Tatatak tatak tatatatak.

A brisk drum harmony being made on a chopping board.

The skill with the knife is no joke.

He is only cutting one stalk of spring onion, and there is something different about it.

Bubble-bubble bubble-bubble.

The water in the pot is boiling.

There are two pots with water boiling in them.

The way he keeps house……

It was the first time Seo Dahui had been inside another person’s home on the same floor area as her own.

It was not showy in any way that caught the eye.

What struck her was that the quality of the things he has is high enough to show an eye out of the ordinary behind them.

From the slippers set at the entrance to every piece of furniture, and the kitchen things on top of that.

Most of them are expensive articles Seo Dahui knows only by name.

She envied a life as free as this.

Her own agency’s management of her is severe.

When she began to get popular, they arranged accommodation for her at the Latte Signiel, as a management matter.

At first, of course, it was wonderful.

She thought her agency DMC had recognised her.

She had come up from the provinces and made her life in Seoul.

She went to university in Seoul and lived ordinarily.

When she was small her dream was to be a teacher.

She got through the English education department at a teachers’ college without trouble and went after the dream.

She had never once dreamed of being a singer.

She sang better than most people, that was all.

Singing well alone, in an entertainment world where idol groups are the flow of things, made dreaming of being a solo singer nonsense she could not have dared.

She got compliments on her looks now and then, and even so she did not fit an idol’s visual.

Her becoming a singer came by chance.

It was through meeting somebody from the trade at a karaoke place in Hongdae she went to occasionally.

It was when the boom in women singer-songwriters was rising.

A management man looking for a woman singer with the voice and the atmosphere to back it up found Seo Dahui.

Seo Dahui, in the middle of preparing for the teacher appointment examination, was tempted.

Ten million won on signing alone.

They promised accommodation and support for every cost of working.

Thinking about it now, the contract went through with her knowing nothing.

Three years passed that way.

The popularity of singer-songwriters slowed.

The living conditions the company promised at first grew steadily worse.

Now her existence itself is fading inside the agency.

She was not even allotted a manager to handle her schedule.

The small settlements she got melted away entirely on private lessons and living costs.

With nobody to tell it to, she got through her days in tears and just held on with part-time work.

Her circumstances pushed her, and one day a song of her own broke out as a hit.

It was a video channel the company had opened to promote a track.

She learned composition and lyric writing through that chance.

Seo Dahui’s hidden musical talent was outstanding.

A song with her own troubles melted down into it took hold.

The hot love and the parting of a green time when she knew nothing, and tears, and how she felt about the circumstances she was in now, all of it.

On a day when the long rains were falling, a well-known channel mentioned Seo Dahui’s song.

It suited the rain and the popularity shot straight up.

It was an unreleased song of her own, so there was no track to buy.

What went through the roof instead was Seo Dahui’s channel.

The company, learning of it late, rushed into producing a recording.

But the timing was a pity.

While they went back and forth on it inside a large agency’s structure, the rainy season passed and the popularity wilted.

It did not suit a summer with the real heat starting at all.

It did at least settle inside the top ten of several charts.

Straight after that change Seo Dahui came under the agency’s management again.

She put out songs of her own one after another, several drew notice at once, and she made her name steadily.

In the middle of that the contract’s expiry came round.

Moving her accommodation to the Signiel was at that point.

It was the method the agency chose to soothe Seo Dahui and extend the contract.

The trouble is that the cost of the housing was deducted from her personal earnings as well.

It is the all-costs deduction clause of the common bad contract.

Seo Dahui, running into a huge wall again, bore every kind of humiliation and tried to get out of the agency.

The amount settled to her last month was one million three hundred thousand won.

Track sales are steady, and even so the company’s settlements are always mean.

Against that, they offered a hundred million as the signing fee for a new contract.

And they said they would adjust the revenue split to an ordinary level too.

Seo Dahui was at a point where every last scrap of feeling for her agency had fallen away.

Worn down in her mind by working as a singer under contract, she carefully refused to re-sign.

That was when they turned.

After it the company’s pressure came on in earnest.

They went into a forced diet as a condition of releasing new songs.

For a woman who eats little to begin with, they proposed one steamed egg and one small plate of salad a day.

An amount a child would find short for a single meal.

