About to turn on the light, Kyung Jiho looked at the table. There was a plate with two fried eggs on it, and next to it, a kimchi container. And cucumber.
Cucumber?
One of Kyung Jiho’s eyebrows shot up. The cucumber wasn’t something that belonged in this house. Anyway, if you put together the thinly sliced cucumber pieces, it would probably make one whole cucumber.
And the two sets of chopsticks and spoons facing each other were clean too. It seemed the guy hadn’t eaten yet either. He checked his wrist watch. It was eight o’clock. Well past the usual dinner time. As far as he knew, this was a guy who couldn’t afford to miss mealtimes.
Only then did he take off his shoes and step into the living room. He raised his foot near the guy’s shoulder, thinking about waking him up with a nudge, but lowered it again. He stepped past the guy who was giving off pitiful vibes with his tightly curled-up body, and turned on the living room light.
“Ha!”
Kyung Jiho, who was twice as startled as the guy who sat bolt upright with a shout, had to tense his entire body to avoid showing his surprise. He hadn’t yet lowered his finger from the switch, and couldn’t prevent the tendons in his tense forearm from twitching and spasming.
With his occupational habit of reading situations and predicting next moves, Kyung Jiho had inwardly expected that when he turned on the light, the guy would make some kind of moaning sound like “ungh,” wiggle around a bit, then rub his eyes and get up with a smile—something like that. He hadn’t expected him to sit up so abruptly.
The guy, sitting with his hands on the floor and quickly looking around, suddenly jerked his head up. Seeing the man still holding the living room light switch, he jumped again, lifting himself about a hand’s width off the ground while sitting, then immediately knelt. Although Kyung Jiho had managed to remain still, he, the culprit who had startled the sleeping guy into kneeling, was actually more surprised.
“You’re… back?”
Looking at the guy kneeling as if about to perform a formal bow, Kyung Jiho found it completely absurd. Finding it so absurd, he had to click his tongue with a sound tinged with laughter.
“Good grief.”
Feeling awkward that his hand had been stuck to the switch for quite a while, he lowered it and put it in his pants pocket as he asked:
“Haven’t you eaten? Aren’t you supposed to not miss your mealtime?”
“Ah.”
The guy, who lifted his head with a blank expression and said “ah,” started looking around again.
“It’s eight o’clock.”
Kyung Jiho told the time to the guy whose entire body was saying he was looking for a clock. After hearing the current time, the guy, with a face clearly showing his confusion, asked:
“Ah… yes… um… that… have you… eaten?”
“No.”
“I see. Then I’ll serve the rice.”
With that, the guy stood up abruptly, bowed his head, and crossed in front of Kyung Jiho. He opened the electric rice cooker on the counter, looked at the rice, and again showed a confused expression, seeming troubled.
“Oh no… what happened to the rice… this is terrible…”
Listening to the self-talk that was barely louder than a mosquito’s buzz, Kyung Jiho went into the bathroom. After turning on the sink water vigorously, he burst into the laughter he had been holding back. Laughing while washing his face, water went up his nose, and the man held his stinging nose and laughed again.
When Jiho came out after a quick wash, the guy whose real name was Ji Geun-yeong was now kneeling at the table, in a posture similar to his upright bag.
He kept glancing at the man who was drying his face with a towel around his neck, and just as their eyes were about to meet, he lowered his gaze and looked at either the sliced cucumber or the fried eggs. Kyung Jiho sat down at the table and said:
“The guy who came into my hospital room and suddenly recited a poem, or the guy who showed up out of nowhere and said he’d die if I didn’t remember him, didn’t seem like someone who’d be so cautious.”
By the end of that sentence, the man who had stuck his spoon into the rice widened his eyes. The rice that had looked like a lump of rice cake was crumbling apart.
“Wow. You’re quite talented? How do you make rice like this using an electric rice cooker?”
“I’m… sorry. The amount of water…”
The man asked while somehow managing to gather rice onto his spoon and putting it in his mouth:
“Is this your first time making rice?”
“Ah-“
There was a brief temptation to say “-no,” but it wasn’t actually his first time making rice, and saying that while producing this result would be even stranger. Geun-yeong berated himself for not buying instant rice along with the cucumber, for making this reckless attempt based on a vague memory of “just enough water to cover the rice,” and answered:
“…Yes.”
