The bulgogi hit Henry before he reached the last step, and just like that he was starving.
Hell, starving didn’t even begin to cover it; after hours of cataloguing that convoy in the freezing cold, he was well beyond that.
And to make matters worse, the last thing he’d had was sandwiches. Not that they were bad; in fact, they were pretty decent. But standing here with Ron’s bulgogi filling the entire mountain air, comparing them felt almost unfair. It was like putting a solid Tuesday night dinner up against Thanksgiving.
He wasn’t the only one who smelled it, either. Lucan’s Chosen filed back to their own camp, each one of them walking a little too slowly past the fire. It was like they were walking past a steakhouse on an empty stomach – trying not to stare and failing at it.
Henry could already see Tancred getting a pot going on their side, which probably meant stew. And normally, the Chosen would probably have been fine with that – stew was stew, and on a cold mountain after a long day, no one would complain about a hot meal. But Ron’s bulgogi had already ruined any chance of that. The smell alone had disqualified everything else they could put together, and one look at Ron’s station no doubt made it even worse.
The Chosen had a single pot over a campfire. Ron had a generator, an icebox, a two-burner camp stove, and a cast-iron griddle up a mountain, miles away from civilization.
It was overkill, to be honest.
Normally, a setup like this belonged at some high-end glamping resort in the Smokies or the Rockies, not halfway up a frozen mountain in hostile territory – and compared to Tancred’s lone pot, it was less a difference of degree and more a difference of civilization. And all of it was thanks to their Holding Cart.
Back home, the idea of hauling cast iron and a rice cooker into a combat zone would’ve been laughed out of any briefing room in JSOC. According to the guys who’d been to the Middle East, you got MREs, you got whatever the cook could manage out of a field kitchen, and you were grateful. Every once in a while you’d get lucky enough to hit a local place off-base, and guys would talk about those meals for weeks. But even that was a far cry from what Ron had blessed them with right now.
He had the sides lined up along the prep table with a precision that reminded Henry of mise en place videos his mother always liked to send him – kimchi, some kind of seasoned spinach, potato salad, little pan-fried fish cakes already golden and resting on paper towels. Each one in its own container, each one positioned like it had been measured out with a ruler. The man took his cooking seriously, and it showed.
But all of that was just the opening act. The bulgogi sat off to the side in its container, glistening dark brown with bits of green onion and sesame seeds through the meat. Henry couldn’t tell what was in the marinade beyond soy sauce and garlic, but it didn’t matter; his stomach had already made the decision for him about three minutes ago. Whatever Ron was charging for this, it wasn’t enough.
Henry set his rifle down and dropped onto a rock near the station. “How we looking?”
Ron held his palm over the griddle, feeling the heat. “Just got it going. Gimme like twenty, twenty-five, depending on how this griddle wanna act tonight. Gotta get it stupid hot first or the meat’s gonna steam instead of sear, and I ain’t disrespecting this marinade like that.” He glanced over. “You wanna watch? Might learn something.”
Henry moved his rock closer, which was answer enough.
Ron worked through the prep the way he did everything – like it was the easiest thing in the world. He adjusted the burner with a half-turn, checked the oil with a casual tilt of the pan, and set the meat out to let it come up to temperature, all without really looking at what his hands were doing.
It was genuinely impressive, and also a little annoying. Henry had tried Korean cooking once, and the smoke detectors had ended his little experiment as soon as it had started. As much as he wanted to get good at it, he’d probably be better off just taking Sera to a good steakhouse or a sushi place – or whatever the local alternative was – and letting a professional handle it.
Once the griddle was where he wanted it, Ron started laying the meat down.
The sizzle was immediate – loud enough that Doc glanced up from his rock across the camp. Ron spread the strips across the iron in a single even layer, pressing each one flat with his tongs so every surface made contact.
The marinade hit the hot metal and caramelized almost instantly, crackling and browning where it caught, and the smoke carried the scent even further across the ridge than before. Henry caught Tancred’s head turning from all the way across camp, then snapping back to his stew like he hadn’t just been caught staring.
Sera sat down next to Henry with a plate she’d already fixed from the sides and watched Ron flip a strip with his fingers.
“Huh,” she said after a moment.
Henry looked at her. “What?”
“It is strange,” Sera said softly. “With a scent so rich, I had thought the making of it some solemn affair. Yet you set it as though it were no more than a breakfast fry.”
“Yeah, right? Cooking’s the easy part,” Ron said. “All the work’s in the marinade. This is just heat and timing.”
Ron swept the first batch onto a plate still sizzling and went straight into the next round.
