The Holiday, and a Guest Who Came Unannounced
Spring break, they called it — but the calendar still pointed at February, and Lunar New Year, which shifted with the lunar calendar every year, was still to come.
Looked at that way, the days always labeled "spring break" deserved the name "second winter vacation" far more.
With it being a holiday, Yeoncheong was sprawled around the house in the pink pajamas she'd bought in preparation for winter, which made the point impossible to argue with.
Her father wasn't coming home this time either, apparently. So what should she do with the holiday stretch? As Yeoncheong pondered the question while fiddling with her smartphone, a message zipped in.
The sender was Chairwoman Yurim.
Contacting her out of the blue after so long and immediately asking whether she had plans. Yeoncheong couldn't help but recall the days when the woman had dragged her off lingerie shopping or paraded her through clothing stores.
Text messages couldn't exactly convey someone's expression or tone — and yet somehow Yurim had sensed Yeoncheong's guard going up, because a follow-up arrived to soothe it.
Obviously you'd check before visiting if the homeowner might not be there — showing up to an empty house would be a complete waste. That much Yeoncheong understood. But something puzzling had slipped naturally into the message.
What on earth kind of process led someone to describe it as dragging a person off? And who was this person, that they had some connection to Yeoncheong and were being hauled over here?
The one silver lining was that the "someone" Yurim mentioned was a person Yeoncheong knew very well indeed.
Only then did Yeoncheong realize she'd been firing off nothing but question marks in her shock, and she recovered her senses.
Yeoncheong's guardian and Yurim's junior from school were one and the same — two people once, but only one now. And Yurim had pointedly called him her good-for-nothing junior, so there was no mistaking it.
Question marks had flashed back at her like lightning, throwing Yurim off for a moment — apparently a typo. At the properly returned reply, Yeoncheong scratched her head.
Even through the stiff text, she could feel the air of well done, at least you're trying.
They had only ever exchanged brief check-ins, so Yeoncheong felt an odd twinge of guilt and added a footnote.
The relentless probing felt off, so Yeoncheong trailed off on purpose — but Yurim's determination to wring an answer out of her was formidable.
It felt like being interrogated. And so, before she knew it, Yeoncheong had spilled the inner workings of her household.
Yurim had certainly helped her plenty, but did she really need to share this much? Just as that thought crossed her mind, a reply tore through the brief silence.
A chill radiated from the long-winded message. It was the same feeling as that time she'd chatted away blithely without realizing she was standing in front of the Chairwoman's office — and paid dearly for it.
Things had grown awkward since her sex changed, but parent and child were still parent and child.
Her one remaining guardian coming back as a slab of meat wasn't exactly a welcome prospect for Yeoncheong either.
Something was clearly already underway, because no reply came even long after Yeoncheong sent her message.
She was halfway through a genuine worry that she might go from being from a single-parent home to plain orphan when —
Relief that the worst-case scenario had been averted lasted only a moment. Yeoncheong hurriedly hammered at the screen.
How had she found out something even his own child didn't know? The answer, as it turned out, was almost disappointingly simple.
Apparently word of a phone call with one of her father's university friends had found its way back to Yurim.
She was a senior from the same university, twice over — and besides, she was a woman whose ability had been recognized early enough to make board chairwoman at a young age.
Getting caught, just as she had now, was as obvious as fire.
Inside the moving car, Chairwoman Yurim kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, lips twitching.
"Hey."
"Yes, big sis."
Smack.
Though both her eyes remained locked on the road, Yurim's hand found the head of the man in the passenger seat with perfect precision.
"Don't call me big sis. It makes me feel older for no reason."
"Honestly, it wouldn't even be strange to call you that at your age—"
"What was that?"
When Yurim glared at him with a single sidelong eye, the man in the passenger seat shook his head furiously.
"Nothing, ma'am."
"Ha... You know you can't win, and yet you insist on getting under my skin every single time."
"I simply concede in advance, that's all."
Thwack.
Her right hand, raised halfway, was already coming down again — and just as the man in the passenger seat, having pushed the provocation to its end and taken another hit, started milking his injury, Yurim clicked her tongue lightly, lips twitching.
"I raised this idiot by myself, and how on earth did he turn out such a sweet kid... I will never understand it..."
Of course, judging by that business in front of the Chairwoman's office a while back, it seemed he did occasionally get thoroughly trounced after picking fights he couldn't win.
Yeoncheong clearly took after her mother far more than her father, so it was a mercy, really.
As if to say the old back-and-forth ended there, Chairwoman Yurim let out a sigh and shifted the mood.
"So what's your reason for telling Yeoncheong you weren't coming?"
"Well... it'd be awkward for both of us, wouldn't it. For the both of us."
"Both of us? Both of us, you say?"
Just then the light turned red, and Yurim braked the car to a stop and whipped her head around.
"Don't pawn off your discomfort onto Yeoncheong. That kid is the reason you came back with all four limbs intact."
"...Yes, ma'am."
The light turned green again, and Yurim pressed the accelerator slowly — and just as the car pulled away smoothly, the conversation resumed as well.
"Does she remind you of her mother?"
"No. You knew that already. Why ask?"
"Hearing it from their own mouth is a different thing altogether."
At Yurim's sly little shoulder shrug, the man in the passenger seat seemed to decide he couldn't win, and shook his head while staring out the window.
