Chapter 151

“X Talk!”

The message that was sent arrived to Mary with a short notification sound.

Not knowing when she would go out, she was lazily draped in a T-shirt over her underwear.

Scratching her lower abdomen under her clothes, she tilted her head at the message from Shiyeon that arrived while she was intensely focused on her game.

‘She said she would call, but why suddenly a message?’

The message, confirmed only briefly through the notification, contained the information that she would return home tomorrow.

The face that had seemed so sad at the thought of not being able to go to Sokcho was still vivid in her mind. What kind of whim would make her decide to come back so suddenly?

Of course, it wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy being away from home for long….

It was clear that the time spent away was shorter than she had begged for, and it wasn’t like she was returning to her military base after a day out.

“Mary? Shiyeon said she’s coming back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I saw the message.”

Still, she had no intention of saying anything more and turned her gaze back to the game screen.

What could she do since Shiyeon was the one insisting on her return?

Regardless, she focused on the game, whose ranking had dropped significantly because she hadn’t played for a while.

A few clicks to time her skilled build and item purchases.

In a one-on-one situation, she would generally win quite easily with the instincts ingrained in her body.

After playing a few rounds where victory was easily achieved, time naturally passed and it was already 4 AM.

She had expected to encounter monsters a few times during the game, but she couldn’t help but resent how quiet they were during times like this.

Or had news already spread to the place called Spaceship?

If that were the case, she could at least stretch out and sleep comfortably.

“Ha….”

In the end, she let out a long yawn and lay sideways on the bed, closing her eyes.

Though she had been up until 4 AM for the first time in a while, there were no worthwhile results to show for it.

Thinking about what time she would wake up if she slept now, she released her blurry mind to the bed.

Her eyes began to slip shut involuntarily due to the stickiness covering her, so much so that the fan she had on seemed insufficient.

Anyone asleep would seem to have just dozed off for a moment, but the light seeping through the window and her smartphone indicated it was 11:40 AM, denying that.

“Ugh….”

If she kept her eyes closed any longer, she felt she would end up waking around 3 PM.

With great effort, she finally sat up, slowly shuffling towards the living room.

The humidity was so high that her feet stuck to the floor.

Scratching her lower back, she peeked into Shiyeon’s room.

Shiyeon hadn’t returned yet.

Wondering if there might be any new messages, she squinted one eye and looked at the bright smartphone screen.

[I’ll go home tomorrow] – 12:36 AM

[I took the 9:50 bus] – 9:55 AM

[I’m on my way home] – 10:12 AM

[Almost in Incheon] – 11:23 AM

[Getting off the bus!] – 11:32 AM

[Taking a taxi home] – 11:39 AM

She belatedly checked the 5 or 6 messages from Shiyeon that had come while she was sleeping.

It seemed she had taken the bus that departed around 10 from Sokcho.

Comparing the recent chat message about taking a taxi with the current time, there was only a difference of a few minutes.

Coincidentally, Shiyeon was coming back almost right when she had woken up.

She doubted she would have eaten anything by 10 AM before getting on the bus, so it looked like she would end up preparing lunch as soon as she woke up.

With no thoughts in mind, she turned her steps towards the living room, naturally moving in front of the refrigerator.

What’s in there, what’s in there.

Even she couldn’t recall what exactly was in her fridge that she opened most frequently.

Ten eggs, tofu she couldn’t remember buying at all.

Various side dishes from delivery food, and the walls were cluttered with an assortment of sauces and random items like single-use plastic ketchup.

Aside from that, there was just a piece of canned ham chopped into cubes, pretending to be fried rice.

‘There’s nothing.’

Reluctantly, she closed the refrigerator door and opened the freezer door right next to it.

In stark contrast to the refrigerator, the freezer was clearly packed.

Most of it was convenient meals that could be heated and eaten easily in the air fryer.

With just one press of a button, she could eat a completed meal, so both Shiyeon and she tended to care more about the freezer than the fridge.

To be honest, it was more convenient that way.

As the rubber pressed against the door fell away with a sound, her hand rummaged through the white steam, grabbing a plastic bag.

She wasn’t thinking much. It was just an action taken since she couldn’t remember what it was.

‘What was this? Ah.’

It turned out to be the thick pork belly she had bought at the butcher shop about a month ago to make boiled pork.

Having forgotten about it while eating delivery food for two or three days in a row, she had completely forgotten about the meat.

Since it was now in her hand with a thought popping up, she placed the meat on the sink, glad it had come to mind.

Her hand holding the frozen meat trembled slightly from the cold.

She took out an appropriate pot from under the sink and filled it with water, enough to submerge the meat.

At that moment, a friendly sound of the front door opening broke the silence.

Halting her action of scooping out soybean paste from a plastic container, she walked towards the door.

Of course, the person coming in through the front door was Shiyeon.

“Did you have a good trip?”

“Yeah! What are you doing?”

“I’m going to make boiled pork. You didn’t eat lunch, right?”

