Chapter 262: Food STALLS

You Said You Weren't Hungry

Kim Si Hon — First Person

I got up.

There was no particular reason to get up— I'd been lying down for maybe 20 mins, which was long enough to confirm that I was in fact tired, and also long enough to confirm that I was in fact hungry…

I sat up, looked at the ceiling for a moment, and decided the ceiling had nothing new to offer… I should've sat up 20 mins earlier.

I went out into the hallway.

Jisoo and Alex's door was the second on the left.

I pushed it open slowly, just enough to check. The room had a bunk bed— of course it had a bunk bed, ships had bunk beds… rooms has bunk beds… beside mine. Shit, this is unfair, anyways, Jisoo was on the top, curled on her side, warmly tucked in.

Holding something against her chest. I looked closer. Something small and soft. Round-ish. A plushy of some kind.

"That's cute," I said, very quietly, to nobody…. Though, I don't know where she found that round fish plush.

Alex was below, completely encased in blankets, the covers pulled to the top of her head, the resulting shape more pillow than person.

Both of them breathing evenly. Neither of them aware of anything.

I closed the door.

"I was gonna ask them if they wanna come, guess I'll just leave them."

***

The deck was wet.

The deck was always wet… I don't think I need to say that, since as you can see, there's nonstop rain here.

I pushed through the door and the rain immediately found my face.

Actually… I'm getting used to this… being wet, I mean.

That was probably fine. People got used to things.

I walked toward the mid-ship stalls, hands in my pockets, the rain coming down in its soft night version, lighter than it had been during the day.

The ship creaked around me as I waked. A few people moved on the deck at this hour. I nodded at one of them.

They nodded back and kept going. (2girls 1 boy)

***

The food section was still running.

Not all of it— some stalls were dark, shuttered for the night —but enough of them, the ones that could operate by lantern light with enough warmth to make it worth it.

The smell hit before I was fully in the section, layered and good, smoke and spice and something sweet underneath both of them.

I walked through slowly, not in a hurry, looking at what was open.

One stall stopped me.

The fish was on a grill, set on small skewers, and the glaze on them was dark red— the specific red that meant something had been applied and reduced and applied again until it had achieved that depth of color, glossy and catching the lantern light like it was made of something more than food.

I stood there looking at it for a moment.

Wait… what do I pay with…?

I didn't know the currency on this ship… no actually, in this whole trial, this is the first time I needed to pay… is it money? If it is, I can probably buy the whole ship…

Well, I didn't know if there was currency on this ship or if it was barter or some other system, and I'd been so focused on the tour and the rooms and all of it that I hadn't thought to ask, and now I was standing in front of a fish stall with no money and no plan.

"You new here?"

I looked up.

The man behind the stall was large— not tall but wide, that kind of wide that came from decades of being well-fed and working with heavy things.

White beard. Eyes that were doing something kind. He was looking at me the way people looked at someone they'd already figured out from twenty feet away.

"Yes," I said.

He made a sound like well, that explains it. Reached down to the grill, pulled two skewers, and held them out toward me over the counter. "Here."

"How much—"

"For free," he said. "Don't worry about it."

"Dad!"

The voice came from behind him, and then a girl appeared— maybe 13 or 14, wearing a rain jacket that was at least two sizes too large, the hood pushed back, her expression carrying an specific weariness of someone who had dealt with this situation before.

She planted herself next to her father and looked at him seriously.

"Dad. We've talked about this. Some of the crew take advantage of you, you know that? They come around for free and when you say no they guilt trip you and—"

I pushed the man's hand back gently, the two skewers still in it.

"It's alright. Thank you, though." I gave him what I hoped was an agreeable smile. "I'll find something—"

He scoffed. Not meanly— the scoff of someone who had heard this kind of polite refusal before and was not going to honor it.

He flicked his daughter on the forehead with two fingers, quick and light, a gesture of someone who had been doing this her whole life and she knew it. "Sarah. This one's new. Tonight's verification night. Must we let him go in without eating first?"

Sarah clutched her forehead. Looked at me properly for the first time.

Something happened to her face.

The weariness left and something else arrived, rapid and specific, the particular expression of someone encountering something they hadn't prepared for.

She looked at me.

Then at her father's shoulder.

Then at me again, and her ears had gone faintly pink.

"He's..." She stopped. Started again, lower. "He's not some usual old deck man that smells like fish scales?"

