I decided to sup at about 3 in the morning, long after the neighborhood

convenience store put itself to bed for the night. I had limited options:

my boarding house offers meals, but unusual as I am in my eating habits

it seemed imprudent to pay for the service. As a result, I am banned from

the communal kitchen on the third floor.

No one guards it at night, though.

So I hopped down the stairs clutching a chopstick in each hand, the cartoon

caricature of hunger. Motion sensors on each landing lit my descent; out the

windows, quiet Seoul was just a net of neon signs under the moon.

By the time I slipped off my slippers and padded into the kitchen, I was

thrumming with self-satisfaction at having circumvented the meal plan. I

love being the only one awake, especially when it affords sneakiness!

The fridge, to my delight, was a trove of Korean condiments and side dishes, but

having subsisted on kimchi all week I sought something more familiar; the row of

eggs inside the door, when shaken one by one, yielded two that seemed

hard-boiled.

Ho ho, I thought, heading back to my warren, two eggs for Kate. The first

was neatly denuded only to reveal a marbled, yellow, stinky, deformed rotten

egg. The second was a winner.

There is nothing more satisfying, I think, than cleaving a yolk from its white, except

maybe reuniting the two in my belly.

That’s all, yolks!