“Okay, rice is cooked. Ingredients are prepared,” Kiyomi muttered to herself as she leaned on the kitchen counter, reading the bulgogi gimbap recipe she found online. “Add a teaspoon of sugar,” she grabbed the first sugar looking thing and put it mindlessly in the beef.
She promised her grandmother (and herself) that she would be learning how to cook. “It’s a basic life skill, Mi chan,” her grandmother reminded her as she ate ramen for the nth time that week. It’s been a year since she had moved to Korea and quite frankly, she was getting sick of all the convenience store foods. She had also developed a particular aversion to shin ramyun after eating only that ramen for three weeks straight. Needless to say, the girl really needed to learn how to cook for herself.
That’s how she found herself in the shared house of the kitchen, a place she rarely frequents. Kiyomi still remembered her futile attempt at cooking and how she almost burned the house down by somehow setting the pasta on fire. This time though, she was determined to make it through.
As she waited for the beef to cook, Kiyomi grabbed a spoon and gave her rice a taste. “Well it tastes like rice,” she concluded before turning around and seeing a person standing inside the kitchen too. “Holy- you scared me there!” Kiyomi exclaimed, holding her hand to her chest. Had they been there this whole time? Were they judging her non-existent cooking skills? “Do you uh....want to taste my rice?”










