Due to eating breakfast late and going to the library, it was always awkward to eat lunch before going to part-time work.

Today, thinking of having a simple lunch at that house, Soo Young bought two cup ramens at the convenience store.

It was unclear why she bought two when she only needed to eat one. She decided to just store one in the cupboard of that house and eat it tomorrow.

She entered the password and entered the house that was, as expected, without any sign of life.

The moment she took off her shoes and stepped inside, her eyes caught sight of a small pink slipper. It even had a band at the back so it wouldn’t slip off or be dragged.

Could it be… for me to wear?

While her head was worrying about what to do if not, her feet slipped into the slippers. The perfect fit made her feet feel cozy and somehow cared for, improving her mood.

Or, could it be something else unsatisfactory that was placed there? There were still no traces of anything eaten in the kitchen. Does he eat and clean up? Or continue to starve?

As soon as the word ‘starve’ came to mind, she suddenly felt a vibration in her stomach. Her movements became busy at the thought of quickly finishing the cleaning and eating cup ramen.

When she thought it was clean enough, though not as meticulous as her aunt, she threw the rag into the laundry basket and filled the coffee pot with water.

Fearing he might complain about the noise again, she poured the water into the cup ramen before it had fully boiled.

Hmm… smells good.

Perhaps due to the smell, her stomach churned even more. Just as she was about to take a big bite while standing in front of the sink right after 4 minutes had passed,

“What are you eating?”

That soft voice was heard again. Is his sense of smell as developed as his hearing? Do all senses except sight develop several times over when you can’t see?

As Soo Young slowly turned around, she saw that cartoon character standing at the entrance of the kitchen.

Wearing a white knit even though it’s not cold. It suited him well. Well, what wouldn’t look good on that face.

“Ramen… would you like some?”

Feeling somehow caught eating alone, Soo Young asked with a reddened face. The answer was a rejection as expected, but the reason was strange.

“…I don’t eat hot things.”

Since living alone, Woo Jin intentionally avoided eating hot things. If he accidentally got burned, the aftermath would be troublesome.

“You haven’t had lunch, right?”

Perhaps due to the mention of lunch, suddenly a gurgling sound leaked from his seemingly fine stomach. It seemed to be more so because of the ramen smell he was smelling after a long time.

“Eat and ventilate afterwards. I hate when the house smells.”

Woo Jin turned his body to leave the kitchen with a slightly reddened face.

Having heard the gurgling sound, Soo Young quickly approached him, intending to let him taste at least one spoonful of ramen.

Feeling a presence close by, he startled and stepped back a couple of paces. As his back touched the wall, irritation surged at the thought of having nowhere to escape.

“Move!”

“Let’s eat together.”

“I said move!”

As Woo Jin instinctively twisted his body to escape the kitchen, suddenly a scream was heard from the side. Startled by the scream, he shrunk his body.

“What? What is it?”

As he reached out into the wavering light, he felt soft hair at his fingertips. Hair… If hair is touched at this height, it means she’s bending her waist…

“Are you hurt? Are you injured?”

“Ah, stay still right there. Stay still. You’ll burn your foot.”

At the mention of burning, Woo Jin’s body stiffened again. No way…

“You, were you holding the cup ramen? Did you spill it?”

“No, I was going to give it to you, Seol Woo Jin.”

Soo Young said, holding the front of her hoodie where the ramen broth had spilled. Thanks to quickly avoiding, a major disaster of being drenched was averted, but the skin where the broth touched inside the t-shirt stung.

She had just approached to offer a spoonful of ramen, but an unexpected catastrophe occurred. Thinking about what could have happened if she had spilled it on him sent chills down her spine.

He can’t see. Please be careful, he can’t see. As she was brainwashing herself, Woo Jin shouted angrily.

“How many times do I have to say it! I can’t see! How could you approach with hot broth!”

Feeling guilty made him even angrier. However, Soo Young grabbed her t-shirt and hurriedly started wiping the floor with a rag.

She should apologize, but his irritation made her say something brazen instead.

“Could you please stop yelling? It’s fine since no one got hurt. Just stay still there. I’ll clean it up quickly.”

“…Are you really okay? You’re not burned?”

“I’m fine. Don’t move.”

Feeling his voice trembling slightly, Soo Young spoke in an intentionally calm voice to reassure him.

She had seen his gaze following her movements several times when she moved. So she had no idea to what extent he couldn’t see.

Just trying to let him taste a spoonful of ramen had caused this catastrophe… She thought she should never offer food again. No, before that, hot things are absolutely forbidden in this house.

But, a life where you can’t even eat ramen. Isn’t that too pitiful? Surely not all visually impaired people can’t eat ramen… She thought maybe he was just being overly cautious.

