#mpg:accepted

먹고 나면 아주 조금이라도 행복해지는 요리를 만들자

[ 달팽이 식당 中 ]

/

closed.

by the time han lands in incheon, eight plates have cracked and three glasses have shattered. he knows it would’ve broken his sister’s heart, the way it always would whenever he’d bring souvenirs and visit, so he tries to remain thankful for even the smallest of victories. at least she wouldn’t have to cry over broken china anymore. she would never need to cry again.

the restaurant is small. long, wooden tables, an open kitchen along the back. there are dried flowers in the corner and the blue-green tiles behind the stove range look even softer in the evening.

i want it to look like rinco’s restaurant.

the film? but why? you won’t even be able to fit twenty people in here—

because the food she made was magic, han. she didn’t need a fancy menu or michelin stars. all she needed was one table and one guest. her food could heal.

the film had fed: a lonely, abandoned divorcee. a teenage girl, pining after her first love. a widow who had been unable to take off her mourning gown for over twenty years. each of them had been fed and, as his sister had explained, healed. there, in rinco’s kitchen, with its single table, no menu on the wall. just a guest with a hopeless hunger and a meal cooked just for them.

their wishes came true, after eating there. i know it’s fiction and i know my restaurant isn’t magic but — isn’t that the dream, han? i just want… i just want someone to eat my food and if, somehow or some way, it makes them even the smallest bit happier then i think i’ve done a good job, yeah? i just want to be able to cook something and make someone happy. that’s all.

han pours himself a glass of soju at his sister’s favorite table and wonders, alone, what dish would heal him now.

/

open.

@wolrestaurant

wol is back open for business. we thank all of our loyal patrons for the patience, love, and understanding shown over this last month. chef kang sol will be missed, but her dream will live on. let us eat and be happy.

1,201 likes   |  27 comments

/

bare bones.

kang han, one of the youngest korean chefs to ever receive a michelin star, abandons what could’ve been a budding legacy in the food capital of the world. thousands of miles away, his sister passes and leaves behind her “one-table, open-kitchen” concept restaurant in mapo-gu to his name.

han’s love for food had started with his sister. when he had been drowning in academia and parental expectations, it had been sol who had helped him discover his food dream. it had been sol who had encouraged him to become a chef. / isn’t it only fitting, then, that he keep her restaurant open and carry out the rest of her dream, too?

sol had cooked to heal. han prays to do the same.

(to cook or to heal? both, really. both, always.)

INFJ

Capricorn sun, Libra moon, Scorpio rising.

An only child.

His mother abandoned him and his father when he was barely five. His father for good reason; his short temper, combined with a penchant for whiskey, proved to be nasty mix, one that left scars and promises of rehabilitation that never came to fruition.

Jinseok couldn’t understand why she left him with the man, to deal with aftermath that came in the form of cleaning up vomit and broken bottles off the floors of their shithole apartment.

That is, until he witnessed her on the streets of Hongdae holding onto the arm of a man about three times older than his father—and about a hundred times richer—and she was happy.

He has mommy issues (obviously).

Would stay at his grandparent’s home as much as possible.

His grandfather, having been a part of a band much like wuju cowboy, would teach him the bass, while his grandmother shared her skills in sculpting and various other art mediums.

They were the small sliver of happiness Jinseok clung to.

Inherited his father’s short temper, smashing failed pottery pieces usually helps.

His poor eyesight he got from his mother. Replies on contacts most of the time, though he prefers glasses when at home or in studio.

Sculpting is his primary occupation, taking commissions every once in a while and selling other pieces (paintings, pottery pieces) in a small shop located in Mapo-gu.

Can’t cook for the life of him, so he purchases a large meal at the start of every week that lasts him until the following week.

Can be wary of others but feels the most comfortable with his band mates.

Avoids alcohol as much as possible, but he’ll drink if the occasion calls for it.

Became the bassist for Wuju Cowboy after seeing an ad for an opening at the local bar. He has an average singing voice, which he figured helped.

Has a cat named Michelangelo (Angelo for short, of course), purely because it was the subject of a book he had been reading once he came across the kitten and he could think of nothing else.

Gets most of his musical influences from classic rock artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Doors, and The Smiths, but loves RnB of all eras.

Mostly keeps to himself, quiet in nature.

Purposely softens his tone when he speaks so he appears nothing like his father.

He could talk your ear off about films, though—mostly horror, but he appreciates most genres.

He thinks cigarettes are a nasty habit, but it’s hard for him to stop. He can occasionally be seen outside his shop, smoking a cig when his habit gets the best of him.

