Three Servings of Tteokbokki
Haa?
Well, that works out… The lunch at this school tastes awful anyway. I can treat this as an apology and just go eat outside.
I'd never been in the military myself, but I'd seen plenty of those viral photos of the infamous fried croaker. Gyarados, was it? The one that looked like a dragon had stomped on it two or three times.
I'd seen the real thing at this school.
There had to be a limit.
I didn't know how much we paid for cafeteria meals, but serving something like that was an insult to a student's tongue.
Poke. Poke.
Something jabbed me in the side.
You're gonna get in trouble! ꜀( ꜆>ࡇ<)꜆
My deskmate held out a memo pad with both hands.
Get in trouble?
I know.
I shot a halfhearted glance and answered.
"So what. I'll get chewed out once. Big deal."
I don't want to get in trouble! ( -᷅ o -᷄ )=3
"Just say you came out looking for me. You happened to see me leaving school, tried to stop me, and ended up following me out. Easy."
Let's just go back inside… (っ´-`c)
Talkative, this one.
No — write-ative.
My deskmate didn't speak a word, yet those hands flew so fast across the memo pad that answers appeared in an instant. The only sound was the scratch of a pen, and somehow it felt deafeningly loud.
Let's go baaaack~~~
Should I just snatch that memo pad?
If you hate this so much, go back alone. But no — you keep following me perfectly fine while writing a novel's worth of complaints.
"You keep shoving that memo pad at me and I will take it."
"Hic…!"
My deskmate's shoulders gave a violent shudder. Clutching the memo pad protectively and putting distance between us, my deskmate stared at me like I was a cattle thief.
Not going back, though?
Even so, my deskmate didn't turn around — just kept trailing after me.
We walked straight down from the school and into a side alley. It had everything: little snack shops, Chinese restaurants, the works.
"Ohohohoho!"
And then—
"Oh my god, really? Sihun?"
"Yeah. Sihun got into a car accident while drunk driving and apparently went to prison! I'm serious!"
"No way, no way! So that's why Sihun's dad hasn't been around lately?"
There were middle-aged men sitting on a wooden platform outside a salon for some reason, gossiping away — faces caked in makeup, polka-dot pants, the whole package.
I let out a long sigh and spoke to my deskmate.
"Don't you ever turn out like that."
What are you talking about? Don't turn out like what?
"Just say you won't. When an adult tells you something, you say yes."
We're the same age, though…
"Talking back! No — writing back!"
I raised a fist, ready to give my endlessly defiant deskmate a light thump.
Tremble, tremble…
I hadn't even hit anyone yet, but the moment our eyes met, my deskmate started shaking like a terrified hamster.
Weren't we getting a little closer?
Hadn't we been bickering just a second ago?
Why put up this wall again?
Anyone watching would think I'd dragged you out by force.
…
Okay, I had basically dragged you out by force.
"Anything you want to eat?"
Nothing in particular.
My deskmate held out the memo pad with a blank expression.
Can't even take your eyes off the snack shop, and you're pretending you don't want anything.
I absolutely could not let this slide.
If you wanted something, you said so. If you didn't, you said that clearly too. That was how opinions worked.
"Yeah? Then I'll pick. Let's go get a nice, hearty bowl of steaming gukbap from that place over there — the one blasting organ stench all the way down the street."
Even I, who'd been called a gukbap demolisher in my past life, wasn't sure I could handle the smell rolling out of that distant gukbap shop. At that intensity, the offal was guaranteed to reek of pure funk.
"Let's go!"
I was already ahead on the path, so I strode toward the gukbap place at a quick clip.
"Euuh…"
A flustered little whimper came from behind me.
Pat-pat-pat!
Urgent footsteps. And when they got close enough—
Squeeze.
Someone tugged weakly on my arm.
I turned my head toward the pull.
"What?"
"…"
Squeeze!
When I tried to start walking again in the silence, my deskmate yanked harder.
Head bowed low, my deskmate pointed the memo pad toward the snack shop.
"You want snack food?"
Nod, nod…
"You want tteokbokki?"
Nod, nod.
"With a bunch of fried stuff on top?"
Nod, nod!
My deskmate squeezed both eyes shut and nodded with everything available.
"In that case…!"
Nod, nod!!
"We're getting gukbap."
Wobble!
My deskmate lost balance for a second and staggered. Would have fallen, too — except this body's overwhelming reflexes refused to allow it. I grabbed the arm that was holding mine and pulled back, stopping the disaster cold.
As expected. I was built different.
Scribble-scribble!
My deskmate launched into another furious round of writing. When it was done, the memo pad was shoved at my face so fast and hard it nearly slapped me.
Why does the conversation go that way?!
"Because you won't talk."
I nodded!
"I don't accept body language."
"…"
At that, my deskmate sulked, let go of my arm, and whipped around to face the other way.
Something about it…
Felt like looking at Jihu. Noonaaa~
Quiet Jihu, who never did the cute act. Exactly that feeling.
Like I was hauling around a much younger little sibling.
"I'm kidding. Let's get tteokbokki."
Push any further and there was a real chance of tears like earlier, so I dropped the bit.
I grabbed the door of the snack shop.
"…"
Still not over it, apparently — my deskmate stood rooted to the spot.
What a pain…
No, seriously sulking.
For times like this, I had a finishing move. A technique kids this age could never refuse, no matter how mad they were.
I turned back and looked at my deskmate.
"Assorted fritters."
"…!"
"Plus fried squid."
"…!!!"
For a split second, light flared in my deskmate's eyes and vanished.
Done. From here, leave it alone and the following would happen on its own.