He’d flip a strip and the underside would come up a deep, even caramel-brown – perfectly consistent every time, which was honestly a little ridiculous for a man cooking on a camp stove on the side of a mountain. He did the whole thing exactly the same way each round, maintaining such consistency that Henry was pretty sure Ron could’ve held an entirely separate conversation and not lost a single strip.
“Where’d you even learn all this?” Henry asked. “You got a Korean side of the family or something?”
Ron laughed. “Man, nah. That’s a whole story.” He nudged a strip that was browning faster than the rest. “Aight, so you know my pops had me in sports since forever, right? Football, track, basketball – whatever season it was, I was in it. Had me on meal plans and workouts by seventh grade.”
Henry let him continue.
“Even then, all that was secondary in my house. My parents were traditional, on some Asian type timing – nothing to do with the Korean barbecue, though. I mean, they expected straight As. Not ‘good try,’ not A-minus – straight As. Sports was what I got to do after I handled business.”
He flipped the row in quick succession, each piece hitting the iron with a fresh sizzle.
“So every time I brought home a good report card, they’d take me to this spot in K-Town. Gogijip 88 – you been?”
Henry shook his head.
“Bro. When we get back, I’m takin’ you. All-you-can-eat Korean barbecue – beef, pork belly, chicken, all the banchan, everything. And we was goin’ all the time. Twice a month, easy. And I’m thinkin’ my family just really about that barbecue life.”
Ron grinned, shaking his head as he spread the next batch onto the griddle.
“Didn’t figure it out till I was like twenty. Pops had the whole thing mapped. KBBQ got one of the best protein-to-dollar ratios out there, especially all-you-can-eat. Unlimited meat, good sides, everything balanced, and it taste good enough that your twelve-year-old don’t even know he on a nutrition plan. My old man was runnin’ a whole program, type shit, and I’m over there clueless.”
Sera smiled. “How clever.”
“Mm-hmm. And I ain’t know a damn thing.” Ron swept the finished batch aside and dropped the last round onto the griddle. “But yeah – after goin’ that much, I started wantin’ it at home. It’ll be like a random Tuesday, and I’m fiendin’ for KBBQ. Of course, we ain’t goin’ out on a school night, so I just started tryna figure it out. YouTube, trial and error, burnin’ up the kitchen, the whole thing. By senior year high school I could do a full spread. Deadass.”
“Ain’t no way all that came from YouTube,” Henry said.
“The Korean part, yeah,” Ron said. “But the technique-technique – readin’ heat, knowin’ when it’s done by feel, runnin’ six things at once without burnin’ none – that came from this barbecue joint I worked at the summer before I enlisted. I was supposed to just bus tables, but the pit guy thought I was aight, so he started lettin’ me work the smoker on slow days. Three months standin’ over that pit learnin’ how wood and heat and smoke talk to each other… After that, Korean at home was light work. Fundamentals is fundamentals.”
The last batch came off the griddle right as the rice cooker clicked. Ron killed the burner and stepped back to look at what he'd put together – several full plates of bulgogi, a pot of fresh rice, and a full spread of sides lined up across the prep table. He stood there for a second with his tongs still in hand, damn pleased with his masterpiece.
“Aight! Dinner’s ready!” Ron announced, loud enough to hit every corner of the ridge. “Come get it. And if you ain’t over here in thirty seconds – that’s on you.”
Nobody needed to be told twice.
The team converged on Ron’s station like moths to a flame, and within about thirty seconds everyone had a plate in hand. Ron presided over the spread with his tongs resting on his shoulder, just waiting to see how everyone would react.
Henry loaded his plate and found his rock again. Sera had settled in next to him, poking at the kimchi with her fork.
Henry thought about saying something. He’d had kimchi for the first time back in college, and even with a lifetime of hot sauce and processed food behind him, it had still caught him off guard – sour and spicy and funky all at once in a way nothing else really prepared him for. Sera’s frame of reference was roasted meats, herbs, and bread, so he was fairly certain how this was going to go.
She tried it without much hesitation, though, which was pretty courageous. Her mouth scrunched up just slightly afterward – barely enough to notice if he hadn’t been watching for it – and she finished the bite a little too carefully before setting her fork down and moving on to the fish cakes without going back for a second piece.
The fish cakes were easier on her. She tried one, paused, and took another, which was about as enthusiastic as Sera got with unfamiliar food. The potato salad barely lasted a minute on her plate, which made sense; out of everything Ron had put together, it was probably the closest to something she’d actually recognize from her own world.
She caught him staring. “What?” she asked with a smile.
“You don’t like the kimchi.”
Sera glanced over at Ron to make sure he wasn’t listening, then gave him a small, almost apologetic shake of her head.
