Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Reliable and Capable, Envious

The umami, the meat’s juices, and the sweet taste of the crunchy onion were about to explode in perfect harmony inside the mouths of the two foreign man and woman.

“Wow! Oh my gosh!!”

“This is heaven!”

The two shook their shoulders and, without anyone going first, began slurping the noodles.

Chwop chwop chwop!

Hururuk! Hururuk!

The expressions of the parents who had been blankly watching that gluttonous mukbang gradually changed strangely.

“...”

“...”

With faces mixed with doubt and shock, the parents simultaneously turned their heads as if by agreement and looked back at the son.

Jin Myeong, as if having no interest at all in the appearance of the two foreigners, was only piercingly looking into the smartphone screen with the usual blank and indifferent face.

“Honey··· is it really that delicious?”

“Right··· the smell does strangely pull people strongly···”

In the end, the two who couldn’t hold back curiosity entered the kitchen.

A little jajang sauce was stuck to the bottom of the wok.

Soon the two, as if by agreement, scooped the chunjang sauce with a spoon and tasted it.

And...

“······!!!”

In an instant, the parents’ two eyes simultaneously widened as if they would pop out from the shock.

“Th, this is what on earth···”

The moment it touched the tip of the tongue, a pleasant sweet taste spread softly, and a strong fire aroma followed behind it.

Such a fantastic flavor...

In an instant, the memory of the little kid days from decades ago that had been forgotten was being summoned.

Children’s Day.

The bustling neighborhood Chinese restaurant he had followed tightly holding his parents’ hands.

The pure taste of those days when he had smiled happily as if he owned the world while smearing lots of black chunjang around his mouth.

It was making him recall the memories of that childhood with no worries or anxieties at all.

“Honey··· this···”

“How on earth can it taste like this···”

They looked at each other with surprised eyes.

At that time in the living room.

“Fantastic!”

The foreign couple who had scraped even the bottom of the bowls clean continuously raised their thumbs and stood up from their seats.

They poured out incomprehensible English like a machine gun and admired with ecstatic faces, then soon the man took out one 50,000 won bill from his wallet and held it out.

“Since it’s two bowls of jajangmyeon, 14,000 won······ I’ll give the change!”

But the foreign couple freaked out and waved both hands violently.

“No, no! Keep the change!”

“For chef!”

The woman said it was for the chef and smiled brightly toward the father.

“No, what kind of tip do you give so crudely much after eating jajangmyeon! Just wait a moment!”

When the father with a flustered face somehow tried to prepare the change, the two stepped far back so as not to receive the money and giggled.

“Masisseoyo! Masisseoyo!”

Saying that, they quickly ran out of the shop.

With an excited appearance as if they had experienced something fun.

“...”

“...”

The father stood awkwardly holding the change in his hand.

The mother looked at the father with a bewildered face.

“Ho, honey······ just now, did they leave all the change as tip?”

“It, it seems so?”

The father let out a hollow laugh with a dejected face.

In that way the two blankly looked only at each other’s faces for a long while.

And soon the two approached Jin Myeong who was still only looking into the smartphone screen.

“Ji, Jin-myeong······.”

The mother carefully opened her mouth.

“You, how on earth, when did you learn this kind of cooking······?”

Jin Myeong took his gaze off the smartphone and looked up at the parents.

“...”

He couldn’t explain the previous life saying he was the number one chef under heaven.

Jin Myeong recalled the fact that the original owner of this body was originally a child of few words who sometimes did absurd actions others couldn’t understand.

“I like cooking······.”

At those words, the mother’s eyes reddened at once.

“Is, is that so···?”

She had always thought he was spending the days blankly looking at the phone alone.

But had he been growing a dream alone without them knowing?

“Honey, our Jin-myeong seems to be a cooking genius. Looking at him making that kind of taste without ever learning once”

“Ri, right. Haha...”

The father let out a hollow laugh with a dazed face.

But soon wrinkles formed on the father’s brow.

“But, even so, making our Jin-myeong keep working in that dangerous kitchen is···”

At those words, the mother’s expression also darkened.

“Right. What if he gets burned by chance. He was using the knife too roughly too···”

The parents were moved by the son’s tremendous talent but on the other hand couldn’t help worrying.

