My Seoul Man

Chapter 15

You know it was the rich woman he'd told me about—Hae-Won was her name. Means "graceful garden."

And I didn't know about the graceful part, but she was a rare flower to be sure, this one.

Woman had legs up to her neck almost. Slender little body but the teeny tiny waist made her look almost curvy. Had the nerve to be wearing a white crop top and jeans that rode low.

I was a big fan of the white, wide-brimmed sun hat, though. Looked like she wore hats a lot, judging by the lily-white skin. Which set off the red lips, perfectly outlined eyes and jet black, hip-length hair...

Heavy sigh.

She gave me a friendlier smile than I expected. And pointed to her face and said, "Photo shoot. The full paint job today, unfortunately."

She had some kind of British-adjacent accent that was both snooty and kind of badass at the same time.

AJ did this cute little bow and said, "Kim Hae-Won, ladies and gentlemen—Vanity Fair, was it?"

She gave me a little bow and said, "Delighted to finally meet you," and then gave him a smirky little, "Don't bad mouth me while I'm gone," as she went strutting away, snatching the hat off her head to run fingers through her ridiculously shiny hair.

"I'm scared o' her," I admitted.

"People tend to be, unfortunately."

"Well, if they run the damned country, her and her people..."

"That's what this is all about. The boat. The houses and apartments can't sail out into the middle of the ocean when things get weird."

"Weird like...?"

He started walking me to another room—I couldn't keep up with the names of the rooms or anticipate which one we'd be going into next. I just let people drag me to them.

This one was like a dining room. With a long table in the middle that had all these little portable, gas grill things on it—two were more like skillets. AJ used those to make two really thin frittata-looking things that took up the whole pan.

And after sliding one on a plate for me, he filled up the skillets again from a blender full of liquified something or other.

"Okay, this is delicious," I told him. "What have we got here?"

"That's a scallion pancake and this is a potato jeon. I'm going to make several kinds of jeon, actually. From the veggies in the bowls there."

Jeon seemed to be all kinds of veggies and things dipped or mixed into a batter and fried up crisp and golden. Even leafy things like bok choy and Napa cabbage got battered and fried.

The dipping sauces were light, flavorful and so hot in some cases that I was sure their tongues had to be made of asbestos.

But I loved every single version. In fact, I told him, "My family would fight each other over this." Mouth still full of the scallion pancake thing.

"Well, you could easily do something like a jeon bar at those events you cater. Where people could pick the kind they wanted and get it fried up fresh, right?"

I sat back and gaped at him.

And he said, "Bothers me that you're facing that kind of competition when your mother was the best cook in town for decades. They're studying food like that now—there are shows on all the cable channels, even. You're more on trend than the others."

"We've got something really special for you, later," Hae-Won said, patting her now paintless face with her little slender fingers.

"So this...whole trip was about showing me ways to one-up the foodies?"