"I'll go in first and order. Come in or don't — your call."
I opened the snack shop door and stepped inside.
Fast…
As if the sulking had never happened, my deskmate slipped in after me before the door even finished closing.
Empty, as expected.
A snack shop right in front of a school. With classes still in session, there was no reason for customers — except the ones who'd come to ditch, and how long had we even been enrolled?
I sat down, my deskmate took the seat across from me, and I called over to the ajumma diligently stirring the tteokbokki.
"Ajumma, three servings of tteokbokki for now. And also—"
"There's no ajumma in this shop, dear."
"Ah, crap! You scared me!"
The ajumma(?) who'd been stirring the tteokbokki sauce so it wouldn't get too thick turned around, and I nearly toppled backward out of my seat.
The signature curly hair, the high-pitched humming — I'd been sure it was an ajumma.
Instead, a bandit-looking middle-aged man with a full beard was standing over the tteokbokki.
Right…
Even the salon out front had been full of middle-aged men, not women.
I kept forgetting this was the Reverse World and jumping out of my skin. I wasn't even a hero, and I was supposed to be smart.
"Why so startled?"
Because your face is a lot, sir.
"Because you're just so beautiful…"
"Oh my, oh my! Hearing that from a handsome student puts me in a great mood! Hohoho!!"
Thump, thump!
The snack shop man laughed with his whole body and pounded my back hard. I wondered if this was really okay, but matched him with a polite ha-ha of my own.
"Looks like I'll have to throw in a lot of extras. You said three servings?"
He piled the tteokbokki on generously — far past anything that could reasonably be called three servings.
Nothing to be done about it?
What comes around goes around. I'd sold a few pieces of my soul for tteokbokki.
"Aigoo… A pretty man like you is already a free service all by himself. If you keep giving this much extra, you're going to put yourself out of business."
I knew.
The line was a little greasy. The kind of thing middle-aged men at tea rooms used to say, polished to a shine. I knew that too.
But the person hearing it was that age… and more importantly, I looked the way I looked.
If I'd looked like a hero and said something like that, even a nice person would go, Uh… yeah… sure… But looking the way I did, nice or not, a smile bloomed on the other person's face on the spot.
By original-world standards, I was celebrity-tier beautiful. Empty flattery or not, there wasn't a woman — no, a man — who didn't melt a little at my words.
"Hohoho!!"
Sure enough, a smile flowered across the snack shop owner's face.
"…?"
Only my deskmate was looking at me with an expression that asked if I'd lost my mind.
Are you sane?
You actually wrote that.
Let it go, please.
Timid as my deskmate was, the kid still said — wrote — everything that needed saying.
Clunk.
The owner set a bowl heaped with tteokbokki down in front of us. We hadn't even ordered fritters, and a mountain of them was already stacked on top.
"Your hands are a little too generous… How are we supposed to finish all this…"
"…"
The lip service must have gone too far — the portion was absurd. My deskmate looked just as stunned, eyes gone perfectly round.
"You're at the age where you eat nonstop. What's 'too much'? If you can't finish, I'll pack it up, so you and your boyfriend take your time and share nicely."
"He's not my boyfriend? He's my deskmate."
"Deskmates are boyfriends and girlfriends. You two came all the way to a snack shop together — what's there to be shy about? Be more ladylike!"
"No, I'm serious, he's not!"
No matter how hard I denied it, the owner wasn't listening.
It was over.
This man had already made a decision. In the owner's private mental universe, my deskmate was now officially my boyfriend. A sealed, unbreakable pocket dimension of his own logic, immune to any correct statement I could make.
I looked to my deskmate for backup.
"You say something too… Wait, why are you like that…"
My deskmate had buried both hands in the ends of a scarf and dunked that head straight down. Above the scarf, a pair of bright-red ears peeked out.
"Forget it… Let's just eat."
Talking more would only make it longer, so I decided to be satisfied with the money I'd saved and move on.
P.E. class.
Using the excuse that she felt sick, Jia sat on the steps beside the field.
I should have been the deskmate…
Click… click…
She kept biting her thumbnail. She'd chewed it so much that a thin bead of blood had gathered at the tip.
It had already been forty minutes since Seonghyeon disappeared from sight.
Tremble, tremble, tremble…
She tried to calm down, but her hands shook on their own. Even when she forced herself to breathe like she was composed, it felt like gasping after an all-out sprint. Her vision started to blur.
Why… isn't he coming… Where is he…
That deskmate guy — no, Seonghyeon's deskmate — had gone to find Seonghyeon forty minutes ago.
And still hadn't come back.
What could possibly be taking so long? Waking up one sleeping kid — how hard could that be? Jia couldn't understand it.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
The speed of her nail-biting climbed higher and higher.
"Jia… she doesn't look good at all."
"Shouldn't we tell the teacher and take her to the nurse's office?"
Boys whispered among themselves as they watched her. But their worried muttering never reached Jia. Her head was so full of one person that other people's concern didn't even register as noise.
Ding!
Then a notification chimed from Jia's phone.
She yanked it out in a rush. Hoping — just maybe — it was a text from Seonghyeon, she unlocked the screen.
"Haa?"
The moment the unlocked display came into view, Jia's eyes went pitch black.
What filled the screen was not the text from Seonghyeon she had been dying for. It was something else entirely.
Exactly enough for three servings of tteokbokki.
Not the kind of food Seonghyeon, who didn't particularly like snack-shop fare, would go eat alone.
So who was he eating with?
There were only two people missing from this place right now.
"…"
Crrrk…
Jia gripped her phone hard enough to crush it and ran her tongue across her lips.