( THE END )

figuratively, yoona’s name is scrawled on every shooting star that’s ever sailed the night sky.

literally, out in the countryside, situated far away from the evils of pollution and corporate entities, it’s easy to tell when the sky is falling— and as a babe, she’d use this to her advantage, wishing (begging) for anything but to be surrounded by dirt roads and rice paddies that seem to stretch on for miles and miles.

she discovers through mainstream media that the city has a place for girls like her. however, having dreams and ambition means fighting against traditions and expectations that are biologically wired in the seo women. so, it takes a few years of struggling through humdrum and routine for yoona to finally open up about her desires, and what she hopes to achieve by the end of high school.

it all unfolds one summer afternoon, when the women in her family gather in their greenhouse to prune and cut away at foliage.

yoona has her fingers between rose thorns, carefully discarding all prickly points so she could prep the flowers for the family’s all-purpose plant shop. they’re supposed to go out for dinner later to celebrate another season of good business, but thoughts of wanting more than this begin to consume her, eventually drowning out the korean folk playing softly in the background. as she diligently works her way down the stems, she breaks it to her mother and her grandmother slowly, choosing each word carefully as to not offend them.

“i want to move to seoul,” she finalizes. and when her statement ends, the song slows into a gentle fade, and then an abrupt radio silence that surprises her into pricking herself.

what follows that night is disappointment, but mostly heartbreak. it holds weight in years of wasted tutelage, along with the sad reality that their traditions will now cease to exist. she knows more than anyone that in the process of claiming the rights to her life, she’s also done more harm than good.

( THE BEGINNING )

six months and countless arguments later, she makes the big move to seoul. whatever guilt that had gnawed at her before had festered into something more fiery: good for the career but bad for the soul. she goes and grows through shady landlords and rocky homes, while juggling the shit that comes with being a creative, such as scams and having to budget for months at a time.

luckily for yoona, she has a daring personality and the resourcefulness to give her just the edge she needs to make it out alive. (thanks, small town living!)

she finally lands herself a permanent position as a photo editor a few years later, going from a country pauper to a metropolitan princess. long gone is the habit of wishing upon shooting stars; she now has the ability to make her dreams come true without the help of cosmic intervention.

He remembers a shining in the water. How it caught the light of the sun, beckoning him closer. The stories Eomma told him about long-dead kings having lost their treasures to the gods of the sea. Appa taking him treasure-hunting along the shore, digging up seashells and other trinkets that had been buried in the sand. Wanting nothing more than to find his own precious gem.

The rest is all a blur.

—

The water is never the same after that.

While the local kids splash and play along the shore, Jiho’s feet remain firmly planted in the white sand where it is safe.

His friends are puzzled by the way his body locks up tight at the sight of the ocean. At first, they think he’s joking when he digs his heals into the ground and begins to shake, attempting to drag him by the arms into the sea. Only when he starts spewing heavy sobs do they stop, backing away from him as if he is a volcano waiting to erupt.

The therapist he sees every Tuesday talks about trauma a lot. She tells him that it’s something he carries, comparing it to a splinter in his side. A constant inconvenience, one that’s difficult to get out.

She suggests he try expressing himself through art one session, handing him a blank sheet of paper wreck havoc on, a box full of markers and colored pencils at his disposal.

He draws a boy being swallowed up by a monstrous wave.

—

The house becomes a ghost town.

Appa throws himself into his work, taking extra shifts at the restaurant. He comes home in the early hours of the morning, smelling of fish and grease, before crashing on the couch. His smiles turn paper thin and disappear too soon.

Eomma is there, but not quite. She locks herself in her room, and Jiho has to remind her to eat, to shower, to breathe. She stopped writing a long time ago. He can’t help but think it’s his fault.

Years go by in the blink of an eye.

—

He can’t stay here, not if he ever wants to truly live. Seoul calls to him with its immenseness. A place of second chances and possibilities.

The acceptance letter from K-Arts arrives just as tourists are starting to flock to their little corner of the world. He packs his things that day, the entirety of his life contained neatly in two small bags.

At the airport, his parents look hollowed out among the crowd of bright foreigners. He waves until they fade from view and tries not to drown from the guilt.

(Is leaving supposed to feel this good?)

—  

To: Park Eunja XX-1, Hando-ro, Seogwipo-si Jeju-do

Eomma,

You know I’m not good with words. That’s why I’m an artist and not a writer like you.

Honestly, I don’t know how you do did it. I can hardly write two sentences without wanting to erase everything on the page (I’m still not sure choosing to write this with a pen was the best decision, though, because now you’ll be able to sea see all my mistakes; then again, we can’t all be best-selling authors).

