Chapter 4
Lee Jaei, a fifteen-year-old boy in his second year at Haesung Middle School, who was 173cm tall, incredibly handsome, and loved tteokbokki.
That day, Jaei picked up the seed-like tiny Doha in front of the tteokbokki shop. Holding tteokbokki in one hand and firmly grasping Doha’s hand with the other, he continued to sob loudly as he took Doha home. Even though Doha caressed his bright red frozen hands with his own gloved hands, he couldn’t stop crying.
Doha looked up at him, thinking, ‘How cold must he be to cry so bitterly?’ and ‘It’s a bit embarrassing for a grown middle school boy to cry like this on the street.’ But the moment he saw the boy’s face contorted in pain, Doha also burst into tears with a wail.
His heart ached as if the boy’s sorrow had been transferred to him. When Doha cried, Jaei cried even louder. They cried like that until they reached home, as if competing to see who could cry louder.
That was Doha’s first memory of meeting Jaei. It was a meeting between a small fool and a large fool.
Jaei lived with his mother and father in a detached house located in Haesung-dong. There was also a housekeeper who commuted daily. Jaei’s house was so large that the addition of an eight-year-old child who was only 130cm tall wouldn’t make any difference.
According to Jaei, he was born and raised in this house, then moved to a luxurious new apartment called “Haesung Winners Castle” that was erected near the subway station across the street, lived there for about a year, and recently returned to this house.
Ryu Doha, a rare life form that had naturally emerged with acquired etiquette, bowed deeply to Jaei’s parents. And like a child presenting at kindergarten, he introduced himself clearly. Of course, he had no memory of attending kindergarten.
“Hello. My name is Ryu Doha. I am eight years old.”
“Oh, yes. Hello.”
Jaei’s parents appeared very flustered seeing the small child who had come along with the tteokbokki in their son’s hand. They stared down at Doha with surprised faces for quite a while without saying anything. And just as Jaei had done earlier, they asked for his name again.
“You said your name is Doha? Ryu Doha?”
“I am Ryu Doha.”
Although he had no more information to provide, he answered bravely and confidently with what he knew. Looking up at the adults who were pretty and handsome like Jaei, and also extremely kind, Doha smiled brightly. Then he took off his gloves and scratched his red cheeks with his small, stubby hands. Coming into a warm place after being in the cold made his cheeks tingle.
Jaei, as if he had anticipated this situation, took out moisturizer from a drawer and handed it to Doha. He also placed the handle of the tteokbokki bag in Doha’s hand.
“The bathroom is over there. Take off your coat, wash your hands and face, and apply this to your cheeks. Can you do it by yourself?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Then sit here and eat this. I’ll go talk with my mom and dad. If you’re hungry, you can eat it all by yourself.”
Jaei quickly left, taking his mother and father by the arms.
“Let’s talk.”
While they were in the master bedroom talking, Doha removed his coat and placed it on the sofa, then washed his hands and face thoroughly with soap bubbles in the bathroom. After applying the sweet-smelling moisturizer that Jaei had given him to his cheeks, he sat neatly on the living room sofa, waiting for the owner of the tteokbokki to return.
Although he was so hungry that his stomach hurt and burned, he endured it to the end without eating. The instincts of eight-year-old Ryu Doha were screaming that it was absolutely forbidden to eat someone else’s tteokbokki at will.
A while later, his father and mother, who returned to the living room with Jaei, looked at Doha with pitying eyes. Jaei’s mother, who was as kind and beautiful as Jaei, called his name very familiarly and asked affectionately.
“Doha. Why didn’t you eat and waited? Aren’t you hungry?”
“I wanted to eat together. With hyung. And with auntie and uncle too.”
Doha distributed the wooden chopsticks one by one to each of the three people standing in front of him. At that moment, all three members of Jaei’s family looked at Doha with the same expression and began to wipe away tears. It wasn’t cold here at all, so why were they all crying together? Was an unknown child sharing wooden chopsticks such a touching and pretty action that it brought tears to their eyes?
It seemed that Jaei had taken after his parents in being prone to tears. Doha, who had met this kind family of crybabies, thought they were a bit foolish and funny, but this time too, he ended up bursting into tears with them. Is it normal to cry when seeing others cry like this? Without even knowing why they were crying, his heart ached unbearably.
