Sultan's Wrath
The atmosphere had grown a little awkward. Harin walked in silence, and I trailed along behind her.
"Should we get headbands too? Everyone else seems to be wearing them."
I couldn't take it anymore and stepped in front of her, pointing a finger toward the souvenir shop. Harin quickly shook her head.
"We're just here for the day. Don't waste money on useless stuff."
"But we're already here, aren't we? This might be the last time I ever come with you. Shouldn't we try everything everyone else does?"
"The last time..."
Harin froze solid at the word "last." But come on... why that reaction again?
I'd only meant that chances like this didn't come around often. Yet if she took it so seriously, it was practically the same as admitting today really was the last time.
"Haa... Harin? You'll have plenty of chances to come back here, but think about my age. I came once nineteen years ago, and today is the first time since. You should understand wanting to do everything I couldn't back then, right?"
"But..."
"If you're just embarrassed to walk around wearing one, I'll wear it by myself. And if you hate even that, I'll stay way far ahead so—"
"Fine, okay. I'll wear one too."
Harin shook her head like she had no choice and stepped into the souvenir shop first. I felt a little guilty for tugging on a good kid's conscience, but if this really was the last time, we had to try everything.
In the end she gave in to my pestering and went inside. Harin picked up the cheapest headband she could find and said,
"I'll take this one."
"Isn't that too small? What about this instead?"
I lifted a bigger, grander cat-ear headband that suited her perfectly and set it right on her head myself.
She flinched...
The moment my hand touched her, wariness flared and she edged back a little. Come on... it's just a dad putting a headband on his daughter. Why act like that?
Still, she didn't want to ruin the mood, so she slowly accepted my hands. Once the cat ears were on, a complete baby kitten was born.
I immediately held up a mirror for her.
"Well? Super cute, right?"
"I don't know..."
She said that, but the corner of her mouth twitched up like she secretly liked it. Seriously, whose daughter was this cute...
Of course I knew exactly whose daughter she was, but still.
"Sir, you might want to pick something from this side."
And. Then. Just when the mood was starting to improve, someone always had to show up and kill it. An uninvited clerk approached and said something chilling, so I answered with a dead-serious face.
"Excuse me? I'm not her boyfriend. I'm her older brother. Her real blood brother. Can't you tell just by looking?"
"S-sorry. Anyway, the men's items are usually over here."
The clerk backed away, thoroughly embarrassed. I roughly grabbed a raccoon-ear headband, paid, peeled off the tags, and the two of us left the shop wearing them.
"Did you really have to say that?"
"...?"
But Harin's mood had soured a little. The moment we stepped out she brought up what had just happened.
"But I have to correct things that aren't true, right? I didn't even say I was her dad..."
"Don't you think constantly making excuses like that looks even weirder?"
"..."
I'd carefully chosen "older brother" instead of "dad." But even that seemed to bother Harin; she strode off ahead on her own.
Come on... why does it always turn out like this? Hadn't she already resigned herself to the whole Saiyan Syndrome thing?
Yet every time a problem like this came up, it still made her uncomfortable. So rather than answer every single time, she just wanted me to shut up.
"I'm sorry, Harin. I won't do it again."
I immediately ran ahead of her. Her eyes, full of dissatisfaction, glared sharply at me.
"Huu..."
But other than swallowing a sigh, I had nothing to say. Because Harin knew it too.
Whether by choice or not, this was a fated little happening we would have to accept again and again.
"Don't you think we've walked around enough by now? Want to ride something?"
I suggested an attraction to change the mood somehow. Harin didn't seem set on staying annoyed either; she immediately turned her head and scanned the surroundings.
We came to ride Sultan's Wrath. The line was already snaking long before we even reached the third floor, and my head started spinning just looking at it.
Checking the signboard, it looked like we'd have to wait about seventy minutes from now. Most fathers would be exhausted before they even tasted that boredom, but for me—who had never gotten even a scrap of father-daughter time—it was the perfect opportunity.
"How's school these days, Harin?"
"Not bad."
"Jihye and Thuy, the ones you prepared for the election with? Still close with them?"
"Yeah."
"Any other friends?"
"Not yet."
Most of her answers were short, but even that was pure bliss for someone like me. On top of that, Harin—who normally only answered what she was asked—even threw a question my way first.
"Is work fun?"
"There's nothing really fun or unfun about it. I've learned the job well enough that I have a lot of free time these days."
"Have you... gotten close with that person?"
"That person... Eom Chaewon? Same as always? She's just a coworker I carpool with."
This kid brought up Eom Chaewon again. Well, she pretended not to care while fretting about getting a stepmom, so it wasn't strange she'd be curious.
Especially if that woman was only six years older than her. Harin asked what "carpool" meant.
"What's a carpool?"
"Driving alone every day for the commute wastes gas and isn't cost-effective, right? So people who go the same way take turns driving."
"You've been going alone every day."
