The Little Lion in the Hallway
The stone pillar by the front entrance had a single rock jutting out of it. I’d been wondering what it was, and the moment Mom placed her hand on it, a mechanical chime rang out.
Beep-
A sensor? That’s neat.
Open sesame! Or something like that?
I looked around. This place was clearly no ordinary house; the security looked airtight.
Well, it’s the Sungjin Group mansion. Of course it is.
At the very least, no thief was getting in here.
Mom opened the front door with complete confidence and walked inside.
“Oh my, Miss?”
“Long time no see. Is the madam in?”
The servant answered with polite formality, his expression unchanged.
“She is in the study.”
“All right. Thank you.”
Mom carried me deeper into the house at a brisk pace. I waved at the servant as we moved away.
“Ba-woo!”
The servant’s eyes trembled slightly.
The first person to see your cute face in the mansion likes you.
Love & Peace Coin increases by 50.
There it is. This cuteness really can’t be resisted.
Small change, but I still need to collect everything I can.
If I piled up even pocket change, there’d be a use for it someday.
Hmm. I need one deep, powerful strike.
When would the netizens finally see me?
I want them to see me soon.
This face wasn’t meant to be buried in obscurity.
Just as I was thinking all that, the swaying finally stopped.
Are we there?
Mom took a deep breath. Since I was in her arms, I could feel every thread of it.
Her voice rumbled low.
“Let’s go.”
Then she opened the door.
Our mom is really making a whole ceremony out of this.
She looked like a hero heading out to slay the Demon King.
Her hand tightened around me. I stayed quiet and just looked around.
What a luxurious study.
It was the kind of room you’d only see in a chaebol family’s house in a painting. It looked more like a drama set than real life.
And every single book is hardcover.
Each one was bound in gold, and the whole room radiated power.
Mom took one step after another. For some reason, the air grew tighter.
At last, she stopped. A brief silence hung in the room.
Mom was the first to speak.
“Long time no see.”
Her voice had that deep, resonant strength that seemed to rise from the very pit of her stomach. She was once one of the best supporting actresses in South Korea. Even with a baby’s body, I could recognize that much at a glance.
I turned my head slightly. At a refined wooden desk sat an old woman with white hair, reading a book.
Hmm. Pretty ordinary for a Demon King.
Well, she did look extremely polished. Still, she seemed like an ordinary person.
The old woman said, “So you brought a mongrel.”
……Wow.
Forget polished. No, forget ordinary too!
A mongrel?
People actually talk like that in real life?
Were you Hitler or something?
Mom gave a faint smile. But I knew better. That was the smile of someone who was furious.
“You haven’t changed.”
“Throw that thing out.”
She meant me, right?
“If you can’t do it, I’ll throw it out for you. A mongrel should live with mongrels.”
Wow…
I stared at the old woman. Looking again, she absolutely looked like a perfect Demon King.
That was when Mom’s shoulders shook a little, as if she were laughing.
“You’re as consistent as ever. That’s one of the madam’s virtues, after all.”
Mom hugged me tighter.
“Still, since I live in this house, I came to show you our Gongza’s face. Of course, even showing you our angel’s face is already terribly wasteful, but if I didn’t bring him, I had no idea what you might do with that as an excuse. So I came at least to take that excuse away from you.”
I could hear her grinding her teeth.
“I can imagine it. If I didn’t show him to you, you’d just say I threw him away without knowing he was yours, wouldn’t you?”
Wow. She meant that seriously?
The Sungjin Group is something else.
Was this family full of psychopaths? This was no joke.
Mom said brightly, “Let me introduce him.”
Ah, no.
I’m embarrassed, but I still have a job to do.
I immediately lifted the corners of my mouth.
I’ll show you my best smile.
I had no idea what the result would be, but my first priority was still to collect coins.
Then, all of a sudden, singing reached my ears.
- A child just smiled.
Huh. Mom’s deep voice was shaping itself into melody.
- When our eyes met, the child smiled.
It was a familiar tune. Any actor would know it instantly.
This is...
It was the signature number from the world-famous musical Hero Leo, a show every actor dreamed of appearing in.
It starts with a widow picking up a child.
And that child later becomes the hero who protects the nation. But...
