Being Honest in Front of the Children
Yeoncheong left the children entirely to Suyeon and went to help with the lunch preparations.
"Looks about done. Could you go call the kids in?"
"Of course."
At the orphanage staff member's request, she headed outside the building.
By the corner of the playground, Suyeon lay sprawled across a bench while the children chased each other around in their own little packs, running without pause.
Yeoncheong chuckled and shouted toward the kids.
"Hey, everyone! Time to come inside for lunch."
Having run themselves to their hearts' content, the children were now hungry enough for their backs to stick to their ribs, and they streamed past her into the building. A moment later, a command barked out from the back of the dining hall — everyone wash their hands first.
Yeoncheong glanced around to see if any child had been left behind, then made her way toward the lone straggler.
She smirked as she watched Suyeon panting for breath.
"Looks like you had a rough time of it, huh?"
It had been exhausting enough for the two of them together, so it was only natural that a single high schooler — one who'd been sitting at a desk all day, no less — couldn't keep up with a seemingly endless supply of children's energy.
Suyeon had certainly fired off a menacing warning as Yeoncheong abandoned her and fled, but now she didn't even have the strength left to do that.
Shooting Yeoncheong a sharp glare, she could barely manage to move her lips.
"You've got better stamina than me... and you still run off like that? Some friend you are."
"That's exactly why I ran."
Yeoncheong took the hand of her collapsed friend and forcibly hauled her upright.
It wasn't easy, what with Suyeon going limp and moaning about how exhausted she was.
For a moment, a joke about whether she was carrying a little too much weight hovered near the back of Yeoncheong's throat — but thanks to the alarm bells rung by past experience, she managed to swallow it back down.
"Am I heavy?"
Suyeon asked cautiously, apparently aware that she might be.
One kind word repays a thousand-debt grudge, as they say.
As Yeoncheong racked her brain for a way to soothe her friend's wounded pride, an opportunity presented itself. She thought it over, then decided to simply pass along the very words she herself had once been happy to hear.
"You're light. Like a feather."
"Tch. You talk a good game."
Suyeon raised her upper body at Yeoncheong's touch, grumbled for a moment, then got to her feet on her own.
"Let's head in too. Standing out here, it's starting to get chilly."
"So the festival finally relaxed you a little?"
Yeoncheong pressed her body close against her suddenly-chilly friend, the corners of her mouth curling up gently.
Perhaps because she'd spent the entire festival smiling along with the seniors' cheering and rhythm, her smile now carried a richer, warmer range of feeling than before — and Suyeon flinched.
"N-no way. This is nothing."
"Then why is your face so red? Maybe I should've just played with the kids instead..."
Completely oblivious to the effect she was having, Yeoncheong recalled how Suyeon had grumbled about wearing only a thin tracksuit and studied her flushed face with concern.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Let's just get inside, okay?"
Suyeon pushed past her face-peeking friend and hurried into the building.
"Suyeon, I heard lunchtime is going to be the hardest part."
"Yeah, yeah, got it. Just walk ahead and don't look back."
Cooling her burning face, Suyeon followed her friend inside. Yeoncheong recalled what the orphanage staff member had told her and pushed open the dining hall door with a fresh wave of nerves.
"Huh?"
"Eh?"
The children sat quietly in their seats, eating lunch like perfect little angels.
According to the staff, the orphanage kids were so overflowing with energy that lunchtime was always the most chaotic stretch of the day — that was the warning she'd been given, anyway.
"Ha Yeoncheong... did you do something again?"
"No! This time it's really not me."
Just as Suyeon was leveling a suspicious look at her, the orphanage director approached with a warm smile.
"It seems you two had a wonderful time playing with the children."
"...Pardon?"
When Suyeon asked what he meant, the director elaborated a little further.
"They say they're hungry and are eating better than usual — quietly, too. They must be tired. Those kids have quite a lot of stamina, so you've earned your rest. Thank you for your hard work."
Yeoncheong jabbed Suyeon in the side with her elbow and waggled her eyebrows, as if to say see that?
Told to simply enjoy their lunch in peace, the two of them settled into a corner of the dining hall, just the pair of them.
