[I30] (IT'S ALL IN THE) DOENJANG STEW
Prompt Code: I30
Title: (it’s all in the) doenjang stew
Rating: PG-13
Side Pairings (if any): friends!sudo
Warnings: minor gore, implied minor character death
Word Count: 1.6k
Summary: Kyungsoo’s guide on how to cook doenjang stew. Except Kyungsoo doesn’t really have a taste for human food anymore.
AN: To the prompter, I hope you’ll see that I tried to keep the spirit of your prompt, even though my interpretation is heavily influenced by surrealism. To the mods, thank you so much for working hard on this fic fest! Although I hopped on one of the later trains, I really enjoyed participating this round. Also this fic would be nothing without Kyungsoo’s mother’s fermented soybean paste.
Hair slowly falling out from her bun, a single mother inspects a bundle of green onions, the beginnings of doenjang stew. Her daughter tugs at the hem of her skirt and points up.
She screams.
Six stalls over, a figure shoves his hands into his pockets. He passes radishes and pumpkins and watermelons and thinks he’ll never have a taste for human food again.
“The sky!”
“What is this!?”
“The apocalypse! The end is nigh!”
“How could this happen!?”
“Repent! Repent!”
The entire market bursts into chaos as everybody realizes that a chunk of the sky is missing. One vendor runs away from her red chili pepper stall to take cover indoors. Another vendor knocks over her own stand, cabbages spilling onto the streets, in an effort to get away. A single mother with hair quickly falling out from her bun grabs the rest of the ingredients of doenjang stew from the abandoned stalls before she too grabs her daughter’s wrist and runs for the nearest metro station.
The figure looks up and feels nothing but hunger. His lips are smeared with sky; his hands are stained with it.
It’s only his first taste, but Kyungsoo is addicted.
~
When Kyungsoo arrives back at the dorms, Joonmyun answers the door after the second knock. He sees the blue on Kyungsoo’s palms, the bits of cloud stuck in his hair. He invites him in.
Kyungsoo strides toward Joonmyun’s desk and picks up his fluid mechanics textbook.
“You’re hungry for it, aren’t you?” Joonmyun asks. A small smile.
“There’s nothing quite like it,” Kyungsoo says. He fixates his stare on the textbook and inhales its scent, the rich aroma of equations and diagrams.
“I never thought-”
“That it would turn out like this?” Joonmyun says. “Nobody ever does.”
Barely able to control himself anymore, Kyungsoo rips a page from the fluid mechanics textbook, crumples it into a ball, and pops it into his mouth. He closes his eyes savors the moment, letting the ink melt on his tongue.
When he opens his eyes, Joonmyun is already in front of him, taking the textbook into his own hands. He rips a page for himself. Hours float by until a carcass of a book sits in the trash can. The two end up sitting side by side on Joonmyun’s unmade bed.
“At first, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life,” Joonmyun admits. “My parents wanted me to go into law, join the family firm like my older brother did.”
Kyungsoo doesn’t answer. He picks the bits of cloud from his hair, like picking dried grains of rice off a shirt.
Joonmyun continues. “But I knew that I was meant for something else. My brother tried to talk me out of it, but I decided to go to this university and study aerospace engineering. Do you think that’s selfish?”
“Would you change your mind if I said yes?”
“No,” Joonmyun says. “I wouldn’t.”
“Aerospace engineering has always been my dream,” Kyungsoo says. “And now that I finally get to study it, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”
~
Jongin makes a face.
“You taste different.”
“I taste like sky,” Kyungsoo says and kisses Jongin deeper.
~
Somewhere three rooms down, Jongin stirs in his sleep, his covers kicked off. Somewhere 30 minutes away, leftover doenjang stew sits in the refrigerator owned by a single mother whose hair spills all over her pillow.
Kyungsoo wakes up to the thumping of his heartbeat, and he trades his slippers for a pair of ratty sneakers.
Summer still has its greedy hands on Seoul. It twists the city in its grip, digging its fingernails into the asphalt streets. The heat doesn’t really bother Kyungsoo, but the hunger does. His stomach screams for something, anything, everything.
After wandering through alleys and alleys, Kyungsoo stops in an empty basketball court. He and Jongin used to play on this one in a past lifetime, where they were freshmen who still had general education classes together.
But Kyungsoo and Jongin have died since then. The new Jongin surrenders his weight in sweat as a performing arts major, and the new Kyungsoo spends his time studying aerospace engineering, dreaming of flying things, dragging his hands across the melted sky, and licking his fingers clean.
“Is that selfish?” Kyungsoo asks nobody in particular.
The stars don’t answer him, but they do taste delicious. Tart and prickly.
~
“According to NASA, hundreds of stars disappeared last night. Astronomers in the United States and China are trying to determine what caused this cosmic phenomenon. Some are saying a black hole-”
Kyungsoo closes his laptop. They don’t understand. They don’t understand what it’s like.
