DFD Episode 4

Episode 4. It’s okay to be expensive

Sejeong’s hands were busy opening the money box. She smiled brightly and held out a few thousand won bills.

“Sir, did you enjoy your meal? Here’s your change.”

“I almost went back home because I was hungry while waiting for the food to come out.”

“Sorry, I’m a little busy today. I’ll give it to you as soon as possible the next time you come.”

“Okay. Here we go, Grandma!”

The sliding door closed with a bang. Sejeong sighed and wiped the beads of sweat on her forehead with her arm.

After a large restaurant opened at the entrance of the market, the customers visiting the sundae soup restaurant located in a deep alley were now all familiar regulars.

The traditional market where Sejeong’s grandmother’s shop was located was located two stops away from the university district. Because the housing prices were cheap, many students living alone or young people working alone lived in this area. Regular customers were good, but it was obvious that sales would increase if they caught these new customers.

The problem was the condition of the old store. No matter how much the cleaning staff cleaned the tables and disinfected the dishes with hot water, there was nothing they could do about the rotten ceiling and the floor where the tiles had peeled off and black cement was visible.

It was natural that young customers who occasionally visited preferred chain restaurants with clean interiors over old sundae soup restaurants.

“Miss, please give me some more pickled radish.”

“Yes, I’m on it!”

But for some reason, it was a busy Sunday from the morning without a break. There were only five tables, but only one person was working in the hall: Sejeong. The only person working in the kitchen, standing in front of the fire, was her grandmother.

Because there was no room to hire part-time workers, Sejeong had to go into the kitchen every now and then to clean up the dishes that piled up in the sink while serving the table.

“Our Sejeong, are you hungry?”

Both she and her grandmother had breakfast and lunch on two rolls of kimbap bought from the snack shop across the street. Sejeong smiled brightly as she scooped up some radish kimchi on a plate.

“I think we’ll be done if we just go to one table. Grandma. Then let’s come out and eat together.”

“Okay, baby.”

“Aren’t you going to give me some kimchi?”

When Mr. Lee of the hardware store shouted while looking into the kitchen, Sejeong’s grandmother glared.

“How many plates of radish kimchi can you eat while eating one bowl of sundaeguk?”

“Yes, I’m coming!”

Sejeong winked at her grandmother and quickly ran outside with a plate of pickled radish.

Sejeong’s mother left home when she was just entering the fifth grade of elementary school. That fall, her father, who spent his days off drinking soju at home and working as a day laborer at construction sites on his work days, lost his footing and passed away.

After that, Sejeong came to live with her only family, her grandmother. It had already been nine years since she and her grandmother had lived together.

Although Sejeong knew in her head that poverty was not shameful but inconvenient, her heart was not like that during her adolescence. Poverty was something that made people feel ashamed in many ways.

It wasn’t just when she couldn’t pay her lunch fee on time. When she couldn’t refuse a classmate’s invitation to come over to her house to play, the feeling Sejeong had when she saw her friend’s expression upon entering her house was something close to shame.

That was why Sejeong was so obsessed with studying. She wanted to escape from the miserable poverty as soon as possible. She wanted to move to a two-room house, and she wanted to let her old grandmother rest at home instead of working at a restaurant.

There were countless times when she would look at a reference book under the light of a stand at dawn and get nosebleeds. She worked part-time at a fast food restaurant in the evenings since high school to save up for college tuition.

Even after entering college, her tight schedule didn’t change much. In fact, she became busier. She sat in the front row during class hours, trying not to miss a single word the professor said, and worked on her homework all night. She was struggling not to miss out on her academic scholarship.

I used all the money I earned from tutoring to cover my living expenses. I wanted to be of some help to my grandmother, who was always moving around in front of the fire from morning till night.

She didn’t have time to go to a cafe and chat with her friends, nor did she have the time to do club activities. She couldn’t even accept the confessions of the few people who showed interest in her when she was a freshman.

They seemed to take Sejeong’s words about not having time as an excuse, but it didn’t matter to her. Dating was for those who had the time, and her life was too hectic for that.

Sejeong’s goal was to get a job at a large company when she was a senior in college. In a situation where she had to do volunteer work overseas or extracurricular activities to get an internship, all she could do was maintain the highest grades.

If she got a job, the day would come soon when she could set up a small nest for herself and her grandmother. Sejeong was running towards that day.

