A story featuring our beloved #bboing couple as SIG and Youngie.
What would happen if a commitment phobe meets and falls in love with someone whose unique condition renders her the perfect candidate for a one night only jaunt?
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As a result of a he...
This chapter is quite long so please find a comfortable chair. There was a lot to unpack so please bear with me. Just think of it as my way of making it up to you for making you wait for a month between updates. 😅
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Growing up in a commodious home developed a tendency in SIG to favor larger spaces whenever he had to choose a venue for anything. The same thing applied to when he looked for his first apartment when he moved out to pursue his career, and it carried on to when he settled on buying the home he had now. He liked the comfort of being boundless, of being able to move freely as opposed to the constraints of cramped spaces. So when he did his ocular and saw the stretch of the entire unit from the master's bedroom to the adjoining kitchen, he fell in love with the suite in an instant.
How come the short distance from the bottom of the stairs to the kitchen of the cottage seemed too far now? Every step he took to get to the kitchen was heavy, perhaps because each of them was a step farther away from Youngie.
But this was what she needed and as for him, while it made him twist in pain, he knew he needed it, too.
They didn't get to eat lunch after what happened at the beach hut and he had started to get worried that Youngie might be starving by now as it was almost sundown. So he decided to make dinner even if they would have to have their meals apart.
So he put on the apron he found in one of the kitchen drawers and started to prepare what he needed to make dakjuk - the chicken porridge that Mrs. Kang served him when he came to visit the food truck one time while running a fever. He had never had chicken porridge before that incident, and he was amazed at how quickly it made him feel better. Fortunately, Tae Oh learned the recipe and taught him how to make the healing porridge when they still lived together in his parents' house. Even now as an adult, he still couldn't get through even a low grade fever without the help of dakjuk.
He hoped that it could make Youngie feel better, too, like it did to him every time he fell ill.
He started with washing some rice in a bowl under the tap and the water made him shiver a little as he stirred the grains. He then poured the starchy water out and filled the bowl up a second time. But instead of the grains, the sight of the clear liquid quickly turning cloudy with starch again stirred him up with a smarting realization - that what he and Youngie once had, had changed just as quickly as this rice water fogged.
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It was always Youngie's task to cook rice whenever they made their meals together. Now he moved around the kitchen alone, and this mundane task had become a stark reminder of what he was so terrified he had already lost.
After the third rinse, he stared blankly at the still slightly foggy water filling up the bowl again. He didn't notice until the water spilled over and caught the cuff of his pullover shirt, pulling him back to reality from inside his head. He quickly turned the tap off and put the bowl on the countertop.
