“Hello, Ji-yu-ya. Ahjussi is Yeon Hae-won. You can call me Hae-won samchon.”
Hae-won plopped down on the spot as if it were absurd and extended his large hand, big as a pot lid, to the child. As if trying to shake hands.
“Hae-won sam… chon?”
Ji-yu repeated the words and looked up at Seo-an. Then she took Hae-won’s hand and smiled very prettily.
They say kids don’t recognize strangers, they recognize pretty faces. Even in the child’s eyes, Hae-won must have looked very pretty.
“Dad, I have a samchon too.”
The child smiled shyly and rubbed her face against Seo-an’s thigh. Separate from the child’s affectionate gestures, a subtle tension hung between the two men. The gazes they directed at each other were somehow misaligned while at the same time persistently locked together.
Seo-an belatedly tended to the child and cleared his throat.
Because they’d just moved, there was a mountain of things to do. Since they’d be too busy to even meet each other while living here anyway, it seemed there was no need to worry much about it.
“Hae-won-ah, it was nice seeing you after so long, and it’s good to see you’re doing well. If we meet again next time…”
“Are we going to meet, though?”
But the question that followed at the end of his words ultimately made Seo-an close his lips. Hae-won, still crouching down to match the child’s eye level, had tilted his head at an angle and was looking up at Seo-an.
“Is it okay to meet just because you’re a younger brother I know?”
Seo-an was not unaware of the emotion contained in those eyes.
Seo-an swallowed dry saliva. He wanted to run away immediately because Hae-won’s gaze staring up at him while still sitting was piercing, but he couldn’t because there was a young child next to him tightly gripping his thigh.
Seo-an barely composed his expression that was about to contort and met Hae-won’s gaze. Then he spoke in a precise tone.
“Why wouldn’t we be able to see each other?”
As if it were an unexpected answer, a subtle crack appeared in Hae-won’s expression too. Having seen that much, Seo-an adjusted his grip on Ji-yu’s hand and said.
“Ji-yu-ya, say goodbye. Now dad… and you, let’s go buy jellies.”
“Mm-hm. Samchon, good… bye.”
Ji-yu bowed her head so deeply she nearly toppled forward. Worried she might fall, he tightly held the child’s hand he was gripping, and Ji-yu grinned playfully.
Hae-won, who hadn’t acknowledged the child’s greeting, continued to quietly look up at Seo-an. His neatly handsome face and his expression that showed no change. He was exactly as he remembered him, but next to him was a kid.
“She looks like you.”
Hae-won stood up and made a brief observation. With his eyes, he was scanning back and forth as if comparing Seo-an and Ji-yu’s features.
How long had it been since he got married that there was already a kid? He wanted to demand whether he’d gotten married because of a shotgun wedding, but he wasn’t in a position to do so.
Moreover, the child who clearly called Seo-an ‘dad’ did seem to resemble him at a glance.
A married man with a child.
The most common modifier had been attached in front of Kwon Seo-an’s name. Hae-won’s expression sank a little more.
Seo-an, who’d been watching him, left first. As if there was no need to even say goodbye for next time, he made eye contact with the child and had a friendly conversation in a precise tone. At least to the child, he seemed to be an affectionate and good father.
Hae-won frowned, feeling his mouth become dry and rough. He felt resentful toward the indifferent heavens for why, of all times, today, right now, he had to appear before him and stir up his insides.
***
After buying snacks to eat with Ji-yu and cool beverages and returning home, Seo-an sighed first upon seeing the house that was still not organized. Still, he’d at least made the child’s room roughly ready for immediate use, but more problematic was the living room and the study he needed to use right away for work.
When am I going to organize all this? He was letting out a deep sigh when—
Ji-yu, who had seemed to be playing quietly alone in her room, peeked her head out and asked in a cute voice.
“Dad! Can Ji-yu eat one more of these?”
“No, you promised to eat only one.”
“Uuung.”
“Even if you’re cute, there’s nothing I can do. No.”
“Just one more…”
“If dad lets Ji-yu eat that, what will Ji-yu do for dad?”
“When dad wants to play with Hae-won samchon, Ji-yu will step aside!”
At the child’s spirited and absurd words, Seo-an helplessly burst into laughter, “Haha.” It probably wasn’t something she said knowing what it meant—it seemed she was imitating what he’d said to her when she wanted to play more with friends at kindergarten: “Dad will step aside.”
Whether it was her idea of consideration, the child puffed out her belly. At the corner of her grinning mouth, he seemed to glimpse his own reflection, so Seo-an eventually opened his arms and hugged the child tightly.
