Oppa, Have You Heard Of The Tteokbokki Kiss?

Once that strange little gift-giving ceremony was over, the two of them set about enjoying their date in earnest.

Today’s theme was a cooking date. Minjun and Sia had each cooked for the other plenty of times, yet oddly enough they had never once made a meal together. So today they’d decided to try something different and cook side by side.

On the menu was Sia’s favorite, tteokbokki. She had already laid in every ingredient, which left nothing to do but prep and cook.

“I’ll get the rice cakes softening, so could you slice the spring onion and the fish cake, Oppa?”
“Sure, I’ll do that.”

Magic would have made short work of it, sure, but wasn’t the whole point of a cooking date to enjoy the process of making something together? Besides, though she never said so out loud, Sia wanted to watch Minjun handle a knife.

He looked sexy enough just slicing away, but what drove her wild were the sharply defined tendons that stood out on his wrist as he worked.

Slowly softening the rice cakes in a big pot, Sia kept stealing glances at him while he worked the knife.

Whoa. Look at those veins.

Who knew even his veins could be this sexy? Every time the sharp lines on his wrist caught her eye, Sia swallowed hard.

“Spoken like a true tteokbokki lover. Are you that excited?”
“Mm-hm. Hugely.”

It probably never once occurred to Minjun that she’d gulped at the sight of his wrist rather than at the thought of tteokbokki.

Anyway, once the slicing was done, Minjun deftly mixed the tteokbokki sauce and stirred it into the furiously boiling water. The moment he finished, Sia threw her arms around him from behind and poured out her affection.

“Our Sia, you’re a total cicada. A cicada.”
“Reeee. Reeee-eeee.”

When Minjun teased her for clinging to him like a cicada, Sia played along and kept up the impression, then pushed her lips out at him for a peck.

“A cicada this cute is cheating.”

Minjun set the sauce dish down for a moment and kissed her. As they kissed, the same thought struck them both at once.

I’m so glad I suggested a cooking date after all.
I’m so glad I listened to Oppa after all!

And just as they were enjoying that cozy time alone at the stove, Minjun’s phone rang.

“Who is it?”
“Oh, it’s Junhwi. The younger guy who went into the Gate with me the other time.”

Minjun wondered what Junhwi could suddenly want, but he let it ring. This was his undivided time with Sia, the three hours a week they were allowed and no more. The call didn’t seem urgent, and he could get back to Junhwi once the date was over.

Sia had surely guessed why he wasn’t picking up, and ordinarily she’d have told him he’d done the right thing.

But.

“You can take it, you know.”
“It’s fine. It’s not an urgent call.”
“A minute’s fine. And while you’re at it, I’ll go take care of something myself.”

Promising to be back within five minutes no matter what, Sia slipped away. She left Minjun behind and headed for none other than the dressing room.

There she reverently put away the special presents Minjun had given her, then opened one of the wardrobes.

“I should give Oppa a present too, shouldn’t I?”

And what she meant to give him was her own clothes.

Admittedly, there was no guarantee Minjun would want her clothes the way she’d wanted his, to feel like they lived together. Even so, she figured he had good reason to take them.

If, just maybe, just by some tiny chance.

Not that any such thing would ever happen.

If other bitches ever came calling at Oppa’s one-room.

Then she would need traces of herself there to warn those bitches off. Even if the two of them weren’t actually living together, those women had to believe Minjun had a woman living with him. Put simply, it amounted to a kind of territorial marking.

With that in mind, she set about picking out clothes of hers to hang up in Minjun’s one-room.

At first she wondered whether to give him old clothes, the way Minjun had, but those hardly seemed fit for hanging up in a one-room… All things considered, clothes she’d worn only once or twice, as good as new, looked like the better choice.

Then again, nothing but worn clothes would make a strange picture too. While she was at it, she might as well give him matching couple T-shirts sometime soon.

Maybe I should have left this till later?

Even now, her time with Minjun was slipping helplessly away, and here she was, wasting five minutes that were more precious than ever.

She grabbed whatever came to hand, stuffed the clothes into subspace, and hurried back to Minjun’s side. By the time she returned, he had already hung up and was finishing off the cooking.

“Was it something urgent?”
“No. I just had something I needed to check for a second.”

She meant to keep the present a secret, because she wanted to surprise him.

The two of them went on cooking cozily together, and before long the tteokbokki was done.

“Mm, the smell of memories.”
“Amazing. One whiff and the old days come flooding back.”

This tteokbokki was made just the way Minjun used to make it for Sia now and then, back when the two of them had lived together. Steeped in those memories, Sia and Minjun looked into each other’s eyes.

“Enjoy.”
“You enjoy too, Oppa!”

At last the meal began.

