Sweetness
“A house where a woman looks after her man really is different. You’ve seen my place—it’s a pigsty.”
Hyun-soo said it with a joking laugh.
“Looking after a man? You need someone worth looking after first.”
Jung Na-yeon let out a short laugh.
She set a cushion on her lap and spoke while facing the television. Her voice was light, tossed out casually, yet the loneliness threaded through it was hard to hide.
“This place is clean not because I’m particularly good at it, but because there’s no one here to make a mess. I can’t even remember the last time my husband sat on this sofa. It was just a place to sleep—like a hotel.”
Three weeks ago, when her husband had come, he’d washed up, slept, and left the next morning claiming a business trip. He’d treated the house exactly like a hotel—slept and gone.
She brushed her fingertips over the cushion on her knees.
“Your place is a pigsty, Hyun-soo? I saw it yesterday when I went upstairs—the door was open. There was a whole tower of cup ramen.”
Jung Na-yeon was smiling, but her eyes weren’t on the television. They kept flicking to Hyun-soo’s profile—the way he draped his arm over the sofa back, the fingers that paused while flipping channels, the corner of his mouth that lifted when he smiled.
“Cup ramen’s just convenient.”
Hyun-soo said it a little sheepishly.
The tendons in his forearm, visible beneath the T-shirt, brought back the feel of last night, and Jung Na-yeon quickly turned her gaze back to the screen.
“Honestly, I’m jealous. Even of a pigsty.”
Jung Na-yeon pressed down hard on the cushion.
“It’s too quiet here. Watching TV alone at night, I start wondering why I’m scrubbing this big house by myself and cooking meals just for me.”
She bit her lip lightly, letting the end of the sentence trail off.
“If there’s no one to praise you for cleaning, it’s just labor. If there’s no one to eat with you, cooking is just a hassle.”
Then she turned her head toward Hyun-soo.
Their eyes nearly met; she dropped her gaze at once, but it was already too late.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
At Hyun-soo’s words, Jung Na-yeon flinched.
A brief silence settled over them.
She cleared her throat and rose hurriedly from the sofa.
“I should turn down the heat on the dakbokkeumtang.”
She headed for the kitchen, the drag of her slippers trailing behind her. At the doorway she stopped once, gripping the frame, and without looking back she continued.
“Hyun-soo, from now on eat your meals here. Don’t go upstairs and eat cup ramen.”
Was it a reply to what he had said?
It wasn’t merely a dinner invitation.
It was a clumsy, roundabout confession that she needed someone to sit in this quiet house.
“Oh, really? I think I heard something similar this morning. That makes me happy.”
Hyun-soo was delighted, saying he’d save on food expenses.
Jung Na-yeon looked down at the steaming dakbokkeumtang and tried to suppress the curve of her lips, but it was useless. Hyun-soo’s excited voice floated in from the living room. That honest pleasure at saving money on meals made her heart race. Her husband had never once been that happy about food she had cooked.
Not even when they were newlyweds.
Jung Na-yeon scooped up a little broth with the ladle, tasted it, and muttered.
“Is saving on food expenses that great? What are you so happy about?”
Yet more care than usual went into the hand checking the seasoning. She added a little more salt, another spoonful of chili powder. Because Hyun-soo liked spicy food.
“My husband usually comes once or twice a month. He lets me know ahead of time, so you just have to be careful then.”
“That’s a relief, then~”
Hyun-soo’s answer came from the living room.
“Even when he comes these days, he just sleeps and leaves again. Doesn’t even eat breakfast.”
Bitterness clung to the end of her words, but it didn’t last. The side profile of Hyun-soo, smiling brightly as he flipped channels on the sofa, had caught her eye.
“Isn’t that basically a hotel? Just sleeping and leaving.”
The way Hyun-soo seemed to enjoy that remark wasn’t only her imagination.
Was that why?
Jung Na-yeon’s heart pounded.
That expression.
The face that lit up so purely with joy and amusement at the simple offer of a meal. Whether it was just his personality or he found the situation fun, either way didn’t matter.
Just the fact that there was someone in this house who was happy about what she did was enough.
Jung Na-yeon glanced at the box of contraceptives Hyun-soo had bought.
“Get the plates. Second shelf from the top.”
Jung Na-yeon said it as she carried the pot toward the table.
“Oh~ Is it ready?”
When she felt the sense of Hyun-soo springing up from the sofa, a smile spread across her lips.
She liked how he moved the moment he was told. Setting the pot on the table and opening the rice cooker, she said,
“Eat a lot. The food in this house is delicious.”
“This is fucking amazing. After living on ramen or convenience-store triangle kimbap every day, having home cooking is so good.”
“Convenience-store triangle kimbap counts as a meal? You’ve been eating that every day?”
Jung Na-yeon stopped scooping rice and frowned. It was a face ready to scold, yet worry was laced through it.
“If you only eat ramen and triangle kimbap like that, your stomach won’t hold up. Eating carelessly will catch up with you later.”
She pressed the rice firmly with the paddle, filled a bowl to the brim, and set it in front of Hyun-soo. The portion was far larger than usual.