At that time, Jin Myeong who had been quietly listening to the two’s conversation opened his mouth.

“I, will cook.”

At the expression he didn’t usually use, the mother was startled and asked.

“Really······ do you really want to?”

“I want to.”

“...”

“...”

At that answer, the parents could no longer say anything and only looked at each other’s faces.

*

Deep night when everyone was asleep.

Jin Myeong, same as the previous day, stood up from his seat and quietly went outside the restaurant.

The low mountain behind the restaurant where darkness was thickly laid.

Jin Myeong climbed to the mountain peak while breathing short breaths and sat cross-legged.

He tightly closed his eyes and quietly circulated qi.

Perhaps because it was the second training, the flow of qi was much smoother than yesterday.

The blocked meridians opened little by little and weak strength began to circulate in the bones and muscles.

After finishing several hours of deep training like that, Jin Myeong descended the mountain in the early dawn leading a body that had become much lighter than yesterday.

When he carefully entered the room, he faced the mother who had just woken from sleep and was putting on her outerwear.

“Oh my, Jin-myeong. Did you go pee again?”

“...”

“Mom is going to the dawn market now to buy ingredients... want to go together?”

Ingredients?

Curiosity arose.

“...”

Jin Myeong nodded silently.

*

Early dawn.

The seafood market and agricultural wholesale market.

“Make way! Cart passing! Careful there! Careful!”

A rattling iron handcart passed by narrowly like acrobatics through the narrow and slippery passage.

“Hey hey! Goods are good! Come and see first!”

“Ahta boss! This is the best one from today’s auction! 30,000 won, 30,000 won!”

“What is there to see! The goods are the best, the best!”

“Yai shit! It’s all the same even if you look elsewhere!”

Merchants bargained while shoving bundles of bills.

Retailers and restaurant owners who came to buy goods dug through the goods with eyes blazing to lower the unit price even a little.

“Today’s goods are bad?”

“Why is this like this? Today it’s okay I said!”

“Discount it!”

“Aei shit, it’s a mood! I’ll take off 8,000 won!”

The raw vitality where money and goods continuously came and went from all sides.

“...”

But in such an atmosphere, the mother was flustered and wandering with a greatly shrunken appearance.

A situation where they might have to close the door in a few days anyway.

Of course Jin-myeong had sold jajangmyeon with unexpected talent, but even so the situation was already too bad to continue the shop.

Moreover, with the current circumstances, it wasn’t a situation to properly buy ingredients either.

So she only loitered around the secluded street stalls.

At that time, a merchant with a bushy beard kicked the vegetable net rolling on the floor with his foot and shouted toward her.

“Ajumma! This just came up from the field this dawn! Even if it’s ugly, the taste is the same! I’ll sell it cheap so take one net!”

“Ah, yes···”

The mother hesitated and looked down inside the net.

More than half were ones with black rotten outer skins and wrinkled from moisture loss.

Ingredients she would have ignored normally.

But she still couldn’t readily make a decision.

“Ahta, madam! Why are you staring so piercingly? Only the outer skin is a bit soft, if you peel it the inside is firm I say!”

“No, even so this··· when I touch it the moisture is all gone and it’s crumbly, and the ones laid below seem half rotten to the inside...”

“Aigo, frustrating. Really! Roughly slice it and fry it hard and season it and that’s it. Where can you get this amount at this price now! Since it’s my first sale I’m not even taking cost and giving it for free. Are you buying or not? If not buying go elsewhere!”

The merchant’s forceful pushing momentum.

In a situation where even the business capital was precarious, she didn’t even have the nerve to look around other stalls more.

In the end the mother let out a short sigh as if resigned and hesitantly stretched her hand toward that large and cheap rotten onion net.

Tak.

At that moment, Jin Myeong who had been standing quietly beside lightly grabbed the mother’s wrist with an indifferent motion.

“······?”

When the mother turned her head in surprise, Jin Myeong silently shook his head and removed the mother’s hand from the onion net.

Jin Myeong could never tolerate garbage-like ingredients being used in the kitchen.

Jin Myeong began scanning the merchant’s stall with calm eyes himself.

Jin Myeong didn’t even give a glance to the vegetables the merchant had nicely stacked in the front row of the stall.

