Let's Go to School
The moment the funeral ended, I wrapped up life in my hometown in one clean sweep. Having hit a major turning point, I wanted to start completely fresh.
The problem was how to settle the legal relationship between Harin and me.
The best option was to adopt her and put her on my family register. But as always, one of those uniquely Korean legal snags held me back.
Namely, Yu Jiyeon. To me, Harin was my only family—but that didn't mean she was actually an orphan.
As long as Yu Jiyeon held potential parental rights, formally adopting her without her consent was impossible. On top of that, as a single man who hadn't even turned thirty-five, I didn't meet the bare minimum requirements for full adoption.
So I had to settle for taking over the custody rights Mom had held after my brother died. Of course Harin might notice eventually, but how often does an ordinary high schooler need to pull a family relation certificate?
I didn't mean to live like this forever. The day she became an adult, I planned to finally tell her the truth and discuss formal adoption with her.
Because by then it would be possible. As an adult, Harin would have the right of self-determination and could consent to adoption without a guardian's permission—and I would finally meet the conditions for single-person adoption as well.
That added one more reason I needed to become a proper "adult."
Shuffle… shuffle…
Four months had already passed since we'd moved to Seoul and gone through the adjustment period. But I hadn't become an adult in the slightest.
I still looked twenty, and the cursed source of it all—Saiyan Syndrome—was an incurable disease that didn't respond to any medicine. As I'd just seen, Harin had gone past being uncomfortable around me and was now actively avoiding me.
I was too depressed to go straight home, so I decided to walk a little farther. That brought me to my aunt's restaurant, two subway stops from the station.
Jingle!
When I opened the door and stepped in listlessly, my eyes met those of my aunt and uncle, who were cleaning up after the lunch crowd. The moment she saw me with my shoulders slumped, she crossed her arms and sniped at me.
"Living the good life, aren't we? A man with a high school daughter hanging around eating pork cutlets in the middle of a weekday?"
"What are you even—companies set the days off, you know? And I didn't come here for pork cutlets."
"Lunch?"
"I haven't eaten yet, but…"
"You show up at your aunt's place without eating lunch and then say you don't need food? Sit down."
"…"
Even then, I hated how hungry I was. I gave my uncle—still mopping—an awkward greeting, sat down, and immediately thud!—Aunt set a plate with three pork cutlets in front of me.
"Uh… Aunt? Giving me this much of the stuff you sell…"
"Wrong order. I was going to throw it out anyway. Just eat it."
"…"
No wonder it had seemed impossible—she'd fried three cutlets in an instant without ever lighting a burner. I was going to have to finish three cold, congealed pork cutlets with no salad, not even a single pickle.
Aunt was remarkably young. Young by my standards, anyway—she was already pushing fifty, a middle-aged woman with two kids of her own.
But there had been a considerable age gap between her and Mom. And because Mom had married so early and had my brother, Aunt had been playing babysitter for us since her own teenage years.
She could make just about any dish out of whatever ingredients she had on hand. Eventually she went into that line of work for real, starting as a cook in a tiny restaurant.
Then she met Uncle and opened a small pork cutlet place of their own—and it did surprisingly well. The reason Harin loved pork cutlets so much was that Aunt had raised her standards for what they were supposed to taste like.
"So what's going on today?"
"Haa… You can probably guess. Raising a teenage daughter isn't exactly easy, you know?"
"You've been looking after her for a few months and you're already talking like that in front of me? Have you ever come home covered in grease all day and then spent the whole night soothing crying kids?"
"S-sorry. It's just… Harin finds me really uncomfortable."
Aunt's two daughters were still in middle school. Which meant my daughter was older than my own cousins—another update to our completely scrambled family tree.
"Harin doesn't find you uncomfortable."
"Haa… You're just saying that because you can't talk badly about your own nephew…"
"She just doesn't like you."
"…?"
Aunt looked at me like I was pathetic and casually drove a knife straight into my chest. But what was that supposed to mean? Why would Harin hate me?
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would family hate each other?"