Maybe it was because the kid had done so much housework even back when he was a boy — the vibe of it all, somehow. There was a faint but unmistakable air of her mother about her. And now that she'd become a woman, she'd grown to resemble her in looks too, so that Yeoncheong's father — who'd thought he'd fully let her go — couldn't help but flinch every time he saw her.
Yeoncheong had lost her mother in early childhood; her father had lost his wife at the very height of their happiness.
Grief could hardly be ranked against grief, but he had simply never shown it. He had passed through no less brutal a time all the same.
That was why he'd accepted the overseas posting like a man running away.
Because the face of the spouse he'd lost kept flickering across Yeoncheong's. This much, even Chairwoman Yurim understood — and it was why she had so readily taken the girl in.
But that was that, and this was this.
Nearly a year had passed, and still avoiding his own child was a separate matter entirely. And if he'd come back to Korea and lied about not coming? All the more so.
"How long are you going to avoid her? What, until the day you die?"
"Surely not. She's my own child, after all... someday it'll get easier."
"Someday, he says."
Too exasperated for words, Chairwoman Yurim cut her chatter short and focused on driving. If she kept fuming behind the wheel, she was liable to cause an accident.
Past the school, the car drew near the one-room apartment where Yeoncheong lived and gradually slowed down.
Yurim's car stopped at the curb and the door locks clicked open — but the guest in the passenger seat showed no sign of getting out.
This did not sit well with Yurim in the slightest, and a sharp warning slipped from her lips.
"You getting out or not? Or should I toss you out in front of Yeoncheong's place myself?"
"Ah... she lives here?"
He hadn't even known that much. Yurim smacked her own forehead as it finally came back to her — the memory of this same time last year.
"Ha... right. This little... when you left in such a hurry, I was the one who went apartment hunting with you."
"That was... a genuinely enormous mistake on my part, I know."
Even by his own account, there was no excuse to be made. Yeoncheong's father admitted his fault readily enough.
But words-only apologies seemed to be of no interest. Yurim struck the bad-junior's left arm hard where he sat in the passenger seat, lips twitching.
"When exactly do you plan on going to see her? Someday, someday, every single time. Did you commit some mortal sin in a past life? Or is it that you... have feelings for your own daught—"
"Sis! Are you insane!?"
Yeoncheong's father exploded before she could even finish.
Yeoncheong was his daughter now, yes — but how many years had he raised her as his son? He dismissed the suggestion as something that could never happen even if he died and came back to life.
So startled was he that the old nickname sis — a habit from years past — burst out of him, and even inside the car he glanced around nervously, checking whether anyone had overheard.
For a moment, Yurim seriously debated whether, for the sake of her adorable junior (not Yeoncheong's father — Yeoncheong's mother) and for Yeoncheong herself, she ought to send the man in front of her straight to hell...
But watching him recoil in such horror, she let out a sigh of relief instead.
"Then what in the world is your reason? Is Yeoncheong a gorgon? Does looking at her face turn you to stone?"
But the more he balked, the less Yurim could understand why this good-for-nothing junior of hers was avoiding the reunion.
The interrogation wore on. Perhaps he realized he could hide nothing from Chairwoman Yurim — who had looked after Yeoncheong in every way during his absence — because at last he spoke in a low voice.
"It's... because I sinned, isn't it..."
"What?"
Clearly it had taken everything he had to say it. Yeoncheong's father buried his face in both hands, lips twitching.
"What kind of father in this world runs off on an overseas posting because looking at his child reminds him of his dead wife? And leaves her all alone, at that. The one most thrown into chaos was that child... And now, now that I've finally gotten some hold of myself — just stroll back in casually and say hello? I won't do it. No — I can't do it. No one ever taught me how."
Chairwoman Yurim had been poised to unload a lecture on whatever nonsense he was about to spew — but the flood of self-reproach left her speechless.
Clumsy with words though he was, this was exactly the man who used to praise Yeoncheong's late mother to the skies for how thoughtful she always was.
She'd steeled herself for a proper scolding, but in the face of this, it hardly seemed necessary.
"Ha... You truly don't know how blessed you are. If it weren't for Yeoncheong's mother and Yeoncheong herself, I'd wash my hands of you entirely..."
Yurim pushed open the driver's door, stepped out, strode briskly around the front of the car, and headed for the passenger side. Then she flung the door open and hauled Yeoncheong's father bodily out of his seat.
"Hey. Knowing you're in the wrong is enough. Go in there, see her face, and talk to her."
"No, I'm telling you I can't do this? You, sis, honestly...! Your strength is ridiculous...!"
The difference between man and woman meant nothing here. Yeoncheong's father was dragged along in Yurim's grip, heels scraping the ground.
Nearly twenty years had passed since they were both green and fresh-faced, but their relationship hadn't changed much — and so.
Yurim couldn't help but chuckle at the old memory welling up unbidden.
"This is what self-care looks like. Got it? It's not enough to skip the booze and cigarettes. You've got to exercise, like me."
"Very nice for you, being so strong and all."
Yurim brushed off Yeoncheong's father's jab and headed for the apartment building.
"That's why, all these years, you've never gotten marri— oof!"
No — as it turned out, brushing him off was rather difficult.
