# Chapter 13
After washing his body in warm water, Doha came out and encountered Jaei, who had returned home, in the second-floor reception room. With disheveled hair and a bright red face, Jaei sniffled and immediately asked:
“Do you really hate me? Am I mean?”
Doha snorted “hmph” and blinked his round eyes, answering honestly.
“Yes. You’re really bad and weird.”
“Damn it.”
Angered, Jaei rushed at Doha and banged his head against Doha’s. Suddenly subjected to a headbutt, Doha held his dizzy head and stepped back. The foolish Jaei, who had attacked but also shocked his own head, rubbed his painful head and cried loudly and pitifully while saying:
“In kindergarten too, there were friends who didn’t like me. But I like all my friends, so I’m sad. So don’t hate me.”
Doha intended to be really cold-hearted this time. He thought it was all Jaei’s “personal problem” that he needed to solve by improving his personality and behavior himself. However, as he watched Jaei’s face with tears rolling down, somehow Jaei’s sadness transferred to him, making his chest ache subtly, and he ended up bursting into tears too. He sat down next to Jaei who had collapsed on the floor crying, and wailed loud enough to bring the house down.
The mothers did not intervene in the children’s situation after they had fallen into a swamp of wailing following their first date, and just left them alone.
Jaei, who had returned after experiencing being a snowman from being hit one-sidedly with snowballs rather than having a snow “fight,” came down with a cold and suffered alone. His whole body was burning with fever, so he even went to the hospital. Feeling responsible, the snowball fight master Ryu Doha peeked around Jaei’s door. Jaei was lying in bed with a large wet towel on his small head, coughing continuously without rest. As Doha was peeking through the door crack, Jaei’s mother tapped him on the back.
“Oh, Aunt.”
Doha blinked his large eyes slowly and scratched his forehead. Jaei had probably told her everything he had done and asked her to throw him out of the house right away. He didn’t mind being scolded himself, but thinking about his mother who would be troubled in the middle made him feel a bit regretful.
Jaei’s mother, who had closed the slightly open door, knelt down to meet Doha’s eyes and spoke kindly:
“Jaei said he had so much fun having a snowball fight with Doha in the playground. But only he caught a cold. He gets minor illnesses a lot. Jaei is a child who needs a lot of attention.”
“…Did Jaei say it was fun?”
“Yes. He said it was so fun. He wants to have another snowball fight with Doha.”
Doha, who had turned Jaei into a rice cake, felt a pang in his heart at Jaei’s lie. Jaei’s mother continued:
“Jaei’s nose is like a dog’s nose, so he can smell well. He said there was a delicious bread smell from Doha’s cheeks before you went out. His nose hurt for a moment, but he said the smell was really nice. Oh, and Jaei spat out the chocolate you gave him as a gift? I’m really sorry. I think he was surprised because it was a taste he’d never tried before.”
“…”
“When Jaei hears loud sounds or tastes or smells something strong, his body feels prickly and painful. He was born that way, and even if he goes to the hospital, it can’t be fixed. We’re still practicing with Aunt how to endure the prickling and thumping heart without showing it in front of others, but he’s still young, so he can’t do it well yet. So these days, I’m worried that Jaei might be disliked by his friends when he enters elementary school.”
Right now, 8-year-old Ryu Doha was crossing the river of regret. Having lived a full 8 years, how could he have shown such rash behavior to a friend? He had been told too many times since childhood that he was kind and well-mannered, and had never been scolded once, so his downfall was in overconfidence in his own choices. How could he go out onto the streets with his head held high and face his junior fellows in life, infants and kindergarteners, with such a shameful appearance?
Jaei wasn’t a bad or mean child, just a slightly different person. He hadn’t considered that what suited his own taste could be a moment of pain and suffering for Jaei. He reflected on criticizing others based on his own standards. Even the action of Jaei rubbing his nose saying something smelled was something he had misjudged. He was too ashamed to lift his head.
Doha, who had been struggling in the river of regret, barely stuck his face above the surface and asked tearfully:
“Is Jaei very sick?”
“He’ll get better soon. He gets sick often, but he recovers quickly too. And Jaei wanted to give you this.”
It was the black glove that Jaei had been wearing. With tears welling up in his eyes, Doha tightly grasped the glove and confessed all his sins.
“I bullied Jaei.”
“You bullied Jaei?”
“I suggested a snowball fight to Jaei but then I threw snow really fast by myself, and I told Jaei he was bad. That’s why Jaei is sick.”
Doha, who had confessed his wrongdoing like a criminal turning himself in at a police station, collapsed into the aunt’s arms and began to cry. The act of confession had rescued Doha from the river of regret, but now he was determined to drown in tears. She comforted Doha by patting him and spoke firmly:
“Hey, cute baby. Don’t cry. One-sidedly bullying a friend is not okay, but friends can have showdowns with each other. Lee Jaei just lost the snowball fight because he’s slow. And if you hurt a friend’s feelings, you might be called bad too.”
Upon hearing that, it wasn’t wrong. With her help, Doha was finally able to escape from the river of tears. Wiping his tears with the sleeve of his sky-blue thermal underwear, he asked:
“But, Aunt, what’s a ‘showdown’?”
