Ding-dong!
"Coming!"
Cheese Party — a cheese-braised pork ribs restaurant in Hongdae, Seoul.
It sat on prime real estate in one of the city's biggest commercial districts, the kind of spot that packed out every weekend without fail. The cheese food craze sweeping the country at the time meant there was always a line of customers waiting outside.
"Can I get a bottle of Chamdasul, please?"
"Of course! Right away."
It was Lee Ji-hoon's first day on the job, and he took the drink order with cheerful energy.
Every time he approached a table, he wore a smile — the kind that made anyone who saw it feel like he was genuinely happy to be there.
"I'll clear that for you, Manager."
"Oh? Sure, go ahead."
Ji-hoon moved like an all-rounder on a football pitch — constantly in motion, never stopping. Maybe it was his long legs, but he covered ground noticeably faster than everyone else.
*Impressive.*
Ahn Jeong-min, the floor manager, watched him with quiet admiration.
Nobody had told him to, but he'd shown up a full hour before his shift started to learn the POS system and get a feel for the place. Now that he was actually working, he was flying from the very first day.
He was already more dependable than the part-timers who'd been there nearly a year — all of them older than him.
"Cheese pork ribs, extra spicy, extra cheese — here you go. Once the cheese looks melted, you're good to dig in."
"Thank you!"
"Would anyone at this table like an apron?"
"Oh? Yes, please."
A table of two women.
Ji-hoon came back with a smile and a pair of aprons.
"Here you are."
"Thank youuu!"
The customer — twenty-three years old — put on a cutesy voice for the seventeen-year-old boy serving her.
"Rice balls, here you are. They're fresh out, so be careful — they're hot!"
"Got it!"
Ji-hoon kept moving, kept smiling.
He was working harder than any of the other floor staff, and yet he never once lost that easy expression on his face. A few of the others, worn down by the rush, couldn't quite hide the irritation creeping into their faces — not that they meant to show it.
But most of the customers here had come prepared for the crowds and the wait. They weren't the type looking for a fight with the staff.
Which meant that in the middle of a packed Hongdae weekend, Ji-hoon's attentiveness was, strictly speaking, unnecessary. And most people, it turned out, had a soft spot for unnecessary kindness.
"How many in your party?"
"Three."
"Let me pull up a chair for you."
Ji-hoon fetched a chair and set it beside the table.
"I'll get this cleared for you right away, sorry about the wait."
"No, no, it's fine!"
As expected for a place like this, the crowd was mostly couples or groups of women.
The three women at the table waved off his apology.
"We've never been here before — is it very spicy?"
"Hmm… if you're not great with spice, I'd go with the mild. It's still really good."
"Not spicy at all?"
"Right, it's more on the sweet side."
"Oh, that might not be for me."
The middle-aged customer's order was taking a while. Her daughter — clearly a university student — had her head bowed, quietly dying of embarrassment.
"The young ones handle the spicy just fine, so you might want to give it a try."
"Alright, spicy it is."
"Great choice, thank you!"
The order had run long during the busiest part of the evening, but Ji-hoon answered with a smile all the same.
"Those people over there — I think they might be foreign."
"Hm?"
A fellow part-timer muttered it under their breath, but Ji-hoon caught it.
He made his way over to the table — three women who looked to be around twenty or twenty-one.
"……"
As he approached, one of them frantically tapped away at a translation app.
*(If we order this, does it only come with the ribs?)*
"Ah."
Japanese. That was a relief. Not that it would've been a disaster if they were Chinese — the restaurant would've managed somehow — but still.
"I speak Japanese. Let me walk you through the menu."
"Eh?!"
Ji-hoon grinned at their reaction. He'd spent enough time in Japan that it felt completely natural.
"Here you go. Please check your receipt to make sure everything's right!"
He said it as he brought out their food. For travelers abroad, there was always that nagging uncertainty about whether the order had come out correctly. So he'd gotten ahead of it.
"……"
The women didn't notice, but the Japanese university students watched Ji-hoon's retreating back with soft, delighted smiles.
"Are you here on a trip?"
"Yes!"
"Kyoto?"
"What? How did you know?"
"I heard the women from Kyoto are charming."
"No, no, stop it."
They all covered their mouths and laughed.
"Thank you for coming. I hope you have a wonderful trip."
The Kyoto women bowed a full ninety degrees before they left.
No matter how fluent someone might be in Japanese, none of them could have imagined finding someone in Hongdae who could pick up on the particular cadence of Kyoto speech.
And they certainly couldn't have known that this Korean boy had learned it in a previous life — from a regular customer who'd come from Kyoto and told him all about it, in careful, affectionate detail.
To Ji-hoon, of course, it was just good service.
*Yeah. This is it.*
The pure, uncomplicated smiles on those Japanese women's faces just now. He could feel something — some small, corroded corner of the heart he'd carried since his past life — being quietly cleaned.
In all those years surrounded by beautiful, dazzling women, when had he ever seen a smile like that? He never could have, because he'd always approached with something rotten underneath.
But this was different. This was just goodwill, freely given, making someone's day a little better. He should have lived like this from the start.
"Ahem."
Ji-hoon — still not entirely free of the self-reproach he'd brought back with him — straightened up and got back to work.
"Did you enjoy your meal?"
"It was absolutely wonderful."
"I'm glad to hear it."
The middle-aged woman from earlier, the one whose order had taken so long.
Ji-hoon smiled and took her card.
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen this year. First year of high school."
"Really? My goodness — how can someone be this kind and polite? And so tall on top of it."
"You're too generous."
She looked older than his mother, so Ji-hoon made sure to be especially respectful.
"Your parents must be so proud just looking at you."
"Ha ha ha."
"Mom!"
