Chapter 9

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: A Trivial Sort
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The woman was surprisingly formidable. Even as Taeseo acted sullen, she said her piece.

“I’m truly sorry about what happened at the Seongwoo Diner today. I’ll lodge a strong complaint with the lady who runs the place. I’ll make sure she apologizes for making such a huge mistake with our tenant. Oh, you didn’t pay, did you?”

“I paid.”

“Then I’ll get your money back, too.”

“As if I care about a measly ten thousand won?”

As Taeseo waved his hand dismissively, the woman extended her hand with a gentle smile.

“I’m An Yuna.”

They say you can’t spit on a smiling face, and this was a perfect example.

“We’ll be neighbors for a while. I hope we can get along.”

He’d been planning to cuss her out, but her slender, white hand, extended toward him, left him speechless.

* * *

A savory aroma rose from the instant noodles An Yuna had left. She’d said something about sesame ramyun tasting good with canned tuna, and the smell of the well-cooked noodles, the MSG-laced broth, and the oily scent from the tuna can made his stomach rumble.

For Taeseo, making a meal out of only instant foods was a bizarre act. But his stomach, empty from vomiting, was clamoring for food.

“Maybe factory-made food is cleaner, anyway.”

Just then, the green HACCP certification mark on the lunch box caught his eye. As if giving in, Taeseo sat at the island counter and opened the lid of the cup noodles.

When he stirred the noodles with his chopsticks, the red broth seeped out from between the strands.

As he was about to lift the noodles to his mouth, Taeseo glanced at the can of tuna An Yuna had opened and dumped the chunks of fish into the ramyun.

The apricot-colored chunks mixed with the red broth. It wasn’t the most appetizing sight, but the smell was incredible.

He picked up some noodles and tuna together and put them in his mouth, a salty yet savory flavor spreading across his tongue. He didn’t usually like overcooked noodles, but the combination of the soft noodles and tuna was surprisingly good.

After a bite of noodles, he lifted the cup and slurped the broth. The hot broth traveled down his esophagus. It wasn’t a spicy ramyun, but on an empty stomach, it felt hearty and piquant.

The small cup of noodles wasn’t enough to satisfy a grown man’s hunger. After just a few bites, the food was gone, and his eyes fell on the lunch box sitting between the soda and tuna cans.

An Yuna had called the lunch box a "discard." The word literally meant something to be thrown away because it was unusable, but the food under the clear plastic lid looked perfectly neat.

He opened the plastic lid. The savory smell of rice rose from the microwaved lunch box.

Once the lid was off, his aversion to the food lessened. Taeseo picked up a piece of the yellow rolled omelet and put it in his mouth.

He scooped up some rice and mixed it into the ramyun broth, then took a bite of the mushroom bulgogi and the fried imitation crab meat.

It wasn’t as good as a freshly made meal from his family home, but it was enough to satisfy his hunger.

More importantly, perhaps because of the incident with the recycled kimchi at the Seongwoo Diner, he felt a sense of relief looking at the pre-packaged food.

He shoved food into his famished stomach. He’d threatened that she could eat the trash herself, but embarrassingly, when he finally put down his chopsticks, only empty containers remained.

Lastly, he opened the strawberry-flavored soda An Yuna had brought, washed it all down, and lay back down on the bed.

With a full stomach, his aimless anger seemed to subside a little. In the space the anger left behind, the image of An Yuna’s white hand extended toward him surfaced.

‘I’m An Yuna. We’ll be neighbors for a while. I hope we can get along.’

An Yuna was a woman who got on his nerves in many ways.

He had wanted to cuss her out for the absurdity of bringing a discarded lunch box to someone who was already furious about eating garbage-like food, but all he’d managed to say to her as she offered her hand was a single word.

‘Get lost.’

Even after hearing that, An Yuna’s expression didn’t change one bit.

‘I’ll send you a text to the number on the lease agreement. It seems like you’re new to this neighborhood, so if there’s anything you don’t know, or if you run into any trouble like you did today, please contact me.’

Watching An Yuna say her piece and walk out the door, even after he’d told her to get lost, Taeseo clicked his tongue.

Sometimes, looks could be deceiving. Among the celebrities who came to the Friday residence gatherings, there was one who looked as delicate as a rich man’s daughter but was rumored to have done all sorts of dirty work.

Maybe, like them, An Yuna had a pretty face but had been through thick and thin and was a sly fox on the inside.

If not that, then she was either used to hearing harsh words or was simply one of those spineless types.

Whatever sort she was, in Taeseo’s eyes, she was a trivial one.

* * *

His days in Seongwoo Township were monotonous. The day after arriving, he used "adjusting" as an excuse not to go to work and slept in late.