Mr. Lee from the hardware store emptied a bottle of soju and stood up. She quickly cleaned up and wiped the table with a dishtowel.

I found myself humming. I could tell without even calculating it. Today was the busiest day of the past month. If every weekend were like today, I would feel like the reward of not working part-time tutoring was worth it.

When I straightened my back and tapped my stiff shoulder with my fist, the hands on the old wall clock were already approaching 9 o’clock. By this time, all the people in the market, including the fried chicken restaurant, would have left.

I was thinking that I should start cleaning up, but the sliding door rattled and opened again. Judging by the steady stream of customers, it seemed like today was the day.

“Welcome….”

Her voice, which had been greeting the customer with a bright smile and a strong voice, suddenly stopped in the middle. Ji-hoon, who had come in with his head down because the door was low, looked around for a moment and sat down at the table closest to the entrance.

“…what?”

Sejeong, wearing an apron and holding a dishtowel tightly in her hand, frowned at Jihoon.

“Is that the kind of greeting you give to guests?”

He crossed his long legs and tilted his head. Wearing ankle-length slacks, high-heeled shoes, and a T-shirt with a mess of abstract designs, he looked like a model who had just walked down a runway.

Against a backdrop of bleached fluorescent plastic chairs, a tacky metal table with a floral pattern, and a large calendar nailed to an old mud wall, he seemed terribly out of place. He had the aura of a superstar taking pictures in Harlem.

“Why are you staring at me like that? Is it because I’m looking very great?”

Ji-hoon raised his lips as he looked at her. Blood rushed to Se-jeong’s face. She was past the age where she could feel ashamed of the foundation of her life that she had maintained for over 20 years. However, seeing Ji-hoon suddenly appear in a place that did not suit her at all, she felt as if her shame had been revealed.

His appearance, which was so striking that anyone would glance at it at least once, seemed different from the Sundae soup restaurant she worked at, and the more it seemed that the gap in level between them was more apparent, it was inevitable that her pride would be hurt.

Sejeong tightly held the towel she was holding and let out a low sigh.

“Get out.”

He simply ignored Sejeong’s words and turned his gaze towards the plastered cement wall. Then he glanced at the menu she had written by hand. Sejeong’s neck felt hot for no reason.

“Give me one bowl of sundae stew. I’m hungry.”

He glanced at her again as he ordered the most expensive item on the limited menu.

“I don’t have any food to give you, so get out.”

“I will report this to the Consumer Protection Agency.”

Sejeong snorted at his response.

“Do whatever you want, I can report you for obstructing my business.”

“Am I interrupting your business right now?”

“Yeah. That’s correct. So, get out.”

“Why, does that mean when I come, you get so excited that you can’t concentrate on your work?”

Ji-hoon raised the corners of his mouth in victory.

“Hey!”

“Sejeong, what’s going on?”

Sejeong’s screaming made her grandmother, who was working in the kitchen, stick her face out. Sejeong quickly walked towards the kitchen, blocked her grandmother’s gaze, and shook her head.

“No. It’s nothing, Grandma.”

“Ahn Se-jeong. Aren’t you going to take my order? I’m starving.”

Ji-hoon raised his voice slightly in the hall. Se-jeong clenched her teeth, barely able to suppress the anger bubbling inside her.

“Sejeong he seems to know you. Are you friends?”

“Oh, yes. Grandma. Same school.”

“Oh my, you must have studied hard. Just like our Sejeong.”

Sejeong nodded, trying to erase her embarrassed expression.

“Grandma, please hurry up and make me a bowl of sundae soup.”

“Yeah, I will.”

She quickly left the kitchen, took a plastic bottle of barley tea and a cup from the fridge, and placed them on the metal table where he was sitting.

“There’s a lot of stew, so you won’t be able to finish it all, so eat some sundae soup and go back.”

“Well, whatever.”

Ji-hoon shrugged his shoulders, took his phone out of his pocket, and started fiddling with his hands helplessly, so Se-jeong turned around. She didn’t trust his words that he came because he was hungry, but she didn’t really want to face him.

No, to be more honest, Sejeong wanted to avoid anything that might lead to a collision with him. It had been ten days ago that she had kissed him impulsively in his apartment.

