As the days passed, the small town where Seowoo lived began to stir with a slow, creeping energy.
On the black branches packed densely across the sky above the streets, buds swelled at the point of bursting.
When no one was looking, they would transform all at once into a brilliant, glowing pink.
Spring always came that way — in an instant.
Even before the cold had fully lifted, tourists had grown noticeably more numerous, and the alleyways filled up with the sound of people.
Weekend train tickets coming down from Seoul were already sold out a month in advance.
The shops lining the tourist roads were busy shaking off winter and freshening up.
Display windows were polished to a gleam and restocked with new goods; restaurants erased their worn menus and wrote new ones.
Seowoo’s shop was no exception.
If you left the main strip where the popular eateries clustered and followed a street that smelled richly of pine — antique and unhurried — and then turned along a low stone wall and walked about two more blocks in, Seowoo’s Blue Giraffe came into view.
A small two-story building on a corner, with a green door fitted with brass hardware, already wide open.
In the display shelf beneath the large front window, pretty little pieces that Seowoo had painted himself were arranged in a cheerful row.
Inside, in the tea-serving area, the air was thick with the scent of herbal tea steaming from a kettle on top of an old-fashioned stove.
Seowoo, who had been sitting at his work table painting, looked up.
He switched off the small alarm, and carefully cleared away the small canvas and his painting tools.
A man wiping dishes at the bar on one side of the shop popped his head up like a meerkat at the sound.
“Has it gotten to be that time already?”
“I know — it feels like we just had lunch, and it’s already three. I’ll head out. Could you mind the shop for three hours?”
“Of course. Take your time.”
His name was Min Sangoh — a childhood friend of Ji Donghyeok’s, and someone Seowoo had known for three years.
Even so, he still spoke formally and kept a certain reserve.
The polite distance suited Seowoo well enough that he never corrected it, and kept formal speech between them too.
“I’ll be off then.”
With a small bow of his head, Seowoo stepped out of the shop, and his pace quickened with every step.
Three in the afternoon was the hour Seowoo looked forward to most these days.
He covered in three minutes a distance that should have taken ten on foot.
Standing at the entrance of a bright yellow building, he steadied his breathing.
He pressed close to the intercom at the front door and pushed the button — and for something so simple, his hands still trembled just slightly.
“Hello. I’m here to pick up Yoon Dano from the Sprouts class.”
A chime sounded, and the teacher’s voice came through the speaker.
Seowoo leaned in, straining to catch Dano’s voice among the murmur of children in the background — and then, at the sound of a small clearing of throat from the grandmother standing behind him, he snapped back to himself and stepped aside.
A moment later, the firmly locked door of the daycare swung open.
Among the cluster of small children standing with bags larger than themselves, Seowoo’s baby — Dano — was there too.
“Appa!”
Just shy of ninety centimeters tall, round and soft as a little rice cake in his thick yellow cardigan and pumpkin-shaped trousers, Dano lifted his little fern hands and waved at Seowoo.
He stomped his plump, stubby legs and stretched both arms wide — and there was no withstanding it; Seowoo had to run to him.
“Dano, our Dano. Did you have fun today?”
When Dano’s hands touched Seowoo’s cold cheeks, something about it struck him as enormously funny, and he dissolved into bright laughter.
And that laughter — it was like a button that disarmed everyone who heard it, and Seowoo’s face broke into a helpless, loopy smile right along with him.
With Dano tucked against him, Seowoo hooked the extra bag the teacher held out over his arm and took the small sneakers in his hand.
Once everything was gathered and Dano was settled back into his arms, Dano gripped Seowoo’s collar with both hands and wriggled.
Dano had been born beautiful, like a little fairy.
Distinct, defined features were packed into a small face, and he drew eyes wherever he went.
His hair was thick for his age, and when Seowoo bundled it up over his round forehead, every person they passed on the street couldn’t help but smile.
The awkward strangeness Seowoo had felt when he first met him — waking from the anesthesia after surgery — was long gone now.
A world without Dano in it had become impossible to imagine.
What everyone always said — that you fall for your own child in an instant — was one hundred percent true.
Seowoo pressed kiss after kiss against Dano’s soft, plump cheek.
“Dano ate all his tteok snack today.”
“Really?”
“He’s still refusing fruit, but he’s been sneaking glances at what the other children eat. Looks like his curiosity is starting to grow. That’s a good sign, our Dano.”
The teacher came over to the pair, who were entirely absorbed in each other, and gave a brief account of Dano’s day.
Seowoo listened with an expression of absolute concentration.
