human." Having changed into her mourning dress down to the last detail, the monster drew cosmetics from her handbag and deftly painted her face. She could have let it slide without saying anything, but she was honest about the possibility of eating humans. "I don't kill humans without reason. There's nothing to gain from it — if anything, it only draws attention and raises the odds that my existence is discovered." When her makeup was finished, she was the spitting image of the perfect Yoon Sung-ha. "I understand what you're worried about. So let me promise you: aside from what I've described, I will not kill a human." Tuduk. The monster suddenly advanced on me, and I instinctively took a step back, but she paid no mind, closing the distance and looping her arm through mine. The distinctive scent of a woman and a faint lilac perfume mingled together, tickling the tip of my nose. "What are you doing?" "We have to leave together anyway, don't we?" "That's true, but… why the arm…?" "Because I'm your girlfriend." She said it in Sung-ha's usual tone and gave me a bright little smile. Squeeze. Then she pressed herself tighter against my arm, and the soft yield of a woman's chest came through with perfect clarity. "Touch them whenever you like. If you're in heat, we can mate right here and now. It would be cutting it close, but there's still a little time before work." When I went red, the monster narrowed her eyes and studied my complexion. "I-I'm fine, let's just go." "Hmm…" I had no idea why the monster looked disappointed, but desperate to escape the awkwardness, I hurried out of the apartment with her still clinging to my arm. It was the same commute as always, but walking alongside the girlfriend I'd loved made it feel undeniably different. On the way to the subway, the glances of the passing crowd kept landing on me. Most of them, of course, came from men, and their eyes were fixed on the monster. If they learned that the creature hanging on my arm was a monster that had eaten a human and woven its flesh into that shape, what expressions would they make? Would they still be able to hold on to those lecherous stares? Being aware of other men around me for once, a perfectly reasonable question suddenly presented itself, and I couldn't help but ask. "But if it's semen from men, then it doesn't have to be mine, does it?" I whispered it low enough that only the monster could hear, wary of anyone nearby catching the words. "You're right. But I like your semen. It's a matter of taste — much as humans don't love every kind of meat there is." Meat came in many varieties. Duck, beef, pork… and even within those, there were humans who had preferences by cut. I understood the monster's example instantly. "Have I not told you? You are special to me." The monster looked at me and smiled. Whether that smile was manufactured, or genuine, I still couldn't tell.