“Then you eat just one and brush your teeth with dad. If Ji-yu’s teeth rot, you have to go to the dentist.”
“Bleh.”
That meant no. The child, who stuck out her tongue long and frowned, was expressing with her whole body that she hated the dentist.
Still, she knew that if she got cavities she’d have to go. Seo-an took the jelly Ji-yu was holding at about that point. He’d only held out his hand saying “give it here,” but the docile child obediently placed it on Seo-an’s palm.
“It’s dangerous here, so Ji-yu, stay in Ji-yu’s room and play with toys. If you’re bored, call dad.”
“Okay—.”
The child, who answered half-heartedly while munching on the jelly Seo-an had put in her mouth, was already absorbed in another one. Seo-an, watching her quietly, suddenly recalled Hae-won’s voice saying, “She looks like you.”
Of all people, to meet Yeon Hae-won there.
He probably lives here.
Ever since college, there had been widespread rumors that his family was loaded. The rumor that spread because the car he arrived in at the entrance ceremony was an expensive foreign car became an established fact afterward based on his spending habits.
Since I made the big decision and entered this apartment even though it’s expensive because it’s right in front of the company, will I have to keep seeing his face from now on…
Seo-an didn’t hide the unpleasantness blooming in his chest and frowned.
In college, he’d been fairly close with him. They’d grown close while taking the same classes, and did club activities together, so the fact that “Kwon Seo-an and Yeon Hae-won are close” was openly known.
Even when there was nothing special, they contacted each other often, and that was a daily routine that continued naturally every day. Even so, his attitude was different from when dealing with other kids, so Hae-won sometimes made him have strange doubts.
But without warning, contact was cut off completely.
Seo-an was uncomfortable with relationships that didn’t end smoothly.
At first, he was curious about him and wondered if he’d made some mistake. So he tried to meet and talk about it, but Hae-won noticeably ignored his contact. That attitude ultimately left an indelible unpleasantness in Seo-an’s heart.
At the end of that, the conclusion Seo-an reached was that his connection with Hae-won ended there.
A relationship tied to a period of time.
A relationship that naturally breaks off when the group you hang out with changes and your living environment changes.
He thought Hae-won was ultimately one of those.
Though it was regrettable, he had no intention of reconnecting a severed tie.
Seo-an found it difficult to persistently hold onto past connections and reconnect them. Because he’d struggled along with just his older brother since childhood, he was clumsy and found it difficult to form relationships. He was even more so because he had many wounds from people.
After realizing that thinking of it as a broken relationship made him feel more at ease, he never looked back at relationships.
Moreover, now that he had a child to care for, he intended to do so even more.
So he really hoped they wouldn’t run into each other if possible…
“Dad—!”
Seo-an, who had been breathing calmly and briefly immersed in the past, came to his senses only after hearing the voice calling him in a clear, ringing tone from over there.
When he forcibly lifted his heavily sinking body and turned his gaze outward, he saw the child standing on tiptoe and glancing up at the island table.
“What are you trying to do again, Ji-yu?”
“This, aren’t we doing this?”
Ji-yu poked the plate on the table with her small hand. On top of it was sirutteok wrapped in plastic wrap, meant to be given to neighbors as a housewarming gift to commemorate the move.
“Ah.”
“This, dad said you do this.”
Ji-yu’s eyes sparkled brightly with curiosity.
The day before moving, the root of the problem was saying, “When dad was little, when we moved, we gave rice cakes to neighbors.” Because of the child who stamped the ground and felt wronged, saying why don’t we give rice cakes to neighbors when we’re moving too, and why did dad do it when he was little but not when Ji-yu is little, he had no choice but to buy a chunk of rice cake.
How much would I even see of the neighbors anyway? was his main thought, but looking at the child’s expectant eyes, he couldn’t just ignore it.
I should do it… I should go…
Though he wasn’t very keen on it, he’d bought the rice cake because of the child’s nagging, and to Ji-yu who was pestering him to go, this would also become a memory, so he couldn’t just stubbornly hold out. Since things had come to this anyway, there would be nothing bad about greeting and getting along with the neighbors.
Eventually, Seo-an stood up, pushing off the ground.
“Are you going?”
Ji-yu immediately asked with a brightened expression. The child’s sparkling jet-black pupils held anticipation for what was about to happen. Eventually Seo-an smiled with a “yeah” and stroked the child’s head.
“Ji-yu-ya, would you like it if there’s a hyung next door, or would you like it if there’s a noona?”
