The Night I Was Almost Woken Up
“Huh…?”
I was so startled that only a dumb sound came out of me. Had I misheard?
I nearly dropped the spoon I was holding.
But Luca called for me again, vigorously, over and over.
“Dada! Daddy! Papa!”
“Y-yeah, yeah! That’s right!”
I answered in a daze, set down the bowl and spoon, and scooped the child up into my arms.
“Kyaaa…!”
Whatever he found so funny, Luca let out a bright dolphin squeal of laughter, and I patted his back.
“Wow, Daddy. Luca talked.”
Reni said it with a bashful little smile even while diligently ferrying his spoon to his mouth.
“R-right? Luca just said ‘Daddy,’ didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Luca said ‘Daddy.’”
Since Reni had clearly heard it too, I couldn’t have misheard.
It would have been recorded on the home cam as well, so I ought to save the clip later.
But before that…
“Luca. Say Daddy. Daddy.”
“Papa! Daddy!”
“Yeah, that’s right. Daddy…”
What if the baby had simply babbled with extra force and happened to produce “Daddy” once by pure chance?
The thought flickered through my mind, then melted away like snow at Luca’s reaction.
He looked straight at me with clear, bright eyes, as if he truly knew what he was saying, and called out in a booming voice again and again.
Some indescribable emotion rose all the way to my throat.
“Huh? Is Daddy crying?”
“…No? Daddy’s not crying.”
My four-year-old first son, who was unnervingly good at reading a room, tilted his head with the spoon still in his mouth.
“Ahem. More importantly, Reni—let’s praise our Luca. It’s the first time he’s spoken.”
“Okay! Luca, good job.”
I bent my knees to Reni’s eye level so he could gently stroke Luca’s head.
Luca laughed with a face that said he was extremely, enormously proud of himself.
Luca had only just turned nine months old.
Most babies, people said, began to recognize and call for Mom and Dad somewhere between ten months and their first birthday.
While folding laundry I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder and made a call.
“So, Maria. I really think Luca is a genius.”
Maria’s laughing voice came through the line.
“Every parent thinks their kid is a genius around that age. Still, Luca does seem a bit advanced—both in development and in speech.”
“Do you think it’s Reni’s influence? Honestly, he spent a long time just army-crawling and wouldn’t crawl properly, then the moment he saw his big brother doing it he copied him right away.”
“Probably. Some kids skip crawling altogether and go straight to standing… Learning by watching is the biggest thing.”
Then it made sense that he had learned “Daddy” from watching Reni trail after me like a little chick, endlessly chirping “Daddy, Daddy, why? Why?”
“But still—Luca is definitely a genius.”
Maria laughed again.
“Now that he’s started calling me once, he’ll keep calling me from now on, right?”
The thought of him deciding, just for today, that he felt like saying “Daddy,” and then losing interest and never saying it again was simply unacceptable.
“Oh my, there really are babies like that. A friend’s child said ‘Mommy’ exactly once and then didn’t say it again for months.”
Unbelievable.
“But the most important part is that Luca has started to understand that things and people have names. Once he gets that, he’ll keep knowing that Daddy is Daddy.”
“R-right…? I’m suddenly feeling anxious.”
“Jun, when you say ‘No’ to Luca, does he stop what he’s doing?”
Hmm… I rewound through the countless times I had told Luca “No.”
“If I say ‘Luca, no,’ he does look at me once. Then he just does it anyway.”
“Ah, that… Hmm. What about other words? Is there anything where you think, ‘Oh, the baby understands this’?”
“Yes, there is. If I say ‘Time for bed,’ he tries to escape like a little ghost.”
Maria laughed again.
This veteran mother seemed to find everything the rookie dad did endlessly amusing.
“Then he’s definitely calling you because he knows you’re Daddy. Having Reni constantly calling you Daddy must have made it natural and quick for him to learn.”
“Papa!”
“Yes, Luca.”
At the sound of the child calling me, the corners of my mouth stretched all the way to my ears.
I thanked Maria for the advice and ended the call.
When I went over to the baby who had called me, Luca wore a thoroughly satisfied face.
Then he spun around and crawled away.
“….”
Seeing that, I was certain he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Reni, can you come here for a second?”
I called over the child who had been tumbling across the play mat with Luca and sat him down.
Reni came running at once and melted into my arms.
I settled the boy—whose cheeks were flushed red from playing so hard—onto my lap, smoothed his messy hair with my fingers, and asked,
“Reni, do you remember what Daddy asked you last night?”
Reni shook his head with a sunny little “nope.”
“Aigoo.”
I gave the adorable child a firm hug and repeated what I had said the night before.
“Just like the teddy bear Luca carries around everywhere, Daddy’s going to make a pretty doll for our Reni too. What shape do you want?”
A puppy, a kitty, a raccoon, a bunny… Anything at all—just say the word. This dad will make it for you.
Only then did Reni seem to remember; he clapped his hands and exclaimed,
“Oh, right!”
“You remember? Last night you said something like ‘suh…’ I think.”
“That’s right! Daddy, I want a slime doll.”
Reni said it while happily swinging his feet. I had no choice but to ask again.
“Ah… Really? A slime…?”
The slime I knew? The soft, squishy kind from games and such?
Reni nodded hard and launched into an earnest explanation.
“I play slime with Sister Greta every day. We put stars in it. It’s star slime.”
…So they put star-shaped glitter into the slime, I supposed.
Still—Sister Greta and slime play.
