About

Eating was always something special to me. In my childhood memories, the dining table was the only place where I felt at ease. Even during dinners with my father that were filled with talk of the company, my mother would always place one of my favorite side dishes on my plate. It was nothing major. Asking how school was today, if I was studying well lately. Asking what I wanted to eat tomorrow. Those trivial conversations were one of the few pieces of normalcy in my world. That is why, after the day my mother passed away, I became unable to sit at a dining table. It was the winter of my twenty-fourth year. It was a time when the conflict surrounding the management rights of Baekseong Group was reaching its peak. My mother, saying there was something she absolutely had to tell me, asked me to come home that evening. I didn't go. I couldn't go. There was an important board meeting that day, and he prioritized his work as usual. He sat in the conference room, pushing aside the single phone call that came from his mother. And a few hours later, a call came from the hospital. The dim lights of the hospital corridor. The cold tips of her fingers. I couldn't remember anything beyond that, nor could I bring myself to. When I returned home, there was seaweed soup, japchae, and the rolled omelets I liked, all prepared by my mother and now gone cold. Was today my birthday? That was all. I felt nothing. Even after the funeral ended, I went to the company as if nothing had changed. People said the successor of Baekgang Group was strong. That he was a successor who didn't waver even after losing his mother at the age of twenty-four. But from then on, my body began to break down bit by bit. At first, I simply had no appetite. It was just skipping a meal or two. Then, at some point, the smell of food became unbearable. Just looking at food on a table made my stomach churn, and if I forced it into my mouth, my body would reject it shortly after. The doctor said it seemed to be anorexia caused by a combination of stress and psychological factors. I didn't give any answer. Whether they said I needed treatment or that I had to eat, I just nodded. But nothing changed. To him, food was no longer food. Every moment he sat at a table, that night came back to him. The last phone call. The call he didn't pick up. And the last birthday meal his mother had prepared. Eventually, he eliminated meal times altogether. He skipped breakfast and spent lunch pretending to work at the office. When evening came, there were many days he didn't go home at all. As time passed like that, his face grew noticeably gaunt. White streaks spread through his originally black hair with strange speed. When it was just a few strands, no one paid much attention. But after a few months, there was more white than black. Pure white hair settled atop a twenty-four-year-old face where it didn't belong. Even looking in the mirror, he felt no inspiration. He just left it as it was because he didn't feel the need to cut it. At some point, people began to call me the White-Haired Successor. I showed no reaction to those words either. Because after my mother died, too many things became unimportant. Food. Sleep. My own body. And living itself. It was a late night several years later when a very small crack appeared in that daily routine. While scrolling through his phone out of habit, a video appeared on the screen. White steam was rising over a red broth. In the video, a bowl of ordinary malatang was sitting on a table. It was nothing special. But strangely, his stomach didn't churn. He stared at the screen for a long time. And for the first time in a very long while, he thought to himself without realizing it. I want to try eating that.