"Strictly speaking it's not a carpool—I just give her a ride. But officially it's a carpool, so..."
"You never told me once. So every day the two of you commute to Incheon together?"
"Uh... just the ride home..."
Harin's words suddenly sped up. The sharp tone that said how could you hide something like this made me realize I'd slipped.
"Harin, the manager just asked me to do it, that's all. Once she's in the car she puts in her AirPods and we don't exchange a single word."
Of course that was a lie. It was true Eom Chaewon stuck her AirPods in first, but she still listened pretty well while pretending not to.
"..."
Harin couldn't hide her complicated expression. She was clearly convinced something was going on between me and Chaewon and fretting about a stepmom all by herself again.
But I keep telling her there's a 99% chance that won't happen, you know?
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You don't have a boyfriend or anything? Aunt says these days second-year high school girls..."
"I don't."
"Really? Even if not a boyfriend, like a crush or something..."
"I don't."
"Oh, you don't? But you're human too—there has to be at least one guy you like..."
"I said I don't!"
"..."
Why get angry before the question even finished... Harin realized her voice had gotten too loud, clamped her mouth shut, and turned her head away.
But why are you lying? I'd already heard through Hyeonji that she had a crush, yet she refused to tell me till the end.
Of course I understood. We'd never built a father-daughter relationship close enough to bare our hearts.
And looking at how she hadn't even used this ticket, she'd clearly been rejected. If she admitted to having a crush, I'd grill her endlessly, so she cut it off at the source.
"I'm sorry, Harin. I was just curious. It's true we've never had time to talk like this, right?"
"I really don't have anything like that. I hate when you think that."
"..."
Harin drew a sharp line, speaking as if I had no "right" to be curious about her.
Come on... our relationship is lacking, sure, but did she have to put it so final?
In the end the conversation died and an awkward wait stretched on. The line kept shrinking, yet the distance between Harin and me felt like it was growing uncontrollably in inverse proportion.
But someone had to break the icy silence, and of course the adult had to speak first. I turned to Harin and asked,
"We're riding Sultan's Wrath, right? Do you know what a sultan is?"
"Like an old king... or something?"
"Right. But some countries still have sultans. Once when I was on a ship we made a short stop at a port called Muscat, and that place was ruled by a sultan too."
"To catch fish?"
"We were trying to pass through the canal into the Mediterranean, but right then pirates were swarming the Gulf of Aden. They said it was better to wait in port until things calmed down, so we stayed in Muscat a few days."
"There are still pirates these days?"
"Of course. I ran into them a few times. Luckily they were all small fry, so once we returned fire a bit they ran."
"You... shot guns?"
"The sea isn't a place where you call the police and they come running right away, you know? You have to know how to defend yourself at least. The captain of the first ship I was on had a bunch of guns hidden under the deck. So whenever we had free time he made us practice shooting."
"..."
Harin turned pale, as if she'd never imagined sea life was like that. I'd only brought it up because the mood felt frozen, but had I scared my daughter too much?
"But I came back safe, so you don't have to worry too much."
"Grandma said it was dangerous, but that was way over the line. Why would you do something like that?"
"Well..."
Why else? Because your mom ran off in the night with my older brother. Of course I couldn't say that straight to Harin's face.
"I told you before, right? The reason Mom never came home was because she was disappointed in me. We had a huge fight. So in a fit of anger I left, and I figured no one would ever find me there."
It was true I'd left home because of the conflict with Yu Jiyeon, so it wasn't a complete lie. Though I'd been the one who unilaterally caused the conflict.
"Never ride again."
"Huh? Come on, I'm not crazy enough to go back there—"
"Promise! Promise you'll never ride again."
"Okay, okay. I promise."
I wasn't used to being worried over by anyone. Yet besides Eunju, there was still someone left in the world who absolutely refused to let me board a ship.
And that someone was my own daughter—how moving could it get... Look how pale she went at the news that her only dad had crossed the line between life and death and come back.
So I won't go again. I hadn't planned to anyway, but now even if I lost every last won Jinho hyung borrowed, I would never leave my daughter's side.
It was a warm Sunday. The warmth called family love traveled through her hand holding mine...
Whip!
But that was as far as it went. Realizing her emotions had overflowed, Harin shook my hand off like it had something disgusting on it.
Then she went back to looking elsewhere, distant again.
Hey... a dad and daughter finally connect and hold hands for once—what's the problem? In the end we were back to that ambiguous position.
After a full seventy minutes of waiting we finally got to experience Sultan's Wrath. Once we came out, Harin—who had been quiet the whole time—asked,
"It was boring, right? We waited forever and it was over in a flash..."
"Not at all! It was really fun. The bigger the wait, the bigger the thrill, right? If we'd just walked up and ridden without any line, I probably would've thought it was boring like you said."
"Well, that's a relief..."
Harin looked satisfied, as if it was enough that I'd enjoyed it. Hmm... but this felt a little strange too?
