Chapter 2: Wait…my hair’s on fire?

[Hyuntae's home]

By the time Sunny pulls up to Hyuntae's home, his friend is already standing outside the front door of the former eatery, waiting for him. Soeun barks enthusiastically as she sees Hyuntae, and he cautiously ventures a wave.

It is the sun's greatest hour: the asphalt has absorbed much of the heat of the day, and the pale walls, unfinished railings, and metallic outlines of the building have been touched up with a fiery brush. Hyuntae's hair is slicked back and glistening, as if basting under a lamp, and Sunny suspects that it is more than heat, that he is catching him at the tail end of a marathon cleaning session.

Hwang Hyuntae is a towering, lanky fellow with big hands. Like a sapling without a stake, he had grown gradually lopsided over the years, his big shoulders perched unevenly on either side of a broad and sloping back. The veins in his forearms are prominent and run bluish across his very pale skin, unconscious of such a thing as a beach tan. 

As Sunny makes his way up the front path of the building, dragging along his conspicuous cargo, Hyuntae wrings his big hands a couple of times. Then, like a pebble suddenly knocked loose from its perch, he stumbles forward, a mess of arms and legs rushing to assist his friend. 

"A wagon? Are you some kind of...child runaway in an 80s movie? You could have taken a car," he scolds Sunny lightly, tucking the foldable bike under one arm as Sunny moves to quickly unhitch the wagon.

"No thanks! Calling a car would be like rubbing salt in my wounds right now," Sunny replies cheerfully, not missing a beat. If Hyuntae grunts a rebuttal at some point, he is determined not to hear it. 

"Of course, if you want to lend me some money to get back to campus..."

"Money," Hyuntae repeats, shaking his head. "Money is the entire reason for your current predicament and that's all you've come up with to resolve it, begging? Begging from me?" Shakes his head again. "No, I can't. But, you should consider amputating your brain and selling that."

[A home is a place best left alone]

The inside of Hyuntae's house is...well, a country restaurant. Recognizably so. After his unexpected windfall, Hyuntae has done very little to renovate the property bequeathed to him by his thoughtful relative, though he has clearly made it work for him with the fewest possible refurbishments. 

Walking into the lobby, one is struck by the sight of half a dozen mahogany dining tables, the tops still outfitted with stainless steel grills (albeit worn down to the colour of brass), the robust legs still perfectly aligned with the contours of the linoleum tiles beneath. Some of these tables are strewn with papers and textbooks, others display ersatz equipment - everything from recorders to meters to industrial magnets. 

There's not much to make sense of here, and not much does make sense. Hyuntae's own laptop, a beast of a machine, is inexplicably sitting upside down on a pile of old oily newspapers. His computer mouse lies in a letter tray on the other side of the room, next to a handful of batteries and a battered and eviscerated fellow that is sitting belly-up. A face towel hangs over the table's call bell, now eliciting nobody's attention. Everything smells faintly of singed oakwood, dried chilis, and tallow. 

"Go around my workstations, would you? If you have to put anything down, take it into the lounge," Hyuntae says over his shoulder, switching on a standing fan that had no business being off for even a few minutes. He huffs audibly as he rests Sunny's bike in the one empty corner of the dining hall, taking an extra moment in his squat to breathe. 

With some difficulty, Sunny pulls his wagon over the threshold and into the interior of the "home", past the former dining hall and through heavy double doors into the area which he believes to be the "lounge". This is chiefly marked by the presence of a stack of tabletop games in their original faded boxes, more old newspapers, half a dozen playing cards, and a remote missing its television. 

All this is scattered, in random configuration, across a coffee table whose deep smoke stains permeate even the glass top, and a soft sinking sofa oozing with crimson vines and magenta roses. The latter is the only piece of furniture in the entire house that looks as if it once belonged to a person rather than an establishment, and the mere fact that Hyuntae retains it immediately suggests its importance. 

"Hello, my bed," Sunny whispers as he pats the old relic, hoping that his wish can become material reality just by speaking it. Soeun is rather more emphatic in her wishes, jumping straight onto the sofa and splaying her entire body over the velvety fabric.

[The call of food]

"Tteokbokki's on the counter!" Hyuntae shouts from the other side of the double doors, the thin voice barely carrying. This call temporarily distracts Sunny from the stinging realization that he had failed to take along any of his beddings. Or pillows! Or toiletries! The wish enlarges: he silently hopes that Hyuntae had set himself up for surprise alien visitations, and that those aliens use toothpaste. 

