Happy Kitchen

Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to relax on his week-long vacation with CL in Jejudo unless he finished the track he was working on first, G-Dragon had spent the last twelve hours in the studio tweaking the sound until the punch of the kick drum and the reverb of the vocals was just right. It was late evening by the time he was satisfied. He grabbed his backpack and raced home, hoping that CL had already packed their luggage in preparation for the morning flight so that they could spend what remained of the night in bed together.

He smiled as he ran down the hallway to their apartment, imagining her lying there in their big bed, scantily clad and waiting for him; however, that fantasy came to a sudden halt when he slammed the door open to their apartment and saw her working frantically in the kitchen, her blonde hair loosely tied back, her face and clothes stained with soy sauce.

When CL looked up from the counter and noticed him standing in the entryway, she slouched her shoulders and pouted, disappointed. “I was hoping to surprise you,” she said, with a sort of unintentional touch of aegyo.

G-Dragon wasn’t used to seeing CL like that. Like him, she was a leader, always strong and in control. But in that messy kitchen under the harsh fluorescent lights was a version of CL that was both weak and cute. G-Dragon was confused, but captivated. “Where’s my girlfriend?” he asked, teasing her as he pretended to look around, eventually making his way toward the island counter that separated the kitchen space from the living room. “Have you seen her?” he asked, leaning over the counter to look into the kitchen. “She’s this gorgeous woman who should be in bed right now waiting for her man…”

“What? Waiting for my man?” Whatever aegyo CL had previously exuded was gone. In its place was her usual temperament. “Want to die?” she asked, holding up the knife that she had just grabbed from the cutting board.

“Oh, Chaerinnie, there you are,” he said, devilishly smiling. “I was just looking for you.”

“Yah, I swear, Jiyong-ah, one of these days…”

“One of these days… what?” he asked.

“One of these days you are going to really make me go crazy,” she said, smiling now, too. “Why are you home? I thought you’d be in the studio until at least ten.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re a perfectionist,” she said.

“Aish,” G-Dragon mumbled, but he didn’t bother trying to think up a retort; after all, she was right. “What are you doing in there anyway?” he asked, as he put down his backpack and walked around the counter to join her in the kitchen.

“Making us a nice dinner,” she said, as she continued cutting cucumbers for the oyi namul (stir-fried cucumbers), which was one of four main dishes she had planned. The others included dureup namul (fatsia shoots), bugeo gui (pan-seared dried pollack), and galbi (pork ribs). She planned to serve the dishes with rice, soup, and some kimchi that had been fermenting for nearly two weeks now.

She normally didn’t cook large meals like this, but because tonight was their last night in Seoul before their trip to Jejudo to celebrate their second anniversary, she had wanted to do something special for G-Dragon. She hadn’t realized how overwhelming it would be to manage all of these different cooking tasks at once. “Well, since you’re here now, you wanna help?” she asked.

G-Dragon reached up and tucked a few strays of her long hair behind her ear so that they were no longer hanging in front of her face. “Nah, I’ll just stand here and watch you work.”

CL rolled her eyes at him and smiled as she swept the sliced cucumbers into a bowl and sprinkled salt on them. “Okay, that needs to sit there for a while,” she quietly said to herself. She then looked around, trying to figure out what she should do in the meantime. Realizing that she hadn’t started the soup, she quickly gathered the ingredients for the maeuntang sauce. “Add some fish sauce…” she said in somewhat of a singsong way as she spooned some into the blender. “And some hot pepper paste, and some garlic, and some soju…”

“Do you always talk to yourself while you cook?” he asked.

CL added the rest of the ingredients into the blender and then moved on to prepare the stock. She grabbed the mushrooms that she’d had soaking for the previous five hours and quickly sliced them along with some radish. “Jiyong-ah, go fill this with six cups of water,” she said, gesturing toward the pot on the counter while she continued to slice the vegetables. “Oh, and start that blender,” she said, realizing that she had forgotten to do so.

As he passed by her on the way to the sink, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“Am I going to get a kiss for each little thing I do to help?” he asked.

“Aish, if that’s what it takes,” she said.

G-Dragon measured out six cups of water, poured it into the pot, and then closed his eyes and presented his lips for CL to kiss.

CL dutifully kissed him as she grabbed the pot from him.

Anxious to get his next kiss, G-Dragon quickly the blender, not realizing that it didn’t have a top on. The spicy mixture inside immediately whirled out as the blender roared, splattering everything nearby – the counter, the walls, even the ceiling – with red chunky drips.

“Ai, Jiyong-ah!” CL screamed.

G-Dragon hurried to turn the blender off, but by then it was too late. The two of them looked around at the mess, stunned.

“Looks like someone was murdered!” CL said, as she dabbed her finger into some of the spicy sauce stuck onto the wall. “Ai, now I have to clean this up!” she said.

“You didn’t tell me the top wasn’t on!” G-Dragon said. “You just said to start the blender!”