“Isn’t this a lot of rice?”
“You can handle that much easily.”
At Na-yeon’s confident words, Hyun-soo burst out laughing.
“Ramen is banned from now on. I’ll cook for you, so don’t bother going upstairs and boiling that stuff.”
“Ramen once in a while is—”
“You’ve already eaten enough of it.”
At Na-yeon’s firm tone, Hyun-soo nodded as if he had no choice.
“I put the chicken legs in on purpose. With chicken dishes the legs are the main event.”
She handed him a spoon and sat across from him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
In truth, when she’d chosen the chicken at the supermarket recently, she had deliberately picked ones with big legs.
She was glad he liked them.
“What’s ‘fucking amazing’?”
Jung Na-yeon clicked her tongue as she ladled broth onto her own plate, but there was no sharpness in her voice.
“If it’s delicious, just say it’s delicious. I like hearing it directly.”
Even as she grumbled, she snuck a glance at Hyun-soo inhaling the aroma and marveling.
A man who reacted like that to the food she made.
Her husband would stare at his phone even when the table was set, eat roughly, and get up.
She knew she shouldn’t compare, yet she kept doing it.
“Eat a lot. There’s more.”
Jung Na-yeon gestured at the pot with her chin and picked up her own spoon. Sitting across from each other and sharing a meal—had it always been this warm?
The clink of spoons against plates, the soft breathing from across the table as he blew on the food.
These small noises were filling the table that had stood empty for two years.
Jung Na-yeon chewed a piece of potato and looked at Hyun-soo.
“Is it good?”
It was a short question, yet layered meanings were folded inside it. Is my cooking good? Do you like eating with me? Will you keep sitting in this seat from now on?
Hyun-soo’s face was reflected in Jung Na-yeon’s eyes.
“It’s really delicious!”
She watched Hyun-soo tearing into a chicken leg, sincerely declaring it delicious. Sauce clung to the corner of his mouth, yet he paid it no mind, ripping into the meat bone and all, and Jung Na-yeon simply watched that unrestrained sight.
“My husband never liked chicken. Said it was greasy.”
“What? He doesn’t eat this? I really don’t get that husband of yours.”
Hyun-soo answered as if he couldn’t believe it.
“At first I tried all sorts of things to match his tastes, but since there was never any reaction no matter what I did, I eventually gave up too.”
“Wow, he doesn’t like chicken dishes?”
“But you really eat so well, Hyun-soo.”
“Of course. Fried chicken, samgyetang, dakbokkeumtang—I go crazy for anything with chicken!”
Jung Na-yeon pulled out a tissue and held it out subtly.
A silent request to wipe his mouth.
“When you eat like that, it makes the person who cooked feel good.”
The corners of Jung Na-yeon’s eyes curved softly.
It wasn’t the sharp landlady voice of ordinary days.
Cooking for someone, and that person saying it was delicious. She was realizing that such a simple thing could make her heart flutter like this.
Jung Na-yeon fished a chicken wing from the pot and placed it on Hyun-soo’s plate.
“Eat it all. You need to put on some weight. What are these arms?”
It sounded like nagging, yet the hands choosing the meat were affectionate.
She picked a large potato as well and set it beside the wing.
The motion was natural, as if she had been doing it for a long-time lover.
“You said earlier you didn’t understand?”
“I did.”
Jung Na-yeon took a sip of her broth and gave a bitter smile.
“I don’t either. But I don’t try to understand anymore. It’s tiring.”
She looked again at Hyun-soo eating.
The sauce-stained lips, the moving jaw, the throat working as he swallowed. She took every detail in with her eyes.
“Instead, now that there’s someone who’ll eat it deliciously…”
She trailed off, suddenly aware of the weight of the words that had left her mouth, and her cheeks flushed.
“Want more broth? I’ll scoop more rice too, so eat slowly.”
After cleaning his plate, Hyun-soo spoke.
“It’s really delicious…! One more bowl, please.”
At Hyun-soo’s words, Jung Na-yeon, ladle still in hand, felt her heart flutter again. The voice was half-joking, yet she didn’t miss the sincerity in it. She ladled generous portions of chicken, potato, and broth onto the plate.
She gripped the ladle so her hand wouldn’t tremble. She had never known that this trivial act of putting food on someone’s plate could make her heart race like this.
When she served her husband, it had been an obligation.
It wasn’t like that now.
She was doing it because she wanted to.
“Should I give you a third after you finish?”
Jung Na-yeon set the plate down and smiled.
The tone was playful, yet she was truly smiling.
“Shall I?”
Hyun-soo grinned as he answered.
“If you finish it all, that’s impressive. You’re basically eating the whole thing by yourself.”
Jung Na-yeon picked up her spoon but only stirred the broth.
Other emotions were filling her stomach more than appetite. She watched Hyun-soo across from her lift his chopsticks toward the second plate. And eat with genuine pleasure.
Sauce got on the side of his lips again.
This time Jung Na-yeon almost wiped it herself with a tissue, then hesitated.
Not yet.
She held herself back, telling herself it was still too soon.