There's a food stall in front of the high school that is a favorite hangout spot for the students after school. Jong In hates the smell of cheap food and mindless chatter, so he walks out through the back gate.


There's a dark-skinned guy with intense eyes who walks alone through the back gate. He is kind of intimidating, so despite that Hana's house is in that direction, she walks out through the front gate.


There's a nuisance of an oak tree that the school administrators have been debating whether or not to spare, but this week, they've noticed that its roots have grown through the asphalt of the parking lot near the back gate. They decide to cut it down and reset the pavement.


The day they start the construction, Jong In stays in class for a really, really long time after school. The hallways are getting darker and his seat by the window a little chillier as the evening draws in. He doesn't know when the food cart closes down, but he hopes that it does by sundown.


It doesn't.


He tries not to throw annoyed glances at the obnoxious girls who talk with their mouths full as he stalks past the food cart with all its dirty-sweet and pungent-spicy odors.


Hana may not come from one of the richest family in Seoul, but she knows how to feed herself. Her parents are never home, and sometimes the power goes out because they accidentally forget (or so her mom tells her) to pay the bills, but in her one-room apartment, she experiments new recipes with whatever she can find in her kitchen. 


At the end of the day, she sits and stares at her dining table full of food, cold and unshared, under the dimming light bulb.


The day they start the construction, Hana comes back from the hospital after a checkup. No food for the next two days, the doctors had said, and now that the checkup is over, she is free to eat whatever she likes.


She's leaving the school with a hand clutched over her poor shriveling stomach when the food stall appears with all the golden majesty of El Dorado. She hates the food stall, hates the shabby tent, hates the classless customers, hates the greasy food. Today is an exception, though, and so she seats herself at the counter and orders a bowl of ramen. She takes one spoonful of the bloody, murky broth.


Jong In is enduring his fourth walk out the front gate when he notices the usual stench is gone. The food stall is still there, the ugly menu board unchanged, but there are more people than he's ever seen before. He's curious, so he orders a bowl of ramen and catiously takes a chopstick full of noodles.


At the end of it, he quietly pays and slips out of the hustle bustle of the eatery, leaving a note under his empty bowl.


The owner is wiping the tables when he finds the note. He hands it to Hana after closing shop.
Hana finishes cleaning up the stove and reads the note.
She smiles. There's more to her part-time job than just the pay.


Jong In returns every day for a week. Hana collects all of the notes the owner relays to her, and wonders if she'll ever catch a glimpse of the sender among the crowd of customers that stop by every day.


She finally meets him the following Thursday. It's drizzling, and the steam from the pot of broth in front of her disfigures the grey street. The stall is abandoned today, the sky still groggy, and it reminds Hana of the table full of plates back at home. Then there are footsteps, and out of the fog emerges a pair of intense eyes.


Jong In recognizes the girl, her pale skin and short hair. He's seen her before once. She's scared of him, he can tell, but after isolating himself for years from the rest of the student population, it's not something he's not used to.


He finishes his food and leaves his note under the bowl. The girl watches him from the corner of her eyes as he disappears into the rain.


Half a month later, the construction ends. Instead of work, Hana goes immediately to the back gate after school. Jong In heads immediately to the front. She waits and waits, but he doesn't know she's waiting for him. He eats.


The Taste is gone, and he doesn't return to the food cart the next day.


He heads to the back gate, the street lit up in sunlight because the tree is no longer there to stretch its shadows across the ground. In the middle of the new blinding brightness, she's there. With the bleach of her uniform and the pallor of her skin, she seems to be glowing. The fear is gone from her face.


"Hey," he says. He's surprised by how gentle his voice sounds.


"I-- Thanks for the notes," she blurts. She cracks into a sheepish laughter. "Yeah, I just wanted to say that." She twists her hand in an awkward wave, and disappears into the campus, the glow of her figure flickering behind his eyelids with every blink.


He catches her at school during break. She's wearing earphones and finishing a homework assignment with a lunch box next to her. When she notices him, she does her lame wave again, and his lips unknowingly curl into a something like a smile. They sit side by side, Hana humming along to a song and Jong In listening to her voice trail the scratchy ups and downs of a tune that leaks out from the earphones. They don't say a word.


It's not until the 2nd week that Hana finally looks up from her papers.


"Why don't you eat during lunch?" she speaks, one earbud hanging loose.
"I eat after school," he shrugs. "Too lazy to bring food."
"You can't eat ramen every day though."
"It's not that bad."
Hana frowns and puts the loose bud back into her ear.


Jong In should have expected it.
"Isn't it a hassle, though?"
"No. I like making food for people." She means it.
He can't lie; he likes her cooking, so he doesn't refuse the offer.


He's actually not intimidating at all, she realizes, and the whole don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover cliche seems to apply here. Jong In never talks to have fun. He talks with a purpose, a reason, and even the short, brutally simple notes he leaves under the ramen bowls reflect that. To most of their peers who are have grown up all their lives with people who have too much to say, he comes off as gruff and cranky.


"You know," she notes while watching him eat her bentou. "You're actually pretty good looking."
He chokes on an egg roll. She gives him a bottle of water and resumes.
"If you didn't walk around frowning all the time, you'd have lots of friends."
"I don't want a lot of friends," he confesses. "I think you're more than enough company."
She smiles at that. She doesn't notice his face heat up in a belated blush.


Her apartment is a little bigger than his bedroom. He doesn't want to be rude, but he can't help marveling at how everything fits between the four walls as he sits on the dining table with wide, curious eyes glinting in the warm, orange radiance of the light bulb above. She's fixing up a meal in the kitchen, asking over the roar of the sink what his majesty the guest would like to have for dinner. 


"Anything," he hums. "Anything you make is good."
Her back is to him, but he can see her cheeks move into a smile.
"Why do you like my cooking so much," she laughs.
"I can't explain it," he mumbles. "It makes me feel safe or something like that."
He's never been good with words, but it doesn't matter. She doesn't hear him over the loud splashes anyway.


He's walking back home from hakwon when he finds her crouched on the steps of the high school in the 9:30 p.m. blackness. He wouldn't have even noticed her had it not been for the white glow (bleached uniform and pallid skin) she seems to emit whenever he sees her. It's almost like a permanent color that he associates with her and her only. 


"What's wrong?" He think about reaching over and wiping her cheeks with his thumbs. He doesn't.
"Nothing, really." She rubs at her face until the wet streaks spread into blotches. "It's just, not easy sometimes, I guess, when no one's home and all."
"Oh," he says intelligently. He can't tell if her shivers are from sobbing or from the way the cold night air bites at her skin. He think about putting an arm around her shaking shoulders. He doesn't.
Hana doesn't wait Jong In to say anything more. He's never been good with words, she knows that. She inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales and feels a little better as she watches the white fog of their breaths sync up.
"I'm lonely," she confesses at last.
A pause.
"I'm lonely, too."
She looks up at him and smiles, and something in Jong In breaks a little because it's sad and tired and he wishes the night was dark enough to hide it away.
"We can be lonely together," he says.
He thinks about closing his eyes and putting his lips on hers.



He does.
She tastes like salt and butter and Hana, the way she makes him feel like he belongs, and he realizes that there are no words in the world to quite explain it.


(It's perfect.)