A Suggestion for Tteokbokki
"Enjoy your meal."
"Whoa... chicken...."
When she said she'd give me something to eat, I wondered what it would be. I never expected homemade chicken.
"It's just some leftover from what I fried earlier... I'm sorry."
"What? No, no, it's totally fine!"
In truth, it was chicken Jungwoo had set aside for himself from the beginning, but since he already felt full just looking at it, some had been left over.
"...Thank you. I'll enjoy it."
The moment she picked up a perfectly fried piece and put it in her mouth, Seia's eyes watching her changed completely.
"Is it yummy?!"
She hadn't even chewed yet.
Covering her mouth with one hand, Choi Su-yeon smiled brightly and answered.
"Yeah. It's super delicious."
Choi Su-yeon prided herself on being something of a chicken expert.
After all, she'd tried nearly every brand out there.
She could tell what a piece would taste like just from the state of the batter.
She had predicted the flavor the moment she saw it.
And it did taste exactly as she'd expected.
Only it was even better than anticipated.
Even though it had been fried once, set aside, and fried again.
He must be an incredible cook.
With skills like this, the place should have gained a reputation by now. Why hadn't she heard of it before?
Especially since her friends, who went crazy for good food, always tried different menus whenever they went out together in the city.
To them, eating wasn't simply about filling their stomachs.
They saw flavor as another form of happiness.
It completely melted away stress, too.
"Hey, Seia."
"Yes?"
"How long have you been running this restaurant?"
"Umm...."
Seia immediately held up her fingers and began folding them down one by one.
After opening and closing her little fingers several times, she gave a faint smile and answered.
"...A little bit?"
It clearly hadn't been long, but she didn't seem to know exactly how much time had passed.
Several nights had gone by, yet she couldn't say how many.
"I see. So it's pretty new."
This chicken ranked in the top three of every piece she'd ever eaten.
If it had been freshly fried, it might have taken first place.
What other dishes did they have?
She picked up the menu placed on the table and looked it over. Familiar home-cooked favorites filled the page—soybean paste stew, kimchi stew, stir-fried spicy pork, and more.
Choi Su-yeon had eaten kimchi stew just yesterday.
Hmm....
The more she looked, the more it seemed like a restaurant focused on comforting home-style meals.
And it's not even that far from school.
She felt a twinge of disappointment.
Maybe it was too early to judge based on a single chicken dish, but one bite had already told her plenty.
For Choi Su-yeon, chicken was that kind of food—deceptively simple yet mysteriously profound.
A deeply sophisticated dish.
There was just one thing missing.
There weren't any foods that students could easily grab and enjoy.
Everything on the menu looked delicious, but students loved street snacks and bunsik.
It was a shame those options weren't available.
"Seia."
"Yes."
"Have you ever tried tteokbokki?"
"Tteokbokki? Umm...."
Seia searched her memory.
Tteokbokki, tteokbokki.
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she had no memory of actually eating it.
That made sense. From Jungwoo's perspective, tteokbokki was practically a forbidden food.
Before Seia came into his life—exactly before then—Jungwoo had quite enjoyed tteokbokki himself.
It had been his late wife's favorite dish, after all.
But after Seia arrived, he began paying close attention not only to taste but to nutrition as well, and tteokbokki disappeared from their table.
If Jungwoo had stopped eating it, there was no way he would have made it for Seia.
In fact, they had all but forgotten the dish existed.
"Tteokbokki...."
"It's rice cakes tossed in a bright red sauce. Doesn't that sound good?"
Unaware of any of this, Choi Su-yeon explained tteokbokki to Seia with pure enthusiasm, wanting to recommend something delicious.
What it tasted like, and just how amazing it was.
"If you dip this chicken in tteokbokki sauce, it's insanely good."
"Really...? Is tteokbokki yummier than chicken?"
"Hmm... not exactly, but it makes everything taste even better."
"Wow...."
Seia's eyes, those clear windows to her heart, were already sparkling with the imagined scene of dipping chicken into something bright red.
Hiding her growing smile, Choi Su-yeon picked up another piece of chicken.
There was plenty, and she was hungry. The flavor was perfect. There was no reason to leave any behind.
I wonder if they have any plans to sell bunsik.
It was pure curiosity.
If they offered tteokbokki and fried snacks, students would definitely start coming in droves.
In truth, it was also a small, selfish wish to create a perfectly legitimate reason to visit this restaurant again.
"Then I'll ask Daddy to make tteokbokki!"
"Try it once. I think you'll really like it, Seia. Want to... share the rest of this?"
"Oh, is that really okay?"
"Of course. Let's eat together."
Seia had already eaten more chicken than she usually did, but it was the kind of flavor that never got old no matter how much you had.
Even so, she couldn't eat too much more.
One by one, the pieces disappeared.
The chicken that had stayed perfectly warm until the very end soon revealed the empty plate beneath, and with one final satisfying crunch, their little feast came to an end.
"Thank you for the meal, boss."
"Was it all right? It was fried a while ago, so it might have been a little lacking."
"Not at all. It was incredibly delicious."
"That's right! Everything Daddy makes is yummy!"
