I Did It Because You Were Cute

"It's gotten a little cold..."

After coming into Hyunwoo's house with him, that was the first thing Hyunwoo said as he set out the food.

We'd been outside for nearly twenty minutes, after all, so it was only natural that the once-warm takeout packaging had cooled to lukewarm.

Hyunwoo stared at the microwave for a moment, as if pondering something. Maybe he decided it hadn't completely cooled and was still warm enough to eat, because he simply opened the takeout bag and took out the tteokbokki.

The spread was simple: tteokbokki in a cylindrical plastic container, about as basic as it got.

There were no other dishes; the only thing that came out of the bag was the tteokbokki.

'...I thought he tapped the screen a lot...'

Considering how many times he'd tapped the screen, it was hard to believe he'd ordered just one item, so I checked the bag again. But there was nothing left.

The only explanation was that he wasn't used to the kiosk and had pressed all sorts of things at random.

Still, tteokbokki didn't absolutely need any side dishes, and as I kept reminding myself, I was the one being treated. So I decided to accept it.

'Though, if there was one problem...'

"Can we really finish all this? I can't eat much since I got smaller..."

At least to me, the amount looked far too huge now.

Even if I forced myself to eat and tried my hardest, it would be difficult to finish even a quarter of it.

'That means Hyunwoo has to eat all the rest...'

"...Huh? You can't eat much now? Of course I got the large one, thinking about how you used to eat."

"......"

Maybe Hyunwoo had no common sense at all. Even though I'd turned into this, he seemed to think I could eat as much as before.

I looked down at the tteokbokki, its vivid red color proudly blazing.

Its beautiful appearance flaunted itself like a blazing flame, as if appealing to me to hurry up and devour it.

At the thought that, despite the tteokbokki's tearjerking efforts, about half of it would end up shoved into the refrigerator, tears came to my eyes.

'What a waste...'

Still, just as befitted the food that had finally made me give up on dying, the passion and strength soaked into each bit of sauce, rice cake, and fish cake began to captivate me.

It felt as if every ingredient inside the round plastic container were alive, each one hypnotizing me on its own and driving me mad.

Their beautiful forms slowly cooling before my eyes, as if urging me to hurry and put them in my mouth, were enough to remind me that beautiful things were beautiful because they didn't last forever.

While I stared at it in a daze, Hyunwoo had already finished setting out the cups, chopsticks, and everything else.

Only then did I come to my senses and get up to help him. But when I saw him sit down, I suddenly felt awkward and guilty.

"At your age, how can you be so careless as to drool all over the place?"

Not only that, I hadn't even realized I was drooling until Hyunwoo touched the corner of my mouth and wiped the saliva away with his finger.

"...Thanks."

Maybe because I'd been so engrossed in the tteokbokki that I hadn't even noticed I was drooling, I could feel my cheeks growing redder and redder with embarrassment.

'Come to think of it, was Hyunwoo always this forward?'

At least the Hyunwoo I knew from about a year ago wouldn't have wiped something off someone else's mouth with his hand.

At most, he would've pointed at their mouth and told them something was there. He'd always kept that sort of distance.

There was no way to describe it other than strange: he'd become someone who approached people so casually in such a short time.

'And his house is weirdly clean, too.'

It wasn't entirely tidy, and it'd be a lie to say there weren't spots that looked like they'd been hastily cleaned. Still, it was strange, since there was no one Hyunwoo needed to impress.

The house looked like he probably did a thorough cleaning every so often, even if he did it all at once.

Surely he wouldn't have cleaned just because I was coming.

"Aren't you going to eat? Here. Say ah."

While I'd been spacing out and thinking about little things again, Hyunwoo's chopsticks came toward me.

They held one rice cake and one fish cake in perfect harmony, making me look forward to the taste as I chewed.

"Hup..."

For a moment, I was so entranced by their beautiful appearance that I instinctively leaned forward and accepted them into my mouth.

Then I slowly chewed, savoring the taste.

'...! Why is this so delicious...?'

I may have liked tteokbokki from the start, but it had never tasted this special.