It was hard to picture the rather cool-looking nun together with slime. Maybe she joined in as a kind of sensory play.
Separate from my flustered feelings, I quickly pulled out my smartphone and searched for slime dolls. I didn’t really expect any to exist, but…
They existed.
Why on earth did these things exist?
“Wow, cute!”
Reni cried out as he looked at the phone screen.
“….”
Though calling it a slime was generous—it was basically a round cushion with eyes stuck on.
I had originally wanted to make him something cute and soft and fluffy like a rabbit plush, but well.
If the child liked it, my own preferences didn’t matter.
“Then, Reni. Shall I make one exactly like this?”
Reni looked at the doll I pointed to and shook his head.
“It needs stars.”
“I see. Then would it be good to put a star around here? Next to the eye.”
Reni shook his head again.
“Daddyyy, that won’t work. The stars have to keep moving. Because it’s sparkly slime!”
“…Ah. I see.”
Children’s imaginations really were something else.
But I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I racked my brains hard.
Then a good idea suddenly struck me, and I carefully suggested it.
“Then, Reni. What if we make a slime doll like this where you can stick the stars on and take them off again?”
Reni thought for a moment, chin in hand, then answered with full force.
“Yeah!”
After another busy day, I finished washing up and laid the warm, freshly bathed children down on the bed.
They seemed to love the cool sheets; they rolled around on top of them, giggling.
And they showed no signs of tiring whatsoever.
Who was it that said, “A rookie dad raising two sons—how brave”?
I sat on the floor and rested my head against the mattress. Luca called me.
“Papa! Daddy!”
“Yes, baby.”
When I lifted my head to look at him, Luca wore a proud face, then spun his head away again and went back to playing with Reni.
“….”
He wouldn’t play with Daddy, but he definitely wanted Daddy to stay awake and watch him play. The baby’s demand came through loud and clear.
When Luca is old enough to hold a proper conversation, I am absolutely going to grill him about this.
With that resolution, I picked up the notebook and pencil I always kept on the nightstand.
Then I began sketching, trying to figure out how to make the doll Reni had described earlier.
The body of the slime doll itself was no problem—just a slightly flattened, round water-droplet shape.
I fretted over what could let the stars be stuck on and peeled off, then grabbed my smartphone again and started searching.
That was when I came across the Velcro boards used as educational toys for kids.
If I made the doll out of Velcro fabric and created several small star-shaped Velcro patches, the child would be able to stick the stars on and take them off however he liked.
Hmm. That might actually work.
But once I finished the sketch, a faint sense of regret washed over me.
Originally I had wanted to make him a soft, fluffy rabbit plush.
It would have been so cute—the older boy holding a rabbit doll, the younger one holding his teddy bear.
No, maybe I should make that too. If I make it, he might change his mind.
I picked up my phone again to look up the rabbit doll I had bookmarked before, and a notification popped up that an email had arrived.
It was from Cassandra.
Attached was a video of our family’s sleep hours.
It was basically just a speed-up with no real editing, so the video had come out quickly.
But was this really something we should upload?
I personally couldn’t imagine going out of my way to watch someone else’s family sleeping.
I played the video that compressed seven or eight hours down into a little over ten minutes.
Accompanied by a gentle melody, the footage showed me putting the children to bed.
Luca fell asleep first, then there was a short conversation between Reni and me.
A little later Reni drifted off as well, and I lay down too.
Because the camera angle was set slightly from above looking down, the sleeping children beyond my body were captured clearly.
Even with their faces blurred, the sleeping kids looked incredibly cute.
The way their little bodies rose and fell in even breaths, the tiny hands that twitched as if they were doing something in a dream.
“…Oh.”
The peaceful, uneventful footage continued for several dozen seconds.
Then Luca woke up and sat up.
The video slowed down.
Luca blinked eyes that could barely stay open from sleepiness, crawled over toward me, rested his hands on the cushion fence I had set up, and stared at me.
This little guy was definitely debating whether or not to wake me.
After wrestling with the decision, Luca nodded his head as if fighting the sleep that kept trying to pull him under.
Then a moment later he crawled over toward Reni.
Seeing that Reni was also asleep, he gave up quickly this time and lay back down in his own spot.
What a good boy…
Still, the fact that Luca went back to sleep without waking me or Reni made him so cute and so good and so proud-making.
Our baby really was a genius after all.
After that, Reni sat up in bed.
My heart lurched at the thought that he might wake up and cry alone.
But the little one just dozed sitting up, nodding off, then lay right back down and fell asleep again.
I had thought I was only half-asleep, but the fact that I hadn’t noticed the children moving at all suggested otherwise.
And then the brightening dawn.
Once again Luca’s eyes snapped open first.
He sat bolt upright and crawled furiously toward me.
That same debate over whether or not to wake me.
No—I had always thought that the moment the baby became fully conscious he just started smacking my cheek, but now I saw that wasn’t the case.
Right after, Reni woke up. Luca wriggled over to him.
Even with a face still half-asleep, Reni smiled and played peekaboo with Luca.
I had been sleeping through all of this?
The children played peekaboo, then held each other’s hands and let go again, playing for quite a while.
Finally, with an expression that said he had waited as long as he could possibly wait, Luca crawled over and smacked my cheek—caught perfectly on camera.
Our baby had really been so patient…
Luca thumped the head of me, who had buried my face in the pillow, while Reni tried to restrain the baby.
Only then did I sit up, scoop both children into my arms, and leave the frame.
“….”
I hadn’t known. Sleep videos could be moving and fun too.