The moment I realized that the relationship between Eorin and me had changed incomparably from before, holding the private childcare teacher employment contract, I no longer knew how to treat Eorin. It would be right to treat Eorin as an employer, but…
One certain fact was that I couldn’t smile and show affection to Eorin like before. And also that I would have a very hard time seeing such a smile from Eorin. The awkwardly sparse conversation between us proved that.
I didn’t want to restore the relationship. I just… thought it would be okay as long as Eorin didn’t make that precarious expression again, one scary enough to make people watching feel afraid. I hoped that my taking Eorin’s hand was the right choice, so that Eorin had stepped back a few paces from the cliff edge. Then when Eorin became a sparkling person again, I planned to leave at that time.
I knew painfully well that we lived in different worlds, and I was someone who knew how to maintain my place.
So let’s just not get unreasonably close.
Having set up an ambiguous standard beyond comparison, I was complacently satisfied. However, I soon realized that that standard ultimately didn’t determine my attitude toward Eorin.
My daily routine was simple. Going to the house in time for Eorin to go to work, and coming home when Eorin came back from work. Cleaning didn’t need to be done since the company periodically sent people, and ultimately all I had to do was completely take care of Jiwon. Feeding, bathing, putting to sleep, and playing—those tasks.
I was fortunate there was no time to be alone with Eorin. When I was face to face with Eorin, a strange tension filled the air. I found it hard to endure. When I gave a difficult greeting saying “Have a good day,” Eorin would reply “Please take good care of things today.” And then the brief silence that followed, and the dispersion of gazes. When Eorin left the house with Jiwon’s bright greeting as the final word, I was finally released from the tension.
Jiwon opened up to me quickly. Was it because it hadn’t been long since we moved here so there weren’t many people he knew?
When I told him to tell me what he liked, Jiwon, taught by someone, used his right hand to count the fingers of his left hand one by one as he spoke. Roy from Robocar Poli, tomatoes, strawberries, dinosaurs… After quietly listening to the story, when I said “So Jiwon likes red,” Jiwon’s mouth fell wide open. Thinking about it, it seemed he started smiling at me a lot more from that time.
“Teacher-nim. Want to watch Kuyu-ppa.”
“Mm, shall we go watch after we finish eating all this?”
“Yesh.”
Jiwon, who answered obediently, diligently stabbed strawberries with his non-sharp baby fork and brought them to his mouth. After swallowing the last strawberry while shrugging his shoulders up to show me, Jiwon held out the empty bowl. Until I came back after putting the empty bowl and fork in the sink, Jiwon sat obediently in the baby dining chair. While I carried Jiwon to the living room, Jiwon rubbed his cheek against my shoulder.
“Want to sit in the dinosaur chair and watch?”
There was a small, low red dinosaur-patterned chair that Jiwon could sit in by himself. Standing on the baby mat and heading toward the chair out of habit, Jiwon suddenly turned to look at me and reached out his hand.
“Together with Teacher-nim.”
Jiwon, who took my hand and pulled me to sit on the floor, pushed his bottom onto my lap and sat down. Then he fiddled with his hands, wanting me to quickly turn on what he wanted.
“…What did you say you wanted to watch?”
“Ku-ppa!”
“Yes, Cloud Bread.”
When I found and turned on the TV program with the remote, Jiwon got excited, swinging his feet.
When I first met Jiwon after learning that he was an adopted child, I actually had a trace of anxiety. If he was adopted as a newborn baby, he would have been separated from his parents at a much younger age than me. Some of my younger siblings at Haebam Orphanage had been like that too. And what I knew for certain was that children who had experienced loss, regardless of age, were starved for affection. I had worried whether Jiwon might be like that too.
But the Jiwon I actually met seemed accustomed to affection. Approaching someone and expressing what he wanted was extremely natural. Children’s requests come out without hesitation only when there’s someone who will readily grant them. Jiwon didn’t watch my face when telling me what he wanted. I was most relieved by the fact that he had demands. Jiwon was a child who had grown up receiving love.
Actually, I could tell that from watching him see Eorin off too. Cheerfully seeing off Eorin going to work and running with a smile to hug Eorin who returned was the daily routine.
Still, if there was one thing that worried me, it was that Jiwon had never once looked for “Mom.” He must have been with Eorin’s ex-spouse for several years… But that wasn’t a problem I could get involved in. While habitually rubbing Jiwon’s belly in the child’s warm body temperature, I turned my attention to the TV. A fairy tale was drawn of cats flying in the sky after eating bread kneaded with clouds.
“Jiwon-ah, shall we stop now?”
“Uuuung.”
“Can’t we stop?”
“Uung, eomeo-na.”
Jiwon barely stretched out one index finger and waved it with a pitiful face. “Eomeona” was “just once” as spoken by Jiwon who was poor at pronunciation.
“Just once?”
“Jush once.”
It was cute how he babbled while gathering his slightly drooping eyebrows, so I laughed. Seeing my face, Jiwon understood the permission and got excited, bouncing up and down.