"Oh yeah? There's a guy who never showed his face once until the day he died just because his brother made a mistake young—and you're saying that kind of thing never happens?"
"…"
I'd forgotten I was the most solid counterexample myself. But the situations were completely different.
I'd had my own reasons to resent my brother. Between Harin and me, there was no grudge of any kind.
"Of course you haven't done anything wrong. If anything, the way you're trying to play dad when it was never in the cards for you, just so you won't hurt your niece—from our side, that's genuinely admirable."
"Then why say something like that…"
"Because Harin doesn't know any of that. Have you ever once tried looking at it from her side? She came to her aunt's house when she was three. She has basically zero memory of her real mother. Sure, Mingu and my sister took care of her with everything they had—but that was only for a blink. And then what happened?"
"You said Harin didn't know anything when my brother died. She even mistook me for her dad…"
"And that so-called dad spent his whole life never showing his face, running around outside? When he did come back to town, he didn't stay at the house—he rented a room far away and only saw her grandmother in secret, deliberately avoiding her. You really think she never noticed? Still don't get it? Harin thinks she was abandoned by her parents."
"…"
That had never even crossed my mind. I'd been patting myself on the back for reflecting on my past life and doing something worthwhile—but from Harin's point of view, it was nothing like that.
Never showing up during the most important years, then only appearing after her grandmother died—to Harin, that looked like nothing more than a formality, me reluctantly fulfilling a guardian's obligations.
And then I had the nerve to demand she be warm with me. How disgusting must I have seemed? Shame made the pork cutlets stick in my throat. The oil having gone completely cold didn't help either.
When I couldn't manage any answer, Uncle stepped in for me.
"Don't be so hard on the kid. Let's look on the bright side. Not having much family affection isn't that bad. Later, when you tell her you're not her real dad, she'll be less shocked, right?"
"Is that supposed to be helpful?"
"…"
Not particularly. Uncle ducked Aunt's murderous glare and spoke to me instead.
"You've only been living together a short while. Keep trying to get closer and Harin will figure out how you really feel."
"How am I supposed to get close to her? You know I've been on ships for so long I have no idea what kids these days even like."
I barely even knew what people my own age were into. Uncle gave me a clear answer.
"Easiest way is a diary. Back in our day we had to write them for school, so they were full of lies. Kids these days do the opposite—they put every honest feeling they have into their diaries."
"What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying you've been reading the kids' diaries?"
"No, I'm just saying in general…"
Aunt and Uncle started bickering. I'd come looking for a way to fix my family problems and somehow felt like I was only wrecking someone else's.
Time to go home.
Uncle's method was basically a crime, but he wasn't entirely wrong. Harin and I were father and daughter in name only—we'd never built a bond stronger than the one I had with the neighborhood ajumma next door.
I wasn't going to go as far as stealing her diary, but figuring out what she usually thought about was important. The problem was, the second any conversation with me looked like it might get long, she bolted. So what was I supposed to do?
"I'm heading out."
Harin slung her bag over her shoulder and tossed off a flat goodbye. I immediately ran to the front door and asked her.
"Where are you going?"
"The library."
"To study? Come to think of it, shouldn't you be going to a cram school or something?"
"I'm too dumb. Studying wouldn't help."
"What kind of thing is that to say? No matter how much your dad and mom…"
"…"
In that instant I realized I'd put my foot in my mouth and clamped it shut. Harin's catlike eyes flashed as she stared at me without a word.
"No, I mean… your mom maybe, but your dad—that is, me—I'm definitely not dumb. I wasn't going to bring this up, but back in middle school I was fighting for first place in the whole school…"
"I'm going."
Whoosh—
Harin left like she couldn't stand to hear another word. Fair enough—from her perspective it was probably unbearable.
A dad who'd become a teen parent, never even made it to the university gates, and spent his life catching tuna, lecturing her about schoolwork? Classic "back in my day" nonsense—stale to the point of rotting.
Haa…
I sighed and turned around. I was seriously starting to wonder if I should just follow Uncle's advice and steal her diary when something strange entered my field of vision.