Once the broth and solid ingredients were mostly cleaned up, she rinsed the rag and started thoroughly wiping the floor again. Meanwhile, Woo Jin remained motionless as she had instructed.

Still, his gaze followed her movements.

“It’s done. Whew, I’m tired. This house is too big. Don’t you think it’s wasteful and extravagant for one person to live in such a big house?”

Soo Young intentionally said something absurd to ease Woo Jin’s tension. However, he remained frozen in place like a fixture.

Honestly, he wanted to return to his room, but he had lost his sense of direction due to unintentional movements.

To find his direction, he needed to feel around, but he didn’t want to grope around in front of her.

Watching him caress the wall behind him with a reddened face, Soo Young realized he had lost his direction.

Since he can’t see, he must be mindful of direction and number of steps even at home, but now he clearly couldn’t find his direction.

It would be easier if she held and guided him, but he seemed to hate being touched more than anything. Wondering what to do, Soo Young asked Woo Jin while looking at him.

“If you don’t like me touching you…, is it okay if you touch me?”

“What?”

“I asked if it’s okay for you to touch me. You seemed to touch me a few times before…”

The expression ‘touch’ sounded a bit strange to say to a man, but because Soo Young spoke so matter-of-factly, neither of them felt the oddness.

“If it’s okay for you to touch me, do you want to hold onto me and move?”

“…No need to hold. Just explain.”

Woo Jin stepped away from the wall and said gruffly.

“Do you want to sit at the table? Let’s eat ramen together.”

“Why do you keep going on about ramen?”

He couldn’t understand why she was still trying to feed him ramen even after that commotion.

“Both you and I are hungry. Ramen tastes good and smells good. Don’t you want to eat it? I had the foresight to buy an extra one just in case. I saw rice in the fridge, let’s heat that up and eat together. Okay?”

Since he said he doesn’t eat hot things, he probably hadn’t eaten ramen for a long time. But his stomach had growled at the smell of ramen.

He seemed to want to eat but couldn’t ask due to his proud ego, so she actively encouraged him.

After hesitating for a while, Woo Jin approached the table slowly with a displeased expression, despite giving in to her persistent suggestion.

He found it so strange that he couldn’t resist till the end like he did with Seol Ji Hyun.

Someone tapped Soo Young on the back as she was watching YouTube with her earphones on. It was So Yeon Ho, a senior from the same department.

“Senior So.”

While everyone else called him Senior Yeon Ho, Soo Young always called him Senior So. At first he tried various reactions, but now he just went along with it. Thinking of it as a nickname only she called him.

He had been discharged from the military and was now retaking the teacher certification exam. He was determined to try for one more year and if it didn’t work out, he would enter a private school.

“Have you given up on job hunting? Always with novels and YouTube… Why don’t you prepare for the teacher certification exam like me? Then your mother won’t be able to push you anymore.”

He said as he got coffee from the hallway vending machine and handed it to Soo Young.

“I don’t want to invest years in something that may or may not work out.”

“Then why don’t you just enter a large academy as an instructor?”

“I worked at a large academy for a year, remember? You know it’s no joke, right? I have to make all the materials myself. During exam periods, I have to give up weekends and have classes late every night so I can’t even date.”

As Soo Young spoke nonchalantly, Yeon Ho looked at her with an exasperated expression.

“Are you a kangaroo kid? Do you want to be a writer? Just be honest with your mother and pursue the path of a writer. Don’t just hang around the library.”

“You need input to have output. And I’m doing part-time work these days.”

“The housekeeping job you’re doing instead of your aunt? Even your part-time jobs are like that…”

“Why are you like this? It’s quite high-paying, you know? 2 million won for two hours.”

“Didn’t you say you’d give it all to your aunt?”

“But I think I should ask for about 30 percent. The mental stress is too much.”

As Soo Young sighed deeply, Yeon Ho asked with a puzzled expression.

“What’s there to be mentally stressed about?”

“The homeowner… Never mind. It’s not much longer anyway, I should just let it go.”

“Why! Is the homeowner making life difficult for you? Looking down on you for being a housekeeper?”

Suddenly Yeon Ho’s voice became rough.

Soo Young thought it would be better if he looked down on her or something like that. Then she could just confront and fight. But this, it was an emotion she couldn’t quite understand.

Soo Young, who had seated him at the table by explaining ‘a few steps left, a few steps right’ like coding instructions, since he refused to hold her arm which would have been easier, scooped half of the cup ramen into a bowl for him.

