A Lunchbox Full of Romance
Jinwoo blinked at the sight of the two adults in school uniforms walking with slightly awkward steps. He and Eunbyul sat down on a nearby bench.
“I’m getting hungry!”
“Same here. It’s still a bit early, but should we head to a restaurant?”
Considering the time, leaving now would let them eat right on schedule. It might also be fun to track down one of those nostalgic eateries they used to visit back in their student days.
But when Eunbyul looked up at him, she wore a triumphant expression.
“Let’s eat here!”
“Huh?”
Jinwoo blinked and scanned their surroundings. There wasn’t a single restaurant in sight—not even a small convenience store.
“There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to eat around here.”
“Hehe! Actually, I brought a lunchbox today.”
With a proud smile, Eunbyul lifted the bag she’d been carrying and set it in front of her. She pulled out a lunch container and placed it in the middle of the bench. When she lifted the lid, it revealed an array of delicious-looking food: gimbap, inari sushi, fried chicken, and even cherry tomatoes. Anyone would agree it was an excellent lunchbox.
“You even prepared something like this?”
“It’s basically a rule in romance stories, right? So I wanted to try making one~”
Jinwoo blinked in surprise. It wasn’t just that Eunbyul had this kind of cooking skill. More than anything, he was touched that she’d gone to all this trouble just for him. Having helped his father at the Tteokbokki Shop, he knew exactly how much work it took. Preparing a lunchbox from early in the morning was no easy task.
“Hehe… To be honest, getting this ready made me a little late.”
“Not at all. You arrived five whole minutes early.”
“But you were already waiting, Jinwoo. I wanted to get here even sooner.”
It was true—Jinwoo had shown up thirty minutes before their meeting time. He hadn’t wanted to make Eunbyul wait. More than that, he’d worried that a grown woman in a school uniform standing alone might run into trouble. Still, by normal standards, thirty minutes was a bit excessive.
“Actually, the idea to make a lunchbox came from you, Jinwoo.”
“From me?”
Eunbyul smiled softly and nodded.
“I wanted to repay you for granting my request today. And remember how you told me to put myself in the characters’ shoes?”
It was something they’d talked about at the café.
“So I wondered what it would feel like if the heroine prepared something for the protagonist… I thought it would be fun, but it turned out to be way more enjoyable than I expected. It was a great experience.”
Jinwoo licked his dry lips. A strange tickling sensation bloomed in his chest. He was grateful that Eunbyul had worked so hard for him, and the way she proudly showed it off was incredibly cute. As if embarrassed by her own words, her cheeks flushed a soft pink.
“A-anyway, let’s eat quickly! The lunchbox has a good insulation function, so it should still be warm.”
“Thank you. I’ll enjoy it.”
Eunbyul pulled out chopsticks as she spoke. But for some reason… there was only one pair.
That familiar mischievous glint returned to her face.
“Senior?”
“Mmm~?”
“There’s only one pair of chopsticks. Should I run and buy some nearby?”
“I did it on purpose, you know?”
With that, she neatly snapped the chopsticks exactly in half. She picked up a piece of gimbap and held it out to him.
Even Jinwoo wasn’t clueless about what this meant.
“Senior?”
“Ah~”
“Even so, this is…”
“Ah!”
Eunbyul frowned, clearly not accepting any refusal. Besides, he was already the one being treated to lunch. He couldn’t possibly turn down such an adorable prank.
She just wants to experience the heroine feeding the protagonist scene from her novels in real life.
Muttering that to himself, he accepted the gimbap she offered.
“There we go. Our Jinwoo eats so well.”
The last time anyone had fed him like this was back in elementary school when his mom was making kimchi. Now here he was, opening his mouth for ahhh~ from Eunbyul. A strange feeling rose in his chest—somewhere between excitement and pride.
“How is it? Does it taste good?”
Eunbyul asked with a slightly anxious expression. Jinwoo chewed the gimbap thoroughly, then swallowed and looked at her with serious eyes.
“Huh? Was it bad? But I followed the recipe exactly and checked the seasoning…”
“No, that’s not the problem.”
Honestly, the flavor of the gimbap didn’t matter. There was a more fundamental issue.
“Is it okay if I feed you this time?”
“U-um? S-sure, I guess.”
Eunbyul looked a little flustered. She’d fed him first without considering the reverse. Even that reaction was cute. Jinwoo picked up the chopsticks and lifted a piece of inari sushi.
“Ah~”
Eunbyul accepted it. Her small mouth couldn’t fit the whole piece at once, so she had to take a bite. After chewing for a moment, she nodded as if she understood.
“……Yeah, I’m too embarrassed to even taste it.”
There were too many things to focus on before she could even savor the flavor—the close proximity of their faces, his watchful gaze, the physical connection through the chopsticks. Having someone she was conscious of feeding her directly… of course she couldn’t taste the food properly.
“Ugh! So the sweet scenes in novels really are just for show?”
In their case, that didn’t seem to be the problem, but Eunbyul hadn’t realized it yet.
“Still, if we keep doing it, won’t we get used to it?”
“You want us to keep feeding each other?”
“……Is that not okay?”
When she looked at him with those sparkling eyes and that expression, what man could possibly refuse? In the end, the two of them happily shared the lunchbox, feeding each other turn by turn.
Jinwoo never quite managed to taste the gimbap properly until the end. It seemed the same for Eunbyul. That was a little disappointing, yet strangely delightful at the same time.
