NOVEL NEXT 91
“…Woo-yeon.”
I turned slowly at the voice calling my name. Kim Jong-chun was staring at me, his eyes trembling.
Disheveled hair, a face etched with dismay. He’d clearly rushed here, still wearing slippers that revealed his bare feet.
“Ahjussi. You’re late.”
“……”
Kim Jong-chun seemed to be struggling with what to say next.
Should he immediately apologize and grovel, or try to laugh it off?
But he chose neither, merely staring at me with eyes full of trepidation.
I barely managed to suppress the surge of emotion rising within me.
I forced myself to hold back a sigh. Sensing the tense atmosphere, some customers were glancing in our direction.
Or perhaps they recognized me from my TV appearances and were debating whether to approach. Either way, the timing was poor.
I lowered my voice to a whisper.
“We’ll talk later. There are too many customers now.”
I tried my best to speak without emotion. Kim Jong-chun, reading my mood, cautiously began to speak.
“Woo-yeon. Please, hear me out. It’s not what you think.”
“Boss Kim Jong-chun.”
Not ‘Ahjussi,’ but ‘Boss Kim Jong-chun.’
Seeming to grasp the significance of my words, Kim Jong-chun promptly shut his mouth.
That’s right. We were no longer ‘Woo-yeon’ and ‘Ahjussi.’ We were ‘Song Woo-yeon,’ the company CEO, and ‘Kim Jong-chun,’ the franchise owner.
“Later. We’ll talk later.”
It was no longer a suggestion.
Kim Jong-chun nodded silently. There was no point in raising our voices with customers present.
“I’ll come back when business hours are over. Don’t touch anything in the kitchen. Leave everything as it is.”
“……”
“I’ve already seen everything. If anything is different from what I saw earlier, then…”
I left the sentence unfinished.
“Anyway. I’ll see you later. Have a good day.”
I gave a curt bow and walked out with heavy steps. Kim Jong-chun remained frozen in place, like a statue, as I brushed past him.
Swoosh.
As I opened the door and stepped outside, the air felt quite chilly.
The cool breeze against my cheeks seemed to clear my head a bit.
“Haah……”
I let out the sigh I’d been holding in and leaned against the wall.
The taste in my mouth was unbearably bitter.
⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱⊰⋆⋅⭑⋅⋆⊱
The Hapjae Soup 0212 sign glowed late into the night. At a time when the lights should have been off, the restaurant remained brightly lit.
I moved my feet sluggishly.
My heart was just as heavy. My body felt as if it weighed a ton. But what else could I do?
As I slid the door open and entered, Kim Jong-chun, who had been sitting alone in the empty hall, sprang to his feet.
“Woo-yeon.”
He called out reflexively, then hesitated.
“No, should I call you CEO Song…? …ma’am?”
Such awkward formality.
“Don’t bother. I’ll speak comfortably too.”
If I were to speak to him as I would to any franchise owner, I’d have almost nothing to say to Kim Jong-chun. He was already in a situation where one more warning would trigger the three-strikes rule, resulting in immediate termination.
If we counted my visit today as an undercover inspection, Kim Jong-chun would already be subject to expulsion for falling below standards.
But if we considered this as just Song Woo-yeon, the individual, happening to drop by, we might be able to overlook it before the company takes official action.
Today, I stood at that crossroads.
Depending on Kim Jong-chun’s attitude, the purpose of my visit today could change completely.
Hiding these thoughts, I glared at Kim Jong-chun. He seemed acutely aware of his wrongdoing, his discomfort evident.
“Ahjussi. Why did you do it?”
Though I knew the reason, I asked once more.
“I told you many times not to leave opening and closing to others, didn’t I?”
“You did….”
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
At my question, Kim Jong-chun hesitated before replying in a small voice.
“Well, at first, I did everything myself. But then I caught the flu and couldn’t come to the store for about a week. And during that time… I realized the store ran just fine without me.”
“……”
“After that, I started to wonder if I really needed to do everything myself.”
It was the same old story.
“You know how hard I worked day and night to establish this place, don’t you? Getting up at the crack of dawn to make broth, sleeping in the back room, worried sick that the fire might go out.”
“I know.”
“I worked so hard back then, but now the place is established and making good money. Don’t I deserve some time to rest?”