Perhaps the convenience store lunch box he’d eaten the day before was surprisingly high in calories; it hadn't digested well, so he’d downloaded a mobile game and played it all night.

It was the mobile version of an online game he used to play all night with his peers as a teenager, so it brought back old memories and was fun enough that he played until he was sick of it, which naturally led to him oversleeping.

When he woke up, it was around 3 PM. Even in Seoul, on days he didn't work, he would kill time by lazing around in bed, so the hours passed easily enough.

The problem was that as the afternoon wore on, he was starting to get hungry.

There were three options for a meal: go to the construction site canteen, go to *that* restaurant, or eat a convenience store lunch box.

Having never cooked before, making his own food was out of the question.

First, the construction site canteen was a no-go. Showing his face at the site just for a meal like some freeloader was unacceptable to Kwon Taeseo’s pride.

Going back to the restaurant that recycled food was unthinkable, and the only better alternative was a convenience store lunch box, but Taeseo had never eaten the same thing for two meals in a row.

“Ha, this is fucking ridiculous.”

Lying in bed, he turned on his phone. There were a few push notifications from his mobile game and a text from his driver.

[I've parked the car in the lot. You were sleeping, so I couldn't give you the key. I left it at the site office instead.]

Taeseo had told him to bring his personal car, a Porsche. The sedan he used for work had a solid feel, but it wasn't any fun to drive.

Above all, he’d bought the car to show off on his commute; it was five times more expensive than the company car of his older brother, a Senior Managing Director at Namgyeong Development, the parent company of Namgyeong Group.

“No way I'm driving a car like this on these rough roads.”

Just as there was TPO for clothes, Taeseo's philosophy was that the same applied to cars.

Another of his missed texts was from An Yuna.

[This is An Yuna. If you need help with anything, please contact me at this number.]

Help with anything, huh.

In fact, he needed help right now. He had to solve his meal situation, and since all the options were unsatisfactory, An Yuna would have to present a solution for her picky tenant.

[Anywhere around here deliver?]

He sent the text, but An Yuna neither read it nor replied.

It felt as if she were giving him a taste of his own medicine for not checking his texts all night, but since he'd run into her anyway if he went down to the first-floor convenience store, he didn't think much of it.

Getting up late, Taeseo opened the window, displeased with the stuffy indoor air from the air conditioner that had been running all night. Instantly, a clamor of voices rushed in.

“Whoa, what’s with that Porsche?”

“I dunno. Some guy dropped it off this afternoon.”

“A guy? What guy?”

“He parked it and walked over to the golf course construction site.”

“What was the name of the company building the golf course? Namgyeong? Is he from there?”

“Looks like it.”

They were talking about Taeseo’s car, parked in front of the convenience store. The same neighborhood lowlifes he’d seen yesterday were gathered again at the parasol table in front of the store.

The acrid smoke from the cigarettes they were chain-smoking wafted in through the window.

Taeseo took a cigarette from the pack he’d tossed carelessly on the kitchen sink and lit it. Even as he puffed out white smoke, the lowlifes' voices continued to drift in.

“Whoa, damn. Look how shiny that thing is. If you drove a car like that, you’d have women lining up.”

“The only place you’d drive that thing is to the rice paddies.”

“If you could afford a car like that, why would you be rotting in a shithole village like this? You’d leave for Seoul in a heartbeat.”

Taeseo flicked his cigarette ash into an empty cup and snorted. They were making such a fuss over a single car; they’d be shocked to see him driving it.

He suddenly wondered if that woman, An Yuna, would be surprised too.

“Hey, how come you’re watching the store today?”

“Yuna’s shift changed starting today.”

A familiar name came from the lowlifes’ mouths.

Since they called her Yuna, he figured they were talking about that An Yuna woman.

Hearing her shift had changed, it seemed she worked another job besides manning the convenience store counter.

“So Yuna works the evening shift?”

“Yeah. From 7.”

“Guess I’ll come buy my cigarettes then.”

Taeseo scoffed. From the moment he’d seen An Yuna at the convenience store counter, he’d figured the local lowlifes wouldn’t leave her alone. As expected, whether in Seoul or here, men never left a pretty woman in peace.

“What’s the point of just buying cigarettes all the time? Just go for it and nail her already.”

“You gotta get her drunk to do that. You set the stage.”

“Ugh, you idiot. How are you gonna get a girl who doesn’t drink to drink?”

“Ah, shit. Isn’t there any way to get a piece? She’s getting hotter and hotter, isn’t she? I get a hard-on every time I see her.”

Fucking morons. He sneered and dropped his finished cigarette into the empty cup.

With a sizzle, the cigarette filter soaked up water. As he stood up to put the cup in the sink, the phone on his bed vibrated.

[An Yuna]

A text came from An Yuna.