After finishing their meal, the two walked around the school grounds for a while. Every so often, Eunbyul would lift her camera and take pictures. If Jinwoo had done it, he would’ve been reported as a creep with no defense. But when Eunbyul did it, it somehow looked like art.
I want to take some pictures too.
Of course, Jinwoo was far more interested in Eunbyul than the school itself. There was no telling when he’d see her in a uniform again. If he missed this chance, it might never happen. But he didn’t have the courage to ask her to let him photograph her in the school uniform.
“Hmm, it’d be impossible to transplant a modern school building straight into an academy setting, wouldn’t it?”
Her serious question snapped him back to reality. Right—he couldn’t forget that Eunbyul was currently doing research for her new project.
“Your new work has a fantasy background, right? Then maybe adding a few changes would be fine.”
“Hmm. The structure of the setting is surprisingly important. Building it from scratch is pretty difficult.”
“Academy stories are mostly about battles rather than classes anyway, aren’t they? Does that still matter?”
“Well, it’s not like hallways and classrooms never appear at all.”
Eunbyul spoke with the serious face of a professional writer.
“In manga, you see a lot of those ‘lucky pervert’ moments, right?”
The content of her serious discussion was a bit questionable, but from an author’s perspective, it might actually be important.
“It’s not just manga. Those kinds of scenes appear a lot in erotic novels too.”
“Ah, most of the novels I read do have pretty spicy covers.”
Quite a few were too embarrassing to open in public. Of course, Jinwoo was the type who actually liked those kinds of covers. If there was an illustration of a female character in a swimsuit, his hand would instinctively reach for it.
“Surprisingly, those scenes are hard to make feel natural. If you write them clumsily, they lose realism. The protagonist could easily end up looking like trash. That’s why they rely heavily on the building’s layout.”
Eunbyul spoke with the face of a master craftsman sharpening a blade.
“Tripping in the hallway and flashing what’s under the skirt, accidentally seeing underwear from below on the stairs, or stumbling into the girls’ changing room by chance.”
“So they frame it as something that couldn’t be helped because of the environment?”
After saying that, Eunbyul let out a deep, regretful sigh.
“But in the end, it’s all fantasy. Fantasy. Real high school girls usually wear safety shorts. It’s so disappointing.”
……Was that really something another woman should be disappointed about? To Jinwoo, who had never once had the chance to look under a high school girl’s skirt, it was completely unknown territory. Well, if he had seen it, that would’ve been a problem in its own right.
“Do all high school girls wear them?”
“At least eighty percent, I’d say? Besides, the heroines in novels all come from good families. Their defenses would be even stronger.”
“Then the romance has to make up for it somehow.”
If you thought about it that way, most of the scenes in novels would be impossible. It was like the teachers who only showed up after the students had already resolved the entire incident.
“In that sense, it’s a good thing the protagonist is the protagonist. No matter what happens with a woman, he won’t get sued.”
“Isn’t that because the heroine trusts him? After spending time together, she probably thinks it’s fine. Just like how I’m walking around with you in a school uniform right now, Senior.”
“……Does that mean I’m your heroine?”
Jinwoo flinched at her words. Could it be interpreted that way? No way. Him as the protagonist and Eunbyul as the heroine? There was no way such a convenient setup existed in reality.
“T-that’s not what I meant.”
“Really? But looking at the situation, it doesn’t seem entirely wrong. We’re even wearing matching uniforms like this.”
Eunbyul tilted her head slightly as she looked at him.
“Hmmm~ Then here’s a question for our protagonist Jinwoo~”
She very lightly lifted the hem of her skirt with both hands. It was barely enough to show her thighs, let alone her panties, but Jinwoo jerked his head away in shock. Even the sight of her smooth thighs was an overwhelming stimulus to him.
“S-Senior?”
“Am I wearing safety shorts right now, or not?”
What was this? Some kind of high-level experiment as a writer? A shameless thought flashed through his mind for a second, but he quickly regained his senses. He was starting to understand that Eunbyul liked teasing him. And right now, her face was full of mischief.
Besides, thinking back to what Senior said earlier…
No matter how playful Eunbyul was, there was no way a grown woman would wear a school uniform and go out completely defenseless. Especially while walking around with a younger guy. If she was bold enough to lift her skirt like that, she must have been fully guarded.
“Of course you’re wearing them, right?”
“Yep!! Correct. So you don’t have to be that embarrassed, do you?”
“Even safety shorts are embarrassing enough for me.”
At Jinwoo’s sincere answer, Eunbyul burst out laughing.
“You really are too pure, Jinwoo. Since I’m wearing safety shorts anyway, even if I lift my skirt like this, you wouldn’t see any—hic!”
A short yelp escaped her. Jinwoo reflexively turned his head. Eunbyul’s ears had turned bright red as she pressed her skirt down tightly. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was even a light sheen of cold sweat on her forehead.
“Senior?”
When Jinwoo called her name, Eunbyul only moved her eyes to look at him.
“……D-did you see?”
“See what?”
His expression said he had no idea what she was talking about. If that was acting, Jinwoo would’ve already been a professional actor.
“N-nothing! It’s nothing, so don’t worry about it.”
With that, Eunbyul turned away, moving awkwardly.
“A-anyway, it’s about time. Should we go get dinner?”
“Ah, sure.”
Jinwoo tilted his head at her sudden change in behavior. For some reason, her steps looked much more cautious than before.