The moment Doha burst into tears, the family of crybabies lost even more control over their emotions and cried out loud like people who had just experienced a death. Jaei’s father cried while hitting the wall, and his mother cried while hitting his father’s back. Thus, a moment of inexplicable wailing and sobbing continued.
“Uncle, why are you crying? Auntie, what about you?”
He wanted to tell them to stop crying and please eat the tteokbokki. However, Doha, who had been crying to the point of breathlessness, eventually couldn’t say those words and fell asleep leaning against the sofa without taking even a single bite of the rice cake.
He woke up after taking a good nap in Jaei’s bed, cradled in his arms. After eating his fill of the new tteokbokki that Jaei had bought—not the swollen old one—Jaei’s father gave him a bath in warm water. While Doha was bathing, his mother bought new clothes and shoes that Doha could wear.
The next day, they visited the police station with his parents. Jaei, who was on vacation, also accompanied them. They searched for his identity based on the personal information Doha remembered, but the few Ryu Dohas across the country with the same name and similar age all reported back that they were healthily rolling around in their own homes. In the end, it was revealed that Ryu Doha was a child of unknown identity, but anyway, it was good news that all the other Dohas were doing well.
After the police station visit, the four of them ate out together. Mother and father were deep in thought, pondering the disposition of this mysterious life form who had chosen a children’s set that included tonkatsu. While Jaei was away using the restroom, Doha whispered the “Theory of 8-year-old Ryu Doha’s Sudden Natural Occurrence” into his mother’s ear.
Despite it being a sufficiently logical hypothesis, she didn’t believe him and shook her head while cutting the tonkatsu.
“Doha. Humans can’t just suddenly appear. If humans could just appear, why would I have gone through all that trouble to give birth to Jaei? He could have just appeared on his own.”
So he moved and this time whispered into his father’s ear. But he didn’t believe him either.
“There must be parents who gave birth to and raised Doha. Doha is still young and doesn’t understand well, but biologically, how humans come to be is…”
Communication with adults wasn’t working well. Doha sulked and pouted his lips. Jaei, who returned after washing his hands, pressed firmly on Doha’s lips with his fingers, which were still wet with cold water.
What they learned during the meal was that yesterday, Jaei hadn’t cried because he was cold but because he felt sorry for Doha. Mother and father also said they had suddenly had a time of wailing because they felt sorry for him. However, since Doha hadn’t been abandoned but had “just been there,” he couldn’t think of himself as pitiful at all. He didn’t cower or feel sad.
“The tonkatsu is really delicious.”
Doha speared the tonkatsu with a fork and put a piece each into his mother’s, father’s, and Jaei’s mouths in order.
The disposition of Ryu Doha was decided the next day. Sitting on Jaei’s lap, Doha waited with a calm expression for what the adults would say. Jaei, although already knowing the outcome, didn’t give any hint at all. He just hummed a tune while rocking Doha’s body back and forth.
His mother, sitting with her legs crossed and a serious expression, asked.
“Hey, cute baby. Since you’re so cute, do you want to be Mom’s youngest son?”
“Wow! I’d really like that.”
It wasn’t difficult at all for a baby duck to accept the first brother it saw as a brother, mom as mom, and dad as dad. Lucky Doha, who had been chosen by Lee Jaei and fortunately won a spot as a son in the Lee family, happily kicked his feet.
Jaei’s parents were similar to Jaei, with gentle and warm personalities. They were people who did business traveling between Korea and overseas, and they said they had always been interested in children’s rights and consistently made large donations. Even so, adding one more crybaby son was never an easy task.
The reason for Ryu Doha’s acceptance as a son that father officially announced was as follows:
“We needed something cute at home. Jaei isn’t very cute anymore now that he’s all grown up. When he was young, he was the cutest in Seoul.”
Jaei, who was once the cutest not only in Haesung-dong but in all of Seoul, but who had been overtaken in cuteness by the appearance of tiny Ryu Doha, was indignant and said it was absurd. Doha turned his head, blinked his large eyes, and looked up at Jaei. He turned his body in Jaei’s arms and hugged him back with both arms. He didn’t like that Jaei felt displeasure because of him.
Jaei had no choice but to recognize Doha, who was wriggling like a baby polar bear in his arms, as “The Cutest Thing in Seoul Special City, Rank 1.” And hugging Doha tightly like a stuffed animal until he almost burst, Jaei shouted in an excited voice.
“When I see something cute, I want to squeeze it till it pops!”
After that, Doha almost got crushed in Jaei’s arms several times.