Originally this outing was me treating Harin to revive our crumbling father-daughter relationship, wasn't it?
Yet even then Harin was thinking about my feelings. Normally she coldly locked her door, but today at least she seemed to want nothing more than for her dad to have as much fun as possible.
"Want something to drink? We've been standing forever."
"I brought a tumbler, so we can just drink that."
"Uh... actually I already finished it earlier. So we kind of have to get something."
"..."
I'd emptied it clean before boarding the attraction and stuck it in the locker just in case. Harin shook her head like she had no choice and headed for a nearby café.
"What do you want, Harin?"
"I..."
Harin started scanning the menu with the eyes of a baby kitten picking treats at a pet shop. Then she opened her mouth heavily and answered.
"Peach iced tea."
"Of course that one, huh? Then I'll..."
But right then, an extreme sense of wrongness I couldn't identify washed over my whole body.
It was already well-known that Harin's favorite drink was peach iced tea. But hadn't everything she'd shown so far been the exact opposite?
Think about the mountain of tea bags piled up at home. Remember how she always hesitated whenever I made iced tea to please her.
Did Harin really like iced tea?
Without realizing it I checked the menu. Written there was clear proof of why she always chose peach iced tea at the decisive moment.
"Harin. You don't actually like peach iced tea, do you?"
"I never said I liked it. But today..."
"You just drink it because it's the cheapest, right?"
"..."
Harin couldn't answer. That alone proved the new proposition true, and at the same time completely flipped the world I'd known until now.
Of course Eunchae had never lied. There had simply been information that was hard to convey through "hearing" alone.
Harin had been self-conscious. That strangely stingy habit with money had shown itself outside without her noticing.
So when Jihye treated her, instead of what she wanted she chose the cheapest drink. Probably Grandma's values—that if you owe someone you have to pay it back—had been passed down intact.
That was why she never drank the tea bags no matter how many I bought. That was why she gave up the tumbler in the morning for me, who seemed half-crazy for iced tea.
"Hey, Harin? Like I said earlier, Dad isn't that poor, you know? Can't you just drink what you want at times like this?"
"How could I?"
"What do you mean how? We're family. I don't know what Grandma taught you, but just saving everything doesn't solve—"
"You said it was money you risked your life for. How am I supposed to spend that?"
"..."
The answer that pierced the blind spot left me momentarily speechless. And only now did I understand why Harin had been so stingy with money.
This kid didn't see it as simple sweat and effort. Even though the pirate talk only came out today, she'd still known through Mom how dangerous Dad's work was.
So she'd always felt burdened. So she'd built an iron wall saying she just had to save everything.
To think I'd misunderstood a daughter with this much consideration all this time...
"W-well, you have a point, but I came back alive and well, right? So can't you spend freely thinking of all the hard times I went through?"
"I can't."
"Haa... Fine, I won't tell you to be extravagant. But this might really be the last time, you know?"
"The last time again..."
A look of hurt settled in Harin's eyes. Yet the way she couldn't finish her sentence made it seem she couldn't deny deep down that this really might be the last.
"Harin, to be honest I wanted to come just the two of us. But Aunt said if it was just me you'd feel burdened for sure, so she deliberately gave you tickets to go with friends."
"What... are you talking about? Why? If you'd just said let's go the two of us..."
"If I'd said let's go the two of us, you would've made some excuse not to go, right? So I used the busy excuse. If it became an unavoidable situation you'd have no choice but to use the tickets."
"You lied? Yesterday you clearly said you were busy from morning—"
"I actually had nothing to do. I just wandered around all day."
Of course I hadn't just wandered. I'd moved around far busier than usual and met all sorts of people.
But they were people Harin didn't need to know. More precisely, people she absolutely must never know until the day she dies and goes to her grave.
"Why... why did you do that? You clearly said you had no one to go with, so why..."
"There could be someone, right? If you never tell me anything, in the end I have no choice but to think that way."
"But..."
Tears were slowly welling in those baby-kitten eyes. Uh-oh... I hadn't been free of hurt feelings, but I hadn't meant to make her cry.
Yet to Harin it must have been that big a wound. The fact that Dad couldn't even ask her to go to the amusement park just the two of them, and had wandered outside from weekend morning, was coming back as deep disappointment in herself.
Plop...
In the end I couldn't stop one drop from falling and rolling down. All I could do was quietly stretch out a finger and wipe away another tear.
"A-anyway, we came here, right? So for today at least, don't think about that stuff and just have fun. I'm just too excited. I thought I'd never come to a place like this again in my whole life. And the person I came with is none other than you. It's going to be a day I'll never forget as long as I live."
"..."
Harin slowly lifted her head. With a face where I could no longer read resentment or hurt or any other emotion, she slowly nodded.
"So tell me. What are you going to drink?"
It was the final invitation. The corner of Harin's mouth slowly curled upward.
"Choux cream gelato vanilla latte. Extra cream."
I knew it... I figured she'd like something like that.