Snacks and Secret Backstory, All You Can Eat
Ever since that day, my plan was to avoid running into Kang Min-ah as much as possible. Even if the worldline had changed, something about it still felt off.
Right now I only hung around her because of her looks, but if we got close for real, she and Lee Ye-eun would clash on a fundamental level.
And yet that resolve went hilariously sideways, and I ended up seeing her face constantly.
"Why do I have to memorize Gangwon Province's regional specialties? There isn't even a pro baseball team in Gangwon."
"Kang Min-hyuk, get it together. Are you going to compete in the tournament or not?"
First of all, that punk Kang Min-hyuk had studying on his mind more than baseball.
Lim Song-ah was doing her best to tutor him from beside him, but the kid was hopeless — no matter how hard she tried, nothing would stick in that thick skull of his. In the end, it somehow turned into me doing the tutoring.
"Please, both of you, have some while you work."
"Oh, thanks."
And then there was Kang Min-ah. Unlike the version of her I knew from the manga, she turned out to have a surprising number of domestic hobbies. She went beyond being merely good at cooking and all the way into baking — and honestly, she was better at it than Lim Song-ah, who was written as the nurturing homemaker type from the very start.
The cookie I was eating right now was seriously good. Better than store-bought, even.
Munching away without thinking, the cookie disappeared fast. Then I'd refocus on studying, and before I knew it, the plate would be quietly refilled.
Studying like this at Kang Min-hyuk's place every time, I started to feel guilty about exploiting her so shamelessly. For one reason or another, we'd ended up gathering at his house most often — his mother was busy and rarely home, so it naturally became our default gathering spot.
Determined to avoid it, I made a point of steering our study sessions to everyone else's houses instead. Which led to problem number two.
The moment we settled in at Lim Song-ah's place, the doorbell rang, and in walked Kang Min-ah.
"Min-ah, is something the matter...?"
"Mother thinks she'll be home late tonight, so I thought I'd come help with dinner — and eat with you all while I'm at it."
Lim Song-ah's family basically treated Kang Min-ah as one of their own. Their houses were practically next door to each other, and everyone drifted between them freely, so it was effectively the same environment as Kang Min-hyuk's home.
More importantly — these madeleines she'd brought were pretty good. Not too sweet, the kind of flavor that keeps you reaching for another.
So this time, we moved the study session to my house entirely. My mother had never once had friends over, so she rolled out the red carpet.
"Oh my! So you're Yi-seon's friend? What's your name, dear?"
"I'm Kang Min-hyuk, ma'am."
"Such a sturdy, kind-faced boy. Come on in, quickly. This is a first for me, having your friends over, so I'm not quite used to it yet."
My mother, all fired up, laid out fruit, every snack imaginable, even drinks... Hmm. Why is it that the fruit at our house always tastes kind of mediocre?
I wasn't the only one who thought so, either — the others all set their slices down half-finished. Except Lee Ye-eun, who stubbornly forced hers down to the last bite.
I was in the middle of that thought when the doorbell rang.
"Oh my, really? Well, since you're here, come right in. It'd be too rude of me to just send you back after you've come all this way."
I wondered who it could be and stole a glance at the front door. Kang Min-ah. Why was she here?
Then I saw what she was waving in her hand, and it clicked. Ah. That's my handkerchief. And my uniform tie.
"Yi-seon, you left these at our house the other day. I thought about waiting until you came by to return them, but since you use them every day, I figured I'd bring them over right away."
"Uh... right. Thanks."
And this was reason number three for why I kept crossing paths with Kang Min-ah. Every single time I visited that house, I managed to leave something behind.
Lee Ye-eun gives me an earful about how embarrassing it is every time — and I agree, honestly, but this isn't exactly something I can control by sheer willpower.
Doing my best to look appropriately apologetic, I thanked Kang Min-ah over and over. My mother, apparently completely charmed by how cute and pretty Kang Min-ah was, immediately pressed snacks into her hands.
