You wake up a bit late since you have bunch of works to do last night. You do not want your weekend to be disturbed by any piece of works begging to be done. You check your phone and read some messages from your mom, mostly about recipes. It is not that you could not look for it on the internet, but everybody knows mom’s recipes are still the best. Mom’s recipes are the tastes that have been engaged to you since you were a kid. You often ask your mom for recipes so that at least you can relive the feeling of eating your mom’s cooking when you could not go home. Sometimes you cook mom’s recipes for your friends too when you have a small party or when you have them coming over to your apartment.  You just want to show them what kind of taste and food you grew up with, what kind of taste and food that make you yourself right now.

You blink and stare at the window, realizing that the sun has made its way up, yet you are still on your bed. You think of anything that you could do on this weekend. And suddenly you remember something.

Are you still sleeping?

You text Changkyun, but mostly he is still sleeping at this hour since this is weekend. You wait for his reply while contemplating whether you need to call him or not. But you decide to just wait for his reply.

Actually I was, but then your text woke me up. Anything’s up?

The reply comes faster than you thought. Thinking that he might be fully awake now, you decide to call him.

“Kkukkung!”

“So early in the morning and it is weekend,” his voice sounds lazy and still sleepy.

“Have you eaten?”

“Considering that I was just woken up by your message and this is basically still like, um, 6 a.m.? I think you should have known the answer”

In some ways, Changkyun’s answers always knock you down as he has this mountain of sarcasms inside his head and he is ready to spit them out. Anywhere, anytime. You know he felt bothered being called so early in the morning as his answer becomes like a sharp knife.

“Would you like to come over? I am going to have a little food fest today. You know I cannot eat them all,”

“Kihyun? He loves food”

“I want to see you,”

You let out a deep sigh, being disappointed at yourself because you could not hold those words. And by the time you hear Changkyun chuckled, you know that he might be waiting for you to say it first. It is about time, it is always about time for you to lose to Changkyun.

“Why do not you come over to my place instead? My bed is being so possessive right now, I do not want to make it upset,”

“It is not like you sleep in bed?” you know it since every time you came over, you always found Changkyun sleeping in his chair, close to all of pieces of his rap writing. You can hear him laughing now.

“And again, I do not want to rant about your place, so just come here, okay? Sunlight is good for your bones,” you remember how you would spend the first hour after you arrived at Changkyun place ranting about how messy it was while helping him tidying it. Changkyun place is such a comfortable place to stay after all, if it was not messy.

“Alright, alright. 9 a.m.?” Changkyun agrees.

“Ah, Kkukkung, could you buy me some curcumin?”

“What are you cooking?”

“Biryani!”

You just asked your mom for a new recipe and you are so eager to try it out. You hang up and then clean your space since you did not have enough time to clean them up. Actually it is okay for you to come over Changkyun place, but Changkyun does not have proper kitchen equipment so both of you would end up buying fast food. Changkyun only has typical fast food as the option when he is busy, and you do not want him to eat fast food when you are around. You always try to cook for him whenever he is coming over to your place or you would bring some food for him when he was at campus. He is getting thinner than the first time you met him, so all you want to do is stuffing as much food as you could to Changkyun’s stomach.

***

“I am here,” you can hear Changkyun opening the door and shouting like a child. You stare at him for few seconds and then run to him. You hug him, tight.

“Hey, hey, what is going on here?” Changkyun laughs. Probably because he was startled, amazed by what you did. But he knows why, he always knows why. You could act all strong and independent but Changkyun knows you missed him. He pats your head.

“Okay. Okay, you can have me all day now. I will not go anywhere. I will eat all foods you cook today, how is that?”

You looked at him smiling, but you could not help but worrying him. His eyes are smiling but they look tired, and you could feel the body that you embrace being thinner than it used to be. He probably skipped meals. He does not really care for himself and it makes you sad. You hug him again and now he hugs you back. Both of you stayed like that for some good minutes. You try your best to hold the tears back. It is not that you want to look strong in front of Changkyun, you just do not want him to be worry about you.

“Can I have a seat now?” he asks you.