Dano’s poor appetite had been his biggest worry lately, so not a single word from the daycare teacher was something he could afford to miss.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Dano, say goodbye to the teacher.”
“Anni-ha-yo.”
“It’s annyeonghi gyeseyo. See you tomorrow! Dano, tomorrow we’re going to eat lots, okay?”
The daycare entrance overflowed with laughter.
Seowoo exchanged bows with everyone he passed and made his way out of the bright yellow building.
Crossing the playground and garden to where the stroller was parked, Dano sat nestled in Seowoo’s arms and played with his ear.
Seowoo settled Dano into the stroller, buckled him in, and tucked a warm blanket over him — and the thought of Hyeon surfaced without warning.
In truth, even as a scrunched-up newborn, Dano had resembled Hyeon enough to bring him to mind.
Seowoo had been forcing himself to look away from that reality all this time, but the older Dano grew, the more clearly Hyeon’s features came through — catching Seowoo off guard every now and then.
Surely the Hyeon with that gentle expression I saw in my prenatal dream is Dano’s future, right?
At this point, he was beginning to wonder if he had some kind of gift for seeing the future.
Though, in truth, it might simply be that he had thought of Hyeon throughout the entire pregnancy……
In a way, thinking he could forget had been arrogance.
“Sigh.”
“Hm?”
“Sigh, sigh.”
“Ah — no. Appa didn’t sigh. That wasn’t a sigh.”
“Not? Not?”
“Yeah yeah, not.”
“Nahh. Naaht.”
At this rate, “nope” would be the only word he’d learn.
They said babies learned negatives first.
Seowoo stretched his mouth into the widest smile he could manage, then took hold of the stroller handle.
So Dano could take in all of the pretty world where a gentle spring breeze had begun to blow, Seowoo walked slowly, unhurried, toward home.
Stopping to buy a snack for Dano, taking about thirty photos of him — by the time they got home it would be four o’clock.
Bathing him, getting him dressed, starting dinner — that was when Donghyeok would join them.
The annex of the traditional hanok guesthouse run by Donghyeok and his parents was where Seowoo lived, so the three of them always shared breakfast and dinner together.
Three years ago, when Seowoo had made up his mind to leave Seoul but had no idea where to go, it was his friend Ji Donghyeok who had reached out his hand and invited him to come down to his hometown.
With nowhere to go, Seowoo had taken root quickly in an unfamiliar place and built his life to where it was now.
Before Seowoo had even put the washed rice in the cooker, Donghyeok came through the door, both hands loaded with bags.
Seowoo hurried over and took them from him.
Inside a large tarpaulin bag were pork belly, vegetables, and fruit in abundance.
“A guest had something come up and checked out early. Left me all the groceries they’d bought and told me to eat them.”
“Why’d they check out? Were they not happy……?”
“If they weren’t happy they wouldn’t have left the food, would they. They said it was a work emergency, but my guess is——”
“Your guess is what?”
Donghyeok glanced over at Dano, then bent close and whispered in Seowoo’s ear.
“I think they got caught cheating.”
“What?”
“Rushed out of there, had a huge fight with whoever they were with and ditched them. The one who got left behind was absolutely screaming at the car as it drove off — made my skin crawl just hearing it. Sounds like a short life.”
“Oh no……”
“Or maybe not — maybe they’ll live long?”
Leaving Seowoo standing there with his mouth in a little O, Donghyeok went and started washing vegetables and grilling the meat.
The affair is the crime, not the meat, he declared, singing and dancing around the kitchen — and Dano shot to his feet, clapping along to keep the beat.
It was something Seowoo couldn’t fathom.
How could anyone give their heart to more than one person when one was already difficult enough to manage?
Even for himself — since Dano had come into the picture, his heart simply didn’t have the capacity for romantic feelings toward anyone else in the world.
He was shaking his head and wiping down the table, setting out the side dishes, when someone knocked heavily on the guesthouse gate.
Thud, thud.
Seowoo and Donghyeok stopped at exactly the same moment.
Thud, thud again — so it wasn’t his imagination.
“I’ll go check.”
Seowoo stepped up instead of Donghyeok, who was still holding the tongs.
The guesthouse operated by reservation only, and every door — traditional as the hanok was — had a number keypad fitted.
Guests had no reason to knock.
Seowoo slipped on his sandals and stepped out of the annex, a careless smile still on his face.
Inside the house, Dano was singing and dancing.
The smell of grilling meat filled the air.
It was an ordinary evening, unremarkable in every way.
“……”
As Seowoo crossed the small courtyard and drew near the gate, his expression slowly went still.
The unexpected visitor was someone whose tall frame rose well above the low stone wall.