To me, tteokbokki had only ever been one tasty food among countless other comfort foods.

I could say with certainty that it had never tasted good enough to move me like this and make me shed a tear without thinking.

"H-hey! Why are you crying...? Does it taste bad?"

Seeing me like that, Hyunwoo panicked and wiped away my tears. Normally, I would've found those fingers fussing over my cheek and eyes disgusting, but for some reason, they felt a little warm and comforting.

This tteokbokki definitely wasn't anything special in taste.

Objectively speaking, it was actually mediocre, focusing only on the spicy and sweet flavors and drowning out its original taste.

But maybe that's exactly why.

The ambiguous taste and the fact that the food had cooled just enough blended together in some mysterious way, creating a completely new flavor I'd never experienced before.

A taste too middling to call delicious.

It felt like a food that had lost something important and simply surrendered its entire being to sweetness, with no free will of its own.

And realizing it was no different from me—relying on Hyunwoo and brainwashing myself into finding meaning in everything just to keep living—made it all the more...

Of course, that wasn't the only reason I was crying.

At most, this was only enough to make my eyes water.

'The most important reason is... right.'

There was another real reason I was crying after putting nothing but cooled rice cakes and fish cakes in my mouth.

"W-wa...! It's spicy...! Ugh..."

The reason was that this tteokbokki was freaking spicy.

The spicy kick rushing up my tongue and making my eyes throb was so intense I couldn't even tell how many levels he'd ordered.

I hurriedly checked the receipt and saw that the spice level was set to the default.

Level 2. Out of five levels, level two was more than enough to plunge me into despair.

"Hyunwoo... My tongue hurts... Water..."

Only after drinking a whole cup of water Hyunwoo poured for me did I finally calm down a little.

I stuck my still-throbbing tongue out of my mouth to cool it, and Hyunwoo stared at me strangely.

After looking back and forth between my tongue and my eyes for a long while, Hyunwoo came closer, until he was so close our faces nearly touched.

He looked a little hesitant, then took a deep breath and came even closer, as if his lips were about to touch my tongue.

"...! What are you doing...?!"

Startled at seeing Hyunwoo's face up close in an unexpected close-up, I shoved him away.

A slightly creepy, repulsive sensation seemed to swirl in my mouth.

I had no idea what he was trying to do, but what I felt was the nauseating sensation of being subjected to one of those first-person-view boyfriend pics.png that might make the rounds online.

"No. I was just going to cool your tongue down. I mean, I've heard people suck food into their mouths and feed it to babies when it's too spicy for them."

"...What?"

My ominous feeling seemed to have been right, because Hyunwoo's ridiculous words made my body shudder.

'So... what he means is... to me...'

"I thought sucking on your tongue might make it feel better, so I was going to try."

Hyunwoo said out loud, completely unabashed, that he'd been trying to kiss me.

I'd always thought he was a pretty unusual guy, but I hadn't thought he was this bad, so I subtly edged farther away.

Of course, Hyunwoo didn't have romantic feelings for me, but two adult men mixing tongues to counteract spicy food was something that could only be described as insane.

"D-did you do that kind of thing in the military...? Mix tongues with another guy..."

I asked Hyunwoo, my question born of pure shock.

I'd heard that even perfectly normal people came back strange after doing military service.

They came back with some kind of illness, whether mental or physical.

'And if Hyunwoo came back so mentally unwell that he lacked even basic common sense...'

I was starting to question whether it was really right to entrust the rest of my life to Hyunwoo.

I seriously considered whether I should run away right now and sleep rough on the street.

"You just look so tiny, I did it without thinking. I don't do this to just anyone. Want another glass of water?"

"...Yeah."

Hyunwoo brushed off my reaction as if it were no big deal.

In fact, his calm confidence made me start to wonder if I was overreacting.

It was suspicious, but from his attitude, he didn't seem to be lying.

He continued speaking calmly, as if he'd really only tried to put my tongue in his mouth for the sake of soothing the burn.

'Well, if that's not the case, then good...'