As Sunny makes his way back to the dining hall, he guesses at the form of the tteokbokki in question, and is not disappointed to see a crusty tub of leftover rice cakes swimming in red sauce, still enclosed in the original takeaway bags, and only halfway full. He opens the container - jiggles its half-frozen contents around - and thinks. 

"How about turning this into rabokki? I don't think this will feed both of us."

"Up to you."

"You got any protein, Bro?"

Hyuntae makes a squirming sound with his throat, like his tongue is trying to make a run for it. Surely, Sunny thinks, they cannot be that desperate for protein!

"Uhrrrh, check the wine cabinet."

Sunny does. Without dwelling too much on why a commercial-grade wine cabinet is holding a jumbo pack of fish cakes and a sardine tin, Sunny rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on his bid to stay as tenant. 

[Rabokki, it's good for you]

In under half an hour, dinner for two is ready. Sunny has never used such a large wok range before, but he has cooked meals for enough of his friends and relatives to acclimatize to any kitchen setup, and his hair was only singed twice in the process. 

Having instant ramyun around is an amazing cheat card. It thickens sauces, extends leftovers, harmonizes dissonant proteins. It should win a Nobel prize! He sprinkles a little chopped green onion - nicked from an ambitious green shoot growing in Hyuntae's window - over the top of his creation, and carefully takes the steaming pot over to an empty table, while Hyuntae hunts down some paper plates.

"It's really healing, this," Hyuntae later tells him between mouthfuls of tteok simmered in red sauce. 

"...this, what? You mean rabokki?" Sunny raises his eyebrows questioningly, as he tucks a slice of fish cake into his cheek. It is tender but pleasantly chewy, infused with the aroma of braised sardines. (He sneaked only two sardines to make a meal for Soeun, mashing them into her kibble.)

"It's - mm - totally easy, right? You can do this much at home."

"I was referring to spending time like this," Hyuntae says, a little annoyed. "With you."

"Ah...ah?" 

"Don't get me wrong, you still need your own place. But." A hard pause. "Having someone cook a satisfying meal for you out of nowhere with nothing...well, it's the ultimate expression in caring. I can't do anything for you, and you want to take care of me unprompted."

Sunny never knows when to expect Hyuntae's compliments. In the bland nothingness of their usual exchanges about school, faculty politics and the unknowable future, a kind word from Hyuntae cuts through the fog like a shooting star. 

"I...than...ks," Sunny stammers, unsure why he would draw this out into three syllables.

Now! Ask now! His brain interjects.

"B-but, I wouldn't say you can't do anything for me!" Sunny stammers, seizing the moment. "You'd really be helping me out huge by letting me crash...for tonight...or maybe even two or three nights while I try to reach my landlord? If you want, I can cook a dinner like this every night - "

"You don't have to cook a dinner like this every night," Hyuntae replies briskly, as if the offer had somehow concealed an insult. "Only..."

[A lightbulb meets a divining rod]

"What is it?"

"Well...I'm pretty erratic. It's not as if I haven't had that cartoon lightbulb of recognition go off about keeping a tenant here, but you know, it's impossible. You'd run a serious risk of incurring the wrath of my all-seeing eye."

"Your...your what?"

"My eye," Hyuntae repeated, and in this moment he finally removes the dark sunglasses that he had been wearing the entire time they were talking, that Sunny sees him wearing perpetually at school, as reliable as if they had been the painted eyes of a Lego man. 

He had never asked Hyuntae, why those sunglasses. He always assumed they were related to his friend's uncommon grey eyes, which would surely attract nosy questions.  

"Could you...define what you mean by 'all-seeing eye'?" Sunny attempts diplomatically.

"It travels."

"Oh, so like...nystagmus."

"No, not like nystagmus."

Sunny demurs. If this were anyone else, he might think this is a very silly attempt to scuttle the conversation. But, it's Hyuntae. And with Hyuntae you make adjustments to your expectations. Not just about human physiology, but the universe.

"Did you ever wonder how I was always able to find you when I was a student?" Hyuntae asks, and the eye in question trembles on cue. With a bit of imagination, Sunny thinks he can nearly see it whipping around in a tight circle, too frenetic to be noticed. But it couldn't be...? "Let's just say, I'm not itching to test out the extent of my arcane powers. Not on you, my friend."