Instead of having a seat, he wanders around looking at things. Figuring out the changes happened during the time he did not visit your place. Changkyun stops near the book shelf, looking at some photos of you and him. His gaze then fixed to a guitar near the book shelf.

“Whose is this?”

“Kihyun’s. He stopped by yesterday and he forgot to bring that. He asked me to keep it until he comes by again next time. I do not know he could play guitar?”

You take the things he brought to the kitchen. It turns out that he brought more than just curcumin. There are also two buckets of ice cream, potato chips, and even two bottles of cola. He also brought some pasta and meat. Changkyun sure knows how to party. But cola is never a part of your party.

“You bring so many stuffs,” you look at Changkyun who was sitting comfortably on your couch while switching the channels on television.

“There are so many things in my refrigerator; I do not know what to do with them so I just bring them here. You know I do not cook that much,”

You look at those bottles of cola. Changkyun notices it.

“Wonho brought that for us when he and Kihyun stayed in my place,”

“You drink cola instead of water, don’t you?” you cannot help but give him a judging stare. He stares back, waiting for you to spit your words. He knew you would scold him a lot today.

“Is there anything I could do so that you won’t drink cola that much?”

Both of you stare at each other from distance. Silence suddenly fills up the room. You wait for his answer; he was probably thinking about the answer, or still waiting for your words. Changkyun finally gathers his will to approach you. He walks to the kitchen.

“You could stay with me forever, stay at my place, so you could warn me every time I am going to drink cola,” he says while flashing sheepish and kidding smile ignoring your worries. You stare at him, there was a glance of anger in your eyes and suddenly Changkyun understand. He holds your hands and caresses your knuckles.

“Okay. Okay. I won’t drink cola that much again, I promise you. So we start cooking now?”

He loves to kid around to the point that he would not care about your worries, while you were all thinking about his health. Sleep deprived, eating mostly fast food, drinking cola. How you wish you could stay with him, but no, no you could not. He needs to take care of himself. He needs to stop kidding around about his health.

* * *

The cooking time was little bit messy since Changkyun decided to ‘help’ you. But it turned out messier. You bumped to Changkyun and spilled some coconut milk, Changkyun accidentally brushed off a bottle of frying oil and it scattered on the floor. You ended up spending extra time to clean up the kitchen, longer and more tiring than usual. Gladly Changkyun still helped you even though he would mumble all the time sulking like a little kid. It was both a total mess and total success because you could finally make Biryani rice, chicken curry, and chicken popcorn. Chicken popcorn was originally Changkyun’s idea, since you are going to spend some time together probably watching movies or TV series.

“Chicken popcorn is the best company!” he said.

Done with cooking and eating, you and Changkyun decide to have lazy times in couch while having Supernatural series marathon. It was difficult to find the right series because there was no such thing as favorite series for you and Changkyun. Both of you could watch movies or TV series, but the only time you really watching it were mostly the first 15 minutes. And this happened to the Supernatural too. It was not that the series were boring, but Changkyun and you ended up spending the rest of the time catching up on each other.

You lay your head on Changkyun’s lap while staring blankly at TV screen. Changkyun still munches the chicken popcorn sometimes.

“Can I drink cola?”

“No, you can drink everything in my refrigerator but not cola,”

He flashes a smile while ruffling your hair. He then takes the remote control and turns off the TV. You wanted to protest but you were not watching it anyway.

“How were your days?” he asks, while stuffing some chicken popcorn to your mouth.

You tell him everything happened these whole 2 weeks, and you emphasize on how practice days went so rough. You cut your fingers a lot during cooking class; you still have the band aid on your fingers. But then you are glad everything has been passed and you get good grades for cooking class. Changkyun tells you how his weeks were. He went to practice a lot of rap writing and he studied about language more. But mostly he still had the fun because Kihyun and Wonho still asked him to practice together in their studio room.He also tells you how his circadian rhythm went wild due to the assignments. He slept 2 hours a day for 2 weeks.

You shift a bit fixing your head on Changkyun’s lap and look at him. He stuffs more chicken popcorn to your mouth. He sees your smile turns into worry. He caresses your head.

“You should consider your health, eat properly, sleep properly,” you let out a deep sigh.

“I miss my fluffy Kkukkung,”