The children were one thing, but the two who'd spent the whole morning playing with them were every bit as famished. Side by side, the pair inhaled their food like the pink bread-shaped characters from that famous video game.
As the kids who'd finished their trays early trickled out, leaving the dining hall half-empty, a girl's voice — thick with protest — rang across the room.
"I won't eat it!"
Naturally, Yeoncheong's and Suyeon's eyes both drifted to the source of the commotion.
Whether it was a side dish she simply disliked, the girl's tray held nothing but the barest nibbled traces. Despite the staff member gently asking her to try just one bite, she kept her mouth clamped shut and only shook her head.
Suyeon's gaze bounced between the little girl and Yeoncheong as she muttered.
"Looks like she's a picky eater, just like you."
"What? Since when am I picky?"
"You don't eat beans."
Yeoncheong instinctively started to protest loudly — then flinched at her friend's terrifyingly good memory.
Except the memory wasn't quite perfect. In a crawling voice, she issued a correction.
"It's not that I don't eat beans, it's that I don't eat bean rice. I eat things like tofu..."
"Oh, right. That's how it was."
Suyeon finally dredged the full memory back up.
"Still, you're a picky eater, so."
"Ugh..."
Faced with an irrefutable truth, Yeoncheong let out a low groan.
Watching the tug-of-war between the staff member and the little girl, Suyeon decided to step in.
"Hey, you shouldn't be picky about your food."
When the girl turned her head toward her, Suyeon pointed at Yeoncheong and pressed on.
"This unnie here doesn't eat her bean rice either. If you don't want to end up like her, you'd better eat all your vegetables. Got it?"
"What are you saying to a child...!"
While Yeoncheong stood there utterly flustered, Suyeon met the girl's eyes as if to say, you understand, right? Her plan had been to persuade the child with a living cautionary example — but the girl stared hard at Yeoncheong, then said something no one could have predicted.
"Then I won't eat."
"...Hm?"
"That unnie is really, really pretty. So I won't eat either."
They did say that the younger the child, the more brutally honest — and the more discerning — their eyes.
Yeoncheong flushed crimson at the completely unexpected compliment on her looks, while Suyeon and the staff member couldn't quite hide their bewilderment.
To make matters worse, the girl, having heard Suyeon's story, was now shaking her head all the more vigorously in refusal of her side dishes.
"Hey — stop smirking over there and do something about this!"
Having only made things worse, Suyeon appealed to Yeoncheong for help. Only then did Yeoncheong snap back to her senses; she thought for a moment, then spoke to the little girl.
"Ahem. Well then, you'd better eat even more than everyone else. Aside from bean rice, I finish everything on my plate, you know?"
"Still..."
"This unnie here is pretty too, right? And she eats everything, no picking."
Suyeon faltered for a moment at being called pretty to her face — then, playing along, she showed the little girl how she ate her side dishes, making a point of demonstrating that it was true.
A short while later, watching the girl bravely carry the dreaded side dish to her mouth, the staff member let out a long breath of relief.
Lunchtime came and went, and the sun hanging overhead slowly began its descent.
The elementary-school-aged kids, who'd spent the whole morning huddled over their studies, were out on the playground kicking a ball around.
The children, bellies full after their exhilarating play with the two girls, started nodding off one by one, and soon the whole group was down for their afternoon nap.
As if their earlier rampage had been nothing but a lie, the kids now slept like a row of little dolls. Watching them, Suyeon spoke up.
"Wow... I can't believe these are the same kids who drained the very souls out of us just a while ago."
"Is there any kid who isn't adorable while sleeping, though?"
Yeoncheong glanced over at the sleeping children and kept sweeping, until the earlier incident suddenly crossed her mind.
"By the way... did you really have to bring up the whole bean rice thing?"
Yeoncheong understood perfectly well what Suyeon had been trying to do, but the child's wholly unexpected reaction had only landed them all in an awkward spot.
Suyeon stopped watching the kids and scratched her head.
"Sorry. Never in my wildest dreams did I think she'd take it like that."
Falling into step behind Yeoncheong as they kept cleaning, she went on.
