Nerd Guy Taste Makeover (1)
Sizzle, sizzle — the eel was browning to a perfect golden crisp.
A delicious smell filled the restaurant from wall to wall, mingling with the boisterous, rowdy energy that only a truly popular place could produce. Bells rang here and there — ding-dong, ding-dong.
Even people who hated team dinners would hesitate once if the menu was beef, and twice if it was eel. And when that eel was being served at an upscale restaurant costing over fifty dollars a head, attendance rates climbed dramatically.
For that reason, tonight's team dinner boasted a no-show rate converging on a flat zero.
Ju-ri was one of the attendees. Not because of the menu — it would simply have been awkward to be the only one missing when everyone else showed up.
"Ju-ri, when are you heading home?"
Blue-gray smoke rose hot and hazy from the grill, and Ju-ri leaned back to answer.
"In a bit. Why?"
"Are you coming to the after-party?"
"Mm... depends on the mood, I guess?"
Ju-ri heaped a perilla leaf with two pieces of eel and a generous pile of ginger and stuffed it into her mouth. One cheek bulged out round and full.
"You really do eat well."
At Yu-ha's look of wonder, Ju-ri replied around her food.
"I love eel."
"I can tell. You eat it like a champ. So how come you never gain any weight?"
Yu-ha poured beer into Ju-ri's glass with a face full of grievance. Ju-ri, who never fell behind when it came to alcohol, topped the glass off with soju, turning it into a somaek.
"You forgot we had a dinner today, didn't you?"
Yu-ha gave her ivory cardigan a sidelong glance. On the right breast, the logo of a luxury brand was embroidered, small and discreet.
"Yeah."
"I thought so. Take off the cardigan, at least. It's expensive, isn't it?"
"I have a change of clothes. So what?"
"Still, a pricey outfit at a greasy table — it's making me anxious on your behalf."
"I've been meaning to ask — Ju-ri, are you a rich girl or something?"
A colleague from the office cut in. Her eyes were sparkling; apparently she'd been dying to ask for a while now.
"Why? Do I look rich?"
"Yeah. You don't seem bothered when expensive clothes get ruined, and you always carry yourself with this easy air."
"I don't have any 'easy air.'"
"Then how does someone with no spare money own nothing but designer labels?"
"They're brands I like."
"See?"
"You could do it too, unnie, if you spent your savings instead of keeping them."
"Ha — so you're just too honest to admit it."
Ju-ri assumed he was joking, but the man scoffed. The others reacted the same way. Ju-ri merely shrugged. Tell the truth and nobody believes it. Figures.
"I buy what I want to buy. You only live once — how many times am I doing this?"
"Fair enough. Who needs to live with their belt cinched tight? God, it's sad. Everyone, don't end up like me. Drink up, drink up."
The man had married a year ago and bought an apartment near the office, now scrimping even on restaurant meals to pay down the mortgage. At his over-the-top theatrics, everyone laughed and raised their glasses.
The cold liquor clawed its way down her throat. Ju-ri emptied her glass in one gulp, then wrapped another piece of eel in ggaennip and pushed it into her mouth. Three pieces of eel and a heap of ginger made her cheeks balloon out.
"You are seriously enjoying that."
At Yu-ha's admiration, Ju-ri flashed a smile around her bulging cheeks, waving a hand toward the eel. Eat quickly. What are you doing, chewing? Somehow Yu-ha understood anyway and followed her lead, wrapping eel in a perilla leaf of her own.
"Ju-ri, eating well, I see?"
Joo-won, the resident chatterbox, had been making the rounds with his glass in hand, and now plopped himself down in the seat beside her.
"...?"
Ju-ri stared at him, both cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk's.
"Eating better than anyone here, apparently."
Pfft. Covering his mouth, Joo-won hastily transferred the eel browning on the grill onto a plate in front of her. Yu-ha scowled at the suddenly bare grill.
Ju-ri turned away from the eel and raised her glass.
"Cheers."
A beer glass swooped in and clinked against hers. Joo-won, slithering into a toast uninvited like a snake, gulped his drink down. Grimacing — ugh — he popped a piece of eel into his mouth, tilted his head toward her with a sly grin, then whispered so no one else could hear.
"Smoke break later?"
"I quit."
"Huh? Really? Liar."
"What are you two whispering about over there?"
Curious eyes from the group latched onto them, and Ju-ri answered with perfect calm.
"He wants to borrow my e-cig. Says he's going to the bathroom."
"Ugh, gross! At the dinner table?"
As everyone grimaced, Joo-won's face went red.
"Come onnn, it was a joke! A joke!"
Shooting Ju-ri a look of betrayal, he hurried off to another seat. Ju-ri giggled like a sore tooth had finally come loose — then looked at the table and frowned. The spot where her glass had been was completely empty.
"What's wrong?"
