## Chapter 190 – 190화 – A Little Doubtful (4)
A Korean BBQ restaurant specializing in pork belly.
Min Jia, sitting on a chair at a table, leaned all the way back, rubbing her full belly.
“Ugh, that was good. I’m so full…”
Harin looked at Jia and opened her mouth, as if amazed. The table was completely clean.
“You really didn’t leave a single thing.”
I knew she was excited to come to a BBQ place after so long, but I didn’t expect her to eat two servings of pork belly, stew, cold noodles, and even an extra order of assorted meats. And to finish it all so cleanly.
“Hehe. It’s a waste to leave it.”
“But didn’t you eat too much?”
At Harin’s words, Jia chuckled and flicked her finger.
“Tsk tsk. I’ll leave the diet to tomorrow’s me…! That’s how I live my life…”
“It’s amazing how much you can fit in that stomach.”
“Well, hehe. I think my portions have increased because I do mukbangs, but it’s still amazing even to me. At first, viewers really disliked how little I ate. It’s almost never like that now.”
Jia said that and suddenly started boasting about her mukbang career.
Harin listened to Jia with one ear and let it out the other, thinking about her high school days.
Come to think of it, Jia used to be a very light eater back then. It’s just that her portions have suddenly increased recently.
“Should I get some ice cream?”
“Huh? Oh, thanks, I want strawberry!”
“If they don’t have it? I’ll just get whatever I want.”
“Okay.”
Harin got up from her seat.
Then, the face of the man she had seen earlier suddenly came to mind. A face that had a strange resemblance to her childhood friend, Jinhyun.
So she looked at the next table, but maybe it was because they had been eating for too long.
‘Ah.’
It seemed that the man and woman had already finished their meal and left while they were engrossed in their conversation.
There were completely different people sitting at the next table now.
Harin pondered the man’s face for a moment, then scooped up some ice cream and brought it to Jia.
Jia happily took the ice cream.
“Aren’t you going to have any?”
“No. We’re going to a cafe anyway.”
“That’s right, we were.”
“Anyway, let’s walk around a bit and digest before we go.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Jia comfortably licked her ice cream.
Harin waited for her to finish, then paid the bill and left the restaurant.
“Thank you for the meal.”
“Thank you!! Please come again~!!”
The cold air rushed in. Jia shivered.
“Ugh, it’s refreshing.”
“Refreshing, or cold? It’s almost winter.”
“Hehehe. I like winter because I can hide my belly fat.”
Harin chuckled at Jia’s sudden talk about belly fat and walked with her to digest, as she had said earlier.
“Ah, how much was it?”
“I’ll send it to you on KakaoTalk later.”
“Okay~.”
As they walked, Harin looked around, trying to take in every detail of the scenery.
‘Hmm…’
The clean street scenery and the fashionable clothes of the people.
Would it be okay to live in a place like this?
From what she had seen, the neighborhood seemed quite nice.
The streets were nice, and there was a mountain behind it, so she could exercise instead of the hotel’s gym, which she wouldn’t be able to use after moving out.
Well, she could just get a gym membership.
The reason she was looking around the neighborhood was simple.
It was because of the issue of living alone.
Harin recalled the KakaoTalk conversation she had with Eunju recently.
[Eunju: Harin, do you want to live together?]
[Me: Huh? Live together?]
[Eunju: Yeah. If you’re okay with it, I think it would be good to live together and save money.]
Eunju had made the offer first when she found out that graduation was just around the corner and that she was planning to move out and live alone.
It didn’t seem like an empty offer.
Eunju was also graduating from Berklee College of Music soon and was going back to Korea.
She could go back to her parents’ house, but it seemed like she wanted to be independent.
‘However.’
Eunju’s YouTube channel was doing very well, so she should be able to afford the monthly rent on her own.
The reason she was making this offer was probably because she knew that she was moving out without a job.
It was her way of being considerate.
She had reached 800,000 subscribers recently, so there was no reason for Eunju to live together to save money.
[Me: Thanks. I’ll think about it.]
[Eunju: Okay. Think about it!]
Harin didn’t immediately accept Eunju’s offer.
To be precise, she was still considering it and had put it on hold.
She had been very close to Eunju since they were kids and had kept in touch and met up occasionally, but living together was a different matter.
When she looked it up online, she found a lot of stories about people who had even broken up after living together. There were also people who had become closer, but they were in the minority.
