Cotton Candy
Click! Click!
After snapping three or four shots like that, I handed the phone back. The couple beamed with satisfaction, laughing happily. Now it was time for Harin and me to be on our way…
“I’ll take one of you two as well.”
“...?”
But right then, that uniquely Korean spirit of mutual help kicked in. I turned straight to Harin and asked,
“Want to take one? We still haven’t gotten a shot of the two of us together.”
Whether the question put any pressure on her was something I could worry about later. We had finally made it to the amusement park together, even gone flower-viewing—leaving without a single two-shot would have been too much.
She gave a shy little nod. Well, she was the kind of kid who looked out for me in quiet ways, so of course she wouldn’t refuse.
We moved under the tree and stood side by side. The woman holding the phone couldn’t seem to hold back her laughter as she coached us.
“Come on, get a little closer. Your girlfriend’s going to feel left out.”
“Huh? She’s my—”
Wait a second. Hadn’t the exact same situation happened earlier? Back at the souvenir shop when we were buying the headband, I’d argued for no good reason and ended up hurting Harin’s feelings.
I stole a glance at her. She didn’t even look my way; instead she edged closer, following the woman’s directions, and slipped right up against my side.
“Aww… even if you’re young, you can at least link arms. Right, oppa?”
These two were treating me like a kid again. They clearly thought we were a high-school couple out flower-viewing, just too shy to show affection in front of adults.
What was I supposed to do? If I argued, Harin would get angry. But following every single one of their instructions felt…
Then Harin’s hand slid naturally around my arm. She pressed her whole body against me and even rested her head against my forearm.
I swallowed hard without meaning to. Of course there was nothing wrong with the situation.
Harin and I were father and daughter; this much contact was natural—ordinary, even.
But our relationship wasn’t ordinary, was it? Only a few days ago she had locked her door and shut me out. Why was she suddenly acting like this today?
No—thinking about it, this had been building for a while. Harin had been opening her heart little by little.
It was just that my greed was so huge I had never felt satisfied.
“Oh, perfect! Taking it now. One, two, three!”
Click!
The shutter was already going. Once, twice, three times.
As those fleeting moments stacked up, I found myself enjoying it too. Without thinking I reached out with my left hand and laid it over the hand that was holding onto me.
“Thank you.”
I took the phone back and immediately called Harin over so we could check the pictures.
“Let’s look at the photos, Harin.”
“I… need the bathroom for a second.”
“Huh?”
But she left those words hanging and sprinted toward the nearby public restroom. She hadn’t looked like she was desperate to go, so why…?
With no other choice I sat alone on an empty bench and checked the photos. First I looked at the ones I had taken of her, then compared them to the ones the couple had taken of us.
“….”
What was this strange sense of dissonance? It wasn’t just that “I” had entered the frame and changed the composition. That wasn’t it at all.
What had changed wasn’t the composition or me—it was Harin herself.
In the photo she was smiling. Earlier she had looked like she was forcing the corners of her mouth up with all her might, but now she was grinning as brightly as if someone had tied balloons to her cheeks.
What was the difference? What difference could there possibly be between being alone and being with me that could change a person this much?
Separate from that, one of the photos had come out really well. In the first shot I had looked pretty flustered, but in the last one I was smiling just as brightly as Harin.
The unfortunate part was that no one looking at it would ever think we were father and daughter. Just as that couple’s misunderstanding had claimed, we looked like a fresh young couple out flower-viewing, leaning on each other.
In that moment I felt something fill a hollow place in my heart that I hadn’t even known was still there. It was the lost piece of youth my uncle had talked about—the one I had finally had to give up on.
The two-shot I had never managed to take with Yu Jiyeon. And yet today, more than a decade later, her living copy had filled that empty space for me.
Of course it wasn’t the way I had wanted. Still, it was enough to feed the hunger for memories and quench the thirst of regret.
“How much is it?”
Without realizing it I had bought a cotton candy from a nearby stall. My mind had already raced back nineteen years.
Without meaning to, I was preparing the final puzzle piece that would put the last period on those memories.
“Sorry… did I keep you waiting long?”