I tried to end it with just a kiss, but the result wasn’t like that. The kiss went on forever, and strange moans kept coming out of Sejeong’s lips. Even thinking about it now, it was embarrassing.

While Ji-hoon was in the bathroom, Se-jeong, who had been staring blankly outside the darkened room on his bed, suddenly came to her senses and ran away from his apartment in a hurry. Even now, thinking back on it, it was amazing that she had properly packed the USB.

Ji-hoon’s file, which she opened with trembling hands when she got home, was perfect, and the presentation was also successful. The team members who had not contacted her even once apologized and handed her gift certificates, and Se-jeong glared at them coldly, but accepted them all without hesitation.

However, Ji-hoon did not get a chance to talk to her. She avoided him as if she was running away when he approached her.

For the past ten days, I couldn’t stop thinking about that day. It’s true that I kissed him until the room got dark without turning on the lights, and I caught a glimpse of his trembling and sincerity hidden in his rough words and actions. But the end of my thoughts was always the same.

Ji-hoon was a person who lived in a completely different world from her, and his financial level was very different from hers. Se-jeong was already too busy to have the time to date, and if the person she was dating was as reckless as Ji-hoon, it would be even more difficult.

I didn’t want to meet him any more because he was so reckless, so I kept avoiding him, and then he came to me.

“Why did you ignore me at school?”

Ji-hoon asked abruptly. His eyes were still on his cell phone. Se-jeong started cleaning up and answered him curtly.

“Is there any reason why I should know you in particular?”

Ji-hoon looked up at her and narrowed his eyes.

“Are you saying you’re going to dine and dash now?”

“…What nonsense are you talking about?”

Sejeong frowned as she filled the empty water jug ​​with barley tea and closed the plastic lid with a snap.

“When you rolled around with me while kissing me deeply, you enjoyed it to your heart’s content and then you ran away without me knowing, That means you’re going to eat me and run away without paying back, Right?

Sejeong was startled by his time bomb-like words and turned her head to look at the kitchen. Fortunately, her grandmother was taking pork head meat out of a pot deep in the kitchen.

“Hey, won’t you be quiet?”

Jihoon snickered as Sejeong glared at him and muttered softly.

“So don’t avoid me. Hey. Look here. One, two.”

There was a click sound from the cell phone in his hand. Sejeong blinked in confusion.

“Hey. What did you just do?”

“I took a picture.”

“Do you want to die? Erase it now.”

“It suits you well, that… apron.”

Sejeong’s face turned bright red. Even without looking in the mirror, she could tell that she looked terrible right now.

Looking at her sweaty figure, tightly tied up in the tacky green apron that had been given out as a prize by the soju company, he said, “It suits you well.” It seemed like hot steam was rising from her exposed forehead.

Sejeong’s ears burned with shame. She walked briskly toward him, dragging her slippers full of holes.

“Hand me your phone.”

Jihoon put his cell phone in his pants pocket.

“What are you doing now?”

“If you can take it, then take it.”

He spread his arms wide. It was as if he was telling her to take them out herself if she wanted. Sejeong sighed as she looked at his pants, which were narrow and clung nicely to his long legs. She had no desire to feel inside his pockets.

“Don’t you know that taking hidden cameras is a crime?”

Ji-hoon snickered as if he was dumbfounded.

“I took the picture right in front of you. What kind of hidden camera is this?”

“Are you really going to be so childish?”

“Let’s trade, then.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jihoon nodded his head as Sejeong narrowed her eyes.

“You probably have a selfie of me taken in bed too. Let’s trade the picture I just took of you with that.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do. The negotiations break down.”

“This guy is really….”

“Sejeong, come and take the food!”

When her grandmother shouted in the kitchen, Ji-hoon raised his lips towards her and smiled.

“Grandma is calling you.”

For the first time in her life, Sejeong was overcome with the urge to wield extreme violence against someone. The face that called for a grand fist was definitely Do Ji-hoon’s face. Sejeong glared at him with her white eyes and went into the kitchen.

Steam was rising from the hot Sundae soup on the plate.

My grandmother had prepared a generous portion of Sundae soup, adding all the ingredients she could without even knowing what he was thinking.

“This is bigger than the special sundae soup, Grandma.”

When Sejeong made a displeased expression, her grandmother responded nonchalantly.

“You said he was your friend. Take this to him quickly.”

To be honest, I didn’t think Ji-hoon would touch this kind of food.