She still hadn’t made a decision about Eunju’s offer, and now she was visiting a different neighborhood.
It was already mid-November. It was time to start thinking about where she would live, in addition to Eunju’s offer.
“Ugh, it’s cold. Can we go into a cafe now?”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
After deciding that it was a pretty good neighborhood, Harin went into a cafe with Jia.
*Ding-dong.*
As soon as they went inside, the cold air disappeared like a lie, and a comfortable and cozy atmosphere warmly enveloped Harin.
“Oh.”
“Wow, it’s warm. Phew, this is heaven.”
The atmosphere was even better than she had expected.
To be honest, the pork belly restaurant that the YouTuber had raved about wasn’t that great, so she was a little disappointed, but judging by the atmosphere, this cafe seemed better than the pork belly restaurant.
“What are you going to have?”
Harin looked at Jia, seeing the large number of items on the menu, and Jia chuckled.
“Hehe. I knew you’d ask, so I made a list. If we eat this, it’ll be perfect!”
“You’re so prepared.”
Harin ordered the items on the list that Jia gave her.
As they waited for their order, they sat down at an empty table. Then, she noticed a man’s face inside the counter.
It was the man she had seen at the next table earlier. The man who looked like Jinhyun.
‘Oh, does he work here?’
She even saw the woman who was with him. Harin stared at the man, who was in her line of sight.
He looked like him, but he also didn’t. It was a strange feeling.
Harin stared at the man.
‘I must be mistaken.’
She came to that conclusion and looked away.
Something seemed subtly different. How could she recognize him after so much time had passed?
And Jinhyun was Eunju’s cousin. Maybe she would have a chance to meet him again after she came to Korea.
Harin took a bite of her financier and sipped her drink.
‘It’s good.’
This cafe was also raved about by the YouTuber, and unlike the pork belly restaurant, she thought it was worth it.
Harin had a satisfying dessert time.
“You’re buying 10?”
“Yeah. It’s so good. It’s amazing.”
“They’ll taste better if you eat them by tomorrow.”
“I-I’m going to give some to my parents too.”
Jia bought 10 financiers to go.
Harin took the subway back to the Royal Hotel and parted ways with Jia, entering her room.
She ate one of the financiers that Jia had given her and thought about the cafe she had visited and the issue of living alone.
‘It might not be bad.’
The cafe seemed to have improved her impression of the neighborhood.
Harin added the neighborhood she had visited today to the list of candidates for where she would live, took off her clothes, and went into the bathroom to take a shower.
******
“Hmm hmm~ hmm~.”
She hummed as she fried garlic.
As the pungent smell rose, a smile never left Jang Ye-hwa’s face.
“Now, I’ll add the shrimp and bacon…”
She had been in a great mood lately.
Her songwriting was going smoothly, and the mornings were always refreshing. Had she ever been this happy every single day?
And the biggest contributor to her smile was…
*Ting-tong~ Ting-tong~*
“Ah! He must be here.”
It was a visitor who came to see her.
Ye-hwa, who was standing in the kitchen, stopped what she was doing and rushed to the front door.
*Beep, click-*
She opened the door, wearing her slippers, and saw a familiar face.
“How have you been?”
A man who came to see her with a bright smile.
Seeing him, Ye-hwa’s face, which was already bright, became even brighter.
“Ah, Jinhyun! Yes. Come in.”
Chun Jinhyun.
It had been six days since Ye-hwa had first been held by him.
She hadn’t been able to see him the day before because she had visited her parents’ house, but since the first time she had been held by him, Ye-hwa had been experiencing extreme pleasure every day.
As they mingled, they naturally talked a lot, and sometimes they spoke informally to each other.
But on the surface, they always spoke formally, but yesterday, while they were talking, they wondered why they were still using formal language when they were the same age, so they decided to speak informally from now on.
“Were you cooking? It smells good.”
“Yeah. Pasta. You didn’t have lunch, did you? Wait a little bit. I’ll make it for you.”
Ye-hwa ran back to the kitchen and put the shrimp on top of the fried garlic. It was fun to cook when there was someone to eat it, not just for herself.
The first day they had sex, he had said that the *rabokki* was delicious, which made her even more motivated.
It made her feel like she had a boyfriend, but then Ye-hwa suddenly felt a pang in her heart as she thought of Sujeong.
What if she really found out?