When the widow first brought the child home, people threw stones at him, saying he was cursed.
That was the song she sang while holding the child then, heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.
- All I ask for is one thing.
I looked up at my beautiful mother. While singing, she coaxed me with a warm hand.
The Demon King’s eyes wavered.
Ah, she’s being shaken.
Mom’s sincerity was getting through.
- Only that you stay healthy...
Mom lifted me high into the air. This was the musical’s most famous scene. Madam Na Hwa-jin clenched her lips tightly.
I see what Mom’s strategy is.
She was expressing her honest feelings through a world-famous musical number.
And it seems to be working.
The tremor in the old woman’s eyes was proof enough.
If you were the wife of a chaebol family, and the mother of a famous actress, then of course you’d have some interest in cultural things like musicals.
I should help too.
I shook my little hands with all my might and smiled brightly.
After all, when a mother is crying, a child smiling as if he knows nothing only makes the audience’s sorrow deepen.
“Bbu-a!”
How do you like that, Madam?
You don’t get to see a scene like this every day.
If you’re moved, please give me some coins.
The old lady’s butterfly-framed glasses slowly began to slide down. I loved the look on her face, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“……”
The song ended. At the same time, Mom’s performance did too. She held me and smiled.
“Madam, do you remember?”
Mom said evenly,
“It was the musical we first went to see together.”
Wow. So it wasn’t just a song she happened to pick. It had meaning for the two of them.
Mom stretched out the arms that were holding me and offered me toward the old woman.
“Our Gongza is cute, isn’t he?”
“Ma Soo-jung.”
The Demon King blinked and said,
“Have you lost your mind?”
Mom snorted.
“Ah, so it doesn’t work.”
“Ma Soo-jung!”
“You haven’t changed a bit. This is my heart now. I love Gongza. Well, I’m sure the madam can’t understand that.”
Mom patted my back.
“Nothing to say, then? I’ll be going. Live long and prosper in this goddamn house, Madam.”
Mom turned at once, as if she were about to leave.
“Stop!”
The Demon King went on,
“That’s not Maru.”
Mom looked down at me a little.
“You brought home a mongrel because you miss Maru? Ma Soo-jung, have you gone insane?”
Mom turned back and approached the Demon King. Then she lifted me up and held me out.
“Look closely.”
“What?”
“Look closely at my angel.”
The butterfly glasses stared at me. Her gaze was sharp.
A normal baby would start crying right about now.
But what was I supposed to do? I wasn’t a normal baby.
I reached out my small hand, then gently touched the madam’s cheek.
“Bbu-a!”
I kept lightly patting her while smiling brightly.
The old woman’s eyes trembled. I tilted my head a little, and the lion mane attached to my hoodie tickled her cheek.
Well? Madam.
I babbled, “Baa.”
The madam’s pupils moved, but she didn’t budge. Still, I knew.
Her cheeks are turning red.
As expected, she couldn’t resist this cuteness.
I tapped my feet together. Then the madam, who’d locked everything down so tightly, averted her gaze.
“Well?”
“He’s, well, just a baby.”
“But he’s cute. So, so cute.”
“W-What does that matter!”
“It does matter. Maru and Gongza are different. Look! They’re different, aren’t they?”
The madam stared at me silently. I shook my hands again.
Ah, her cheeks are even redder now.
If I did it one more time, I might even get coins.
I need something deep and powerful.
What could I use?
There were stripes on the sleeves that made up the lion mane around my wrists.
Ah! Found it. A deep, powerful strike!
I’m the kind of person who uses whatever he can.
Rubbing my cheek against the mane-patterned sleeve, I clenched my fist tight. Then I quickly bent my wrist.
“Bbu-hm!”
Roar.
Ah, but “roar” is for tigers, isn’t it?
Well, they’re both basically the same kind of thing. She’d probably let it slide.
That was when subtitles appeared.
Na Hwa-jin, who saw your adorable animal imitation, is pleased.
Love & Peace Coin increases by 200.
Whoa.
Thank you very much.
Two hundred coins! She must have been deeply moved.
See? You really can’t resist this cuteness.
The old woman, cheeks tinged red, pushed her glasses up. But I saw it clearly.
Her hand is trembling.
Wow. This old lady was more interesting than I’d thought.
