- Commonalities of First Love (5)
“What’s with that expression?”
I raised my hand and felt around my face. Since I couldn’t see my own face, I couldn’t fully understand what he meant.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure how to explain it.”
Na Jihan stared at me intently. I felt his calm yet meticulous gaze adhering to every corner of my face without missing a spot.
“You look upset, anxious… and sad.”
“……”
“I’m not as sensitive as you, so I don’t know how to explain this. But one thing is certain.”
Na Jihan tapped the tip of my nose with his fingertip and added:
“I don’t want you to be like that.”
“……”
“Even though I try, it never works out well. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”
He lowered his head and rested his forehead on my shoulder. His black, silky hair tickled my nape.
“…So don’t hate me, Yoon Seowoo.”
I carefully stroked his hair and answered:
“How could I ever hate you?”
It’s already difficult not to like you, so hating you would be absolutely impossible. Even if the sky were to split in two, that much wouldn’t change.
Just as I’m your one and only, you are my one and only too.
“We’ve been offered a spot on a variety show.”
“I know. I heard from Hyeonjun hyung on the way here. ‘One Day Sleepover,’ right?”
“Yeah.”
Just as I was about to ask if we could do it without fighting…
He stretched out his arms, wrapped them around my waist, and pulled me tight. I lost my balance and was yanked forward, ending up snugly in his embrace.
“If I go with you, I have no worries. I like going with you the most.”
…But I’m worried about going with you.
“So stop avoiding me. Got it?”
When I delayed answering, he gently applied pressure with his arms and urged me on. The way he called my name, “Yoon Seowoo,” sounded just like a sulking child.
“Yeah.”
I like going with you the most too, Jihan.
I like you the most.
The ticklish words lingered on the tip of my tongue for a while before silently melting away.
* * *
Time passed, and before we knew it, an autumn day in October arrived.
We headed to a mountain village in Jeolla Province for the filming of ‘One Day Sleepover.’
Perhaps because we hadn’t had a chance to get fresh air for a while with our comeback approaching, the wide-open rural scenery visible in every direction made me feel unexpectedly excited.
The problem was that I wasn’t particularly accustomed to rural life where you have to do everything with your own hands.
“Seowoo, don’t you know how to use matches?”
After several failed attempts, I looked up with a dejected face. Bae Dojin looked down at me with an expression that was clearly struggling to hold back laughter.
“You still haven’t lit the fire. Anyone watching would think you were given flint stones instead.”
“I’m sorry…”
Lee Yuwon from Days, who was bringing a large pot, looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“It’s not that complicated, is it? Most people use them when lighting birthday cake candles.”
“I always did it for him. I made Seowoo use a lighter for candles since he could get hurt.”
Na Jihan, who had brought some more firewood, bent down beside me. He pushed the freshly split wood into the furnace and naturally took the matches from my hand.
“You’ll hurt yourself, give it here.”
The fire that had refused to catch despite all my struggling burst into flames with just one attempt from Na Jihan. He transferred the fire to a crumpled newspaper and pushed it between the logs.
“Want to roast some potatoes?”
“Can we?”
“There’s foil over there, so wrap them and bury them between the logs. Don’t use your bare hands, and use this to move things around.”
He placed a poker in my hand.
“Be careful, okay?”
I finally burst into laughter and nodded.
“That’s the thirtieth time you’ve said that. Are you that worried about me?”
He quickly grabs even a match from me because he’s afraid I might get hurt, yet he rolled up his sleeves and split wood for over thirty minutes. Every time he swung the axe, I was so anxious that I wanted to insist we just break branches instead.
Unlike me, who was awkward with physical labor, Na Jihan split the wood skillfully as if he’d been doing it for years.
“I’m always worried about you.”
Although it was quite inconvenient to have to light a fire in the furnace just to cook a meal, it was fun because it was something I’d never done before.
Squatting down, I wrapped potatoes in foil and tossed them one by one into the furnace. Perhaps because I wanted to cook enough to share with the production staff, before I knew it, more than ten potatoes were buried among the logs.
