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Chapter 31
“Aren’t you cold out here?” Je-hee asked, his breath puffing white in the evening air.
“No, I’m fine. Should we start heading back toward the apartment in case you’re getting chilled, though?”
“All right.” Turning back along the tree-lined walkway together after their after-dinner stroll, Je-hee drew a crisp lungful of winter air into his chest—then paused after a few paces when the footsteps beside him stopped. “Si-woon-ssi?”
Looking back over his shoulder, he found Si-woon standing motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, his dark eyes fixed intently on something across the lane.
“Si-woon-ah.”
“Ah.” It took calling him a second time—and dropping the polite suffix—to pull Si-woon out of his trance.
Following the direction of his lover’s gaze toward a brightly lit street cart under the trees, Je-hee raised an eyebrow. “What caught your eye over there? …Hotteok?”
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Beneath the hand-lettered cardboard sign, disks of leavened dough were turning golden-brown on a sizzling iron griddle. The sweet winter pancakes smelled pleasant enough, though Je-hee had never understood the appeal of street snacks like that. Still, after watching Si-woon’s wistful expression for another beat, he walked straight over to the cart.
“Two hotteok, please,” Je-hee told the vendor, then glanced back at Si-woon with a smile. “You’ll eat one with me, right?”
“…Yes.”
A minute later, each holding a piping-hot pancake tucked inside a folded paper cup, they resumed their walk home side by side. Taking a cautious test bite of his own, Je-hee blinked in mild surprise. “It’s actually really good.”
Ordinarily, hotteok was the very last thing he would have bought for himself; he had never cared for cinnamon or the syrupy rush of melted brown sugar. Yet tonight, chewing the warm, pleasantly chewy dough in the cold night air, he found himself enjoying every bite. At this rate, I really am going to put on weight. Ever since moving in with Si-woon, his once-indifferent appetite had steadily grown; food simply tasted better when eaten across from someone who savored every mouthful so wholeheartedly.
“…”
Pausing mid-bite, Je-hee watched Si-woon take a generous mouthful of his own pancake without seeming to care that the molten sugar inside was still scalding hot.
“Mmm.” A soft, contented smile curved across Si-woon’s lips.
“Is it that good?” Je-hee asked, fondness warming his chest.
“Yes.”
“Is there a particular reason you like hotteok so much?”
Glancing down at the paper cup in his hand, Si-woon’s dark eyes softened with memory. “I used to eat them a lot with my dad when I was little. Since my birthday is January nineteenth, I think a lot of my favorite childhood memories are tied to the middle of winter.”
“My sister and I used to stay outside building snowmen until the sun went down,” Si-woon continued in his low, unhurried voice, “and then we’d race back inside to thaw out our freezing hands and feet under a thick quilt, wrestling until dinner was ready. There was a hotteok cart right near our alley back then, too. On his way home, Dad would hold our chapped hands in his big warm ones and buy us hotteok to eat while they were still sizzling.” Offering a faint smile, he added quietly, “I still think about those evenings sometimes.”
Listening beside him, Je-hee could hear just how deeply Si-woon had been loved in those early years—a steady reservoir of warmth that had kept him kind and upright through all the lonely winters that followed.
Turning his head, Si-woon met Je-hee’s gaze with a smile so clear and unguarded that Je-hee’s breath caught in his throat. “It tastes just as good tonight as it did back then.”
Looking down at the last bite in his paper cup before looking back at Je-hee, Si-woon added softly, “When I bought them by myself after I grew up, they never tasted quite right. For years I figured I had just idealized the memory—remembered them as sweeter than they actually were because I was a kid. But eating one with you tonight… it tastes the exact way I remember.”
“…Is there anything else you feel like eating right now?” Je-hee blurted out before he could stop himself.
“Pardon?” Si-woon blinked at him.
“Or anything else down this street you’d like me to buy you?” The questions tumbled out in a rush; if he didn’t keep talking, he was going to pull Si-woon into his arms and kiss him senseless right here under the streetlamps. How did this man manage to hand over his whole heart in a single, unassuming sentence without even realizing what it did to the person listening?
“Right now, this is more than enough.”
Reaching out with his free hand, Si-woon took Je-hee’s chilled fingers and tucked both of their hands deep into the warm pocket of his own wool coat, rubbing his thumb gently across Je-hee’s knuckles until Je-hee laced their fingers tightly together inside the lining.
Popping the last bite of warm pancake into his mouth as the sweet scent of cinnamon drifted between them on the frosty air, Si-woon smiled ahead at the lighted path leading home. “This is why winter is my favorite season.”
[END of SIDE STORIES]