“……”
“It’s been ages since I had dinner with my kids because I was always working, and I rarely had breakfast with them because I had to get up so early. But even when I was sick with the flu… hearing my kids laugh made me so happy.”
His voice grew thick with emotion as he spoke.
“Making money is all well and good. But how can a person always just chase after success?”
“……”
“Maybe you can live like that. But I can’t, Woo-yeon. Normal people can’t live like that.”
Perhaps he was right.
The countless confessions like this I’d heard always ended the same way. They couldn’t overcome the tedium of this hamster-wheel life.
‘They say it’s not hardship that ruins people, but laziness.’
How true that was.
The Kim Jong-chun who first started this business had vanished without a trace, and now he was using his children as an excuse to justify his own laziness.
“I see, Ahjussi. Time with family? That’s very important. I’m not oblivious to that.”
I curled my lips into a smirk.
“In fact, I feel it even more keenly because I don’t have a family.”
“Woo-yeon. That’s not what I meant…!”
“But this is too cowardly. Ahjussi, did you really come to work late and leave early just to spend time with your children?”
I walked deliberately into the kitchen.
“Is that really all? Can you honestly say everything else remained exactly the same as before?”
“Well, that’s….”
Swish.
I ran my fingertip around the edge of the stove. It came away sticky with grime.
Of course.
People never slack off in just one area.
Problematic franchise owners never make just one mistake. Someone who doesn’t properly maintain opening and closing times can’t be expected to strictly adhere to hygiene protocols.
I had been in and out of this kitchen countless times. A quick glance around was enough to spot what had changed.
“When was the last time you cleaned the kitchen yourself?”
“……”
“You left it all to the part-timers, didn’t you? So they only clean what’s visible. They don’t pay any attention to places like this.”
I spun around a container holding cooking utensils, revealing the dust accumulated behind it.
“This is why I always insisted you handle opening and closing yourself.”
“…I have no excuse.”
Kim Jong-chun said, squeezing his eyes shut. But it didn’t end there.
“Ahjussi. When was the last time you checked the broth?”
“The broth? Our Chef Choi handles that well…”
“‘Handles that well?'”
My voice came out sharp before I could catch myself.
“Why did you learn kitchen work in the first place? It was so you could understand what goes on in the kitchen and not be at the mercy of the chef, wasn’t it? And now it’s ‘the chef handles it well?'”
Does this even make sense?
“You’re the owner of this restaurant, Ahjussi. I don’t know anything about this Chef Choi, but you’re the owner here. Doesn’t that mean you should be the one most concerned about and protective of this place?”
“Y-yes, that’s true.”
“So how can you just leave the most crucial part of the cooking to someone else and wash your hands of it?”
“Wash my hands of it? Woo-yeon, don’t think of it like that. Chef Choi is really trustworthy.”
“Oh, is that so?”
I twisted one corner of my mouth up in a sardonic smile.
“Is he so trustworthy that instead of brewing separate broths and blending them as needed, he just throws everything into one pot and boils it?”
“What?”
“You still don’t understand?”
I flung open the lid of the broth container. I grabbed a ladle and scooped some of the broth into a bowl.
Then I ladled some from the adjacent container.
The colors were identical.
“……!”
“You’ve learned kitchen work, so you should know. Bone broth and meat broth have completely different colors. But here, the broths in both pots are exactly the same.”
Why? The reason is simple.
“Blending the broths as needed is troublesome and time-consuming, isn’t it? I told you, kitchen staff will always find ways to make things easier for themselves.”
“…That can’t be.”
“Oh, it can’t?”
I thrust the bowl containing the two types of broth towards him.
“Do these look any different to you?”
“……”
“Taste them. If there’s even the slightest difference, I’ll apologize to you.”
But Kim Jong-chun couldn’t bring himself to lift the spoon. Of course, he didn’t need to taste it to know.
“Why aren’t you tasting it? You need to taste it to know the difference.”
“……”
Kim Jong-chun’s face darkened instantly.
I figured I’d said enough. I let out a deep sigh before continuing.
“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that not handling opening and closing yourself is excusable. But if that’s the case, you should have been even more thorough with your checks later.”
“……”
“Without doing even that, you claim it’s because ‘you enjoy spending time with your children’? Does that make any sense? This is nothing but an excuse.”
Kim Jong-chun could only stare at the ground, unable to respond. But the expression on his face wasn’t one of guilt or regret.
It was more like he was just waiting for this ordeal to be over.