His arrogant expression when he said he wouldn’t even drink cheap coffee was still vivid in my mind. Not knowing that Ji-hoon was that kind of person, her grandmother’s sincerity in not sparing any ingredients just because they were in the same school made her forehead tingle.

Sejeong tried to calm her throbbing heart and left the kitchen with the tray in her hand. She placed the tray on the table with a thud and placed a bowl of warm sundae soup and a bowl of rice on his table.

“Here. Eat it.”

“Is this something humans can eat?”

Ji-hoon’s words, which were scratching gently, made a thousand fires rise inside her. Se-jeong clenched her teeth and looked at him.

“You really….”

“I’m joking. It looks delicious. I’ll enjoy it.”

Ji-hoon snickered and took a spoon out of the spoon holder next to him. Se-jeong stared at him with wide eyes as he stirred the noodles with the spoon, then returned to the refrigerator.

“You don’t have to force yourself to eat it, just go. Please.”

A distorted voice flowed from Sejeong’s lips. Jihoon pretended not to hear her words and, with an elegant hand, scooped up some of the white broth and swallowed it. The way he swallowed it was annoyingly neat.

Carak.

After tasting the soup, he took out his chopsticks from the spoon holder. He stared at the sundae hanging on his chopsticks, then put the cold food back into his mouth and chewed it quietly.

The long, cut pieces of head meat and intestines disappeared into his mouth one after another. Sejeong stared at him, forgetting to fill the water jug ​​with barley tea. At first, she had planned to wait and see how far he could go.

The lid of the small rice bowl opened and Ji-hoon scooped up a large spoonful of warm rice. He took a sip of the soup, then scooped up some rice and chewed it.

Contrary to her expectations that Ji-hoon would just pretend to take a few sips and then throw his spoon away, he was slowly but neatly finishing off his food. Se-jeong couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief.

There was no chewing sound, no slurping sound, no usual blowing of hot steam, but the bowl was steadily being emptied.

Sejeong stared at him blankly and then got up from her seat. She opened the refrigerator, took out pickled radish and salted shrimp, and placed them on his table one by one. Jihoon, who was scooping soup with a spoon, raised his head towards her and arched his thick eyebrows.

“What? Why are you giving me the side dish now?”

“I never thought that you, who used to say that you don’t eat cheap food, would actually eat sundaeguk, which costs not much more than the price of that coffee.”

The moment Ji-hoon was about to open his mouth to say something, the store’s sliding door opened again with a dull sound.

“Hey, Sejeong, we’re so busy today that we haven’t even had time to eat, would you mind if I order some sundae soup to-go?”

It was the lady from the Mimi snack shop across the street. Sejeong quickly relaxed her expression and nodded towards her.

“Sure.”

There would still be some ingredients left, and her grandmother always said that she shouldn’t be rude to the market people, even if it meant being rude to other customers.

“Sorry, it’s your closing time right?”

Mimi, a young single mother, clasped her hands together with an apologetic expression. Sejeong smiled at her.

“No. I’ll make it right away and bring it to you. You can’t leave the store.”

“Would you do that? Thank you very much. I’ll go. My child is alone.”

Mimi, who was hurriedly leaving the store, glanced at Ji-hoon, who was eating Sundae soup, and made a surprised expression, stretching out her philtrum. Se-jeong hid her embarrassed face and gave her a bitter smile, shrugging her shoulders as she winked at her.

It wasn’t just Sejeong who felt that his appearance, which seemed to have come straight out of a magazine, didn’t match the store. In this situation, the only one who acted naturally was Jihoon.

After Aunt Mimi left, Sejeong asked her grandmother for another bowl of Sundae soup and diligently cleaned up. She was worried about Jihoon, who was eating, but she had to close the shop.

“Sejeong, take the package to Mimi.”

“Yes, Grandma!”

She quickly packed the Sundaeguk into a container, taped the lid tightly, and put it in a plastic bag. She also secretly took the remaining old-fashioned sausages and left the store.

“Do you also deliver?”

Ji-hoon asked her as she opened the stiff sliding door, still moving the spoon.

“Not really, I’ll be back soon, so just wait here.”

His bowl of sundae soup was almost empty. Her grandmother had filled it up with a lot of food, but it seemed like he had finished it all.

“Have a nice trip.”