I Got Indigestion
"Ugh..."
I sat in my chair and fidgeted, hitching my hips against the seat.
"We all had a good day today, didn't we? Come back healthy tomorrow!"
I waited for nothing but the end of the teacher's closing remarks. My backside was already halfway off the chair. I kept stealing glances at the clock, and at last the speech wound down and dismissal arrived.
"Yahoo!"
I whooped, snatched up my bag, and got ready to head home, privately congratulating myself on another day of school well survived. I always felt it—the moment it was time to leave, my mood lifted. Someone going through school a second time in a single life... in the whole world, that was probably just me.
Attending elementary school twice was a miraculous experience not even a president could manage. Ordinarily, the instant you graduated, it became a place you could never return to.
"Hana! Want to hit the snack shop today?"
Yumi said it from beside me, watching my face. I nodded hard. Lunch hadn't tasted like much, so I hadn't eaten much of it either. Maybe that was why I'd been fretting over how to quiet my growling stomach—and Yumi had just handed me the perfect answer. A belly full of street snacks ought to sit nice and solid.
"I wanna come too!"
Jiyu poked her face out from the seat behind us. The more people there were, the better food tasted when you ate it together, so from where I stood there was no reason to refuse. Wasn't food always better the more you shared it?
"You mean the place in front of our school?"
I'd only ever seen the one snack shop. Yumi nodded.
"Yeah. It's good there. I go all the time, so the auntie knows my face and gives me extra!"
"Oho!"
A regular, then. For all that she looked, Yumi was the type who ate a lot. Once, at lunch, I'd been secretly startled by the mountain of food heaped on her tray. Staring at that piled-high spread, I'd even thought, I could never eat like that...
And yet, for everything she put away, Yumi didn't look as if she'd gained any weight at all. If anything, you'd have to call her slim. If I had eaten the way she did, I would have turned into a pig. I ate plenty myself, but next to Yumi it was nothing.
"Let's go!"
We got out of school in a hurry and slipped into the snack shop. The place was packed with students. No—you were supposed to eat the home-cooked meals your mother made. Filling up at a snack shop like this was downright unfilial! I, of course, was the exception. I didn't have parents.
"Whoa, it's crowded~"
"Right? Feels like every kid from our school showed up."
Even so, one table was still free, and we managed to sit. Once I was in my chair I looked over the menu. All kinds of things were on it, but we ordered what you always ordered at a place like this—tteokbokki, spicy stir-fried rice cakes, and sundae, Korean blood sausage. There were other dishes, but we'd try those two first and decide from there.
"Their tteokbokki and sundae are crazy good! And they give you tons! If you want anything else, just order it. I'll pay!"
Hungry enough to show it, Yumi grabbed her chopsticks and drummed on the table as she talked, eyes begging the food to hurry up already. Catching that look, Jiyu stole a glance around and piped up.
"Yeah? I kinda want fried seaweed rolls!"
"If Jiyu wants them, let's order those too!"
And just like that, the order grew. We chatted for a few minutes, and then the auntie came over with a generous spread. Steam curled off the tteokbokki and sundae, and my eyes lit up. You had to treat yourself to a snack like this once in a while for it to taste the way it should.
"Whoa!"
None of us could help marveling at food that smelled that good. Jiyu and Yumi had been at this school for three years and had probably tried every restaurant nearby, but for me it was the first time. Everything was a first. I picked up my chopsticks, snagged a piece of tteokbokki, and ate it.
The rice cake had a wonderful chew. With every bite, the sauce soaked all the way through it flooded my mouth. Proof this place was the real thing. If you wanted to win over kids' taste buds, this was how you had to cook. Plenty of other snack shops skimped on seasoning to save on the food itself. This one wasn't like that.
I flashed Yumi a thumbs-up and sang its praises. A shop this good, I could come back hundreds of times.
"This is really good, Yumi!"
"Yeah? If you think it's good, then I'm glad!"