CL reached for the sponge in the sink but G-Dragon grabbed it first. “I’ll clean it up,” he said, sulking. “Guess no more kisses for me, right?”

CL sighed and wiped the sweat from her brow as she tossed the vegetables into the water. She then began getting the red snapper, shrimp, and clams ready to add to the soup, but stopped when she noticed how much difficulty G-Dragon was having with the cleanup. He was trying to scrub the sauce from the wall but was just smearing the stain around even more. Feeling stressed, she grabbed the sponge from him and said, “Let me take care of this.” Looking around at all the dishes in progress, she pointed to the dried pollack that had been soaking in water and the marinade nearby. “Can you just get the excess water out of that fish and marinade it for me?”

G-Dragon shrugged. “Think I can do that without screwing it up?” he asked.

CL laughed, releasing some of her stress. “Come here,” she said, kissing him again. “I’m sorry. I just had this whole thing planned and it’s such a disaster.”

“Let’s just forget this dinner,” he said, putting his arms around her as he began kissing her neck. “Let’s just get and go to bed instead.”

CL tilted her head and closed her eyes, wanting to give into the temptation of just leaving this mess behind and letting G-Dragon love her, but her stomach was rumbling from all these hours she had been working to prepare this food. “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.

G-Dragon kissed her chin and then her lips, letting his tongue sweetly glide over hers. “I’m hungry for you,” he said, now nibbling on her cheek.

CL lightly slapped his teeth away from her cheek. “Yah, what are you, some sort of cannibal?” she asked, holding her palm against her red cheek.

“Yep, I’m going to eat you up,” he said, opening his mouth wide as he pretended to chomp down on her.

“Ai, stop!” CL screamed, laughing crazily as she scrambled to get free from his grip. “Wait,” she said, her face serious now.

G-Dragon ignored her and continued to pretend to try and bite her.

CL held her hand out to stop him, her body frozen as she sniffed the air. “Do you smell something burning?” she asked.

G-Dragon stopped and inhaled deeply. “What do you have in the oven?” he asked.

“Oh my gawddd!” she yelled. “The galbi!” She yanked open the oven door. Flames surged out and then ebbed back as thick black smoke billowed and filled the kitchen. CL dove to the cabinet underneath the sink to grab the fire extinguisher as G-Dragon, nearly choking, tried to wave the dense smoke away from his face.

She stood and aimed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher at the oven, squeezing the handle as the white gas poured out, covering the oven and everything inside in powdery foam.

The two of them stood there, staring at the mess in shock.

“This is one miserable kitchen,” G-Dragon said, shaking his head. Pointing to the extinguisher, he added, “Guess I can’t make fun of you anymore for buying that thing.”

CL glanced between him and the oven, too stunned to speak. Then she looked over the counter to the dishes she had been preparing, all of which were now covered in a fine layer of white dust from the extinguisher. “All that work…” she said, her voice trailing off as she took the pot off the stove and dumped the stock into the sink.

G-Dragon put his arm around her. “Yah, how about you go take a shower and I’ll make reservations at that Chinese place you like?”

“We can’t just leave the kitchen like this,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. You go shower and I’ll get this mess straightened out.”

“There’s no way you’ll finish by the time I’m done with my shower,” she said. “This will take hours to clean.”

“I didn’t say I was going to be the one to clean it.” G-Dragon smiled. “I’ll make the maknae do it.”

CL laughed and dropped her face into her hands as she shook her head.

“What? It’ll be perfect. We’ll go out to dinner and enjoy ourselves while Seungri deals with this mess. He owes me anyway.”

“For what?” she asked.

“Ai, you know that Seungri, always doing stupid things and getting yelled at by the boss. I covered for him this time so he wouldn’t get in trouble. Now he owes me. Anyway, we shouldn’t be all stressed out the night before our trip.”

CL sighed. “I just wanted to do something special for you,” she said.

“Chaerinni, I don’t need you to slave in the kitchen for hours to make me happy.” He pushed some more strays of her hair back from her face and thought about the track he had worked on earlier at the studio. He had written the song just for her as an anniversary gift, which is why he had tried so hard to finish it in time. Peeking his head around the kitchen entrance, he saw the backpack he had dropped there and walked over to it now to retrieve the CD inside. “Take this and listen to it while you’re in the shower,” he said, handing her the CD. “In the meantime, I’ll get that maknae on the phone.”

CL eyed the CD curiously.

“You need help getting out of those clothes?” he asked.

“What? No!”

“Okay, then go,” he said, shooing her out of the kitchen. When she was gone, he looked over the mess in the kitchen – the stained walls and countertops, the foam covering everything. Smiling that devilish smile of his, he reached into his pocket for his cell and dialed Seungri’s number. “Yah, Seungri-yah,” he said to that poor unsuspecting maknae. “Get your panda over here pronto. Got a job for you.”