Author’s POV (At ABC Steak House)

“How would you like your steak done?” the waitress asked.

“Er… nice and delicious?” Eun Gyeol wondered why they asked such an obvious question. Krystal and Sulli tried their best to hold back their laughter.

“Are you trying to be funny?” Jae Hee retorted. Then he turned to the waitress, “I like mine well-done. What about you ladies?”

“Same here,” Krystal and Sulli replied.

“Same for me too,” Eun Gyeol was not sure what it meant, but if everyone wanted that, it had to be the correct answer.

“Is this your first time ordering a steak?” Jae Hee taunted.

“Of course not. I was trying to crack a joke, it’s funny, isn’t it?” Eun Gyeol turned to ask the girls.

“I guessed so,” Krystal forced a weak smile.

“Unless you are like Krystal who grew up in the States or some western country, you do not have the benefit of being exposed to such knowledge from young. I made this mistake too in the past. The waiter asked how I would like my steak cooked. Being a naïve kid, I told him to chop up the cow and fry it. My parents were so embarrassed in front of their colleagues,” Sulli recalled.

“So you had made a mistake too? Thank you for your story. I feel better now,” Eun Gyeol grinned widely.

“Made a mistake TOO?” Jae Hee emphasized, “So are you admitting that you really don’t know how to answer the How-would-you-like-your-steak-done question?”

“Yah! So what if I don’t know. It’s unfair. Just like Sulli had said, you have the upper hand because you are from the States…”

“You are an American Asian too?” Krystal interrupted.

“Yes and no. Yes because I am now holding an American passport. No because I was borne in Korea. I ended up in USA because I was adopted by a childless American couple.”

“What a coincidence! Sulli was adopted too. Seems like the two of you had something in common,” Krystal said.

Just then the food arrived. As they began to eat, Krystal and Eun Gyeol were distracted by the interesting culinary habit of Jae Hee and Sulli respectively. Both of them use the knife to scrape off the fluffy internal of the baked potato and spread it across the steak like butter.

“I thought Sulli is the only person in the world to have her steak this way,” Krystal remarked.

“What makes it even more interesting is how their actions synchronized with each other,” Eun Gyeol was amazed by his observation of the two.

“Yah! Would you stop mimicking my actions? It’s annoying!” Sulli complained.

“Bwoh? I thought you are imitating me. I was about to give you the benefit of the doubt and keep quiet about it so as not to embarrass you. You end up turning around and point the finger at me. That’s so ‘grateful’ of you,” Jae Hee shot back.

“Yeah right! Pretending to be a gentleman now.”

“He’s not lying. Whenever the dish contains baked potato and a slab of meat, he would start doing this,” Eun Gyeol came to his friend’s defence.

“Hahaha. Sulli too. Not just with baked potato. As long as the potato is cooked in such a way that’s soft enough to be mashed, she would use it like butter,” Krystal added on.

“See I’ve been doing that all my life. Look, who’s copying whom?” Sulli stuck out her tongue.

“That’s supposed to be my line,” Jae Hee complained. “Anyway I was borne earlier than you, so I started it first.”

“You didn’t even know my birthday, how do you know you are borne earlier?”

“My birthday is on the 1st of January, can anyone beat that?” Jae Hee replied triumphantly.

“Now you even want to copy my birthday, tsk tsk tsk...” Sulli shook her head in disbelief.

To prove that they were not lying, both of them took out their student ID.

“Incredible! To call this a coincidence is an understatement,” Krystal said.

“I second that. They just met and are already bickering like husband and wife,” Eun Gyeol commented.

“No way!” Jae Hee and Sulli shouted in unison. By this time, Krystal and Eun Gyeol were getting used to their perfectly matched timing. And that’s how the double date went.