Jungwoo had been organizing the kitchen and had briefly looked away from where Seia was sitting.
He was sure he had wiped her mouth clean earlier, yet now it was glistening with oil again.
Chuckling softly, he wiped her face and handed a tissue to Choi Su-yeon as well.
"The menu might not be exactly what you're looking for, but feel free to stop by whenever studying gets tough."
"Um, boss."
"Yes?"
"Would you ever consider adding tteokbokki or things like that to the menu?"
"Tteokbokki?"
"Yes. I was thinking it might be nice to come here with my friends later, and if you sold bunsik too, it would be perfect."
Bunsik, huh.
He truly hadn't considered it at all.
That stubborn focus on nutrition kept dominating his thoughts, making him want to give Seia only things that were both delicious and good for her body.
Elementary and middle schools were a bit far, but the high school was relatively close.
Selling bunsik around the time students got out of school didn't seem like a bad idea at all.
"You're right. I hadn't even thought about offering bunsik...."
"Daddy. I want to try tteokbokki."
And right on cue, Seia spoke up.
Her eyes were sparkling again. It looked like she'd already heard all about it.
"Haha... Really? Since you've never tried it before, we should give it a go. But not too often, okay?"
"Yes! I'll enjoy it—"
She was saying she'd enjoy it when they didn't even have rice cakes, let alone the sauce.
How could anyone resist that kind of cuteness?
Jungwoo gently stroked Seia's hair, then saw Choi Su-yeon off as she left.
"It's gotten quite late. Please get home safely."
"I will. Thank you so much for today. Seia, goodbye—"
"Pretty sister, bye-bye—!"
That bright smile and enthusiastic wave.
The sight made leaving feel impossible, and Choi Su-yeon had to force her reluctant legs to move.
The streets had grown even darker by then.
Using the warm glow from the restaurant and the streetlights as her guide, Choi Su-yeon started the journey home.
"It's pretty dark out. I should take a taxi."
The place she arrived at after the ride was a massive house roughly the same scale as the building where Jungwoo's restaurant was located.
Standing before the enormous residence, the smile had already vanished from Choi Su-yeon's face.
"I'm home."
"Where were you until this hour?"
"It was after-school study."
"Tsk. Lying again."
Her father, seated on the sofa watching the news, didn't even spare her a glance.
Choi Su-yeon walked down the long corridor-like hallway to the room at the very end.
She tossed her bag beside the enormous bed and threw herself onto it.
"Sigh...."
It was an incredibly spacious room, yet why did it always feel so cramped?
Even though the house ventilated well, the sensation of suffocating wasn't her imagination.
It was the same reason she chose public transportation over the family driver.
A heavy sigh, like releasing all the air trapped in her chest, filled the room.
It wasn't cold enough to feel the chill of winter yet, but the room felt cool and distant.
Still, the hardened expression didn't last long.
The faint smile that soon appeared lingered far longer than something merely "faint" should.
She was so cute.
That gaze directed at her.
The expression that perfectly matched the phrase "smiling face."
Not a single moment had failed to leave an impression.
Every instant she had spent taking in Seia remained in her mind like photographs.
In truth, memories didn't need to be grand.
Even the smallest things became vivid when they were new experiences.
In that sense, what happened at the game center.
And everything that happened at the restaurant.
"I want to go again."
In this huge house, the only family members were her parents and Choi Su-yeon—just the three of them.
There were other people, of course, but they weren't family.
Meanwhile, outside her room, Choi Su-yeon's father was receiving a report.
"So where did she go this time? That game center again?"
"No, sir. Today it was a place called Seona's Restaurant."
"Seona's Restaurant? A food establishment?"
"Yes. It opened quite recently."
He wasn't receiving the report out of actual curiosity.
He only listened because not doing so would be inconvenient.
But this time, a spark of interest appeared.
The child who practically lived at the game center had suddenly gone to a restaurant?
Was it really just because she was hungry?
Or was there another reason?
"Hunters?"
"No, sir. It was a small restaurant run by a father and his young daughter."
"A father and daughter who aren't even hunters, running a restaurant... Where is it located?"
"Near the company building."
"Nearby, you say."
His fingers began tapping rhythmically against the sofa's armrest.
It was the sign that he had begun considering something. When those fingers stopped, the contemplation would be over.
"Should we look into it further?"
"No. They're ordinary people, not hunters. There shouldn't be any problems."
Going to a restaurant was, after all, an incredibly ordinary thing.
When you're hungry and something looks good, you go to one of the many eateries lining the street.
But the puzzling part was that the food at home was on an entirely different level—impossibly superior in both ingredients and taste.
They always used the finest ingredients and employed renowned hunter chefs to prepare a wide variety of dishes.
"If she starts visiting that restaurant frequently... then it's a different story."
It was an order to keep watching.
To see whether she became a regular at that restaurant or if today's visit had simply been a coincidence.
Time would eventually provide the answer.
Choi Su-yeon's father wasn't the type who enjoyed creating problems.
It was simply that the range of things he considered "problems" was a little wider, deeper, and more demanding than most people's.
He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but if it ever fell into that category, a suitable price would have to be paid.