Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can - Chapter 58.1
After accepting the medicine from Cha Gwonhyeok, I became worried that the kids might catch my cold, so I got up, found a disposable mask in my desk drawer, and put it on.
My breath filling the inside of the mask felt unnaturally hot. This cold seemed worse than I had thought.
“Guys, have you eaten?”
“No.”
“We came here right after school ended.”
It was six in the evening. Today was one of the days when neither Kim Jihwan nor Cha Gwonhyeok went to an academy. Intending to make them something, I went to the kitchen and put on an apron.
Then I turned around and asked.
“Sit in the living room. I’ll make dinner for you in no time.”
At my words, Kim Jihwan ran one hand over his face and sighed. Cha Gwonhyeok, who was beside him, also smiled as though slightly troubled.
“…Fine, but put on some pants first, Baek Hanrim.”
“Ah.”
Only after Kim Jihwan said that did I realize I still hadn’t put on my pants. Wow, I must really be out of it because I’m sick.
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When I went to prepare dinner, there was no rice in the rice cooker. Should I at least make ramyeon? I asked the kids.
“How many packs of ramyeon do you guys eat? Should I cook two?”
“There are three people, and you’re making two packs?”
Kim Jihwan asked me doubtfully.
I held up two five-pack bundles, meaning ten packs of ramyeon in total, and shook them. When Kim Jihwan realized how many I meant, he looked disgusted and berated me, asking if I thought everyone was a pig like me.
“Who knows? Gwonhyeok might eat as much as I do, right?”
When I turned to Cha Gwonhyeok and asked, he made a strange expression and hesitated to answer. What was that expression? Puzzled, I asked Cha Gwonhyeok on the off chance.
“Uh… Gwonhyeok-ah, have you never eaten ramyeon before?”
“I’ve eaten it.”
Right, no matter how rich his family was, there was no way someone born and raised in Korea had never eaten ramyeon. Then why… Aha.
“You’ve never cooked it before.”
“…Yeah.”
Kim Jihwan, who was beside him, looked dumbfounded before sneering at Cha Gwonhyeok.
“You don’t even know how much one pack is?”
“……”
An obsessive top who couldn’t even cook ramyeon. That was somewhat interesting.
It also made him seem as though he had been raised with extreme care, and as though he had very little ability to take care of himself. It made him seem more three-dimensional. Still, if he had never even cooked ramyeon before, he would struggle if a war broke out.
Ah, was thinking about war a bit excessive when this wasn’t even a world-setting transfer?
“Eating one pack feels like eating three spoonfuls of rice.”
I took out a stockpot and gave him my review of a single pack of ramyeon. If he didn’t know, I only had to teach him.
“You pig, how is Cha Gwonhyeok supposed to understand if you explain it using your standards?”
“Hanrim-ah, even I know that can’t be right.”
After I had gone to the trouble of explaining it, Kim Jihwan and Cha Gwonhyeok took issue with what I said and stopped me from taking out the stockpot.
In the end, we agreed to cook only five packs of ramyeon. If we all ate together, each person would probably eat another half pack or full pack. Was it because they were people from a novel? Their stomachs were awfully flat too.
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“Do your parents rarely come home?”
“That’s right. They’re busy people.”
I answered Cha Gwonhyeok’s question while washing the ramyeon bowls and pot after we finished eating.
Baek Hanrim’s parents had frequently been away from home for work ever since he was in elementary school. Perhaps because they felt guilty about that, they tried to make up for what was lacking with allowance money and phone calls even when they were physically distant.
“Don’t you miss them?”
“Mm? I’m not sure.”
I had been grateful for their efforts, so I had never felt particularly dissatisfied. But thinking back on it, the young Baek Hanrim from the original novel must have been quite lonely. Was that why he tried to fill his need for affection through the picture-perfect, harmonious family next door and ended up falling for Kim Jihwan? Baek Hanrim’s lifelong unrequited love for Kim Jihwan might have originated from that deprivation.
“It doesn’t seem like many kids have ever come to your house either.”
“Baek Hanrim doesn’t invite people over often.”
“Haha, I should at least be able to rest at home.”
Ironically, ‘I’ felt comfortable and happy because my parents weren’t around.
I was past the age when I would blindly crave affection, and even after several years, they felt more like kind mentors than family. Being together with them for too long was uncomfortable.
The biggest reason was probably that I had transmigrated into this body after becoming an adult. If I had come here in my teens, I might have shamelessly accepted them as my real new mother and father.
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