The Silent Omelet Rice

"Good grief," I thought. There are boycotts you declare, and boycotts you don't.

The former makes the news. People gather in front of the station with placards, TV cameras arrive, and eventually, it gets thirty seconds of airtime on the evening news.
The latter happens quietly at home. No one applauds, and no one reads a statement. At most, an egg nearing its expiration date in the refrigerator rolls around, looking a bit lost.

The whole thing started with an unremarkable omelet rice. That day, I made omelet rice for my wife, who would be coming home from work. I chopped onions, dyed the ketchup rice a suitable shade of red, and covered it with egg. The way the egg was cooked wasn't bad either. Not too runny, not too firm—a perfect middle ground for a stomach in its forties and the domestic mood.
I don't have the adventurous spirit to draw hearts with ketchup. If I bring excessive performance into home cooking, my own spirit usually burns out before the food does.

I placed the omelet rice on the table. The yellow oval on the plate waited quietly for its role. However, my wife looked at it, furrowed her brow slightly, and said,

"What's this? For me?"

I felt as if I had heard a small gear slip somewhere in the world. What other possibility could there be? Was she suggesting I had started some avant-garde domestic art where I, having finished work, went out of my way to present an omelet rice to my wife's seat for myself?

"I won't know unless you tell me. Why don't you say anything, like 'it's ready' or something?"

I thought about it for a moment. No matter how well an omelet rice is wrapped in egg, it will never walk over on its own and introduce itself, saying, "Madam, thank you for your hard work. Here is today's dinner." If such an omelet rice existed, it wouldn't be dinner anymore; it would be a new type of musical. The rice grains dressed in yellow costumes might start singing in the center of the stage under the spotlight of ketchup.

However, for my wife that day, it seemed that cooking also required an announcement function. Just as they announce "Dinner is arriving shortly" on a train platform, I should have said it out loud.
Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, there is a system in traditional home cooking that involves ringing a small bell before the meal. Or perhaps I should have worn white gloves and said, "Madam, here is today's dish," while placing the plate.

I could have argued back. Things like, "It's obviously your omelet rice," or "If it were mine, that's too much trouble. I'll just have fried rice," or "Why is the person who doesn't cook the one complaining?" Several retorts were curled up inside me like old socks tucked away in a drawer. But even if I took them out, all that would be left in the end is cold omelet rice.

So, I decided to stop cooking.

I didn't stand up, clench my fist, and loudly declare, "As of today, I am indefinitely suspending the provision of meals to my wife." All I could do was distance myself from the kitchen.
I wouldn't touch the frying pan. I wouldn't put a pot on the stove. Even if I saw leftovers in the fridge, I would pretend I didn't. It was a small, non-violent resistance within the home.

A week passed. No one applauded, no one interviewed me, and I didn't make anything. The vegetables in the refrigerator, like actors stripped of their roles, waited patiently for their turn in the back of the vegetable drawer. The cabbage was silent, the green pepper wore a philosophical expression, and the egg remained as round as ever. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. There are mornings when the world needs round things.

Silence also has a maturation period. If it's too short, it's just bad temper; if it's too long, you forget what you were angry about in the first place. Thinking it was about time, I stood in the kitchen and decided to make omelet rice. I sautéed the onions, and the rice gradually turned red.
Good grief. I wish marital relationships were this simple. If you add heat, it softens; if you add salt, the flavor balances out. But domestic conversation cannot be resolved by salt levels alone.

I asked my wife,

"I'm having omelet rice today, what about you?"

Then my wife thawed out the last week's worth of silence all at once.

"I'm not making dinner. I'm not buying bread either. I come home tired, endure being hungry, take a bath, and then I have to make my own food. In the meantime, I do the laundry, and this and that..."

I listened in silence as the words poured out one after another. It was as if all the ice packs that had been sleeping in the back of the freezer had fallen out the moment I opened the drawer.
For my part, I had intended to quietly pose the philosophical question of "Why should the person who cooked be the one getting scolded?" But from my wife's perspective, there was simply a man there who wouldn't make dinner.

I looked at the omelet rice. The egg wobbled silently on the table. Good grief. A boycott you don't declare might look like a quiet and beautiful resistance, but in reality, its communication efficiency is quite poor. If you don't say it, it doesn't get across, and if you do say it, it's a hassle.

Thinking about it, omelet rice is unexpectedly a dangerous dish. It's not just rice that's wrapped in the egg. It neatly wraps up expectations, fatigue, silence, and even the humidity of daily life—the "I won't know unless you tell me" kind of thing.

I had intended to start a cooking boycott, but I had also omitted conversation. I placed the omelet rice on the table. But I had forgotten to include the "it's ready," "will you eat?" or "are you tired today?" that go before and after it. The omelet rice was finished, but the domestic context was still half-cooked.

I didn't argue back, I didn't apologize, I just nodded quietly. I have my pride, too. Even if it's a pride as thin as a single egg, it makes a sound when it tears.

Good grief. My boycott is still continuing today, half-cooked as ever.