May arrived, and until the midterms ended, Kkotmoa and I studied at the cafe several times. Even though it was only on Wednesdays and Fridays, unlike the beginning when we finished in two and a half hours, these days we often went until 10 or 11 PM. We even had dinner at the cafe, settling for sandwiches and the like.
Our school was coed, but the odd-numbered classes were boys’ classes, and the even-numbered classes were girls’ classes. Classes 1 through 13 were humanities, and classes 14 through 18 were sciences. Kkotmoa and I were in Class 3, humanities. Nevertheless, the reason I could represent the school at the Math Olympiad or teach Kkotmoa math was because I had already mastered Math II back in middle school. Back then, I was annoyed about why I, who was going to study business administration anyway, had to study all the way to Math II for no reason, but just the fact that I could teach Kkotmoa more easily made me think I’d done well to study hard. Of course, I studied it because even if I inherit D Group, I need to directly understand business finance and accounting even with experts around.
Anyway, during that time, the variety of flowers I received also diversified. Kkotmoa, who had secretly hidden a single flower in his bag on the first day, from then on openly came to the cafe carrying a flower. When the first rose I received was about to wilt, I recalled what he had said and wanted to put it in cold water, but I didn’t want to unwrap the packaging he had done for the first time. Twice a week, I had received a total of five flowers so far, but only two were still alive now. I placed the wilted flowers in the spot in my room where the sunlight came in best, so they could dry prettily.
Every time I looked at the flowers he gifted me, flowers bloomed in my heart too.
Kkotmoa rejoiced that his midterm average had gone up by almost 20 points. Even so, it was still barely an 80 average. Still, it was worth being happy about since he had risen from the middle tier to the upper-middle tier. Honestly, most of them were problems I had marked for him, so I couldn’t quite understand why he only managed an 80 average. Still, seeing him happy made me burn with motivation to teach him even more.
“Let’s not study today and go eat something delicious. I’ll treat you.”
Wednesday was the day I studied with Kkotmoa. But as we left the school gate, he said with a brightly smiling face.
I organized everything all last week because I was going to start the mock exam section starting today. I wanted to give him that.
“I got my allowance yesterday, so my allowance is really fresh.”
The refreshing sunlight seemed to shine only on Kkotmoa. This guy who said he spent most of his allowance on transportation, phone bills, and of course, most of it on Deonggeori, was trying to allocate a portion for me too. I think I was a bit moved. That said, I wasn’t the type who tolerated embarrassing things well. Kkotmoa didn’t do anything embarrassing at all, but I felt that way alone and grumbled for no reason.
“Even if your money is fresh, so what. How much allowance do you even get?”
“A hundred thousand won a month.”
“…Huh?”
“A hundred thousand won.”
Kkotmoa spread all ten of his fingers wide. I understood that he wanted to express ten, but I was flustered wondering what you could do with a hundred thousand won a month. A hundred thousand won was far short of even one serving of steak at our hotel restaurant that I sometimes went to eat at with Junwoo. It was also less than one-tenth of the allowance I spent in a month.
Ah. So that’s why he was so happy when he won the cafe card event. Because he received an amount equal to his monthly allowance. We were still using that cafe card. In the middle, after I said I’d go order, I secretly charged another 100,000 won.
“Let’s eat tteoktwisun and gimbap too. Should I order ramyeon for you too?”
The place Kkotmoa took me to was a snack bar near school. It was my first time coming here. It was a place I had never come to even once, knowing that the kids wore down the threshold coming and going, because it was unhygienic from the exterior alone. But now I was sitting here without any resistance, waiting for the food to come out.
Just because a single flower was blooming before me.
It wasn’t my first time eating snack food, but I didn’t particularly like it. The tteokbokki and gimbap that Mom sometimes made were delicious, but the ones I bought were never that great. However, right now I was eating so deliciously that I wondered if it was okay for it to be this delicious. It genuinely felt delicious.
Because of the fact that a single flower was blooming before me.
“So usually when I go home, it’s even more hectic. I have to bathe Jaea, prepare his meals, put him to sleep, and from when the flower shop closes, I have to basically take care of Jaea. House cleaning and those kinds of household chores aren’t every day, but I still have to do them.”
“…What does your mom do?”
“Huh? I don’t have a mom though?”
He said it so casually that I was more flustered. Did they divorce, did she pass away—various questions came to mind, but my mouth only mechanically chewed the gimbap. I didn’t know what words to say at times like this. Since I only hung out with set people, I didn’t have this kind of experience. Also, I wasn’t nasty enough to dig into someone else’s wounds, nor was I trash enough to trample a bright flower.
“No one at school knows this… but actually, my dad adopted me.”
In an instant, my mouth that had been chewing gimbap stopped completely. The eyes that met mine had no wavering. Kkotmoa was so calm that I had to doubt whether he was telling me a morning drama plot. Far from being calm, his neat and tidy face was as radiant as usual.
“Jaea too.”
“…Why?”
I shouldn’t have asked. I should have kept my wicked curiosity to myself. I shouldn’t have been relieved just because Kkotmoa was smiling.