"Oh, oh, alright."
The daughter grabbed her mother and dragged her away.
"……"
Whoosh.
Then she glanced back, caught Ji-hoon's eye, and snapped her head away.
"Too bad the owner wasn't here to see you work today — he's over at the first location."
"Ah, well."
"Are you sure this is your first part-time job? You're lying, aren't you?"
"If I'd done it before, I would've put it on my application."
Ji-hoon said it with a playful grin.
End of shift.
He came back out after changing, and the compliments came pouring in.
"Manager, I'll be heading out then."
"Hm? You know, you don't have to be so formal — you can just call me unnie."
"Oh, really? See you tomorrow, unnie."
"Yeah! Get home safe!"
Ji-hoon waved to Ahn Jeong-min with a smile as he headed for the door.
On his way out, he made a point of saying goodbye to every coworker he passed.
"Goodness."
Ahn Jeong-min — who would be turning thirty in a few years — felt a small, involuntary pang of self-reproach. But there was something about Ji-hoon that didn't read as young, even though he was. He was seventeen, and yet he didn't seem like a kid at all.
***
"So given all of this, the word that would best fit in the blank is…"
"……"
Chorok High School, Gangseo District, Seoul.
The students of Class 1-2 were sitting through English.
"That's how it works — everyone follow?"
"……"
"Ahem."
Choo Min-jeong — twenty-five years old, English teacher — made a slightly awkward face.
The class's response was, to put it charitably, lukewarm.
*Same as always.*
She'd been trying to change up her teaching style and the way she spoke lately, but nothing seemed to be working. She'd heard that some of the other teachers had students who were genuinely engaged — so why couldn't she manage it?
Top university graduate. Sharp enough to pass the notoriously difficult teacher certification exam while still in school. Pretty enough to have modeled for a well-known university magazine. Not particularly tall, but slender with a figure that more than made up for it.
Her neat, stylish mid-length bob suited her perfectly, and if anyone had posted her photo on social media, she would have gone viral as the beautiful young teacher. She was that kind of woman.
But even a face and figure that turned heads among male students couldn't sustain their focus after nearly half a year. A pretty face grew familiar with repetition; the drowsiness that came from boredom, on the other hand, always felt fresh and immediate.
"Any questions?"
Out of habit, Min-jeong finished a problem and called out the prompt. She wasn't expecting much.
*Oh?*
The student right in front of her raised his hand.
"Yes."
She smiled.
The boy in the front row. Lee Ji-hoon.
*He's lost so much weight.*
An almost startling amount, really. She'd known his face — he was in Class 1-2, after all — but he'd been quiet, the kind of student who never really paid attention. Now, though, he seemed as changed on the inside as he was on the outside.
"I thought number four could also work as an answer — why doesn't it?"
"Four would make a grammatically acceptable sentence on its own, but there's a negative expression earlier in the passage, which means the following clause needs to be its opposite. That's why only three works here."
"Ohh……"
Ji-hoon's eyes went wide, and he nodded slowly, like something had just clicked into place.
"……"
Min-jeong pressed her lips together for a moment. More than half the class wasn't paying attention, so no one noticed — but that reaction from a student gave her a genuine, unexpected surge of pride as a teacher.
"Alright, moving on."
The lesson continued.
She found herself making eye contact with Ji-hoon in the front row again and again — his gaze clear and attentive — as she worked through the material.
"That's it for today."
Min-jeong ended the class in a good mood.
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
Ji-hoon came up to her.
"I couldn't quite follow this translation — I thought it meant something else?"
"Oh, that one — it's because this word is being used as an adjective here."
"Ah, I see."
Ji-hoon smiled and nodded again.
"You're really putting in the effort, aren't you?"
"I have to."
"You've lost a lot of weight, though."
"Yeah, I've been hearing that a lot lately."
"Oh, I'm sorry — you must be tired of it by now."
"What? No, not at all."
Min-jeong looked genuinely apologetic, lips slightly pursed, hand raised in a small gesture of contrition. The faint hint of aegyo aside, Ji-hoon blinked, caught off guard.
*Why is she apologizing for that?*
He almost laughed. The teacher standing in front of him was kind of adorable.
Ji-hoon was still more accustomed to his younger sister as she'd been in his past life.
Maybe that was why — Choo Min-jeong struck him the same way, like a little sister, genuinely endearing. And compared to the older teachers who seemed to drag themselves through lessons with barely concealed indifference, there was something visibly earnest about her.
From where he stood — someone actively trying to pull his grades up — that earnestness was easy to like. He'd specifically asked to be moved to the front row so he could focus better during class. Most students avoided that seat, so it hadn't been hard to get.
"Hmm."
Ji-hoon was reviewing the English lesson he'd just had. He'd stay focused during class, and stay focused during breaks too.
Japanese had seemed impossible at first, and he'd learned it anyway. He trusted that English would reward the same kind of honest effort.
"Was yours English just now?"
"Yeah."
"Is your English teacher Choo Min-jeong?"
"Uh-huh."
"……"
A cluster of girls was chatting near the front of the classroom.
A friend of Kang Da-hyeon's — same class — had stopped by for a quick visit.
"Ugh, that teacher is seriously something else. Did you see how short her skirts are? Total attention-seeker. And she always talks in that nasally voice."
"……"
"Hm?"
Kang Da-hyeon kept stealing glances at Ji-hoon.
He, of course, hadn't heard a word — too absorbed in what he was doing.
"I don't know."
"……What?"
"I said I don't know. She can wear whatever she wants."
"……"
The heavily made-up girl had no response to her friend's flat, indifferent reply.
Da-hyeon — currently sporting bleached blonde hair — had gone a shade darker, quietly hoping Ji-hoon hadn't caught any of it.