Rather, the place his steps headed was the secluded floor of the shop.

Dirt-covered onions stacked layer upon layer haphazardly in nets.

Jin Myeong squatted in front of them, forcibly opened the mouth of the net, and stuck his bare hand in to roughly dig inside.

Seeing that, the merchant’s brow crumpled sharply.

“Hey young man! What are you doing!”

The merchant yelled in a nervous voice.

“What are you digging without knowing anything?! If you’re going to do that don’t buy!”

“So, sorry. Boss. Our kid doesn’t know well······ Jin-myeong, don’t do that.”

The mother tried to urgently pull Jin Myeong’s arm.

But Jin Myeong paid no mind even to the mother’s dissuasion.

He was immersed only in checking the state of the ingredients.

And soon he ghost-like sorted out only the onions with full insides from within the net.

The cabbage was the same.

He picked only the ones with deep and clear blue light on the outer leaves and well-held moisture and placed them one by one on the stall.

“No, like that repeatedly... huh??”

The merchant paused for a moment.

At first he had been angry at the young fellow digging everything up.

But his eyes widened while examining the onions and cabbages Jin Myeong had sorted.

The merchant looked back at the mother while sticking out his tongue with a surprised face.

“Ajumma, is this young man your son?”

“Yes, yes··· he’s my son··· really sorry.”

The mother apologized in a voice crawling in thinking the son had done something rude.

Then the merchant suddenly burst out laughing.

“What is there to be sorry about!”

The merchant made a face truly impressed.

“The young fellow knows how to properly look at goods. He ghost-like picked only the best ones!”

“...”

At the merchant’s praise, the mother was momentarily blank.

She had received sympathetic gazes from people all her life, but this kind of praise was something she was experiencing for the first time in her life.

“Really reliable. The son is this reliable and capable. Very envious, envious!”

At the merchant’s nonsense saying he was envious while tapping Jin Myeong’s back, something hot surged up from one corner of the mother’s chest.

“Ah··· yes, yes. Our son······ is a bit capable.”

The mother smiled brightly while boasting about the son.

However Jin Myeong only looked for the next ingredient with an indifferent expression even at such praise.

Coming out of the vegetable wholesale and heading to was the livestock alley.

Same as when selecting vegetables, Jin Myeong immediately sorted out good-condition pork.

“Hehe, the young person knows how to look at meat!”

To the extent the butcher owner stuck out his tongue and admired.

Up to here it was good.

The problem was right after that.

“We, our business is really not going well. Just this one geun······ no, only half a geun please slice.”

The mother tried to order only a very small amount.

But Jin Myeong shook his head.

Then he pointed at the entire large pork lump displayed and insisted.

“This!”

“Ji, Jin-myeong!”

The mother was flustered but in the end couldn’t break the son’s stubbornness and paid the merchants.

A moment later.

“Honey!”

The old mini van the father drove stopped at the corner of the market.

The father who got out of the car and opened the trunk was startled seeing the ingredient boxes piled on the floor.

“No, what is all this? Why so much?”

When the father asked as if dumbfounded, the mother made an awkward smile and glanced at Jin Myeong.

“Jin-myeong······ insisted like that today of all days. Said we have to buy all this. Maybe he was in a good mood from receiving lots of praise from the vegetable shop and meat shop bosses for ghost-like picking good ingredients...”

At the mother’s words, the father burst out a good-natured laugh, rolled up his sleeves, and began loading the mountain-like boxes into the trunk flashily.

“What, whatever! Our Jin-myeong is trying like that with determination, so it’s fine! If there’s leftover we can all eat it, right? Hahaha!”

Watching the husband who passed it over so heartily, the mother sighed.

“...”

But the mother’s gaze headed toward Jin Myeong who was silently loading the luggage.

And soon a faint smile spread on the corner of her mouth.

‘Still··· it’s the first time in his life I’ve seen our Jin-myeong having passion for something.’

Even if they couldn’t sell all those many ingredients and ended up dumping everything into the trash a few days later, she thought it didn’t matter.

Wasn’t it a miraculous day when the son showed his will for the first time and even received praise from others saying he was amazing.

Thinking of it as paying the price of that emotion and joy, the ingredient cost didn’t feel wasteful.

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