"They grilled me about it too, afterward — kept asking why I was trying to kill you. Got quite the scolding. We really do have to watch our mouths around the kids."
"Yeah, well, you be careful. They told us not to say I was dying — even as a joke..."
Narrowed eyes slid sideways toward Suyeon.
"A-all right! From now on, I'll make an effort not to say things I don't mean!"
"Just make an effort?"
Now it was Suyeon's turn for her eyes to sharpen, pouncing on Yeoncheong's nitpicking.
"Then how about you promise not to say you're dying anymore either — even as a joke?"
"Let's just agree that we'll both try."
Agreements and promises alike — the two chattered and bantered away, the kind of talk destined to be forgotten within the hour.
But reminded that the cleanup had to be finished before the children woke, the two of them got back to work.
Cleanup finished, and with the children fully recharged from their nap, they spent a long while playing with them all over again. Then the orphanage director called Yeoncheong and Suyeon to him.
The office they'd first entered at the start of their volunteer shift. Being summoned back here could only mean one thing.
"Thank you both so much for today. Watching the children run around that happily, I couldn't help thinking how lucky we are to have such good students come visit."
"Oh, no, please. Honestly, it was nice for us too — it's been ages since we got to run around like that."
Yeoncheong nodded along in agreement at Suyeon's answer.
The director, apparently having prepared in advance, handed over a simple certificate of volunteer service, then rose from his seat.
"I'll see you both out."
Yeoncheong and Suyeon waved their hands and tried to decline, but it turned out he always personally saw off every volunteer to the very end — so the two had nothing more to say.
Proof that the director hadn't been exaggerating: the moment they stepped out alongside him, the children came swarming up in a crowd.
"Unnie! You're leaving already?"
"That's right. Noona, can't you play with us a little longer?"
Only a handful of hours together, and already they clung like this — children really were children.
Those shining eyes tugged at both girls' hearts, but letting the hour get too late would be its own problem. Yeoncheong and Suyeon made do with meeting each child's eyes and saying their goodbyes one by one.
And then—
"Noona! When I grow up, marry me!"
One audacious little boy fired off a confession at Yeoncheong.
A bluntness that neither Seoha nor Suyeon had ever quite managed.
Faced with a scene straight out of a manga, Yeoncheong had no idea how to respond.
"No~ way!"
The one who answered the boy wasn't Yeoncheong, but Suyeon.
Looping her arm through Yeoncheong's and resting her head on her shoulder, Suyeon flashed a grin.
"Sorry. I called dibs on Yeoncheong first."
"Are you two dating?"
Pure, unfiltered curiosity — the kind of question only children, free of prejudice, could ask.
Suyeon paused for a moment, deciding how to answer. Then, a faint smile playing at her lips, she told the boy:
"Not yet. But someday, I'd like us to be."
"Then I'm not giving up either!"
With that laughter-filled exchange with the audacious little boy as their send-off, Yeoncheong and Suyeon walked away amid the waves of the director and the children.
For some reason, Suyeon's footsteps ahead of her seemed unusually light, and Yeoncheong followed along behind.
"Suyeon... don't you think that joke with the kids went a bit too far?"
She asked it lightly, but the answer didn't come right away.
Just as an awkward Yeoncheong was about to laugh it off and move past the moment—
"It wasn't a joke."
The serious voice of her friend, walking ahead, drifted back to her.
"...Huh?"
"I'm not lying."
Suyeon stopped in her tracks, and her deep navy hair caught the slanting evening light and rippled.
Backlit, the sun blazing behind her.
Frozen in spite of herself, Yeoncheong stared blankly at her friend's face, indistinguishable from the sun itself.
"Where did you even learn to be bad like that? You're supposed to be honest in front of the children, you know."
Blue eyes and mismatched eyes locked onto each other, boring into one another — then Suyeon was the first to look away and bolt.
Only then coming back to herself, Yeoncheong chased after her, figuring they'd be going the same way anyway.
Their stamina was equally wrecked from playing with the kids all day, after all.
Having caught up, she walked beside Suyeon without another word. On the way home, they both fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and in the end they parted quietly, without a single word exchanged.