She presses the tongs onto the raw meat, searing the red beef until it turns as brown as the table that has specks of hot grease. Her eyes are focused on the glazed pieces of succulence, taking extra precautions not to burn or overcook each side. I'm powerless, a slave to entertainment and time. I'd read the menu properly, but I can't speak Korean at all (I'm afraid to butcher the name in public). I'm starving, and jealous—the one who controls the cooking utensil gets the first and best slices of meat. But hell, could be worse. I had a rough first day at the internship; filing receiving and transmitting calls, paperwork and papercuts, paper copies and paper planes, hotlines, boring-ass cubicles deprived of air conditioning in the midst of May, all in a ruffled suit and tie drenched in sweat.
Fuck adulthood. And fuck this summer too. Fuck everything.
"You're not supposed to do that. It's bad luck," she lectured me, pointed her foot-long scepter straight towards my steel bowl of rice, two metal chopsticks sticking out like knitting needles in a ball of clustered yarn, soft and malleable.
"Like I'm supposed to know that." I'm not the one who had the energy to travel abroad to Southeastern Asia for two semesters—in a row. I take my two sticks and twirl them across my fingers like two No. 2 pencils. I go for the first strike, aiming towards a cut of life with extra fat. The grease falls off like the raindrops outside. But it's still raw, myoglobin oozing out from the muscle and sinew, still sizzling hot. She takes control and places back her cut on the populous grill. I huff sarcastically in my depression. I sulk in my chair.
Bad luck indeed.
"Told you so."
The continuous searing makes me wonder whenever I'm going to get on with my life.