Snack accepted, Kang Min-ah sat primly at the table and nibbled away one piece at a time. With that stone-flat expression of hers, there was no telling whether the food was delicious or terrible. Still, she ate with such contented little bites.
Then she began pulling out things she'd brought along, one after another.
Inside was a batch of adorably wrapped muffins. This apparently moved my mother so deeply that from then on, even when we shut the door to study, all you could hear was my mother's flustered cooing and Lee Ye-eun squealing with Kang Min-ah wrapped up in her arms.
And so, every study session, some excuse or another cropped up and put Kang Min-ah's face right in front of me.
Lee Ye-eun was over the moon every single time, so I figured it couldn't be a bad thing... but still, conscience-wise, it didn't sit right to just accept snacks hand-made by a kid, every single time.
And so, in roughly a month's time, I'd worked my way all the way to Kang Min-ah's twelfth menu item: cinnamon rolls.
Even someone as hopelessly oblivious as me could tell at this point that this was an approach with a very specific intent behind it.
I'd wanted to ask her about it at least once along the way, but Lee Ye-eun was always clinging to me, so the timing never came. But today, as luck would have it, was the one day Lee Ye-eun was out for a family event.
"So... should I just call you Min-ah?"
"Call me whatever's comfortable."
Calling a girl by her bare first name made me feel oddly itchy, but adding the surname felt too stiff...
I dithered for a moment, then decided to just keep it simple.
"Alright then, Min-ah. I'm grateful that you look after us and bring snacks all the time, but aren't you going a little overboard? If there's anything you want to ask of me, just say the word."
"You seemed to enjoy them, so I simply made more whenever they came to mind. There's no other meaning."
She said it without a flicker of expression, making the truth impossible to gauge. I can't be certain since she's a supporting character rather than a lead, but I never saw any such baking-hobby setup for her in the manga.
"Then setting that aside — isn't there something you could ask of me, something I could do for you? Honestly, I've been freeloading so much my conscience is starting to sting."
Snacks pressed on me by grown-ups are one thing — I can accept those as simple kindness. But eating food that a kid still in elementary school worked so hard to make with those tiny hands? That left me genuinely uneasy.
Whatever she said, she clearly wanted something, which meant she'd probably been engineering these run-ins with me on purpose — clumsy as they were.
"There's nothing to apologize for. But if you insist... may I ask for one small favor?"
"A favor?"
"Yes. Nothing much. When you visit our house, I'd just like you to stop being so self-conscious about it."
So it showed, huh.
"It's just that I haven't really been to other people's houses much before..."
"No, that's not it. When you come over, you spend the whole time watching how I react."
Well, sure — part of it was worrying when Kang Min-ah and Lee Ye-eun might explode if left side by side, and part of it was that housework around there fell to Kang Min-ah, so I didn't want to be a burden and made a point of watching myself.
Even if I'd initially been smitten by her looks, surely they'd sense they didn't click as they spent more time together...
Or were they still too young for that kind of friction? Or was Kang Min-ah, being the younger one, the one holding back?
With thoughts like that churning around, how could I not keep checking how she was taking it?
"You seem to be coming up with some reason or other even right now. Whatever it is, it doesn't bother me at all. If anything, I'd say I rather like having you visit, Yi-seon."
"You like it when I come over?"
"Yes. When you're around, my brother loosens up a little. He's not usually like that at all."
Kang Min-ah gave me a meaningful look — this might take a while, was that alright? I took the hint, texted the others that I was stepping out to the convenience store, and got up from my seat.
We walked out to the bench by the convenience store down the street and sat side by side. Sitting there empty-handed felt awkward, so I grabbed a strawberry milk — the drink Kang Min-ah was always sipping in the manga — and brought it out.
"Here. Drink up."
"Thank you."
She took the strawberry milk and polished it off in an instant, demure and graceful the whole way down. Just watching that, I could tell the person hadn't been swapped out from the manga's version.
One-shotting the milk like that, she began to speak, carefully.