“Boiled pork!”

When she said she was preparing meat for cooking, Shiyeon’s eyes brightened and widened.

It’s meat that any Korean would find hard to dislike, delicious whether grilled, boiled, or fried.

She roughly peeled the skin off an onion on the cutting board and chopped it in half, tossing it into the pot.

She cut the last remaining green onion in the fridge into three large pieces and threw it in.

Although there were no whole garlic cloves, she added three spoonfuls of minced garlic instead for flavor.

After tossing in the ingredients, she took the spoon and slapped it against the edge of the pot, and the preparation was reasonably finished.

After boiling the vegetables for a while, she generously scooped out the soybean paste with a ladle and dissolved it in, then sprinkled ground pepper instead of whole peppercorns and stirred the chestnut-colored broth with the ladle.

A little more waiting, and bubbles began to rise slowly before it began to boil.

Carefully, so the broth wouldn’t splash, she added the meat, which was still emitting white steam from the surface.

Once all three large pieces of meat were in, the pot was filled to about 80 percent.

A sufficient quantity for two people with one piece sure to remain.

She purposely tilted the lid slightly to allow steam to escape and set the smartphone timer for about 20 minutes.

Since it was meat taken straight out of the freezer, it would naturally take a while to cook through.

She planned to boil it on high heat for about 20 minutes, then set it to medium-low heat for the remaining 30 minutes.

“How long will it take?”

“Let’s say at least 50 minutes? Since we pulled it straight from the freezer to cook.”

After finishing the discussion about the meat, she loosened her apron and returned to her underwear, asking Shiyeon.

“Why did you come back so soon when you wanted to go so badly?”

She was curious about why Shiyeon, who had wanted to go to Sokcho so much, returned after just one day.

Ugh… Ah, I can’t remember. Anyway, something about that game, right?

If it was a game she had wanted to play so much, wouldn’t she have kept her focus on it for a few days?

It was just a simple question.

Shiyeon, perhaps out of shame or feeling awkward for not being able to last more than a day after insisting so hard, looked around cautiously before speaking.

“Well… I had a lot of fun for the first few hours, you know?”

“Yeah.”

She responded appropriately with a nod when Shiyeon said the first few hours were fun.

Then came Shiyeon’s next words.

“But the characters you catch are all pretty similar, and as I kept playing, it just wasn’t fun anymore….”

It seemed the game hadn’t been as exciting as she had thought, and she started offering up various excuses.

Now that she thought about it, someone among her military friends had said something like that in a conversation.

“You just play those low-spec NexX games anyway, so why would you say you need a good graphics card?”

“Hey, there’s a ‘huge’ difference between not playing and not being able to play!”

She recalled the debate over graphics cards that had erupted when a highly anticipated game was released.

Rumors were going around that a high-spec game was about to come out, and her friends in the military were eyeing their computer specifications, including graphics cards.

Of course, the guy who had argued about that gave up on the game he wanted to play because it didn’t suit his tastes despite needing a good graphics card.

It seemed Shiyeon felt similarly.

When she was told she couldn’t play, she wanted to, but when she could, she didn’t find it fun….

Anyway, as she released her crossed arms, she spoke.

“Yeah, you only suffer when you leave home.”

It felt odd when she started making a fuss about traveling because of a game.

Still, wanting to boast, Shiyeon fiddled with her smartphone, turning on the game screen to show the characters she had collected.

“Look at this!”

“You got quite a few.”

There was a character that personified a water elemental breakwater, as well as an earth elemental bus… there were quite a few, actually.

Ding ding ding, the default notification sound rang from her smartphone.

It was the alert indicating the 20 minutes were up, and rather than picking up the smartphone first, she adjusted the induction heat level from 10 to about 4.

After turning off the alarm, she reset it for another 30 minutes.

Since she had been receiving things each time from Taehyun, she thought to treat him to a meal since it seemed like there would be plenty of the meat left over.

The current time was 12:23 PM.

For someone whose sleep pattern had been messed up by the sweet poison of vacation, it wouldn’t be strange if they had just gotten up.

She opened the previously used one-on-one chat room and typed a message.

[Hey]

[Did you eat lunch?]

[Nope.]

[Why?]

It seemed the guy was also toying around with his phone, as the moment she sent the message, the number 1 indicating he was typing disappeared in less than two seconds, along with a quick reply.

Finding out that he hadn’t eaten lunch was a stroke of luck, so with a stoic expression, she tapped the screen of her smartphone.

With the message “Boiled pork will be ready in 30 minutes,” she left a note saying whether he wanted to come down or not.

Having a previous incident with the underwear, she changed into short shorts and a T-shirt to prepare for her guest.

“Taehyun will be here soon, so let’s take out the rice and the dipping sauce.”

“Okay.”

Thus began the lunch with three middle school boys gathering 30 minutes later.

During the meal, as the dining table fell into silence, it was Shiyeon who opened her mouth first.

“Are you two dating?”