<aside> ✒️
Seoul, 2007. Around a dinner table set with silver spoons and silk runners, desire and destiny begin to surface in the domestic rituals of the Kim household.
</aside>
After that night, it took Taejun almost a week to sleep properly again. Memories and thoughts blurred together in his head. He stared at the ceiling.
Denied. Smiled. Denied.
It had probably just been a dream. He tried to distract himself.
He got up, still crumpled from the cold spring night, and sat at a corner of the table, trying to eat tofu soup.
Around him, the air moved faster.
— Omma, are you sure we’ve prepared everything? One, two, three…
Jaeeun counted the bowls arranged and lined up the metal chopsticks. Mrs. Kim had laid the wooden table with ivory silk runners, carefully chosen and ironed for the occasion. She set the silver spoons. Added a few forks.
The scent began to fill the room. Steamed rice, doenjang-guk, kimchi-jjigae, bulgogi. Tteokbokki. Kimchi, not too spicy, placed in smaller bowls. Jaeeun tasted a piece. Still cold from the fridge, but the sharp heat hadn’t dulled.
Mrs. Kim had considered preparing a few European dishes—Italian, perhaps—but feared making a mistake. She preferred to play it safe. Gangjeong. Songpyeon. Few, but sweet.
The Kim family was getting ready. In its own way.
Tae watched the moment through a closed eyepiece. A few nights earlier, that night, he had found what he had not been looking for.
Mr. Kim also joined the preparations. He brought to the table a bottle of clear soju and a Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 2002.
They rarely drank wine. But this seemed the perfect occasion to open that rare bottle, and to place on the table the glasses he had bought on sale months before.
The Kims had carefully recreated the living room. It was the staging of their new life.
They had flown overseas to secure visas for their children, a better future than Seoul could offer at the time. 1997. Misery, tear gas, riots. Labor and student protests in a nervous State that still had no face.
Jaeeun dabbed her face. The powder dried her state of waiting. Rice dust fell onto her cardigan. She brushed it off quickly with her hand.
— Omma, please, let’s not talk about what Tae is doing. Don’t put me in an awkward position…
— Why? You should be proud of your brother!