Meanwhile, Lee Yuwon brought flour dough and a bowl of water, and Bae Dojin brought a large tray with kimchi on it.
Because of today’s mission, “Prepare dinner with the given ingredients,” the four of us had been busy moving around the yard for about an hour.
“Is this enough?”
“I wish we had more vegetables. Dojin hyung, was there nothing else in the storage shed?”
“Onions, zucchini, and sweet potatoes?”
“I’ll prepare the onions and zucchini, so please bring those.”
“You’re not using the sweet potatoes?”
“Wouldn’t it be a bit strange to put sweet potatoes in kimchi sujebi?”
Bae Dojin looked at the few sweet potatoes he was holding, then smiled and handed them to me.
“Then let’s roast these too, Seowoo. They’ll make a good snack later.”
Eventually, the thickly wrapped sweet potatoes also went into the furnace. By this point, it seemed like there were more things to roast than firewood.
Unlike us, who usually left cooking to Ahn Haesol and Na Hyeonjun, Bae Dojin and Lee Yuwon seemed quite experienced. Even when helping with the field work earlier, they handled the farming tools with uncommon skill, unlike me who fumbled a bit at first with everything.
‘He said he often helped with farming when he was young.’
I needed to work harder to make up for my lack of experience. I also wanted to show that I could do well. I quickly got up, put the vegetables and kimchi that Lee Yuwon had nicely chopped into the pot, and waited for the water to boil, firmly gripping the ladle.
“We should check the seasoning before adding the sujebi dough, right?”
“Yeah. Would you check it with Jihan?”
After I ladled a little broth into a small bowl, Na Jihan took it and blew on it to cool it down. After blowing on it several times with a concentrated expression, he placed the edge of the bowl against my lips.
“Eat slowly. Don’t burn your tongue.”
“Okay.”
As I gulped it down while holding his wrist, all three of them looked at me.
“How is it?”
“Wasn’t it hot?”
“Is it good?”
“Um…”
It didn’t taste… good. Well, not exactly that it didn’t taste good…
“The taste is… somehow…”
It’s not that it tastes bad. I can taste the well-ripened kimchi, zucchini, and the characteristic sweet tang of onions, but…
“…Something seems to be missing. What could it be?”
If I were more experienced with cooking, I would have immediately known what to add, but unfortunately, I wasn’t that intuitive.
As I frowned while clutching the bowl, Na Jihan, also curious, tasted a little of the broth. But since he was in a similar situation as me, the number of people perplexed just increased from one to two.
“What is it? What else should we add?”
“You’re right, Seowoo. It’s not that it doesn’t taste good. It’s not bad, but…”
Bae Dojin looked into the pot with a serious expression. The reddish broth was diligently bubbling under the gaze of the three people.
Just then, a hand suddenly entered my field of vision. Lee Yuwon sprinkled something into the pot, then withdrew as if nothing had happened.
“Huh?”
I turned to look at Lee Yuwon with round eyes.
“Sunbaenim, what did you just do?”
He replied in a calm tone with his hands behind his back:
“I didn’t do anything.”
That can’t be right. He definitely added something. It was a fine red powder in a small, flat rectangular packet, smaller than a palm. I was sure I’d seen it somewhere before.
“Didn’t you add something?”
“It’s just your imagination.”
Ah, right. Something like ramen seasoning…
…Could it be that he brought it in advance thinking we wouldn’t be able to cook properly?
I looked at Lee Yuwon with suspicious eyes, but he kept avoiding my gaze and eventually disappeared somewhere. It seemed like he was trying to dispose of the hidden ramen seasoning packet without the production staff noticing.
“Looks like Yuwon worked some magic.”
Bae Dojin took the ladle from my hand with an amused voice and gave the pot’s contents a big stir.
“Want to taste it again?”
The broth that Na Jihan blew on and fed me again was amazingly much more delicious than before.
It was the moment I realized the first lesson from rural life experience: the greatness of MSG.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