Thinking one cup ramen wouldn’t be enough for two, she also heated up the rice from the black lunchbox and placed it in front of him. He picked up the chopsticks and started eating the ramen as skillfully as if he could see.

He ate so deliciously, even savoring it as if eating ramen for the first time, that Soo Young gave him all of her ramen despite his refusals.

After gulping down one ramen like that, he quickly devoured a full bowl of rice mixed with the remaining soup. Seeing this, she thought he must have been quite hungry.

Was he not eating because it’s troublesome and cumbersome to prepare food when you can’t see?

As he finished lunch so quickly and left the kitchen, he didn’t forget to nag about ventilating. She should have been annoyed at the nagging, but somehow she felt a warm fuzzy feeling.

What is this? Pity? No, it was a bit different from pity.

The satisfaction of a mother who fed her son who doesn’t eat well? No. This was the feeling she had when she ate tteokbokki for the first time with the boy she had a crush on in high school.

Why? For such a prickly man? Am I starved for love because I haven’t had a proper relationship? Do I start liking someone just from eating together now?

No, no. This is purely because of that face.

Seeing is believing… If your heart stays calm after eating with a face like that, you’re not a woman. This is natural, natural.

Yeon Ho clicked his tongue as he watched Soo Young shaking her head, nodding, and acting erratically while drinking coffee.

I need to get her employed quickly and take care of her… It seemed her condition was getting worse as her unemployed life prolonged.

“What were you watching on YouTube earlier?”

As Yeon Ho asked while downing the rest of his coffee in one go, Soo Young finally came to her senses and looked up at him.

“Ah, Senior So. Did you know that even visually impaired people have vastly different levels of vision?”

“Really? Aren’t they called visually impaired because they can’t see?”

“There are people who can’t see light at all, and there are those who can see large letters. Those people are called low vision visually impaired.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that. But then, shouldn’t we not call those people visually impaired? They can see.”

“But apparently they can’t write or do things like that. So when they go to the bank and ask for help writing, people look at them strangely. Because they came after seeing the numbers displayed but say they can’t see and ask for help writing.”

“Hmm. But why are you suddenly looking into this? Are you planning to volunteer?”

“Huh? No, I didn’t particularly look it up, just…”

Soo Young mumbled while sipping her already cold coffee. It was true that she had become more interested in visual impairment after meeting Woo Jin. Yeon Ho sat down next to her and asked.

“Are you going to your part-time job today too?”

“Yeah. I need to leave at 1:30.”

“You can go after lunch then. Want to go eat tteokbokki together?”

Yeon Ho, who didn’t have a teacher certification academy class today, invited her to lunch after a long time. He had even found a new tteokbokki place near the library for her, who likes tteokbokki.

But unexpectedly, Soo Young shook her head.

“I ate breakfast late, so I’m fine.”

“Still, you should eat lunch. I heard there’s a new delicious tteokbokki place near the library.”

“That’s true, but…”

As she was speaking, she suddenly thought about getting tteokbokki to go. If he likes ramen, he’ll probably like tteokbokki too. For sure.

“Where is that tteokbokki place?”

When Soo Young asked, Yeon Ho answered with sparkling eyes.

“You know that takeout coffee place we used to go to often? It opened right next to it.”

“Re-eally?”

Regardless of Yeon Ho’s expectation that she might want to go together later, Soo Young decided to leave a little early and buy that tteokbokki to take with her.

Ji Hyun, who was checking Woo Jin’s emails, looked at her younger brother’s face as if it was strange.

“Did that housekeeper bring ramen? So? Don’t tell me you scolded her for making the smell?”

Then Woo Jin frowned and said,

“What are you talking about. We even ate together.”

“You ate ramen? With that woman?”

“Ah, if you’re done checking the emails, move aside!”

Woo Jin pushed Ji Hyun, who was asking in disbelief, and pulled up a chair to sit down. Ji Hyun stepped back a good distance to the side and still looked at his younger brother’s profile with surprised eyes.

“Did you throw up after that housekeeper left?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?”

“I said I didn’t!”

When Woo Jin shouted as if he was genuinely annoyed, Ji Hyun carefully said,

“You used to throw up when you ate ramen. Has it gotten a bit better now?”

But Woo Jin didn’t answer. He had eaten ramen on the day of the accident too. Maybe that’s why, every time he happened to eat ramen after regaining consciousness, he always threw up.

Whenever he ate ramen, he smelled something burning from somewhere and felt sick. So that day too, when he smelled ramen from somewhere, he was very flustered.

But when he realized that woman was eating it, the burning smell disappeared. As soon as the burning smell disappeared, his appetite immediately rose.

So he was able to eat ramen for the first time in 10 years. With that woman named Kim Soo Young.