Having learned from an adult what “having a showdown” meant, Doha returned to his room and took out his favorite book from the bookshelf. Though he had already read it until it was worn, he planned to review it once more before falling asleep. After flipping past photos of various wild animals, what appeared was a cute baby fennec fox with enormously large ears.
“Fennec foxes are very sensitive and cautious. They have large ears that can hear small sounds well, so they get startled when there’s a loud noise. If a small and fragile fennec fox were to grow up in a noisy city, it could experience a lot of stress.”
Digesting each word as if chewing them, Doha turned the page and muttered, thinking of Jaei’s large ears:
“I guess Jaei is a fennec fox.”
A kind baby fox that somehow ended up living in the city with humans.
* * *
Jaei, who had been coughing all day with a persistent cold for quite a long time, fortunately recovered just before the entrance ceremony. During that period, Doha had been quarantined to prevent catching the cold and hadn’t even had a meal with Jaei once. Time just flowed by without Doha getting the chance to officially apologize to Jaei.
On the day of the entrance ceremony, they went to school together very awkwardly. Jaei kept his mouth shut tight, afraid that any word he might say would hurt Doha again, and Doha, having missed the opportunity to apologize, closed his mouth not knowing which word to start with.
Jaei was assigned to Class 4 of the 1st grade, and Doha to Class 6. They exchanged greetings, saying “hello” stiffly like Lego figures, and went into their respective classrooms. Doha was feeling increasingly anxious as time passed.
It was no longer just about not being able to apologize to Jaei. He started to imagine Jaei being intimidated among his new friends, afraid of being disliked, and eventually being misunderstood as a bad child again, crying pitifully. And all of it seemed like his fault.
He wasn’t worried about himself. Although he had moved from a different neighborhood and didn’t have friends from the same kindergarten, he was confident about quickly becoming friends with his classmates. This was because Ryu Doha had always been loved by everyone everywhere due to his easygoing personality.
As soon as classes ended, he was the first to get up and rush to Jaei’s classroom. While there was an implicit agreement to go to school together, there wasn’t one for returning home. Not knowing how to ask Jaei to go home together, he was scratching his head when Jaei came out walking quickly alone with his shoe pouch in hand.
He had heard that Jaei was in the same class as children from his kindergarten, but it seemed he didn’t have friends to go home with yet. Doha quietly followed behind Jaei, who hadn’t seen him and was passing by quickly. The plan was to naturally walk beside him after walking in the same direction for a while.
Jaei stopped walking after a short distance, in front of Doha’s classroom. Seeing him peeking into the empty classroom, it seemed he was thinking of going home with Doha. Doha approached Jaei with great joy.
At that moment, a boy with a face full of mischief came running down the corridor making loud footsteps, and shouted “Waaah!” as he slapped Jaei’s back with his palm. It was clearly an action committed deliberately to startle Jaei.
“Aaack!”
Jaei burst into tears, covered his ears, screamed, and hunched his body. Wide-eyed, Doha hid Jaei, who was struggling to breathe properly, behind his back. Jaei was cold-looking but gentle, only knowing how to headbutt even when attacked. Doha demanded an apology from the child who had played the mischievous prank instead.
“You startled him, and now Jaei is crying. Apologize.”
Behind Doha’s back, Jaei gasped for breath and blinked his large eyes. In response to Doha’s firm demand for an apology, the mischief-maker reluctantly apologized.
“Hey, Lee Jaei. Sorry.”
Having secured an apology, Doha wrapped his arms around Jaei and walked out into the corridor. Just then, the door of Class 3 opened, and children rushed out into the corridor all at once. Jaei, who was barely walking with the support of Doha’s strength, not knowing what to do in the crowded corridor, was swept away by them and fell down with a thud. Doha, letting out a deep sigh, helped Jaei up and said:
“You really! Need a lot of attention!”
It was a phrase he had learned from Jaei’s parents. They defined Jaei as “the cutest child in Seoul but one who needs a lot of attention.” Doha had learned the phrase by perking up his ears and listening to them. However, Jaei interpreted Doha’s words at this point as meaning “I tried to help you because I felt sorry for you, but you’re still annoying and I don’t like you.”
“What?”
He rushed at Doha, laid him down on the corridor, and pressed down on him with his whole body. He wasn’t the type to hit someone, nor could he pinch or bite, and he had already tried headbutting once but it hurt his own head more, so the only attack Jaei could perform now was to press down on Doha. He thought that by pressing down on Doha with his whole body, Doha would soon counterattack.
But surprisingly, Doha was like clay that just gets squished when pressed, lying flat. He didn’t flip over or try to escape. So Jaei became not someone who attacked Doha, but just someone lying on top of Doha. Jaei, fluttering his eyelashes like a fan, asked:
“Why are you just lying still?”
With a grunt, Doha calmly replied:
“Because it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m sturdy, so it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s a lie. I’m saying I’m heavy.”
“You’re super light, so I don’t feel anything.”
Jaei turned his head away primly and slowly got up. After Jaei stood up, Doha followed suit and dusted off his coat with his hands. Then he took out the black glove that Jaei had given him as a gift from his pocket and put it on. Walking a couple of steps ahead of the wide-eyed Jaei, he turned his body diagonally and extended his hand to Jaei.
“Let’s go home.”
