Chapter 4 - You are just too tasty (19)

“Do Ook… are you sleeping?” Sun Ha asked, curious to know even though she was quite sure he must have fallen into a deep sleep. Just as she expected, no answer came from him.

Hesitating for a moment, she reached out her shyly shivering hand and carefully stroked his face. Her fingers followed the manly contours of his features as if she was drawing them. Ba-bump, ba-bump. Even though quite a long time had passed since she had begun to have feelings for him, her heart still kept pounding irregularly as if it was still the first time she fell for him.

Feeling greedier, she brushed her mouth against his. Sun Ha felt her cheeks flush a bright pink as she kissed his lips that were softly letting out a drowsy breath.

The woman who had actually just finished having a sloppy and messy mating session with him was now staring at him with a fluttering heart and twinkling eyes just from being able to steal a kiss from his lips.

Even just a year ago, she would shake terribly like a guilty criminal just from having her lips brush against his cheek in passing, so she had actually become much bolder than before.

“…Good night,” she whispered into his ears as if to tickle them. She had a happy yet slightly sad smile on her face.

Yu Sun Ha was a wife that had a crush on her husband, Choi Do Ook.

Act 1 – Beginning of the End

After squeezing out the moisture from the seaweed which had been soaked in cold water, Sun Ha put it on the cutting board and started slicing it.

Do Ook was someone who was able to eat anything and didn’t have any particular dislikes when it came to food. Still, he preferred meat-based cooking more than anything, so she chopped some beef into small cubes and put them in a pan along with some seaweed and sesame seed oil to stir fry them.

Then she poured water into a preheated pot and adjusted the strength of the flame. After adding the ingredients for making stock into the water and boiling it over low heat, she sprinkled some perilla seed powder that she already prepared into the broth, making it start producing a wonderfully delicious smell.

Even as Sun Ha was preparing for breakfast, she had her ears pricked for any sounds coming from outside of the kitchen. She heard the blunt sound of the bathroom door closing, perhaps because Do Ook had finished taking his shower.

Soon he would change into business clothes to leave for work and come into the kitchen. She pushed her slightly disheveled hair behind her ear and awkwardly stared at the delicious-looking meal of seaweed soup garnished with perilla seed. She had realized a bit too late that it was weird for someone to cook seaweed soup for their own birthday.

‘It feels like I’m desperate for him to realize it’s my birthday.’

That day’s breakfast was not really different than usual. The number of side dishes prepared was the same as the day before, and it wasn’t like she’d made an elaborate or large meal. She felt that if she went overboard, it would look to him like she was saying her birthday was special and needed to be special, which is why she made sure to make it seem like it wasn’t particularly.

However, even though she was too timid to make more side dishes than usual, she had decided to make seaweed soup specifically for today because she was still greedy enough to want to have her birthday meal with him.

All of the food that was prepared and set out on the table was made by her, and even though she wouldn’t be able to say ‘It’s my birthday today’ to him until the meal was completely over, Sun Ha was fine with that. She wasn’t alone, and, even more than that, she could spend her birthday with the man she loved. That was all she really needed.

However, even that small wish of hers was completely crushed by just one sentence from Do Ook.

“I’m going to have to leave early today,” he said, speaking louder to be heard without needing to even step foot in the kitchen.

Sun Ha quickly moved, still wearing her apron.

Do Ook was already standing in a tidy business suit at the front door. As she came towards him, he held out the necktie he was holding towards her.

“You’re leaving already?”

“There’s a business meeting early in the morning.”

“So you don’t have time to even have a meal?”

Instead of answering, Do Ook draped his necktie around his neck with a quick movement of his hands. To Sun Ha, it felt like he was saying he didn’t even have the time to talk to her face-to-face like this. Or perhaps he couldn’t be bothered to.

Wiping away the moisture from her hands onto her apron, she hurriedly reached out towards him. She tied his necktie properly around his neck and straightened his stiff shirt. If someone were to look at them just at this moment, they might’ve thought that the two of them looked exactly like a happily married couple.

One morning in the past, Sun Ha mustered all her courage to ask if it was okay for her to try and tie his necktie herself. As it sounded to him that she was simply a little bit curious and nothing else, Do Ook showed her how to tie it without much resistance. From his reaction, she became even more greedy.

“Can I also tie your necktie tomorrow as well? I’ll have to do it a few times more to get used to it.”

“Do you really need to get used to doing it? I can just tie it myself like I just did.”

Sun Ha felt down. His cold response reminded her of the wall they had between them in their relationship, but the next day he came to her and handed her his necktie as if it was nothing.

Though it was certain that allowing her to tie his necktie didn’t mean very much to him, Sun Ha felt all the sadness from the day before wash away completely, replaced with overwhelming happiness in her heart. She became happy so easily whenever he did something for her, so she felt she was a very easy woman to please. Of course, it was a shame that the opposite thing happened much more often.