Chapter 1
The Price of a Rice Cake
BY ALETHEA XANDER
Itaewon, Seoul – A quiet alley near ODD ATELIER
The March evening bit through denim like a warning. Seol had been walking for nearly an hour—she knew because she’d checked her phone before it died, and now the black screen stared back like a small betrayal. No plan. No destination. Just the low, humming restlessness that always surfaced around dinner, when the city softened into neon and steam and the smell of sesame oil.
She’d skipped lunch again. Spent the afternoon cross-legged on her studio floor, sketching nonsense in a notebook—hands that didn’t belong to anyone, faces she couldn’t name. Her stomach clenched.
Outside a small tteokbokki shop—the kind with plastic stools bolted to the floor and windows so fogged you had to wipe them with your sleeve—she stopped. Not because she recognized the name. Because the sauce stain on someone else’s takeout bag looked like rust and promise.
She stomped her boots to shake the cold loose. The door swung open.
Jennie stood there, mid-bite, a rice cake suspended between her lips.
For a second, neither of them moved. The steam curled up between them like a question. Jennie was alone at a corner table, hair spilling over one shoulder, wearing a black knit that plunged so low Seol could see the pale hollow of her sternum, the soft beginning of both breasts meeting in shadow. No jewelry. No makeup except the faint smudge of yesterday’s liner. She’d just come from a solo recording session two blocks away—voice raw, throat tired—and had ducked in foreomuksoup and the kind of cheap, perfectt teokbokki that tasted like high school.
Seol didn’t recognize her. Not really. She knew of Jennie the way everyone in Seoul did—billboards, airport mobs, the low thrum of omnipresence—but faces blurred for her. Fame was a currency she’d never learned to count. Food, though. Food was arithmetic she understood.
And that tteokbokki looked like heaven on a paper plate.
“That smells good,” Seol said. Already walking forward.
Jennie’s chopsticks stopped. Her eyes narrowed—slowly, like a cat deciding whether to hiss. “Excuse me?”
But Seol had already slid into the seat across from her, reached for the spare chopsticks (still wrapped in their paper sleeve, which she tore with her teeth), and pulled the bowl toward herself. She shoved a piece into her mouth—chewy, spicy, the sauce clinging to her lips—and chewed twice before humming.
“Needs more sugar,” she said. Sauce on her lower lip. No napkin.
Jennie stared. Not angry yet. Something else. Something that looked like the split second before a decision. She’d never—never—had a stranger take her food. Not staff, not members, not even family, who knew better. Her jaw tightened.
Seol looked up then. Really looked. Not at the sharp jaw everyone photographed, or the expensive watch peeking from a sleeve, but at the small details: the chipped nail polish on Jennie’s thumb, the way her nostrils flared just slightly, the faint line between her brows that said I’m tired of being looked at.
Pretty. Angry-pretty. The kind of pretty that had teeth.
And then, because Seol had spent her whole life doing the thing that came to mind before the thing that kept her safe, she leaned across the table and pecked Jennie on the lips.
Quick. Dry. A tiny smack sound that seemed to echo in the fogged-up silence.
She pulled back, winked—a lazy, stupid wink—and said, “Payment.”
Then grabbed another rice cake.
“If you want more than a peck,” she added, mouth half-full, “you can take me home.”
She wasn’t serious. She never was. It was just a joke. An intrusive-thoughts-winning joke. She’d done similar things before—stolen a fry from a stranger’s plate, told a convenience store clerk he had kind eyes, once kissed a girl on a dare just to watch her blush. Seol lived like a stray cat: curious, unowned, always moving toward the next warm thing.
But Jennie’s expression didn’t shift into disgust. Or laughter. Or the cold shutdown Seol had half-expected.
Her eyes went very still. Very dark. Her tongue touched the corner of her own lips—right where Seol’s had been—as if tasting something.
“You have no idea who I am,” Jennie said. Not a question.
Seol shrugged, chewing. “Someone who orders good tteokbokki.”
Behind the counter, the owner called out that their eomuk soup was ready. Neither of them moved. The steam kept rising. The plastic clock on the wall ticked.
Jennie set her chopsticks down. Slowly. Deliberately. The way you disarm a bomb. She reached for her bag—black leather, soft, expensive—and pulled out her card.
“Finish it,” she said. “I’ll wait outside.”
Seol blinked. Sauce dripped from the rice cake in her hand. “For what?”
Jennie stood. Pulled her coat tighter—a long charcoal wool that swallowed her wrists—but not before letting the low neckline shift just enough that Seol caught more pale skin, the shadow between her chest moving as she breathed.
“You said if I wanted more than a peck, I could take you home.” Jennie’s voice dropped. Not loud. Not quiet. The kind of voice that entered a room before she did. “I want more.”
She walked out. The glass door swung shut with a soft exhale.
The shop went quiet. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the distant throb of Itaewon bass from three streets over.
Seol sat there. Mouth full. Chopsticks halfway to her lips. Her heart did something stupid—a skip, then a thud that landed low in her ribs. She looked down at the half-eaten tteokbokki, then at the fogged window where Jennie’s silhouette waited, phone in hand, breath clouding the glass.
Oh, she thought.
That wasn’t supposed to work.
She swallowed. Her throat clicked.
Outside, Jennie didn’t look up from her phone. But her lips moved—just slightly—like she was counting seconds.