Having confessed the truth, Geun-yeong bowed his head and picked up his spoon. The rice, which looked like rice cake that had been left in the refrigerator for a day, but crumbled like a sand pile when a spoon was stuck in it, was fascinating even to him.
After that conversation, there wasn’t much dialogue during the next three or four spoonfuls of flying rice. Only sounds crossed the table, like chopsticks scraping the plate trying to cut fried eggs with burnt edges that wouldn’t break easily, or the sound of determinedly chewing cucumber despite feeling apologetic for preparing such a meal.
While it was surprising that even an electric rice cooker could produce such rice, the man, who didn’t seem particularly dissatisfied with the meal and continued eating without complaint, pointed at the cucumber with his neatly held chopsticks and asked:
“You have to eat vegetables, I guess?”
Geun-yeong, who had put the cucumber the man pointed at into his mouth and crunched down on it, nodded. He stopped mid-nod as he felt something was missing. It wasn’t just any emptiness, but something ominously empty—
“Oh!”
The man, who stopped chewing along with the guy who suddenly raised his head, asked with his eyes.
What. What’s wrong.
“Oh no… this is terrible…”
Geun-yeong didn’t see the question in the man’s eyes. So he just hurriedly turned to the side and opened his bag.
Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch, while quickly chewing the cucumber already in his mouth, he took out the package he had bought from the medical supply store.
Making rustling noises as he crumpled the bag, he opened the box for the first time since purchase. Though it had been a while since he started using a continuous glucose monitor that measured his blood sugar just by attaching it to his arm, it wasn’t his first time doing this, so he set it up skillfully.
Kyung Jiho, who had put his chopsticks down on his thigh and paused his meal, watched the guy who was muttering “this is terrible… this is terrible…” in a voice that could only be heard if you concentrated.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to Jiho. There had been quite a few old men who would shout about hypoglycemia during interrogations, and he had often seen infirmary nurses called up to measure blood sugar. It was just a bit unfamiliar to see such a young guy pricking his own finger and measuring his blood sugar.
“Ah. It’s fine.”
He dropped his shoulders even as he put down the things in his hand on his thigh with a thud. The guy, whose entire body expressed relief, put down the items in his hand. Then he grabbed the bottom of his upper garment and started to lift it up, but stopped and turned his head. He made eye contact with the man who had also paused his meal and was watching him, and then lowered his head while maintaining eye contact.
Lowering his head while maintaining eye contact gave him an expression like a dog that needed to defecate but couldn’t find a spot and was looking at its owner. Kyung Jiho had to frown to hold back his laughter.
Geun-yeong, watching the man whose face had somehow become scary, said:
“Um… I’m sorry, but… I need to inject some insulin.”
“Go ahead.”
Kyung Jiho gave permission without hesitation. There was no reason not to. It wasn’t anything to be so sorry about, and above all, it wasn’t something that required his permission.
The guy, who looked down at his own stomach and fidgeted with his hands, was at least operating the device through the gap of his lifted shirt.
A mechanical sound, “zing,” rang out unnecessarily loudly in the quiet space. After the not-so-long mechanical sound stopped, the guy who had fixed his clothes again now began to organize the glucose meter he had somehow spread out in front of his kneeling knees.
“Is it a big deal if you don’t check your blood sugar once? The old man I know only checks it when he goes to the hospital.”
Kyung Jiho asked, citing the example of an old man who suddenly becomes deeply interested in his blood sugar whenever he enters an interrogation room or detention cell, and keeps shouting about hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia, asking to have his blood sugar measured.
“That person is probably Type 2. People who can control it with oral medication don’t need to measure their blood sugar often in everyday life. But I’m Type 1, so since I’m continuously injecting insulin, I need to keep checking… my levels.”
The guy who had been speaking clearly and coherently suddenly became self-conscious toward the end, dragging his words, and then bowed his head.
The articulate, resolute one was the medical student Jang Saetbyeol who had barged into the hospital room and conducted a dementia test, and the one who was now bowing his head and being cautious seemed to be Ji Geun-yeong, who had left behind a home where a helper ajumma would serve hot meals three times a day, to sit in this completely incongruous place eating flying rice.
“By the way,”
The man picked up his spoon again to scoop rice and began speaking, and Geun-yeong listened attentively, wondering what he was about to say.
“Why are you being so cautious? Sit comfortably.”
“Yes.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