"Joo-won took my glass with him."
Ju-ri grumbled, returning the eel on her plate to the grill.
"Being popular must be exhausting."
Yu-ha clicked her tongue and brought the eel to her mouth.
"Everyone, enjoying yourselves?"
Ju-ri turned. The team lead, who managed himself so well that even in middle age his suit hung on him becomingly, was standing with his glass raised.
"I just realized we never did our toast. It's late in the day, but better now than never — let's drink! Come on, everyone, glasses up!"
Everyone hurriedly fished out their glasses. Ju-ri spotted an unused soju glass among the cluttered tabletop at last, and raised it as Yu-ha poured soju in for her.
"May your fortunes rise!"
"Cheong—!"
"—chun-eun!"
"—Ba!"
"—ro!"
"—Ji!"
"—geum!"
Glasses clashed amid the thunderous toast.
When, exactly, was youth ever jeans?
Ju-ri downed a sip of the swaying soju. The cold liquor scraped pleasantly down her throat.
Despite the outdated toast, the mood was as warm and festive as it could possibly be. It was as if some firework of sheer, concentrated pleasure kept going off, feeding the momentum again and again. Caught up in the fun, she felt the buzz climb all the way up to the back of her neck.
"Everyone's in better spirits than usual."
"Right? I'd say it's mostly their doing."
Two pairs of eyes turned to the same spot at once.
At a glance, the people in the restaurant split cleanly into two camps.
Natural, barely-there makeup — or dramatic liner drawn long with false lashes stacked on top. Long, straight blonde hair — or a jelly perm curled into a shape like it had survived a bomb blast. Business suits by default, or tailored-to-fit outfits that made the wearer look effortlessly stylish. People who dressed themselves as well as any professional: the Overseas Sales Department.
Meanwhile, the ones in colorless polos, or tees printed with baffling patterns, or mysteriously rumpled shirts, hair either given a lazy once-over with a comb or styled into an outright magpie's nest: the Development Team.
Ordinarily the two mingled like oil and water, but tonight even they seemed to have thawed, warm and companionable.
It was a tradition-not-quite-tradition for the two departments to share a dinner at least once a year, a custom dating back to when the company's overseas exports got into full swing. But forcing people together doesn't turn a goldfish into a crucian carp, or a turtle into a terrapin. With the two departments' temperaments and tastes being so wildly different, no amount of joint dinners had ever made them closer than cordial.
And yet.
"An in-office couple. That's a first."
Ju-ri nodded.
Dinners, joint projects, meetings — contact between the two departments was frequent enough, and in all that time they had never once managed to spark so much as a flicker of romance.
"They met in a club, apparently."
"A club?"
"You know, the morale-boosting campaign."
Company clubs — part of the morale campaign ordered down from on high, a workplace welfare program. The funding was generous enough that not joining one was widely considered a loss.
"Ju-ri, don't you belong to one?"
"No. Not yet."
"I do musical theater. It's great. Musical tickets are pricey, but you get to watch one for free. I was already a musical nut, so the company hooking me up like this is a blessing. You should join one too, seriously. I'd bet most people here are in something."
"It's that common?"
"Everyone except the total shut-ins, basically."
Yu-ha pointed her chopsticks at somewhere across the room. At the tip of the chopsticks hung a man's face.
Thick, unruly hair. The classic black horn-rimmed glasses, like something out of an old silent film. And a lime-green plaid shirt.
Because of him, the Overseas Sales people at his table glowed all the brighter by contrast — beacons in a sky heavy with storm clouds. Amid that gloomy, overcast atmosphere, the man sat with his back ramrod straight and ate his eel.
"..."
"..."
Yu-ha lowered her chopsticks.
"Salty Geon won't join anything. Unless it's something free like a running club, maybe. Oh — the hiking club, I guess that's free too."
Han Geon-joo of the Development Team, famous for never spending a single won of his own money yet never missing a company dinner the company pays for — a.k.a. Salty Geon.
We're total opposites, him and me.
The instant Ju-ri glanced over at Geon-joo, he was looking at her too. Small eyes behind large lenses.
Oh. Eye contact.
In that same instant, his head snapped away. The reaction practically screamed that even glancing her way was unbearable. Ju-ri's mood soured on the spot.
What's his deal?
He doesn't even try to hide how badly he lacks social skills.
Ju-ri turned her body away from the man. A heartbeat later, Geon-joo's gaze drifted to her retreating back, lingered, and dropped away a few seconds after.
She swapped banter with Yu-ha and kept her glass full; he brought only the perfectly browned eel to his mouth, oblivious to everyone else's noise. Backs turned to each other, they each saw to their own business.
Just like their departments — the Overseas Sales Department and the Development Team, different in their work, their looks, everything — the two of them were opposites in every way that counted.
From one to ten, without a single thing in common: they were the absolute extremes of the scale.