“Okay. Just once. Sit there.”
“Yesh!”
Jiwon sat in front of me with shining eyes. I secretly sighed so Jiwon wouldn’t hear and put my hand back into the finger puppet. The book was already closed. After reading the same storytelling five times, I could not only memorize the lines but even adapt them.
“Hello, my name is Aurora. I’m a pretty princess.”
“Pwincess!”
As soon as I introduced Aurora, Jiwon scooted closer by pushing his bottom and pretended to kiss Aurora. The protruding lips were cute, so I pressed Aurora to Jiwon’s lips.
“Kiss.”
“Kissh.”
“Hello, are you my prince?”
“No! I’m Jiwon.”
“Really? I wish Jiwon would be my prince.”
“Jiwon is not a pwince, Jiwon is Jiwon…”
He probably still finds it hard to understand that “prince” isn’t a name but a position. I moved the story along.
“You know, when I was born, there was a party. But we forgot and couldn’t send a party invitation to a scary fairy who got angry and put a spell on me. A spell that makes me only sleep if I get pricked by a needle.”
“Oh no! Auowa, you can’t sleep!”
“Huh, what’s this? There’s a weird-looking wheel here.”
“Don’t touch it!”
“Ow!”
Despite Jiwon’s enthusiastic dissuasion, Princess Aurora touched the spinning wheel and fell asleep. I also knocked down the Legos I’d set up around us.
“Since Princess Aurora is fast asleep, all the people who lived with Princess Aurora fell asleep too. It must have been really strong magic.”
“Quick, let’s call the pwince!”
“Who should play the prince role?”
The finger puppet that was originally the prince role was hidden behind me. After looking around for a while searching for that puppet, he soon gave up and ran to the toy box, bringing out a dinosaur toy.
“This one!”
“What’s that friend’s name?”
“Apatosauwus.”
“Apatosaurus.”
“Yeah. Very very strong.”
The apatosaurus that walked over with thump-thump sounds approached the sleeping Princess Aurora, lowered its head, and started tickling her belly.
“Auowa Pwincess wake up.”
“Jiwon-ah, you have to give her a kiss for the spell to break!”
“Kiss, yeah.”
Jiwon, tightly holding the dinosaur toy in his hand, bent down and kissed Princess Aurora. I seized that moment to suddenly raise the puppet and hugged Jiwon’s face tightly with the thumb and pinky finger I had threaded through the puppet’s arm parts.
“Peek-a-boo!”
“Kyaaaaa.”
Jiwon giggled and hugged my hands tightly while rolling around. Helplessly dragged along by Jiwon’s strength, I ended up hugging Jiwon and rolling around. No matter how many times we repeated it, Jiwon liked this part the most. After rolling around laughing for a while, we both had to catch our breath.
“Th-this is the end. You said just once earlier, right?”
“Yesh.”
When Jiwon made promises, he mostly kept them. I was relieved as I took off the princess puppet from my hand.
“Jiwon-ah, aren’t you hungry?”
“Hungry.”
“Then shall we eat dinner now? What does Jiwon’s tummy want to eat today?”
“What does Jiwon’s tummy want to eat?”
Jiwon said while rubbing his belly. As if an answer was heard, Jiwon smiled brightly.
“Omuwaiseu!”
“Omurice, understood!”
I swooped up Jiwon and rubbed my cheek against his. Jiwon was giggling when suddenly there was a sound of the door lock opening from behind.
“Huh?”
“Daddy’s home!”
When I put Jiwon down, Jiwon ran to the entrance. I followed. There was Eorin quickly closing the front door so cold air wouldn’t come in.
“I’m back.”
“Welcome home!”
“Did you have a good day today too?”
“Yeah.”
Not caring about the coat with the cold air of early spring on it, Jiwon rushed into Eorin’s arms and hugged him. Eorin, who had been patting Jiwon’s back, raised his head.
“I’m back.”
“Oh, yeah. You came early today.”
“Yeah. I thought it would be okay to leave work early today…”
When I took Jiwon from Eorin, Eorin, who had taken off his shoes, went into the room to change clothes. Meanwhile, I fell into worry. This was the first time Eorin had come back this early. Usually, Eorin returned after I’d finished feeding Jiwon dinner and bathing him, so I could just leave, but today it was still before dinner. Should I go, or should I feed him dinner…
“Teacher-nim, aren’t we making omuwaiseu?”
“Huh?”
“Omuwaiseu.”
“That, um…”
Jiwon whined.
“What’s omuwaiseu?”
I was startled by Eorin’s voice suddenly heard from behind and turned around. Eorin, who had changed into comfortable clothes, was coming out to the living room.
“Ah, that’s omurice… He hasn’t eaten dinner yet.”
“Really?”
Eorin, who had been taking off his wristwatch and putting it in a drawer on one side of the living room, paused for a moment, then approached me and said,
“Are you going to go back now?”
“…”
