Ssssizzle.

I grilled thick-cut samgyeopsal over good-quality charcoal.

Clean fat runs off it in streams and it cooks toward something delicious.

A grill with the crisp-outside, tender-inside skill applied to it.

The smell is no joke.

Snip, snip.

I cut the long grilled strips into pieces the right size for eating.

“Tae-ung. Do you work part-time at a meat restaurant?”

“Sorry? Why?”

“Your grilling is perfect. And you’re cutting it exactly the right size. I can feel the years in this.”

I’ve come to a samgyeopsal place with Pro An Hyeonju — no, with noona.

She said I’d helped her out of an awkward situation, so the meal was on her.

A noona who buys you dinner is always right.

I have money of my own too.

But I couldn’t have bought this kind of easy occasion and this kind of air around it, which she made.

And after a thing like that, saying goodbye and leaving it there would have been a waste.

Noona sits quietly and watches me grill the meat.

The moment she came into my arms I was badly startled.

Something like being asleep and suddenly handed a sweet strawberry cake?

Until the scandal broke, noona was in the top three of the golfers for looks…… she was out of the ordinary.

And it wasn’t only her face.

Her figure, generally speaking, is unfairly good.

What noona left me with, I don’t think I’ll forget until I die.

Putting it into words is……

That’s how an occasion nobody had planned came about.

A samgyeopsal place down a Cheongdam back street.

The kind of samgyeopsal place tucked into a corner that only the people who know it know.

The sign outside is plain and the inside, with its striking oil-drum grills, is rather good.

Noona said she comes here often.

They grill the samgyeopsal over hardwood charcoal, she said, and the place has a name for it.

My meat-grilling skill goes back a fair way.

A rank-and-file conscript in the Special Forces, and always the most junior man at the company.

So the grilling was mine, obviously.

Whatever the period of my life, if there was a meat restaurant to go to, the tongs and the scissors were in my hands.

I’ve never worked in one, but I grilled well from the start.

I enjoyed watching somebody else eat what I’d grilled and enjoy it more than I enjoyed eating.

Samgyeopsal grilled a decent golden brown!

I picked up one piece with my chopsticks, gloss running all over it.

“Noona, here——”

The first mouthful of samgyeopsal is only properly itself without ssamjang or salt or bean powder.

The meat’s own taste needs savouring.

It’s Jirisan black pig belly, so there’s no smell on it.

This is why the place a thing comes from matters, whatever it is.

Beef or pork raised where the water is good and the air is good tastes good.

It’s Cheongdam prices, so it’s a bit steep, but that doesn’t matter.

“……”

Noona took the meat off the chopsticks, colouring as though she were shy of it.

It puts me in mind of dating the ex-girlfriend, for no good reason.

Gu Hyejin.

She was very fond of meat I’d grilled as well.

Something about the hand that grills it, apparently?

“……!!”

An Hyeonju-noona was chewing, and her eyes flew open in surprise.

“Good, isn’t it?”

“……what is this? Why does it taste different?”

She finished chewing and swallowed, and her eyes went rounder still.

That’s a genuinely startled face.

“A pinch each of love and care have been added. That’s the secret.”

“Is— is that so?”

The word love threw her slightly.

The face on her is adorable.

“How old are you this year, noona?”

“Why? Twenty-four.”

“That’s a good age to be.”

“Hey……. That isn’t yours to say, is it, Tae-ung?”

I’m a man who lived through his thirties first and came back.

Twenty-four, and anything you do is fine.

It’s an unfinished stretch of time, but I know it’s a genuinely good one.

“Life isn’t lived in numbers, it’s lived in depth. A fairly famous philosopher said that.”

“Well, I’ll grant you that.”

Her character is a good one too.

You can see it in the way she doesn’t argue, just nods and agrees.

It’s a brisk, light reaction, and hard to find in a woman with a figure that attractive.

This is why living in a world that takes its bearings from fixed ideas is hard.

People see a young, full figure and judge her by it, cut her to a pattern, decide she must know exactly how the world runs.

That’s the mistake older people make.

To my eyes, having lived through my thirties, Pro An Hyeonju was closer to a girl who doesn’t yet know how things work.

Her aura proved the innocence.

Clearer than the kids in my class.

There’s a clean light coming off Pro An Hyeonju that certain of them couldn’t be compared to at all.

“How about it, shall I mix you a good cold somaek?”

“Somaek? You know how to get the ratio right?”

“Wait and see. I hold a patent on the manufacturing technique.”

“You what??”

I mixed them to the point of tedium in working life.

I know the golden ratio that satisfies everyone who tastes it.