"Are you aware that our father passed away early?"
"...Yeah, I heard."
Diving straight into the deep end, huh.
"Ever since then, my brother became someone relentlessly strict with himself. To an excessive degree, even."
That punk Kang Min-hyuk? The guy who's more lenient than anyone about scores and looks headed for a failing grade right now?
"I don't mean grades. How should I put it... if I had to sum it up in words, it's like he's obsessed with the phrases 'head of the household' and 'ace.'"
"Head of the household and ace."
The ace part, I get. In the manga, Kang Min-hyuk pushed himself to an almost alarming degree trying to carry the whole team. Baseball isn't a sport one exhausted man can drag to a championship anyway — all he'd do is wreck his body.
Right now he doesn't show that side because his skills haven't reached ace level yet — but the person who trains the hardest of anyone, desperate to claim that ace-level ability, is Kang Min-hyuk.
"Before our father passed, he had two pet phrases he'd always say to my brother. 'If I'm gone, the head of this family is you. And the ace of a team is the one who leads them to victory.'"
"Did he play baseball?"
"Yes. His lifelong pride was having made it to the Phoenix Flag Tournament back in his own high school days. He used to take my brother to ballparks all the time, and show him photos from back then."
Impressive, considering Wirye Jeil High probably didn't even have a dedicated baseball team back then.
That much of the setup, at least, I vaguely remembered from the manga. The reason Kang Min-hyuk insisted on Wirye Jeil High over every other school was that he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps.
"Baseball is his own dream, so I think that part's fine. If he pushes himself too hard, Song-ah unnie is right there watching over him. But when it came to family, to being the head of the household — no one could do that part for him."
So that's why he babied his little sister to an excessive degree in the manga, huh? Among the Manboong-i, there were plenty spouting nonsense like 'wait, is the incest heroine route real?'
"That textbook-speak way he talks — the kind you'd find printed in a study guide — you know he never used to talk like that at all? After Father died, he decided that as head of the household he had to act grown-up, so he forces himself to talk that way."
Whoa, the backstory just keeps pouring out. Why the hell did Yasin write all this lore and never actually reveal it?
While I sat there marveling, Kang Min-ah kept her eyes fixed on my face. Even when I turned my head away from her gaze, she kept looking.
"What, you've got something to say?"
"Mm... no. Let me finish the story. He was always that kind of person — but whenever he was around you, Yi-seon, none of that showed at all."
"Really?"
"Really. The atmosphere lightens, and even the habit he has of unconsciously tensing his shoulders at home disappears. It's a strange thing, isn't it?"
Yeah, I've got a pretty good idea what she's after.
"Okay, then from now on I'll just come by more often. I just need to keep hanging around that Kang Min-hyuk guy for longer, right?"
"Yes. That would be more than enough."
Well, I'd have to buddy up to the protagonist anyway if I wanted to keep orbiting the main cast, so it's not like I was going to say no. So... that settles that?
"Good. So you're done needing to show up at my door with pastries, then?"
They were delicious, but seriously, the guilt was killing me.
"Hm? But I bring them because you genuinely enjoy them, Yi-seon."
For the first time, I could actually read Kang Min-ah's expression. That one was sincere. Wait — how is THAT the part that's real?
"...Don't tell me they actually taste bad and you've been forcing them down?"
"No, no! Nothing like that. I just figured you might be getting sick of it all."
While I stood there flustered, Kang Min-ah let out a soft little laugh.
Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw her genuinely laugh — not a smirk, a real laugh — even in the manga.
"Yi-seon. Do you know you're like a puppy?"
"A puppy?"
Wait, what? Is that supposed to mean 'son of a bitch'?
"Nothing negative, so don't panic like that. In that spirit, shall I try baking bone-shaped cookies next time?"
Whatever her reasoning, she looked happy, so I guessed things had worked out fine. We traded a few more casual jabs — mostly gossip at Kang Min-hyuk's expense — and then headed back to the room where the others were studying.