Sweet Tooth | k.nj. ✔

삼십일: live everyday like it's your last

Almost ten minutes had elapsed since Yooan arrived at the dining table, tapping his fingers against the teak table-top as he glimpsed every now and then to ensure that the monotonous ticking of the nearby wall clock had not actually ended up freezing time around him. His leg muscles continued to provide him spasms that were unasked-for, a tingling sensation simultaneously erupting in his chest. He tried to distract himself from the overbearing anxiety that hovered above his head, fiddling with the hydrangeas that were contained in a glass vase kept across him.

Yooan was nowhere close to being pacified anytime soon. Ideas kept on suggesting themselves to him, inhibition keen on invading his mind— but there was hardly anything that he could do in order to steer clear of them. He swept his hands across his face, fingers raking through his hair. A shallow sigh escaped from his mouth, its nature fleeting since the two incoming silhouettes had ended up making him land on his toes. Lips curling in a reluctant smile, his eyes met with his parents' one after the other.

"Yooan, what a pleasure to have you at the table today, my child!" Mr. Choi expressed his delight, unconsciously stirring his wife into bobbing her head in agreement with him. "How long has it been, since the three of us shared a meal together? I can't recall even if I try to. But it's still nice to see you finally sitting next to me. I've missed this."

"It makes me feel a little guilty now that you've put it like this," Yooan commented, his smile never fading. "We should always live like it's our last day. A bit too late to have learned so, I know, but better late than never." He swerved his gaze in his mother's direction, "Right, mom?"

"Sounds very wise coming from you." The father chimed in, at long last refraining from toying with the food on his plate and subsequently shoving a meatball into his mouth.

"It's not just a proverb, Dad. It's a fucking piece of brutal truth for you." Yooan snarled out of the blue, immediately earning a disapproving look from his mother— that he ultimately chose to ignore. "It's your last day of this life. And oh, your last meal too. So enjoy while you still can."

A smile had reappeared on Yooan's face, but it was definitely not along the lines of candid bliss. If anything, it gave a venomous reflection, grudging in every sense of the word. A shudder shot down Chungok's— her mother's— spine, eyes widening in disbelief upon hearing such words rolling off her son's tongue.

But before she could protest, let alone rebuke him, her husband coughed loudly, spitting in utter disgust whatever he had eaten till then. He then proceeded to gulp down an entire glass of water in a single go, probably to cool himself down, instantly clicking his tongue in disapproval once he was done drinking. Though for some reason, his son did not seem a tad fazed. Instead, he showed signs of extreme contentment. As if the motive that he had in his mind all along had already been achieved by him.

If the idiom the calm before the storm were to be personified, it would undoubtedly materialise as Yooan of that precise moment.

"I never specifically referred to food, Dad, did I? It was in the water that you just chugged down so impatiently. The ricin that I've dissolved in it won't be patient either, and before you'll even manage to grasp what's happening to you, your cells would've failed you by then and you'll choke to death— Oh, seems like it's begun to work." Yooan deflected from the ongoing explanation when his father suddenly collapsed on the floor, gripping his neck as the color of his face transformed into a deep shade of red.