They had her manager clear everything edible out of the refrigerator.

He moved with her from early morning until eleven at night, controlling her meals and how far she could go.

She cannot use her own phone as she pleases either.

The reason is that one day her manager put a hand on it and it became something she could not trust.

Every report of everything she did was going to the company in real time through the manager.

Lately it has come to controlling contact not only with friends but with her family.

For Seo Dahui, breathing was getting harder as it went on.

Collapsing at the gym a few days ago was because she had eaten far too little.

And she worked an event afterwards.

Today too she bore it and bore it and then came outside.

She came out through her door because she felt she would starve to death indoors.

But she cannot go down to the concierge.

The breath of a company that size reaches even there.

And then she met a man in front of the lift.

The resident who had helped her.

The man’s name is Ha Tae-ung.

The look of that man watching her with his deep eyes was not unpleasant.

He recognised her as FURIA, Seo Dahui.

He wanted to help, so, ashamed of it, she asked for ramyeon.

He led her into his own home without even asking why.

Swish-swish-swish.

He broke two eggs each into an empty container and beat them.

Rolled omelette?

Sitting on a chair at the table and watching it, Seo Dahui fell into imagining one thing and another.

Sss-shhh.

Ha Tae-ung, tipping the soup powder and the dried vegetables into the boiled pot together.

The noodles went in last.

I’m hungry……

The smell of ramyeon broth spread all at once and her appetite came right up.

Torture, for a Seo Dahui on the edge of starving.

Bubble-bubble.

Nothing reached her ears but the sound of the ramyeon boiling.

Sliiide.

Ha Tae-ung, dropping the egg into the boiling broth.

“……??”

It was different from the style she usually eats.

Inside her mouth the saliva went down in gulps.

A few short minutes were far too long.

Perhaps three minutes went by.

He put the spring onion he had cut at the start on as a garnish.

And served it carefully into a milk-white ramyeon bowl.

“Chonggak kimchi. Do you like it?”

“Yes!”

“It’s ripe. Is that all right?”

“It’s good!!”

Seo Dahui called it out, excited.

Ripe chonggak kimchi with ramyeon is the national rule.

Her mouth filled with saliva.

Grinning slowly, Ha Tae-ung opened the refrigerator, brought out the kimchi and put it on a plate.

Tak.

Ramyeon and kimchi, set out in front of Seo Dahui.

“…… Swallow.”

Seo Dahui swallowed the saliva filling her mouth.

In the meantime Ha Tae-ung had brought his own bowl and sat down opposite.

“Do you mind if I eat with you?”

“O— of course not.”

A situation with the guest and the host reversed.

Seo Dahui, embarrassed, said it with her face reddening.

She will be thirty before long.

Had she been an idol it is well past the age for retiring.

Working solo as a singer-songwriter was what let her hold out even this far.

“Please eat.”

At the fineness of a man who uses a chopstick rest for a single pair of chopsticks, Seo Dahui was inwardly impressed.

…… Is he showing off?

It does not seem to be that.

It is natural, an action worn into the body like a habit.

She had a feeling of something particular, unlike ordinary people and impossible to imitate.

If it had to be put into words…… something like breeding?

He undid the top two buttons and began to eat the ramyeon.

There is a bearing even in the way he handles the chopsticks.

Seo Dahui, who was hungry and had wanted to fall on it, grew careful along with him.

Slurp. Slurp.

A hunger that would not be settled by pulling the noodles in a mouthful at a time.

Because of the man sitting opposite, she wound the noodles into her mouth carefully as well.

Crunch.

Chonggak kimchi she wanted to bite a whole mouthful of.

Seo Dahui, biting off only the very end of it, most demurely.

An atmosphere as though they were facing a French set menu over ramyeon.

I’m happy……

Which made it better still.

It is the first time she has sat and eaten ramyeon a man has cooked for her.

She did not want to bolt it down greedily, the way she does eating alone.

Tak!

Just then the man sets his chopsticks down.

“……??”

Seo Dahui, swallowing ramyeon, froze where she was.

By the look of him there is something he wants to say.

“Dahui.”

“Yes??”

“Is there nothing else you need?”

“Yes??”

“Over there……”

Seo Dahui turned her head at the man’s nod and looked.

Swallow!

(End of Chapter 78)