Harin came back. I immediately turned and held the cotton candy out to her.
“Nah. I was buying this.”
Two people, one cotton candy. We would walk side by side, each tearing off pieces to eat.
Like a close father and daughter, feeding each other bites, finishing what I had never managed that day…
“Why… did you buy this?”
“...?”
But in an instant Harin’s eyes changed. The little kitten who had been smiling as if she owned the whole world vanished; in her place stood a mother cat whose territory had been invaded, fur bristling.
“Uh… I just thought it’d be nice to eat while we walked…”
“That’s not it, is it?”
“What do you mean ‘not it’? This isn’t something that even has an ‘it’ or ‘not it’—”
“Because you used to eat it with Mom? That’s why you bought it?”
“Ha—Harin? Why are you suddenly saying things like—”
“Because I’m Mom’s substitute? That’s why you asked me to come?”
“What are you talking about—”
She spun around without giving me a chance to explain and strode off in the opposite direction.
“….”
What had I done? In the end every word she said was true. I hadn’t gone to buy cotton candy by chance.
There had been a shadow of the past that instinctively pulled me. I had projected Yu Jiyeon onto Kang Harin—who shared nothing but blood and was an entirely separate person—and used her as a stand-in to finish the unfinished business with her mother.
“Harin!”
I hurried after her and blocked her path. But I couldn’t force the next words out.
Tears rolled down.
I had made her cry again. This wasn’t the faint, single drop she had allowed earlier; a much deeper sorrow was swallowing her whole body.
“It’s not like that, Harin.”
“What’s not like that? You came here planning that from the start, didn’t you? You wanted to be with Mom but couldn’t, so you figured someone who looks like her would be good enough?”
“No! Does that even make sense? Fine—I went to the amusement park with your mom, went flower-viewing, ate cotton candy, all of it. I admit it. But saying you’re her substitute or whatever is complete nonsense.”
“Isn’t it true? These clothes, these shoes—you were going to buy them all for Mom, weren’t you? Being nice to me, coming here—everything you wanted to do for her?”
“….”
Her words cut straight to the bone. Because buried inside them was the truth I had kept locked away all by myself.
Everyone in the world had suspected it. My obsession with Harin looked abnormal to anyone watching, and I myself had reflected on it countless times in secret.
Maybe everything—this whole attachment—was just a twisted fixation on the only person who could stand in for Yu Jiyeon.
And she had figured it out. Or maybe she had known all along and had simply pretended not to.
That was why she had avoided me. That was why she had built walls and tried so hard to push me away. The relationship that had almost turned around dramatically these past few days had snapped right back to square one.
But I didn’t want that. Because I didn’t want to lose today’s happiness, and more than anything, because her words were never the truth.
“I did think that way once.”
“….”
I finally told her the truth. I didn’t want to explain what kind of shock that must have given Harin, who had trusted me until the very end.
The tears stopped flowing. In their place a deeper despair wrapped around her. Her trembling shoulders looked ready to collapse completely at any second.
But I couldn’t let that happen, so I played the last card I had. I stretched out both arms, pulled everything of her into my arms, and whispered with all my heart against her ear.
“But not anymore. Because I love you more than your mom. I don’t know since when, but that’s how it is. I can’t explain the reason, and I don’t want to deny it either. So if I had to choose between your mom and you, it would always be you. No—even if you put a hundred of your moms in front of me, I would still choose you.”
“….”
This wasn’t some empty rant born of an inferiority complex, the way some people might say. It wasn’t a hollow cry trying to rationalize guilt I couldn’t bear.
She was the only family I had left, the single living being who shared the deepest blood with me.
So how could I possibly deny it? That the most precious person to me in this moment was the Harin standing right in front of me.
So I no longer cared what her mother had done with my brother. If I were given the chance to go back and reverse that decision, I would board that boat again without looking back.
Harin’s arms slowly moved and wrapped around my waist. As if she were checking the truth of those words with her whole body, she pulled me in with a strength she had never shown before, silently shouting,
You’re mine. No one can take you away.
Even if that someone was her own mother…