Can I Keep This?
“All done. Come eat,” Shin Yujin called out.
“Oh, okay.”
I headed to the table at her summons, where a mouthwatering plate of tteokgalbi waited. As always, Shin Yujin’s cooking never let me down. I took a bite of the grilled short rib patties that tasted just like the ones from last time—or maybe even better.
“Whoa, damn. This is insane.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. It was seriously good enough that she could have opened a restaurant instead of becoming an English teacher and probably found huge success. The flavor wasn’t overly strong, yet it had this subtle way of hooking you that made it impossible to stay still.
“Is it okay?”
“Yeah, it’s great. Did you grind the meat and shape it yourself?”
“Obviously. Why would I make it if I wasn’t going to do it properly?”
“Right, of course. Want me to grab something else instead of this kimchi? My mom sent some she made.”
“Wait, really?! Yeah, give me that instead.”
There was a reason Shin Yujin got so excited about this. My mom’s kimchi was ridiculously delicious. Back when we were dating and even after we got married, it was so good that I could eat rice with just her kimchi and nothing else.
“Mmm!! As expected, Mom’s kimchi is the best.”
“My mom’s kimchi really is that good, huh.”
“Even after coming back to the past, the taste hasn’t changed at all.”
“Hey, remember that time we wrapped roasted sweet potatoes in the kimchi because it was so good?”
“We ended up eating half the whole container. It was fresh kimchi from the kimjang batch, so it was extra delicious.”
After we finished that amazing lunch and while Shin Yujin sat down to rest, I started on the dishes. That’s when her loud voice rang out from across the room.
“Wait, what?! Hey, where did you get this?”
“What?”
“The panda.”
“I just saw it while I was in town and picked one up.”
“Can I keep this?”
“Sure, go ahead. It’s not like I’d do anything with it anyway—I’d just end up leaving it somewhere.”
“Thanks! We don’t have a panda at home!!”
When I finished the dishes and walked over to Shin Yujin, she was staring intently at the panda plush I’d bought, clutching it in her hands. Her twenty-year-old face paired with behavior that didn’t match at all felt unfamiliar at first, but right now she looked exactly like the Shin Yujin I knew. In this moment, she really seemed like the twenty-year-old version of herself.
“Now that I think about it, this is the one, right? The one you gave me when we started dating.”
“It came to mind while I was out, so I bought it.”
“Hmm, so you were thinking about me?”
“I can’t exactly deny it. I don’t know why it popped into my head, though.”
“This is the first time something from fourteen years ago has happened exactly the same way.”
It really was the first identical event since we’d regressed a month ago. That realization made both Shin Yujin and me naturally drift back to that time, and a brief silence settled over us. In this situation where only the act of giving the doll was the same, the other similarity was the expression on Shin Yujin’s face when she received it. Back then, she’d looked at the plush with the bright, innocent smile of a child. Even after so much time had passed and so many things had happened, that expression from back then remained vivid in my memory.
“Oh, right. You still have that novel in your room, don’t you? The one I said I liked.”
“It should be there.”
“I want to read it again.”
“Go ahead.”
Shin Yujin casually walked into my room, grabbed the novel from the bookshelf, and came back out. She sat on the sofa, flipped it open for a moment, then her face shifted into a puzzled frown as if she’d noticed something odd.
“You must have read it a lot. It doesn’t feel like a new book at all.”
“How can you even tell that?”
“You just know if you read a lot. Last time I opened this, it felt brand new.”
“I didn’t have anything else to do, so I read it a few times.”
After that short exchange, Shin Yujin started reading. I sat a careful distance away from her on the sofa and fiddled with my phone. It was the exact same situation as fourteen years ago, yet the distance between us felt completely different. It drove home the realization that things between us now were nothing like before.
I watched her face as she read, her eyes fixed on the book. Even though she was just reading the story, the look in her eyes that reminisced about the past was impossible to hide. It wasn’t the usual nostalgic longing you’d see in most people. There was a clear intention not to dwell on the memories or miss them at all.
I thought about making coffee, but Shin Yujin was the type who couldn’t hear a single sound around her once she got absorbed in a good book. So I quietly slipped out of the house and walked to the café. I came back with her favorite cappuccino and my usual iced Americano, only to find her still sitting in the exact same spot, completely focused on the novel. It was always impressive. No matter how interesting the book was, how could she read for that long without even shifting her posture once?
