Accumulate Experience by Reading Books - Chapter 6

At school, all the classes were over, and it was time for lunch.

“Let’s go and eat,” Lee Jong-Suk said to his friend.

Kim Young-Woo who had been sleeping the whole while woke up immediately and ran out of the class.

“Hold up. Wait for me!” Jong-Suk shouted.

Kim Young-Woo stopped running and waited for him. They both walked to the cafeteria together. On the way to the cafeteria, Lee Jong-Suk brought out the spices he put in his bag while Kim Young-Woo curiously watched him.

“One looks like red pepper powder, what are the other things?” he asked.

“It’s salt, sugar, and pepper too.”

“Why did you bring them to school?”

“Recently, the cafeteria food hasn’t been tasty.”

“So? We’re all just eating it that way.”

“I know. I was also okay with eating it until two days ago.”

Lee Jong-Suk kept the spices in his pocket and tapped his friend’s shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said.

When they got to the school cafeteria, there met a long queue there.

“Wow! The queue is so long. You made us late, Jong-Suk.”

Jong-Suk looked at the long queue while considering their options.

“It’ll take nearly twenty minutes before we are served.”

“I would rather come back here after twenty minutes than line up. The queue’s length should have decreased considerably by that time,” Kim Young-Woo said.

Lee Jong-Suk nodded in agreement and looked at the fitness center beside the school cafeteria. There were three students who were playing in the sunlight, near the fitness center. There was a baseball on the ground beside them, and Jong-Suk’s eyes lit up.

“Look! There’s a baseball there.”

Kim Young-Woo immediately ran to where the ball was and picked it up.

“Let’s play for twenty minutes, come on,” Kim Young-Woo urged him.

“But there are no gloves, what ball game are we supposed to play? If we catch the ball with our bare hands, it will definitely hurt.”

“Only if we throw the ball with much force. I’ll throw it lightly,” Kim Young-Woo said.

After assuring him, Kim Young-Woo threw the ball lightly, and Lee Jong-Suk caught the ball easily. He threw the ball back at Kim Young-Woo. Kim Young-Woo caught the lightly thrown ball and threw the ball back without any interest in the sport.

“It’d be more fun if girls were playing with us,” he complained.

Lee Jong-Suk thought about that for a moment and nodded in agreement. He threw the ball up and caught it. He threw it up again and caught it.

Lee Jong-Suk, who caught the ball, nodded in agreement. Catching the ball and throwing it back lightly, he thought about what kind of thing he was doing. He remembered the dream he had and the motions he made with the ball. He vividly remembered the way he handled the ball. But he was yet to try the moves in real life.

“Let’s see Kun Gong,” he said to himself.

He threw the ball high into the air. He immediately spread both his hands and bent his knees a little. Although it was his first time doing it, he didn’t feel uncomfortable. He had never experienced it, but it still felt somewhat familiar to him.

Thud!

The ball fell in front of him.

Lightly the ball fell down in front of him. The ball rose back up to his bent knee level, and he fluidly extended one knee out, and the ball landed on the knee. It down his leg in a straight line and landed on his foot. He kicked it up, and he expertly caught it with his right shoulder. It rolled down his right hand, but before it got to his wrist, he tilted his body, and the ball rolled back up his right hand and down his left hand. He continued moving the ball from hand to hand that way. His body felt soft and jelly-like like that of a squid.

The ball moved on his body as if there were no bones in his body. As the ball moved across his body, a huge smile slowly crept onto his face. He felt awesome. He loved how the ball was moving easily on his body and how his body synchronized itself to the ball. His feeling of ecstasy was cut short when Kim Young-Woo shouted at him across the field.

“Hey! The line has decreased.”

Kim Young-Woo started heading towards the cafeteria. Jong-Suk was rotating the ball on his palm then. He stopped rotating it and squeezed the ball in his fist. He opened his fist and stared at the ball that was spinning in his palm a few moments ago. He put back in its original position on the floor and ran after Kim Young-Woo.

Though Kun-Gong was very interesting, he had to eat lunch. He could continue from where he stopped later. He hurried to catch up to Kim Young-Woo, and they entered the cafeteria together. Immediately after they stepped in, Lee Jong-Suk felt ravenous. The queue had indeed had reduced, but there was a queue nonetheless.

“The teachers get to eat comfortably in a separate place,” he complained.

“Isn’t this discrimination towards the students of this school? Are we not also important?”

The teaching staff cafeteria was located behind the general school cafeteria. The teachers didn’t have to wait in line, and they got to eat comfortably. Lee Jong-Suk joined the queue and stood behind Kim Young-Woo while he was still grumbling.

“Maybe I should become a teacher too,” he said to Young-Woo.

“What are you saying? You want to become a teacher so you won’t have to queue before you get served?” His friend asked him with an incredulous smile.

They got to the front of the queue, and Lee Jong-Suk showed his student identification card at the counter. The person attending to him smiled and told him what they were serving for that day.