I’ve always admired that about you. How dedicated you are. Which is why I don’t understand Most of my paintings take about a day to complete, but even then, I sometimes find myself starting to lose interest only to start another painting the next morning until my apartment is a mess of half-finished portraits and outlined landscapes. How I manage to make any art at all is beyond me.

I never told you how much that meant to me, by the way. The support you and Appa gave me when it came to my art. I know it’s not lucrative, but it’s the only thing I want to do and I’m willing to struggle for it.

What do you think Hajoon would be doing if he were still alive?

So I’m staying in Seoul.

I should have told you sooner, but I was afraid you’d try to change my mind. I should have said this over the phone, but I knew I’d cave if I heard your voice. I should’ve done so many things that I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for this.

Please don’t ask me when I’ll be back. The truth is I don’t know. It’s nothing you or Appa did. I just need time, I think. To work through some things, and to learn how to be me again.

I’ll talk to you both soon, okay? I love you.

Your son,

tw: abuse

Hanbyeol is raised with a silver spoon, a stiff upper lip, and a straight back.

The younger of two boys, it’s understood from birth that he’s not the heir. It makes for a bit of a strange upbringing, really - he’s not quite important enough to receive the attention a child needs, but he’s just important enough that he still needs to be raised the right way, the Song way.

He’s a quiet baby. Perhaps he knows from the very beginning that children are to be seen and not heard. He doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t fuss. His brother is endeared by him, but his parents aren’t as much so, and ultimately this is the way things remain throughout his entire life.

Hanbyeol sees happiness in glimpses and pieces - his brother plays with him sometimes, when the both of them are free from tutors and schoolwork and extracurricular activities. He sees loneliness more often, and he sees it particularly when the whole family is together at the dinner table, the dining room silent except for the clinking of cutlery.

He sees it most when his brother leaves for university.

His father is a quiet man, a strict man. His mother is the same. Sometimes, when Hanbyeol is very young, he wonders whether they talk to each other at all. They certainly don’t talk all that much to him. They don’t really start talking to him for a long time, not until he’s their only child left at home. Hanbyeol realises then that their earlier silence had probably been for the best, and he regrets ever wishing for their attention.

His world remains small for a long, long time. He has minimal friends as a child, and that doesn’t change until he nears secondary school where, with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of chance, he makes his first friend that hasn’t been introduced to him by his parents. And then, like the tiniest domino setup, he suddenly has a group of friends.

Things are suddenly different.

It’s strange at first, to have people apart from his brother ask about him. It’s strange to spend time with people for the sole purpose of enjoyment. Hanbyeol is awkward and then he’s not, and then he’s happier than he’s been in his whole life, and when he’s young and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, he expects it to last forever. Of course, as things tend to, it doesn’t.

His world contracts again sharply as he’s sent to university. Video calls multiple times a week start to dwindle first, and then the phone calls do, and then the texts. Soon enough, he’s getting a single text a month, and then a few months, and then a year. Hanbyeol is smart - it doesn’t take him long to realise what’s going on.

He closes up entirely. Friends aren’t really worth it, he decides, his mother’s words echoing uncomfortably through his mind. They’re distractions, his father’s voice adds. Maybe they’re right. He fast-tracks through his parents’ decided majors for him and he ends up right where they want him - working in their company, high up enough to be of use, not so high up enough to be too powerful.

It’s not his ideal life, not really, but… It’s fine, Hanbyeol thinks, downing his third cup of coffee.

hyunjin never intended to live a double life: the split, as she experienced it, was gradual.

because you don’t just show up on the first day of your new corporate job with a carefree and cheery attitude like it’s the first day of school all over again. no one is going to want to be your friend because you’re (relatively) pretty or (mostly) fun, or because you (used to) wear cool clothes and go out to party every weekend. no one wants to be your friend at all, in fact.

and she really did try – spent a whole year trying to be the ideal employee. putting up with questionable jokes, going along to company outings, looking the part, so on and so forth. it was fine.

so, what changed?

from 8:00 to 17:00, monday to friday, hyunjin runs on auto pilot. sometimes it feels like she’s completely blacked out for the better part of the day, snapping back to reality right when she opens the door to her apartment after the short walk home. who did she talk to? what happened to that account she was working on?

but everything just keeps going. no one has really even noticed. she’s slightly more irate these days, and less of a kiss-ass to her seniors. that’s the hyunjin we know. so it’s all the same, apparently.

her reprieve comes on the weekends. hitting the town with a healthy checkings balance is totally different from all the ways they had to finesse back in university. same good time, just with fewer inhibitions. if you hone a skill for this long, obviously you’ll be great at it.

and then on monday, it’s right back to the office again. her weekend was fine, how was yours?