“Well, I suppose you do look a little different.”
“Right? It’s not your imagination. Raising Gongza has nothing to do with Maru. This child is my destiny.”
Na Hwa-jin took a breath.
I smiled brightly.
“Still, you shouldn’t bring home a black-haired beast!”
“Our Gongza’s hair, you mean?”
Mom showed off my lightly waved hair.
“It’s brown!”
“Baa-wooo.”
That’s right. I am not a black-haired beast.
I’m a brown-haired beast.
So you can raise me however you like, Madam.
Mom adjusted her hold on me and spun around.
“Then we’ll be going now. Live long and prosper, Madam.”
The old woman was so dumbfounded she couldn’t even speak. But as we moved away, I kept waving without stopping.
“Bya, babbo!”
See you again, Madam.
Mom patted me and closed the study door behind us.
“Whew. Gongza, that was rough, huh? Let’s go rinse our ears the second we get home!”
Well, to be fair, being called a mongrel was pretty intense.
Still, I don’t think it was completely useless.
The coin count went up, after all.
Mom let out a quiet breath. She seemed disappointed.
I never understood why Mom needed thirty thousand coins to get healthy, but now I think I’m starting to get it.
Seeing that old woman, I think I understood a little more.
Mom kept walking. I smiled a little. The road ahead was definitely long.
* * *
Na Hwa-jin.
The Sungjin Group madam’s afternoon was as calm as ever. She was drinking a cup of black tea and reading as usual. Yet for some reason, today the pages refused to turn.
Her thoughts kept drifting to the song her daughter Ma Soo-jung had sung.
- Only that you stay healthy.
Na Hwa-jin set the book down.
She remembered that day.
It was the first musical we went to see together.
Na Hwa-jin could never forget the sight of Soo-jung sitting in the front-row seat, eyes shining as she watched the stage.
She said then that she wanted to become an actress.
Na Hwa-jin let out a long sigh.
She could feel her daughter’s heart in it.
Just as she once decided to become an actress, now she’s decided to raise that child.
Na Hwa-jin shook her head.
“And yet she insists on raising a mongrel.”
Na Hwa-jin pictured the brown-haired lion Ma Soo-jung had brought home.
- Baa-wooo.
Her cheek twitched.
The brown-haired beast had such tiny hands. They were so small and plump that she almost wanted to poke them once just to see what would happen.
No.
Madam Na Hwa-jin adjusted her butterfly-framed glasses. It was certainly absurdly cute. But it was still just a mongrel.
Well, a rather cute mongrel.
Like a village mutt that somehow turned out adorable.
Still, how could something look like that?
As someone who had studied art and related aesthetics, Na Hwa-jin knew very well. The combination of eyes, nose, and face shape was anything but common.
It’s like a Cupid sculpture.
Just as Na Hwa-jin was replaying the baby’s face in her mind, the study door suddenly flew open and someone rushed in, out of breath.
Na Hwa-jin let out a sigh. The only person in this mansion who would run like that was the second daughter-in-law, Lee Yu-kyeong.
“Mother! Have you seen this?”
The daughter-in-law thrust her smartphone right in front of her face.
“Seen what?”
“This photo! It’s from our company’s promotional materials, and it’s spread all over the internet!”
Na Hwa-jin lowered her eyes slightly. It was a photo of Ma Soo-jung holding her baby and shedding a few tears.
Interesting enough.
Ma Soo-jung was beautiful as always. But perhaps because the baby in her arms was so adorable...
It looks a bit like a holy painting.
Maybe because there happened to be nuns in the shot.
Na Hwa-jin pushed up her glasses.
“Let me see.”
“Pardon?”
“Let me look at the comments.”
The second daughter-in-law reluctantly raised the screen.
└ Wow, she’s a goddess.
└ She looks saintly.
└ I know what Ma Soo-jung looks like, but who’s the baby?
└ The baby is too cute.
└ If something is too cute, it starts to look holy too.
Lee Yu-kyeong puckered her lips and said, “It’s obviously photoshopped. It doesn’t look anything like the real thing. People are so easy to fool.”
Na Hwa-jin said quietly, “Well, they couldn’t capture it properly.”
“Excuse me?”
“The real thing was even better.”