"…?"
Through the slightly open crack of Harin's door, I could see her bed. The neatly made blankets were fine—the problem was the shape resting lightly on top of them.
A rectangular paper pack with a white background and red markings. On the front it said Marlboro Red.
Those were cigarettes. So why were they in Harin's room instead of mine?
Aside from the day we'd moved in, I'd never set foot in that room. So when…
Thud!
Right then, Harin came back. Her face looked somehow unsettled as her eyes locked with mine.
"Why'd you come back?"
"Ah—I forgot something."
"What did you for—"
Scramble! Thump!
I didn't even get the chance to ask what. Harin bolted into her room, shut the door, and grabbed something.
Then she came back out, click!—locked her door right in front of her own father—and left the house again.
"…?"
What just happened? At this point, no matter how little I knew about kids these days, it was hard to deny that whatever Harin had grabbed was the Marlboro Red pack I'd just seen.
Jingle!
I went back to Aunt's restaurant. Aunt, mopping after the dinner crowd, stared at me in horror.
"Have you developed a taste for garbage?"
"It's not that. I saw something huge."
I immediately gathered Aunt and Uncle and explained what I'd seen. Aunt's eyes went wide with surprise too.
"They weren't yours?"
"I quit three months ago. And even if they were mine, why would Harin have them?"
"Harin smoking… that's a little unexpected."
"She's not the one smoking them either."
"You just said they weren't yours."
"I smoked for years—you think I wouldn't know? No matter how hard you try to hide the smell, you can't erase it that perfectly. More than that—the reason I quit in the first place was because Harin hates the smell of cigarettes."
It was true. The only friend that had gotten me through more than a decade of miserable life at sea—I'd thrown it away for my daughter.
Every time I came home after smoking, she'd scrunch her whole face up and sigh. I couldn't take it anymore, so I made a real decision. Then Uncle spoke up again.
"School violence, maybe?"
"What? School violence? You're saying Harin's getting beaten up somewhere?"
"You wouldn't know this, but school violence these days isn't that direct. They make kids run errands, or say they're just borrowing money and never pay it back."
"…"
That actually made sense. If Harin wasn't smoking herself, but was being forced to run errands for someone, everything lined up.
"Th-then what do I do?"
"You need to talk to Harin. Ah… but she probably won't tell you anything. The thing kids getting bullied fear most is their parents finding out."
"…"
We barely talked as it was—there was no way she'd open up about something as sensitive as school violence. So what now?
My daughter might be getting harassed at school, and there was nothing I could do?
Nothing. I went home, fretted for a long time, still came up empty, and mechanically headed out to throw away the household trash.
"Out throwing trash? Your mom and dad would be so proud."
In the middle of my mental chaos I ran into the neighborhood ajumma. She had no idea I was a thrice-married man raising a high school daughter and treated me like a kid.
"School uniform… you're throwing that out?"
Something caught my eye. The ajumma picked up the uniform she'd been about to put in the clothing bin and said,
"My son's in college now, and this is just taking up space, so I was going to toss it. Oh my? Do you go to this school? If you need it, you could take it and get it altered."
Not me—Harin did. And it was a boys' uniform, so the second I brought that home, our father-daughter relationship would be finished for good.
But for a moment I must have been possessed. When I came to my senses, I found myself standing in front of the full-length mirror in a school uniform.
Was I actually insane? I'd heard of perverts who put on women's clothes the second they got a day off, but a thrice-married man with a daughter doing boys' high school cosplay in the middle of the night?
And. Yet. There was no sense of wrongness at all. That loathsome Saiyan Syndrome was finally useful for once—and that once was right now.
Something was happening to Harin. But she wouldn't tell me a thing, so I was just rotting on the inside alone.
So what about this? What if I went to Harin's school myself?
If I blended in like one of them and watched her, maybe I could get a little closer to the worries she wouldn't share with me.
I knew it was crazy. But a cornered rat will bite a cat. Before I realized it, the decision was already made.
Tomorrow, I'm going to school.