Seven Small Dishes

The bathroom door opened, and Y/N, standing at the stove, forgot what she was stirring.

Jungkook stood in the doorway in her oversized gray shirt and black track pants. The sleeves hung past his wrists. The hems pooled around his bare feet. His long hair was damp and tied back with a rubber band she had handed him through the crack of the door, and he looked, at once, ridiculous and impossibly beautiful, like a prince who had lost a war to a laundry basket.

He held his folded silk robe against his chest with both arms.

"Where do I put this?" he asked stiffly.

"On the chair. Or in the hamper. Just... anywhere."

"A king's robe is not placed anywhere."

"It's a robe. Chair."

He laid it over the chair with the exaggerated care of a man setting down a sleeping infant, and only then looked around the apartment. The unfamiliar lights. The humming machines. The window full of a strange city glowing in the dark.

Something hollow opened in his chest.

At this hour, in his palace, the night watch would be changing. Lamps would burn along the wall walks. His steward would be reading the day's reports by candle, and somewhere in the east wing his guards would be standing at attention outside an empty chamber, waiting for a king who was not coming.

He had never in his life been in a room where no one knew who he was.

---

"Sit," Y/N said, carrying a tray to the dining table. "Dinner's ready."

Jungkook ooked at the table.

It was small. Round, wooden, big enough for two. On it, Y/N set down a bowl of steaming white rice, a pot of red stew still bubbling gently, a plate of rolled yellow omelet, a dish of shredded seaweed, and little bowls of red cabbage, spinach, and fried anchovies. Seven small dishes in all, plus two spoons and two pairs of thin metal sticks.

"It's just leftovers and whatever I had," Y/N said, tugging off her apron. "Sorry. It's nothing fancy."

Nothing fancy.

At his palace, his table sat sixty people. Every morning, fifty dishes were carried to him on lacquered trays, roasted pheasant and river carp, steamed millet, honeyed persimmons, wine in cups of hammered gold. Six cooks worked through the night to prepare it. A taster sampled every plate before he touched a bite, and the whole hall stood in silence until the king lifted his hand.

He had never eaten alone. He had never eaten little.

He stared at the seven dishes, and for a moment the old, cold pride rose in him like a wall.

This is not my kingdom, he reminded himself sternly. There is no hall. There are no cooks. There is one tired girl who took in a stranger, and she has laid out everything she has.

The wall lowered, just slightly.

He sat down in the chair, back straight, and waited.

Y/N sat across from him and waited too.

Nothing happened.

"Are you going to eat?" she asked.

"Where is the taster?"

"The what?"

"The one who tries the food. To ensure it is not poisoned."

Y/N stared at him. "Do you want me to try it?"

"It is customary that the food be tried in the king's presence."

"Fine." She sighed, picked up her spoon, and took a large, deliberate mouthful of stew. She chewed. She swallowed. She held her arms out. "See? Alive. Not poisoned. Can you eat now?"

"You did not kneel."

"Excuse me?"

"When you tasted the dish. You did not kneel, nor bow, nor ask permission." He said it slowly, with the bewildered dignity of a man discovering that gravity no longer applied to him. "In my hall, no one speaks to the king without lowering their eyes. No one sits until I have sat. No one eats until I have lifted my spoon."

"Okay," Y/N said. "Well, in my apartment, the person who cooked eats when she's hungry, and the guest doesn't get to order her around."

His jaw tightened.

It wasn't anger, exactly. It was something older and stranger, the ache of a man who had spent fifteen years being obeyed and had never once wondered what it would feel like to be simply ignored. He was the strongest king of his age. Armies had bowed to him. This girl had just told him to eat his stew.

And the terrible part was, she wasn't even being rude. She was being perfectly natural, as if the whole idea of kneeling to a king was a joke she had never heard.

Respect, he thought bitterly, is worth nothing here.

He looked down at his bowl.

"I do not recognize these dishes," he said, at last, a little stiffly.

"That's kimchi stew. That's rolled egg. That one's seaweed, and those are anchovies. The red thing is kimchi, it's fermented cabbage. It's spicy, so go slow."

"Spicy?"

"Hot. Like pepper."

He raised an eyebrow. "I have eaten pepper. I have eaten it in the field, on campaign, in the mountains of the north. I am a warrior."

Y/N shrugged and gestured at the stew. "Then go on."

---

He picked up the metal sticks.

He held them like knives. Then like daggers. Then like the lonely, incomprehensible tools of a torturer. Y/N, watching, put her hand over her mouth.

"Do not laugh," he warned.

"I'm not."

"You are doing it with your eyes."

"Okay, that's fair." She reached across the table. "Here. Hold them like this."

She adjusted his fingers, one by one. Her hands were small and warm against his, and Jae-kyung went perfectly still. In fifteen years, no one had touched him without permission. Not one hand. Not one finger. He had forgotten that a touch could feel like this, quick and plain and utterly unafraid.

"There," she said, letting go. "Now pinch."

He pinched. A piece of rolled egg wobbled, slipped, and fell into his lap.

"Damn," she said, before she could stop herself. "Sorry. It happens."

He looked at the egg in his lap. Then at her. Then he picked it up with his fingers, looked her dead in the eye, and ate it whole.

Y/N burst out laughing.

"That was so royal," she gasped.

"I am a king," he said with great dignity, chewing. "I do as I please."

But his eyes had widened slightly. The egg was soft, a little sweet, warm from the pan. He picked up his spoon instead, dipped it into the stew, and took a careful sip.

Fire bloomed across his tongue.

His eyes watered. His ears went hot. He set the spoon down very, very slowly, breathing through his nose.

"It is good," he said, in a strangled voice.

"You're crying."

"It is a warrior's tears."

"Drink some water."

She poured him a glass. He drank it in three gulps, then ate a mouthful of rice, then a spoonful of stew again, defiantly, and a slow flush crept across his cheekbones. By the third bite, the rice, the egg, and the seaweed were disappearing at a speed that no dignified king should have allowed.

Y/N watched him quietly. She had stopped laughing.

He ate the way a starving man eats, trying to look like he isn't, and she realized he probably hadn't eaten since before the river took him. Nobody had told him he could ask for more. Nobody had told him where the kitchen was.

She slid the rice bowl toward him and refilled it without a word.

He glanced up. For a moment their eyes met over the little wooden table, in the warm white light of a strange room in a strange century. He didn't say thank you. He didn't know how to say it to someone who wasn't a servant.

But he ate the second bowl slower, and it tasted a little like home.