“Um… because our family can’t have babies?”
I should have caught on when he said he didn’t have a mom. I should have tactfully understood from the fact that he didn’t answer that his mom and dad were divorced or that his mom had passed away. I absolutely do not carelessly pluck or trample pretty flowers.
“Originally they couldn’t have them, so they intended to adopt you from the beginning?”
“Yeah. I’m only telling you this…”
If I wasn’t going to carelessly pluck or trample, I shouldn’t have laid a hand on a flower with thorns, no matter how pretty.
“Actually, I have only two dads.”
The flower’s sharp thorns grazed my fingertips, forming drops of blood.
I felt like I had learned an enormous secret that I shouldn’t have heard. The petals swaying in the gentle breeze looked fragile, as if they would scatter and fly away. The slender stem looked precarious, as if it might break at any moment.
However, as if that was my illusion, the lips that moved saying he was only telling me were calmly swallowing tteokbokki. The weight of the secret he told only me was quite heavy for a still clumsy and immature nineteen-year-old boy to handle.
**2. Because It’s You**
While looking at Kkotmoa, I may have forgotten at some point the fact that he was a guy with the same equipment as me. I also thought that the reason the kids did disgusting and revolting things to Kkotmoa that they would absolutely never do to other kids was probably for the same reason. Even while being in our boys’ class, Kkotmoa was different from us. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, but anyway, he was somehow different.
After pouring out that enormous secret to me, Kkotmoa was the same as usual, as if he had never said such a thing from the beginning. The reason this child maintains this secret may be because there’s a bad wound related to it from when he was young. Or it might just be to uphold Korean society’s common sense.
We finished eating the snack food that day as if nothing had happened. I wanted to ask what it meant to have only two dads, but my mouth could only function to chew food, and Kkotmoa, who changed the subject to talk about other things, was just demure and truly pretty.
What does it mean to have only two dads?
I wasn’t a narrow-minded person who would harbor prejudice and look through tinted glasses just because I heard such a thing. If I did that, I’d get a smashing from Mom until my back was raw. However, no matter how many tens of thousands of times I chewed it over, thinking and thinking again and thinking some more, there was only one answer I could derive from my common sense.
That Kkotmoa’s parents were a gay couple.
If I was going to be this curious, it would have been better to just ask right away that day. Like, why do you have only two dads, what does that mean?
Separate from that, the reason I was flustered and surprised was because of Kkotmoa’s disposition and attitude. No matter how much I pretended to be an adult and bluffed with high status at school, my thinking as a nineteen-year-old with a narrow-minded way of thinking was bound to be shallow.
So, I couldn’t believe the fact that a kid being raised by a gay couple in Korea could be this bright and cheerful. I also thought that the reason he seemed affectionate and different from other guys his age might be his parents’ influence. Just look at the father-son relationship. In the Republic of Korea, you could search high and low for fathers who are affectionate and close with their nineteen-year-old sons and barely find a few, if any. It would be better to say there are almost none. But what was the relationship between Kkotmoa and his dad that I saw at the flower shop like? There was an affection and warmth that would only appear in the dramas Mom likes to watch. Kkotmoa looked exactly like a kid who grew up monopolizing all kinds of love under normal parents, a kid who was very accustomed to being loved by everyone. No, I thought so. But now I don’t even know what the standard for normal parents is anymore.
“Do Teacher, how do you solve this problem?”
“At this rate, you’ll ask even while taking the exam, really. Before you ask me, first think about what formula is being applied.”
“I thought about it but I don’t know.”
“How much did you think about it?”
“Um… 30 seconds?”
“Do you want to die?”
“Okay. Then I’ll think about it for 30 more seconds, and if I still don’t know, I’ll ask again.”
I saw him smile demurely and bite the tip of his mechanical pencil with his lips. The flower boasting magnificent colors still showed no signs of wilting. Like a pine tree that boasts green leaves all year round, the flower before me also seemed like it would shine boasting beautiful colors all year round. The real flower on the table that he would give me after studying was finished didn’t even catch my eye, as a more vivacious flower was spreading its fragrance.
As much as Kkotmoa was the same as usual, I too had not changed. At least on the outside. However, after hearing the bombshell statement, all kinds of curiosities surged in my head. I was a nineteen-year-old with wicked curiosity. Basically, I thought that in our country, legally, adoption qualifications are only given to married couples. Even if his dads got married abroad and came to Korea, adoption would be impossible. As a result of searching the internet on the way home that day, our country’s adoption approval standards were actually like this:
- Couples married for more than 3 years shall jointly adopt. However, this excludes cases where a biological child from a previous marriage of a couple married for more than 1 year becomes a special adoption child.
- The special adoption child must be a minor.
- The biological parents of the child to become a special adoption child must consent to the special adoption. (However, this excludes cases where consent cannot be given due to loss of parental rights, disappearance, or other reasons.)
- If the child to become a special adoption child is 13 years or older, consent to adoption with the consent of the legal guardian.
- If the child to become a special adoption child is under 13 years old, the legal guardian consents to adoption in their place.
