Sunday morning, Lain said he’d made breakfast for the kids the moment he got up.
It’s nothing, really. But something in me paused, just for a second. That this is the first thing he does upon waking. So naturally, so without a second thought. Maybe it caught me more because it was tucked in the middle of something else he was saying, almost in passing.
In the afternoon, he said, they went to the outlet. Clothes for the three of them came to eight hundred thousand won. Jeep and National Geographic — because, he added, they like the outdoors. T-shirts, shorts, cargo pants, polo shirts. Safe black, and a bold orange.
Orange.
That surprised me. I would have guessed he’d choose something plain, something safe. It made me think — even after looking at someone for so long, there are still corners you don’t know.
Back home, he said he’d made tteokbokki. Fish cakes, jjolmyeon noodles, Spam, rice cakes. He said the jjolmyeon has to go in separately, or it loses its chewiness. That little detail was almost funny to me. Like I could see, in it, the person I know.
For dinner, he said, they had fried chicken.
It was today, too, that Jaeyoon asked how to spell anniversary. Whether it meant something, some occasion, or whether it just crossed his mind — I didn’t ask.
What that orange t-shirt might look like — every now and then, it’s the strangest things I find myself wondering about.
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