x - accepting! - 💻 for me to use a line from my favorite TV show as a starter
“I wake up every morning in a bed that’s too small, drive my daughter to a school that’s too expensive, and then I go to work to a job for which I get paid too little, but on Pretzel Day? Well, I like Pretzel Day.” – Stanley, The Office (x)
The third Tuesday of the month is a day Kyungsoo looks forward to. Downtown, in a traditional Japanese restaurant crammed between a tiny pub and a CD store that sells only music from the 1990s, there is a surly old man who curses in his native tongue more than he tends to his customers in broken Korean, with hands mottled by oil burns and lips permanently curved into a distinct scowl. His clothes match his expression as well, wrinkled at almost every seam into deep frowns and weathered from time, from life and its abundance of adversity.
It’s on this evening that Kyungsoo manages to save just enough change for a single bowl of ochazuke, with a sprinkling of thinly sliced seaweed, sesame seeds, and rice crackers. ‘Simple meal for simple folk,’ the old man had grumbled one day, arms crossed and posture rigid. Kyungsoo had eaten the meal that day with such vigour that the old man asked rhetorically if the boy–more bones than skin–hadn’t eaten anything for weeks. And to his mortification, Kyungsoo’s stomach had let out the most awful noise he’d heard in almost his entire life, practically shrieking for just another scoop of rice. After a brief, unbearably awkward pause, the old man behind the counter had slammed a takeaway cup down before the starving boy, then re-crossed his arms with a mumble about ‘kids these days’ in his native language.
Since then, every third Tuesday of the month, Kyungsoo visits the tiny restaurant with a pocket full of change and a ravenous appetite. Those nights, he bids the old man goodbye in practised Japanese, along with a sincere word of thanks, and walks away with a happy stomach and a takeaway cup of ochazuke. Tonight is one of those pleasant nights, one highlighted by the gentle clink of extra change in his pocket. (Apparently, now he gets a frequent customer discount.) But it’s just as he rounds the next corner that he collides with a stranger, and everything after that seems to happen in slow motion. With wide eyes and a frantic heart, he witnesses the agonising descent of what would have been his meal for the next three days, and he’s left frozen with heartbreak as he stares at his wasted food, tears almost immediately welling in his eyes. Had it been any other dish, he would apologise for the mess that has undoubtedly dirtied the stranger’s clothes--but right now, looking down at the ruined ochazuke, he hasn’t a clue what to do. Right now, he just wants to cry.