After he checks his phone for the time, Kyungsoo grabs his backpack and heads for class. He runs past Jongin’s dorm room, which is probably empty since Jongin rises with the sun to get some dance practice in before his actual classes.
When Kyungsoo arrives at the lecture hall, he slips into a seat next to Joonmyun, who silently greets him.
“You’re late,” Joonmyun doesn’t say, but he might as well.
Since this lecture hall holds a class size of 100, the professor doesn’t acknowledge Kyungsoo’s tardiness because he’s just one of many. Instead, the professor continues tossing his lecture slides to his students, who devour them whole.
Kyungsoo raises his hands, and his toes curl when the professor answers his question.
“Yes.”
The professor loosens his tie and lies down on the desk in front of the classroom. As Kyungsoo walks down the rows and rows of seats, the other students shuffle in excitement. He’s a lucky one.
“This is an invaluable lesson, so please take detailed notes,” the professor instructs and then nods at Kyungsoo.
When Joonmyun gives him a thumbs-up from the back row, Kyungsoo grabs a scalpel and begins dissecting the professor. He pulls out secrets of aerospace engineering from his skull, untangles equations from his intestines, and displays it all for the other students. They record everything, from the tip of his gallbladder to the curve of his kidneys, in their notebooks.
~
“You’re selfish,” Jongin doesn’t say, but he might as well.
~
“I can’t. I have to study with Joonmyun,” Kyungsoo says.
“Why can’t you take a break?” Jongin asks. “I never see you anymore.”
“This is important to me. It’s my dream, Jongin.”
Jongin crosses his arms. “You’re not the only one with dreams. I get it, Kyungsoo. I get that you love your major because I feel the same way about mine. But I still try to make time for my friends.”
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” Kyungsoo asks.
“I think you’re the one making yourself feel guilty.”
Jongin plucks a bit of cloud out of Kyungsoo’s hair, which makes Kyungsoo reflexively step back. He sees Jongin’s face fall.
“Are we even friends anymore?” Jongin asks.
“I-” Kyungsoo hesitates. “I can’t give you today, but I can give you tomorrow. I promise.”
Jongin frowns. “But my showcase is today. You know that.”
Kyungsoo knows it, but he runs out of Jongin’s dorm room anyway. He runs down the hallway and up three flights of stairs when he reaches Joonmyun, who answers after the second knock. There’s a piece of textbook paper stuck to his lip, which makes Kyungsoo’s stomach churn with excitement.
Before they exchange any words, Kyungsoo heads straight towards the structural analysis textbook lying open on his bed. Ripping three pages at a time, Kyungsoo stuffs them into his mouth until his stomach churns with revulsion.
“Do you have any friends, Joonmyun?”
Joonmyun lifts an eyebrow, but he plays along. “Besides you, not really.”
“Why not?” Kyungsoo asks.
“I guess I got so caught up in studying that I never really had the time to make any,” he shrugs. “Why does it matter when you could have this?” He gestures towards the structural analysis textbook that’s missing two-thirds of its pages.
Kyungsoo’s stomach twists inside of him. “Hey, do you want to see my friend’s sophomore showcase?”
~
Jongin doesn’t notice when Kyungsoo and Joonmyun sneak into the middle of the showcase. If he does, he doesn’t act like it. Instead, Jongin continues dancing as if his body and the music were the only two things that existed in this world. It’s intoxicating.
Maybe Kyungsoo’s been too busy stuffing his face with sky and stars and textbook pages, but he realizes he never truly understood how much Jongin loves to perform. Until now.
Dancing is Jongin’s version of aerospace engineering.
When the showcase ends and Kyungsoo meets up with Jongin afterward, Kyungsoo tells him just that.
“You’re weird,” Jongin snorts. “But thanks for coming. It means a lot to me.”
“I need to make it up to you. I’ve been too selfish,” Kyungsoo says.
Smiling, Jongin plucks another bit of cloud out of Kyungsoo’s hair.
“You were amazing out there,” Joonmyun butts in. “Want one?” He hands a crumpled textbook paper to Jongin.
“Um, thanks?” Jongin pops it into his mouth and immediately spits it out. “What the hell-”
“Aerospace engineering isn’t for everybody,” Joonmyun shrugs.
Kyungsoo doesn’t know where it comes from, but for the first time in a long time he smiles.
~
“It’s been forever since we’ve hung out like this,” Jongin says.
Kyungsoo hums in agreement. “And it’s been forever since I’ve eaten human food. I’m not even sure if I even remember how to cook it.”
Jongin drapes himself over Kyungsoo’s back and looks at the beginnings of doenjang stew cooking in the pot. “Smells good.”
If it were anybody else, Kyungsoo would shake him off. But this is Jongin.
And since Jongin’s already loitering in the dorm’s sad-excuse-for-a-kitchenette, Kyungsoo teaches him as he cooks. He demonstrates how to hold a knife.
“Cutting the pumpkin thinly,” Kyungsoo instructs, “will make the stew more delicious.”