But I can never eat the most delicious thing I ever ate at 'Mimi's Tteokbokki'.
I mean, 'atmosphere'.
When we drink coffee or tea alone in a cafe, choose a poetry book alone in a bookstore, or sip a draft beer or single malt alone in a bar, we share an invisible but definitely existing 'atmosphere'.
While we are consuming that 'atmosphere', we spend some time thinking about various things that cannot be simply defined, or desperately not thinking about anything at all, and then we end up going out into the streets, somehow strengthened and more confident.
Is it possible to have such an experience at a tteokbokki restaurant?

--- From "Tteokjeong, Mimine"

Baek Gi-nyeo went to find the owner of the snack bar.
“You just called this tteokbokki? It’s completely swollen.”
The woman protested.
“It was made not long ago.”
"Is this just recently made? Are you kidding me? How long does it take for rice cakes to be this swollen? Try it yourself. This rice cake was just made.
Do you really put "instant" signs outside when you sell things like this? Are you giving me this because I said it's only for fun? Please do it again soon.
“Please make it right again, quickly!”
As I watched Baek Gi-nyeo and the snack shop owner bickering, I began to get angry at Baek Gi-nyeo.
I was eating it deliciously, so why did you take it away? What does it mean when rice cakes are split? What does instant mean? I already ate half of it, and now you're telling me to make it again? No matter how I think about it, Baek Gi-nyeo is a bad person.
--- From "Happy Together"

The woman said, “Okay,” and slowly stirred the inside of the shabby iron plate with a ladle a few times before putting a few pieces of rice cake and fish cake in a bowl.
The rice cake was a garaetteok and was long and thick.
The seasoning was very red, so the moment I put it in my mouth, I thought it would be very spicy.
"thank you.
thank you for this food."
I said hello, picked one up with a toothpick, and took a bite.
And… I slowly looked at Lee Hye-yeon.
She was looking at me with the same eyes.
'What is this?'
There was absolutely no intense spicy flavor associated with the color.
The seasoning was rich and sweet, like a person with a lot of affection.
But there was a spicy aura from deep within, as if saying, “I could send you away any time, but I’ll hold back.”
It was a spicy taste that never attacked the person eating it, but the person eating it ended up being subdued on his own.

--- From "A Certain Gravity"

The biggest unique feature of that tteokbokki restaurant was the way they addressed their employees.
The methods we commonly use, such as “over there” or “over here,” did not work there.
It was the rule there to call him “Park Gun-ah.”
Because it was not easy to call someone “Park-gun-ah” as if ordering them around, it was easy to see people there fidgeting because they couldn’t bring themselves to call someone “Park-gun-ah” even though they had already decided what to eat.
I also broke out in a sweat and used an incoherent speech style, saying, “Ba, ba, Mr. Park, I’ll order this…”
Still, it was pretty fun.
Rather than the fun of calling him “Park Gun-ah,” it should be said that it is the fun of watching everyone struggle.
--- From "I wish I could live a long life"

I don't remember how long I was hanging around there.
It literally went 'like crazy'.
I went there whenever I thought of it.
Whether I went in the middle of the day or in the late afternoon when the sun was setting, it was never closed.
And then one day, as if by magic, the store disappeared.
(…)
I returned home with tears streaming down my face.
I felt a great sense of betrayal when the store disappeared without a word.
Even though she knew, even though she knew that I was going crazy, she didn't say a word.
Middle school student Shin Su-jin couldn't accept that.
(…) I really thought I was going to turn around then.
--- From "Waiting for a tip-off"

Kim Sang-hee didn't know much about Shin Su-jin, who wanted to maintain her identity as a singer-songwriter rather than a singer.
Just as I, who have never worked, do not know about Kim Sang-hee, who lives in a social organization called the workplace that is designed to find a woman's usefulness in 'age' and 'marriage',
Nevertheless, there was a center within our relationship.
I think that because of that one center, as our lives grew further and further apart, we were able to calmly call each other our oldest friends and the friends who knew us best, even though we were getting to know each other less and less.
The center of gravity is a tteokbokki restaurant.
--- From "The Mystery of the Taste of Tteokbokki Called Young Snack"

Jeha began to feel uncomfortable.
He started to get annoyed by the way tall, older people would look down on him whenever he was around, stroke his head without permission, ruffle his hair, and talk about themselves as if he didn't understand, thinking it was pathetic and cute, and then smile in front of him.
Although he still has a small, awkward body that struggles with eating and gets food stains all over his clothes, I realized that he had grown faster and more than I had imagined.
“Well, your Majesty.
Jeha really likes dinosaurs.
“What’s your favorite dinosaur these days?”
To change the subject, I brought up the dinosaur story.

“I don’t like it anymore.
“That’s so childish.”
When Jeha answered like this, I was hurt even though I wasn't a dinosaur.
--- From "What I Can Say 'I'm Okay'"

In the face of these intelligent people's five hundred-plus pages of diametrically opposed arguments—that life has meaning, that it doesn't have meaning—the thought, a play on words, naturally arises: What's the point of me even thinking about meaning?
Meaning and meaninglessness are really like a Möbius strip.
The boundaries cannot be drawn at all.
If you think it's meaningless, it's meaningful, and if you think it's meaningful, it's meaningless.
As if the dinosaurs, which have become completely meaningless to Jeha (the running doctor Conchiz), are evidence of Jeha's (the running dinosaur doctor's) childhood.
I describe myself as a meaning addict, obsessed with meaning, but what I experience every morning is the meaninglessness of life.

--- From "What I Can Say 'I'm Okay'"