When I was a Special Forces private even the regiment commander was floored by it.

Would you believe I got leave out of it.

My own trademark somaek technique.

Whirl.

I used a snap of the wrist to spin the soju bottle and make a whirlpool inside it.

Soju that has mixed perfectly and found an even taste.

I filled the soju glass with soju first.

Then I filled the beer glass halfway with beer and poured the soju in.

Whirrrrl.

I shook the glass lightly and set it down in front of noona.

“Try it.”

“You?”

“I’m in school uniform. The owner’s been staring a hole through this table.”

The owner and the part-timer can’t take their eyes off us in case I so much as touch a drink.

I’m legally an adult, but I’m dressed in a uniform, so I held back.

Instead I filled a glass to the brim with cola.

What I wanted was to pour a cold somaek down my throat, but in a uniform that isn’t available to me.

“Thank you for today. I mean it.”

“Me too. I mean it!”

“Sorry?”

An Hyeonju-noona doesn’t take my meaning, and her eyes go round and ask it for her.

“Drink up~ Cheers!”

The glasses met and I took the cola down cold, in one.

“Khh!”

Noona lets out a short sound.

“Good, isn’t it?”

“What— what is this? The somaek is sweet!”

“The golden ratio is a trade secret.”

“I’m not lying, it’s really good!”

“That’s the know-how.”

“But…… don’t you have to study for the exams? Your school is brutally hard, isn’t it.”

We’re in the second-year first-semester midterms right now.

Noona knows that, obviously.

And yet there I was at a driving school.

And on top of that I’ve put off going home and I’m out on a samgyeopsal date with noona.

During exam week these are hard things to do unless you’re a madman.

Cheonghwa’s exam papers are known to be harder than the science schools’ or the foreign-language schools’.

Top tier in the country for difficulty of questions set.

“I told you exams are sat on the ability you already have. Don’t worry about it.”

“You haven’t given up, surely?”

“I’m scheduled to come first in the school on this written exam.”

“First? Pff.”

Noona couldn’t hold it and laughed outright.

“You don’t believe me?”

No, of course you don’t!

First at Cheonghwa High School means first in the country.

“If you actually come first, I’ll grant you a wish.”

“A wish?”

“Yes! One thing you want, exactly one!”

This noona is making a mistake.

“Swear to it.”

I put out my little finger, quick about it.

“Sworn~”

Noona hooks her little finger through mine, laughing through her nose.

Got you!

The air stayed warm between us and we got through the samgyeopsal and the fried rice after it.

“Urp.”

Noona has emptied a few somaek without any trouble.

The signal that she’s full made it out of her mouth.

Both cheeks have gone red as ripe persimmon and it looks well on her.

“Oh, what have I done……”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve completely overeaten. And I’m supposed to be managing my weight.”

She must have a perfect coke-bottle shape with firm muscle under it, and she’s worrying about putting on weight.

It isn’t a feeling the ex-girlfriend ever gave me.

Even like this she’s pretty.

“Do you know when a person is at their heaviest?”

I wanted to make a joke that suited a teenager.

But the reality was.

“When they eat as much as I have?”

“No.”

“Then……?”

“When they finally get some iron in them.”

“Some iron?? What?? Pff-hahahahahaha.”

It came out as a dad joke.

Fortunately noona burst out laughing with her hands together.

She let out enough fresh energy to blow off all the stress of what had happened today.

Watching her do it, a smile spread over my face.

The happiness virus is highly contagious.

“Tae-ung.”

“Yes.”

“What are you?”

“Sorry? What do you mean?”

“Why do you keep seeming like an oppa to me?”

It seems the years you’ve put in at living are a thing you can’t hide.

The body may be in high-schooler condition just now, but the mind is the thirty-something office worker version, with a fair share of the world’s weather behind it.

To me, a noona in her early twenties is at the level of a new hire just through the company door.

A newcomer who needs kind guidance and the sort of attention that helps a person settle.

Noona’s eyes met mine.

A slow flush.

Pro An Hyeonju-noona colours, and it doesn’t look like a joke.

She’s as pretty as a flower just now opening.

Her clean cheeks, warmed pink by a few drinks, look soft to the touch.

“Tae-ung…… I’ve got a favour to ask.”

“A favour?”

“What are you doing on Sunday?”

She’s asking about my weekend.

Is this — surely not — a formal request for a date?

I can see her hesitating slightly even as she says it.

“I’m free.”

“Really?”

Noona’s face brightens all the way.

Those round eyes are shining.

And then.

“In that case — do you want to go and have your first time?”

“What??”

(End of Chapter 25)