“Pfft!!”
“What? Why are you laughing?”
“I suddenly remembered the face you made when we read this together, and it broke my concentration.”
“What kind of face did I make back then?”
“You were bawling your eyes out saying it was so moving. Don’t you remember?”
“…No, I don’t. Just drink your coffee.”
“You remember everything. By the way, when did you buy the coffee?”
“While you were reading. You’ve always been like that—once you focus on something, you don’t notice anything happening around you.”
“Is this a cappuccino?”
“Of course.”
Shin Yujin immediately lifted the cup to her lips to take a sip. I already knew what would happen if she drank it that fast and was about to warn her, but—
“Ouch, it’s hot!!”
It had already happened. Shin Yujin couldn’t handle hot food or drinks, yet she always insisted on drinking her coffee piping hot. I’d wondered for years how someone with a cat-like tongue could enjoy burning-hot things.
“I burned my tongue…”
“I told you to drink it slowly, but you were already gulping it down.”
She stuck her tongue out a little and scrunched up her face. It was kind of cute. It felt like having a little sister around. Once she finished the novel, Shin Yujin closed the book with a satisfied expression and stood up.
“I’m heading out now. I left the ground meat ready, so don’t just eat ramen—grill some patties, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry and go on your way.”
“Ugh, I don’t know why I feel so uneasy leaving you like this.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not so helpless that I need a girl three years younger than me looking after me.”
“If that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t have come over in the first place. Why do you even like ramen when you work out so much?”
“They say plus and minus cancel out to zero.”
“Yeah, well, at least you don’t smoke, so zero sounds about right.”
After seeing Shin Yujin off, I sat quietly on the sofa in the returned silence. She had just left, so the warmth from her body still lingered on the cushions. Every time I felt that warmth, some emotion I couldn’t quite name stirred inside me. It wasn’t entirely positive, but I couldn’t call it completely negative either. It wasn’t longing. I didn’t feel any desire to get back together with her. In this situation where nothing made sense, there was only one thing I could say for sure: a corner of my chest ached.
-Vrrrr! Vrrrr!
Not long after Shin Yujin left, my phone rang. It was Lee Hojin. He’d probably finished his date with Kim Yerim and wanted to meet up. Since I had nothing else to do, it worked out perfectly.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Hey, you wanna come out?”
“You finished your date?”
“Yeah, just now. Let’s grab some drinks.”
“Dude, it’s the middle of the afternoon. Who drinks starting in the afternoon?”
“What are you talking about? You used to jump at the chance whenever I mentioned alcohol.”
What kind of life had twenty-three-year-old me been living? If there was a girl involved, I’d get fired up and try to do something about it. If someone suggested drinks, I’d never refuse and just show up. Of course, after I started dating Shin Yujin, I gradually fixed and changed all of that, but I really had been a total slacker.
“Let’s skip the drinking and just go to a PC bang.”
“Fine. I’ll send you the address—meet me there.”
“Got it.”
I got dressed and checked the location Hojin had sent. I had no idea why he’d picked a forest park as our meeting spot when it was just the two of us guys. He must have ended his date with Kim Yerim here. Couldn’t he have picked somewhere else to meet up?
I took a taxi for about thirty minutes and arrived at the spot. I was just about to call Hojin to ask where he was when a familiar silhouette caught my eye. I thought I must have seen wrong, rubbed my eyes, and looked again—but the silhouette was still standing there.
“Shin Yujin.”
“Huh? What the—Han Yuchan, why are you here?”
“Hojin told me to meet him here.”
“Yerim told me to meet her here too.”
A wave of unease hit me instantly. I immediately called Hojin, and Shin Yujin called Kim Yerim.
“Hey, where are you?”
“Ah, sorry. Something suddenly came up, so I don’t think I can make it.”
“What?! What do you mean something came up?”
“Anyway, that’s how it is. I’ll pay for your round-trip taxi fare. Sorry.”
The call ended after that simple apology. I glanced over at Shin Yujin to see how her conversation with Kim Yerim had gone.
“Yerim said she remembered she had an assignment and went home.”
“An assignment?”
“Y-yeah. But there isn’t one. We’re taking all the exact same classes.”
Once I pieced the situation together, I finally understood what had happened. Those two lovebirds had dug a trap and lured us right into it.