He tried not to laugh. “Want me to take it?”
She slid her plate toward him without a word, and Henry scraped the kimchi onto his own pile. Honestly, more for him.
He handled his own sides, then dove straight into the bulgogi. His impression was pretty straightforward: Ron had outdone himself.
The sides were excellent, but the bulgogi was stupid good – sweet and savory with a caramelized sear on the edges that Henry had never once managed to replicate at home, and it somehow tasted even better than it smelled.
Sera had gone for her bulgogi as well; she laid it over her rice, took a bite, and went still for about two seconds. Then she reached for another piece, and another, and when she finally looked up at Ron it was clear she’d already decided this was the best thing she’d ever eaten.
“This is… extraordinary.”
Ron beamed. “See, that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.”
Judging by the speed at which plates emptied and people went back for seconds, the rest of the team agreed.
With that affirmation, Ron finally fixed himself a plate and sat down to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Well, meats of his labor, technically. Whatever.
“So, Owens,” Henry said. “Did your parents ever get pissed that you went straight to the Space Force? After all those years of sports and straight As, I mean.”
Ron chewed for a second. “Oh, my mom was heated. She had the whole thing planned out – scholarship, degree, law school, all that. I come home talkin’ ’bout I’m enlistin’, and she looked at me like I slapped her. Pops ain’t say much, but I could tell he wasn’t feelin’ it neither.”
“Yeah? How long before they came around?”
“Few months. Wasn’t even that long, honestly.” Ron tilted his head, like he was running the timeline back. “I think it hit different once I was actually in. ‘Cause like – my pops had me in sports my whole life, right? Football, track, basketball, whatever. And that’s cool, but at the end of the day, ask yourself: how many Black dudes are in sports? That ain’t special. Everybody and they mama got a son on a team somewhere.”
He took a bite of food and swallowed before continuing, “But how many Black moms and dads get to say their son went to space?” He let that hang. “That’s a whole different flex. My mom went from cryin’ at the kitchen table to showin’ my enlistment photo at church in like three months flat. Had it on the mantel before I even finished basic.”
“And your pops?”
“You know how dads be. Ain’t gon’ say nothin’ direct.” Ron shrugged, smiling. “But my sister sent me a picture of him wearin’ my unit shirt to his bowling league, so…” He flashed a grin. “Yeah. He was proud.”
Sera smiled at that, though Henry suspected she was filling in some of the cultural gaps on her own. The specifics probably didn’t map to anything in her experience, but the core of it – parents wanting the best for their kid and coming around when they realized he’d found his own version of it – was universal enough.
They settled back into the food for another minute or two until Doc pointed toward Lucan’s camp. “You notice them over there?”
Henry glanced toward Lucan’s camp. He’d been noticing all evening, actually. The Chosen had been working through Tancred’s stew for a while now, and whatever morale it had started with was long gone. Nobody over there was enjoying their meal anymore – they were just finishing it. Not to mention Tancred still sneaking glances at Ron’s station whenever he thought nobody was looking.
“Yeah,” Henry said. “I see them.”
“Could be worth taking some across,” Doc murmured. “This won’t be the last time we’re working with them. Sharing a meal doesn’t hurt.”
He wasn’t wrong. They had plenty of food left, the cost was basically zero, and Doc was right.
Sera didn’t say anything, but Henry could tell she was opposed to it. He got it – Lucan had been nothing but a problem since day one, and nothing about a plate of bulgogi was going to change that.
But this wasn’t about Lucan. It was about Maren, and Vaela, and Corrin, and the fact that they still had a fortress to clear together tomorrow. One meal wasn’t going to fix anything, but it’d at least set a better tone than letting them sit over there choking down cold stew while the smell of Ron’s cooking drifted across the ridge. And if Henry was being honest with himself, part of him wanted to side with Sera purely because it was Sera – which was exactly why he couldn’t let himself.
He looked at her. She held his gaze for a second, read the decision in it, and exhaled. She wasn’t happy about it, but she wasn’t going to fight him on it either.
Henry fixed a tray – bulgogi, rice, sides, all of it. If he was going to do this, he wasn’t going to half-ass it.
He walked it over and held it out. “We had extra. Figured you could use something hot.”
Lucan looked at the tray for a long moment. Then at the rest of his party, all of whom were doing a terrible job pretending they weren’t already thinking about the bulgogi. He let out a slow breath through his nose.
“Very well. We… gratefully accept.”
Henry nodded and headed back, settling down next to Sera. She didn’t comment, but after a moment she leaned slightly closer, which Henry took as a sign of trust.