-

so there’s lee hyunjin the office worker, a cog in the corporate wheel who has just about burned through her grace period and left a distinctly mediocre impression on her seniors. on the quiet side; keeps her head down, but never causes a fuss. a little boring, but nice enough.

tw: body image

He’s born to a girl who’s barely 20 and a man who’s more of a myth than an actual human being, a story to be told to Chihang to make him feel better about the swift abandonment he can’t remember.

Fat kids with poor eyesight and niche hobbies get picked last, get picked on. He doesn’t tell Ma about it, because it’s pointless in worrying her, and everyone knows the truth about it. There’s a boy who saves up his milk boxes throughout the week until they spoil and throws them at Chihang on his way home. There’s a girl who smiles and laughs at him as if teasing the ugly fat kid is some sort of fun game. Ma says he shouldn’t worry about them, her words fall on deaf ears.

Ma meets a guy on a plane when she’s flying somewhere over the South China Sea, serving overpriced wine to business men who don’t look twice at people like her. Only Jihoon looks twice, and a third time. She calls it a whirlwind love affair, one that sees her pregnant within three months and married within six and Chihang gets packaged off to a place called Daegu to fit like a puzzle piece jammed into the wrong spot into their new family narrative.

Kids in Korea are like kids in Hong Kong. No one likes the new boy. The fat boy, the boy who can’t speak Korean, the foreigner. He learns slang before he learns proper words, learns that the girl he likes calls him a “fat fuck” behind his back and even his only friend just feels sorry for him. He doesn’t tell Ma about the disgust he feels with himself, the way self-hatred clings like a second skin and he can’t shake it off, the way he wishes he was just someone else.

Jihoon tells him this: the problem is Chihang with he’s too soft, a residual effect of a boy growing up without a father trying to make sense of himself with no one to look up to. A man is supposed to be tough, to be strong, to be confident. Chihang can’t check off a single box, pathetic. “Don’t you have a rolemodel to look up to?” Chihang doesn’t bother to answer, they both know the answer is no.

He runs two kilometers a day but can’t seem to lose himself. The weight goes, features go from soft to sharp, people call him handsome but it doesn’t make a difference. He’s still Tsui Chihang the same fat little fuck from the shitty part of New Kowloon. Cosmetic changes don’t make a difference.

Adult life is a disappointment by his own design. He fails the college exam twice, gets fired from the halfway decent job Jihoon gets him, and takes the rest of his savings, and some money Ma has to sneak to him to land in Seoul on his ass with nothing to show for but a shit job and a shittier apartment.

in 2007, the most commonly-spoken phrase in the chae household was, “a rock show is no place for a little girl.”

usually, there was an unhealthy amount of anger packed in the sentence, always aimed at somin’s dad. nevermind the fact that he only took somin because of how persistently she begged — even at ten years old, she already loved the tight-knit, energetic atmosphere of dive bars.

then again, she wouldn’t have gotten so hooked on rock ‘n’ roll if her father hadn’t introduced it to her in the first place.

“and what the hell are those shoes she’s wearing? did you buy those for her?”

the doc martens, of course. rubbing blisters into somin’s heels with every step, but she only complained about it once and her father assured her that once they were broken in, they wouldn’t hurt anymore. if her steps were too careful, though, he’d always take note and carry her the rest of the way, wherever they were going. because no matter what somin’s mom would try to claim, he wasn’t a bad parent.

it was only natural that in the divorce, he was granted full custody.

in the years that followed, somin fell even deeper into love with music; her dad taught her how to play the guitar, then the piano, but she never could decide which one she liked more – all she knew was that nothing felt so right as having her hands on an instrument, producing the sounds. she was fourteen when she decided that she would be in a band, someday.

…

“what are you doing now? waitressing?”

somin doesn’t hate her mom, but she hates the way she speaks with such disdain. the way she always seems to be looking down her nose, sneering — as if she has anything to brag about.

“yeah, for now. the library just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. too quiet. you know me, can’t stand silence.”

“and you’re still making music, too? somin, you’re twenty-three. you need to go to college.”

college. they’ve had this conversation plenty of times in plenty of ways and somin’s pretty sure she’s made it clear that she has no intentions of pursuing higher education. besides, if she changes her mind, she can go later. life is short, but not as short as everyone makes it out to be, and she still feels like she’s got all the time in the world.