Yumi said it around a mouthful of sundae. Her cheeks were puffed out, and it was cute. So very much like a kid, I supposed. Beside us, Jiyu was quietly putting away a surprising amount herself. Usually she never stopped talking, but in front of tteokbokki and sundae she went quiet.
Nom, nom!
And so I filled my stomach on tteokbokki and sundae. Eating while talking with my friends, it couldn't possibly have tasted better. I understood why people gathered to share a meal.
"Uuuugh..."
I clutched my stomach and lay sprawled across my desk. Beside me, Yumi patted my back, and every time she did, my insides settled just a little.
"You really ate way too much yesterday, Hana!"
Yumi, delivering the kind of scolding a mom would give. And she wasn't wrong. I'd eaten so much that I'd woken up feeling awful. I'd taken a digestive before coming in, but the medicine didn't seem to have kicked in yet.
"Hana, are you feeling really bad?"
Jiyu asked from behind whether I was all right. Pale as a sheet, I shook my head. I didn't feel any better. There was no way I could sit through class like this, so I made up my mind to go to the nurse's office. A perfectly legal chance to skip class.
"I'll take her!"
"No, I'm taking her!"
Jiyu and Yumi were fighting over who got to walk me there. If they had time to argue, they could just get me to the nurse's office already. My stomach had been so bad I'd skipped breakfast, and my temper was razor-thin. Didn't being hungry always make you meaner? I was a starving beast. An animal.
In the end it was decided both of them would go. Recess was long enough to allow it. One arm apiece, they hauled me off like a criminal. I couldn't understand why they had to hold on like that. Wouldn't it have been more comfortable if we just walked without linking arms?
If someone wrote a paper on why girls linked arms, it would be a smash hit. Back when I was among the boys, we never linked arms—we didn't even walk stuck together. Little kids might not know any better, but the friends I used to run around with were like that. Link arms, or clasp hands, and they would have looked at you as if you'd lost your mind.
For girls, though, linking arms was perfectly natural. And so I had no choice but to arrive at the nurse's office with an arm hooked through mine on either side. There was no one outside. The school nurse really did seem to have a job blessed by heaven. From what I could tell, you just waited in the office all day and then went home.
There were surely hardships to it, of course, but if you couldn't see them, there was no way to know what the work actually was. I knocked and stepped inside. The nurse was sitting there, tapping away at a keyboard, busy with something or other.
The moment she saw me come in, she rose and came over.
"Where does it hurt?"
She asked in a soft, gentle voice. I rubbed my stomach and answered, my face drawn and pale.
"My stomach feels awful, Teacher..."
At that, Jiyu spoke up beside me.
"We went to the snack shop with Hana yesterday, and she really did eat a lot."
Unbelievable. Hadn't she come along to look out for me? Jiyu was being entirely too honest. I hadn't wanted anyone saying I'd stuffed myself sick like some little kid!
Maybe she caught the look on my face, because the nurse hurried over as well. She took out a pill and held it out to me.
"Take this and lie down on the bed, all right? If lying down is too hard, sitting is fine too."
I swallowed the medicine she gave me and lay down. The moment I did, Yumi and Jiyu crowded in beside me and started chattering.
"Hana, why do you eat until you make yourself sick!"
Yumi said it while patting my stomach. I could feel the bulge of it going down.
"I know, right? Usually, the way you act, you're like some middle-aged guy, but you've got this total little-kid side too!"
Jiyu was quietly sharp. There really was one middle-aged man living inside me. The outside was a child, but my heart belonged to one ancient, thoroughly worn-out ajusshi. Not that I had acted like a little kid even once since I'd ended up in this body!
We talked a little longer, and then the long, long recess came to an end.
"See you later, Hana!"
"If anything happens, tell us!"
I waved at Yumi and Jiyu as they headed off to class. The thought that I was skipping made my mood lift at once. There was a reason people kept finding their way to the nurse's office. Lying down in comfort and sleeping while everyone else sat through class—nothing beat that.
And so I closed my eyes and slipped into sleep.