"There! All done!" Chaeyoung put the last bag of rice on the shelf and went to go see what Jisoo had prepared for a snack for them. She found Jisoo sitting at a stool by the prep table, waiting for her. Chaeyoung looked at the table and saw that Jisoo had lit some candles for them to eat by. She'd apparently fixed tea and she'd made finger sandwiches. Jisoo watched as Chaeyoung picked up one of the little sandwiches and devoured half of it in one bite.   "Crab salad!" she exclaimed. Then a puzzled look came over her face. "But. . . we didn't buy any crab salad, or any crab to make salad with!"   Jisoo smiled at her. "It's imitation crab. I bought it at the express lane while you were checking out, then sneaked it into one of the lodge coolers."   Chaeyoung took another bite of her sandwich. "I never would have guessed it was imitation - you make really good crab salad." After a moment's thought, a look of realization came over Chaeyoung's face. "You learned how to make this just for me!"   Jisoo blushed. "No, it's just something a chef should know how to make."   "And it just so happens," Chaeyoung said, leaning in to kiss Jisoo, "that you decided to learn how to make something that's one of my favorite things, and you invested some of your precious little free time in it, because I know this wasn't on your syllabus last semester." She popped the last of her sandwich in and chewed with apparent satisfaction. "Thank you so much." She leaned in to kiss Jisoo again.   "And we've got dessert," Jisoo said, gesturing to a tray with two candles burning on it, a plate full of marshmallows, a plate of chocolate bars and graham crackers, and a pair of wooden skewers.   "We're making s'mores!" Chaeyoung said, all tiredness forgotten. She arrange a piece of chocolate on a graham cracker, set another graham cracker next to it, then skewered a mashmallow and started roasting it slowly over one of the candles, watching as the marshmallow evenly browned.   "I don't have that kind of patience," Jisoo said. She her skewered marshmallow into the flame, waited for it to catch fire, then blew it out and started assembling her s'more. Suddenly Chaeyoung reached over and lightly slapped the back of her hand, causing her to drop the half-assembled s'more.   "Oh no you don't," Chaeyoug said. I will not have you abusing ingredients like that in my kitchen! Now you are going to sit there patiently while I make you a proper s'more and you'll see how much better it is than that slapdash monstrosity you were about to eat."   Absent-mindedly rubbing the back of her hand, Jisoo sat and watched the roasting marshmallow with all the intensity of a lion watching a herd of wildebeest. Chaeyoung kept turning the marshmallow above the flame until it had reached the perfect shade of golden brown, then sandwiched it between two graham crackers with a piece of chocolate. After silently counting to five, she held it out to Jisoo. "Here," she said, "take a bite of that."   Jisoo leaned forward and took rather a larger bite than she'd originally intended, as Chaeyoung shoved the s'more at her as she was biting down. She chewed slowly, savoring the flavors and textures in . She observed that a bitter note that was usually present in her s'mores from scorching the marshmallows was totally absent. She also noticed that the marshmallow was more uniformly melted, rather than having a layer of molten liquid surrounding a solid core. She flung herself forward and kissed Chaeyoung, her tongue invading her girlfriend's mouth. Chaeyoung recovered from her surprise quickly, returning the kiss as she put the s'more down and wrapped her arms around Jisoo.   "Well," Chaeyoung said when Jisoo finally pulled away, "if I had known I would get that kind of a reaction, I'd have made you s'mores long ago!"   Jisoo laughed, blushing. "I'd just never experienced anything like that," she said quietly.   Chaeyoung picked up the s'more and fed Jisoo another bite, then took a bite herself. "It's like I keep telling you," she said as she finished the s'more, "cooking isn't difficult. You try to make it difficult, but it's really just a matter of choosing good ingredients, then respecting them during the process. That crab salad shows that you can do it. You've just got to learn to do it to everything."   Jisoo's blush deepened under Chaeyoung's praise. She leaned in and kissed Chaeyoung again, more softly this time.   "We'd better clean this up and get ready for bed," Chaeyoung said. "By which I mean sleep," she added, fixing Jisoo with a playful stare. "Breakfast comes early in the morning, and it won't come any later because we got in from shopping so late." Chaeyoung grabbed Jisoo's half-assembled s'more and threw it in the trash. "We've got the rest of the season to make s'mores," she added, "over a proper campfire, even."   Jisoo smiled as she put away the extra ingredients she'd laid out, then blew out the candles. She quietly followed Chaeyoung up stairs to their room, pausing for a moment on the way to be sure the alarm on the front door was pulsing red to show that it was armed.   ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^   Hansol sat in his car, staring at his phone. Before he went in to work, he wanted to hear the message from Sunmi again. Nevermind that he'd already listened to it half a dozen times since waking up. He wanted - no, needed - to hear it again.   "Hi Hansol! It's Sunmi. . . I hate talking to these stupid machines but you're probably getting ready for bed too. Anyway, the message will still be there in the morning. . . I just wanted to say, um, about what you said this afternoon. . . I won't have a day off for a couple of weeks, because we're about to get swamped here at the lodge, but anytime you're near the lodge around lunchtime, just text me and we can have lunch together. I. . . I think you're a really great guy and I'd like to get to know you better."   Hansol laughed, glad that he wasn't getting the immediate rejection he'd feared. As for the future, the future could take care of itself. It wasn't even guaranteed that he'd get to come home at the end of his shift, so there wasn't too much point worrying about the future. The most he'd do would be to plan his day so he could be sure to have around the lodge at lunchtime.   ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^   The next morning saw all the women of Fire Lodge sitting around the breakfast table, starting their day with oatmeal with a variety of mix-ins and hot coffee.   "So wait a second," Lisa said, shaking her head, "I must not have heard