The tteokbokki looked mouthwatering enough to steal anyone’s gaze, yet the two of them spent far more time looking at each other than at the food. They caught each other’s eye and smiled, and wiped the sauce from each other’s mouths whenever it strayed there.

In the middle of a meal as sweet as any couple’s, Sia spoke up.

“Oppa. By the way, what did that person call about earlier?”

Had the caller been a woman, she would never have let him answer in the first place, but since it was a man, she wasn’t especially on guard. They’d just traded hellos, surely.

“He said thanks for the other day, and that he wants to buy me a meal — asked when I’d be free.”
“Oh, really? Go and enjoy it. And while you’re at it, tell him to buy you something good. You saved his life, after all.”

So far, none of it bothered her much. The problem was what came next.

“Thing is… it’s not Junhwi who’s buying.”
“Then who?”
“Junhwi’s own older sister.”

“…?”
“She says thank you for saving her little brother, and that sometime the three of us, her and Junhwi and me, should meet up and have a meal together.”

A woman.

And not just any woman, but the older sister of the very man Minjun had saved.

Sia’s mind raced. No doubt the woman felt warmly toward the man who had saved her brother’s life. But sooner or later, that warmth would turn from the kind owed a benefactor into the kind a woman feels for a man.

“…So what did you say, Oppa?”

She set her spoon down slowly and asked in a serious voice. Minjun, as though he’d expected exactly this reaction, answered calmly.

“I said I appreciated the offer, but my girlfriend might get the wrong idea, so I didn’t think I could.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“That it was a shame, since she’d really wanted to meet me. And that if that was how it was, she’d at least like to send me a present.”

The word shame lodged in her chest with a sharp little stab.

Why would she think it’s a shame?

Was she simply sorry to miss meeting her brother’s benefactor? Was that really all? The word could be read any number of ways, and that made her all the more uneasy. Whoever the woman was, Sia couldn’t bear even to picture Minjun sitting down with someone other than her for a cozy chat.

But.

Looked at from Minjun’s side, though, if the other party wanted to buy him an expensive dinner as thanks for saving a life, wouldn’t he like to be treated well and enjoy a good meal for once?

Sia didn’t want to be selfish with the man she loved over one mere woman. At the same time, there was no denying the woman bothered her, and so she reached her conclusion.

“Oppa. Could I come along too?”
“…?”

“I’d like to meet this Junhwi person for myself as well. Would that be out of the question?”

Let Minjun meet the woman and share the meal, but stay glued to his side and keep watch in case she tried anything funny.

That way, nobody would get hurt.

It had never once crossed Minjun’s mind that Sia might want to come, but as long as Junhwi and his sister agreed, he had no particular reason to object.

“Hm. All right, I’ll ask Junhwi about it separately once I get home later.”
“Mm-hm! Thank you!”

With that, the matter of Junhwi was settled, and the two of them went back to their tteokbokki.

“Oppa. There’s something I’ve been wanting to try while eating tteokbokki.”
“What is it?”
“A tteokbokki kiss.”

The last time they’d eaten tteokbokki together on a date, Sia had thought that couples could do with tteokbokki what they did in the biscuit-stick game¹. In a one-room, maybe, but out in public there were too many eyes for that much physical affection.

But now, in this lair, there was no one but the two of them.

“Shall we give it a go?”
“The rice cakes are a bit short for that kind of thing, though—”

“If anything, all the better.”

If that was his girlfriend’s dream, how hard could it be? Minjun picked out a decent-sized rice cake, held it between his teeth, and gave Sia a look. She closed the distance at once.

The fun of the biscuit-stick game supposedly lay in the sheer desperation of a man and woman still awkward with each other, trying to leave the stick as short as possible without quite letting their lips touch. None of that applied to these two lovebirds.

Sia pressed her lips straight to Minjun’s and bit into the rice cake he held. They felt the soft tteokbokki, and the soft touch of each other’s lips.

“My turn now.”

This time they swapped roles, and Sia took a rice cake between her lips. The moment she had it, Minjun bit into it as he kissed her, and once he’d bitten through, it was no longer the rice cake but each other’s lips the two of them were savoring.

However soft a rice cake might be, could it ever be as soft and sweet as the lips of the one you love?

When that first tteokbokki kiss was over, Sia took the next rice cake, and the instant she had it, Minjun went for her mouth without hesitation.

Just as another tteokbokki kiss ended, Minjun noticed tteokbokki sauce smeared on Sia’s lips. The foam kiss from a famous old drama² suddenly came to mind, and he kissed her sauce-smeared lips again. Sia’s face colored with shyness.

Not a word passed between them, but one look at each other’s faces was enough to know that the primal desire a man and a woman in love feel for each other had begun to stir between them.

“Oppa…”
“Sia.”

Heavy, lingering looks passed between them.

No more words than that were needed.