“Today’s menu is meat rice, seaweed, beverage, and kimchi soup.”

This was the menu Lee Jong-Suk liked. Even though the quantity of meat rice they usually served was small, it was still appreciated. He tasted the food and was surprised. The taste had changed. The food was tasteless. He didn’t believe he queued to eat food as tasteless as that.

“Hey, there’s are vacant seats there.”

Kim Young-Woo started walking in that direction, and Lee Jong-Suk followed him without looking at the direction he pointed at. He was still commiserating over the time he spent queuing.

The table Kim Young-Woo picked was occupied by girls. Kim Young-Woo sat down and told Jong-Suk to sit too. Jong-Suk looked up then and was surprised they were seating amidst girl. The girls who were still eating looked in his direction. Lee Jong-Suk let out a small sigh and went to sit beside Kim Young-Woo. He placed his plate next to his friend’s own and took his seat.

Although they attended a co-educational school, boys and girls rarely made contact or talked with each other. Because of this, I didn’t really know how to act around girls. Girls were sort of like a fantasy to him. Like the tough levels, you had to win in a video game to get a huge reward. The reward was there, but it would be very hard to get the reward. Getting a girlfriend was on the same level as slaying a dragon.

Kim Young-Woo wasn’t shy around girls, though. He was the kind of guy who could easily argue with a girl. Although he was feeling a bit awkward, Lee Jong-Suk determinedly rolled up his sleeves and focused on his food.

“Let’s eat quickly and leave.”

Lee Jong-Suk took a bite of his food and grimaced. He took out the spices packet from his pocket, put some salt in his palm, and rubbed his palm together.

“Why are you grinding the salt? If you do that, it will melt.” Kim Young-Woo said.

“If we do it like this before adding it to the soup, then the salt will mix well. If we don’t do it like this, then the salt will stay wherever we dropped it and the taste will be uneven.”

After grinding it to his satisfaction, Lee Jong-Suk added a little salt to his kimchi soup. He then added some red pepper powder to the soup.

“It will be fine even if I don’t add sugar,” he said.

He figured the soup would be sweet enough without it. He took his spoon and tasted it. He was right; the soup was edible.

“Taste it. It’s different now.”

Kim Young-Woo looked at him for a while before using his chopsticks to take a small piece of meat from the soup.

“Wow!” He exclaimed while using his spoon to taste the soup properly.

“Why is this so tasty?”

Lee Jong-Suk sighed and rolled his eyes. The fuss Kim Young-Woo was making the girls stare them, and he was becoming uncomfortable.

“Just eat,” Lee Jong-Suk whispered fiercely.

“Yah! Do it for me too.”

Lee Jong-Suk gave him his own plate and took his. He repeated the same process for the second plate.

“Oh! By adding salt the taste can change this much? Wow.”

“I added red pepper powder too.”

“But how did you know the right amount to put?”

Lee Jong-Suk just wanted him to shut up and eat his lunch. However, Kim Young-Woo kept pestering him until he replied.

“If any food doesn’t taste good it means that the balance of the five flavors – saltiness, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and spiciness – went wrong. That is why I added salt and red pepper powder because this food lacked them.”

“And by adding only those two, the food became this tasty?”

“Isn’t there a difference between a cup of water that’s overflowing and one that isn’t?”

“The difference is one drop of water.”

“One drop?”

“Yes. If there isn’t one additional drop of water, then the water won’t have the possibility of overflowing and will be balanced. What I did is the same as adding one drop of -”

Lee Jong-Suk stopped when he realized Kim Young-Woo had stopped listening and was busy wolfing down his food.

While talking, Lee Jong-suk’s eyes looked at Kim Young-Woo and noticed that he was busy eating his meat.

“Don’t forget to chew, you idiot,” Lee Jong-Suk muttered.

He felt envious of Kim Young-Woo, who was comfortably eating his food like he had no care in the world. He sighed for the umpteenth time. He picked up his chopsticks and started eating. He glanced at Kim Young-Woo, who was halfway into his food, and shook his head.

A girl who was sitting in front of them slowly asked them,

“Hey, may I have a taste of food?

Lee Jong-Suk looked at the girl and was at a loss of words. His hands started shaking, and he found it impossible to maintain eye contact with her. The girl was still looking at him, waiting for his reply. And she wasn’t the only one; others had turned to look at him and Kim Young-Woo, with curiosity in their eyes.

At the words of the female student, Lee Jong-suk looked at the girl and his hands started to shake. The girl and those around her were looking at Lee Jong-suk and Kim Young-Woo alternatively with a lot of curiosity in their eyes.

Kim Young-Woo cleared his throat and was about to reply when Lee Jong-Suk cut in.

“Okay,” he said in an informal tone.

The girl thanked him and used her chopsticks to take a piece of meat and ate it.

“Hmmm. It’s delicious,” she said.