"He's new," her father said. "Traveler…. Probably, lots of new things this week."

A moment of silence in which Sarah appeared to be conducting an internal negotiation.

Then she reached around her father and took his arm in both of hers, leaning against him, looking at me from behind his shoulder.

"Nevermind what I said," she announced. "Give him everything instead."

Her father blinked.

Then sighed with the depth of a man who had many years of this ahead of him and had made his peace with it.

And, well, I don't know if he's an obedient dad, but he really did take all the skewers and pushed it to me.

I took one skewer. Just one. Pushed the other back with a firm but friendly motion. "One is plenty. Really. Thank you both."

I paused, and then smiled at them— not the polite smile from before, but actually, because this was a good interaction and the rain was soft and I was hungry. "Thank you."

They both went briefly still.

Then the father shook himself back into motion, coughed, and pressed the second skewer back into my hand with slightly more insistence than he'd used the first time. "Take it."

Quieter now, and his eyes were doing something different. "I wish you luck tonight, kid. The verification— it's fine, don't be worried. Just... good luck."

I took the second skewer.

He nodded once, satisfied.

Sarah, behind him, was examining the middle distance with great focus… eyes wide, cheeks faintly pink, then whispered. "What the fuck is that Smile?"

"Language Sarah." The old man said.

I waved goodbye and walked.

Walking around here, I took the first bite.

The first bite stopped me in my tracks.

Not dramatically— I just stopped walking and stood there with the rain coming down around me and focused on what was happening.

Sweet first. Not simple sweet— something richer, like something had been caramelized and reduced and added something else to, multiple layers arriving at the same time and sorted in the wrong order.

Then sour, surprising, bright and specific, the kind of citrus-adjacent thing that hit the sides of the tongue.

Then sweet again, smoother this time, the sour lifting it.

And then the fish itself, dense and smoky and warm, the flavor of it opening gradually like it had been waiting for the right moment, the smoke moving through everything and the actual taste of the thing underneath it.

I stood there in the rain and finished both skewers without really deciding to.

Then I looked at the sticks in my hand.

That was actually incredibly good.

I started walking again.

And I just realized the food section was quieter at this hour than it had been during the tour, but not empty— a few people at tables, the overflow of the night crew breaking between tasks.

I was passing through toward the far end when I saw, under a large covered section with a canvas awning keeping the rain off, a table.

And at the table, under that awning, was a person.

I squinted.

The person had a large quantity of food in front of them.

Not a large meal. An unreasonable quantity of food, multiple dishes, the table surface nearly covered. Smoked fish, preserved meat, something wrapped in seaweed, two different things I couldn't identify from this distance, something that appeared to be soup.

All of it in the table and hers only.

I walked closer.

Dark hair. Not quite looking up.

I walked closer.

I kept walking. Slowly now. Quiet. The rain covered most of the sound of my footsteps and she was deeply involved in whatever she was eating and had not looked up once.

I got to within arm's reach and leaned down, close to her ear.

"Aren't you sleeping," I said.

Alex went airborne.

She actually left the chair, both arms flying out, and the piece of fish she'd had in her mouth was still there when she spun around, projecting from the corner of her mouth like something she'd forgotten to process.

"S — S — SI HON—" She grabbed the table with one hand.

The fish fell.

She looked at it, then at me, then at the ridiculous amount of food on the table, then at me.

Her face went through approximately 11 expressions. "What— A— what the FUCK—"

"When did you even—" I looked at the table. "How did you pay for all of this."

"That's what you're asking me right now?"

"I literally couldn't find the currency…"

"You SCARED me! (⁠ノ⁠｀⁠Д⁠´⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻"

"I saw you sleeping in your room," I said again, in exactly the same tone as before.

She stared at me. The fish. The table. Me. "Jisoo sucks," she said, with conviction, as if this were the relevant explanation. "She said no and you agreed and then I came down here and the food was just. RIGHT THERE. And nobody said I couldn't… ok please don't judge, Calvyn gave me money."

"I'm not judging you," I said.

She stopped.

I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.

"You know? I just want some of the seaweed thing," I said.

A pause.

Then Alex pushed it across the table.

We sat there in the rain-proof section of the food deck, in the middle of the night, eating what was probably more food than either of us needed, and somewhere above us the ship groaned quietly with the movement of water, and the lanterns swayed a little.

"Don't tell Jisoo," she said.

"She'll know," I said.

"..Yes," she said. "She will."

We kept eating.