The Arboretum
A happy Saturday morning dawned. Of course, that didn't apply to me—a quasi-unemployed freeloader with no fixed work schedule.
"Daddyyy."
But for Yuna, it was another story entirely.
When I opened my eyes, she was squatting right beside the sofa, staring at me without blinking.
"...When did you wake up?"
"A while ago."
A while ago meaning when, exactly.
What time was it now?
The clock showed a little past nine.
The moment I stretched, Yuna asked as if she had been waiting for exactly that.
"Daddy, what are we doing today?"
I felt like I'd heard that question yesterday.
Well.
What should we do.
"..."
I got up from the sofa and worked the stiffness out of my lower back with a series of cracks.
Her mother would be back in about four days.
With so few days left to spend with Yuna, I wanted to make them as fun as possible.
"Yuna."
I turned over what her mother had said on the phone the day before.
Among all the information she'd dumped on me, one detail stood out.
Yuna still remembered going to the arboretum with her father long ago.
"Want to go to the arboretum?"
Honestly, it was a field I felt pretty confident about.
Believe it or not, I'd been admitted as the top student in horticulture.
I never graduated, sure, but I still had some confidence in myself.
"Huh...?"
The moment the words left my mouth, Yuna's expression stiffened for a second.
Until just now she'd been wriggling around, pestering me about where we were going. The sudden change left me a little flustered.
What was this?
Maybe she'd been scolded badly by her dad at the arboretum, and that was why the memory stuck so hard?
"If you don't like it, we can go somewhere else."
"N-no. I like it."
Yuna said it with a faintly complicated look on her face.
"...You sure? You don't have to force yourself."
"I'm not! I like the arboretum."
Her sudden shift still threw me a little, but...
If she said she liked it, what else could I do?
I brushed it off and started searching for nearby arboretums on my phone.
Luckily, there was a large one about a forty-minute bus ride away.
After quickly reheating some side dishes from the fridge and feeding Yuna breakfast, the two of us finished getting ready and headed outside.
Yuna came out wearing the new winter jacket again.
"It's cold, so zip it all the way up."
"Ung."
It was a five-minute walk to the bus stop.
When I mentioned we were taking the bus, Yuna just gave a casual answer.
She'd clearly ridden buses plenty of times before.
—Hiss.
As we reached the stop, a bus pulled up with perfect timing.
Being a weekend morning, the inside was nearly empty.
We headed for the very back, and Yuna immediately claimed the window seat.
Buried in that fluffy jacket, she buried her cold-nipped nose into the collar to warm it up.
—Vroom!
As the bus started moving, Yuna shot me a sideways glance.
Hadn't she sat by the window to look outside?
When our eyes met, she made an ambiguous face and turned back toward the glass.
What's with her today.
"There won't be many flowers outside. It's winter."
Feeling a little awkward, I brought up the arboretum.
"...S'okay. We can go to the greenhouse."
"You know about greenhouses?"
"Ung. Flowers bloom there even in winter."
You saw it when you went with Dad, remember? Together.
Yuna murmured it while secretly biting her lower lip, then turned back to the window again.
"...Ah, right."
With Dad.
Meaning her real father—not me.
Her mother had been right. She really did remember.
"Yeah. We did."
I stared into empty air and offered a clumsy lie.
Lost in those complicated, ridiculous thoughts, I barely noticed when we arrived at our stop.
Yuna hadn't said a word to me the whole way.
She just watched the scenery or occasionally shifted in her seat.
—Hiss.
Stepping off the bus, a completely different air met my nose—cold, mixed with the faint scent of earth.
"..."
The arboretum entrance was bigger than I'd expected.
A massive wooden sign, and beyond it a sea of bare, skeletal trees.
Truth was, I had never actually been to an arboretum.
The university had its own greenhouse and practice plots, I never had a girlfriend to bring here on a weekend date, and after dropping out I'd been too busy running businesses or working part-time jobs.
"Whoa."
And now I had to pretend in front of Yuna that I had.
What a goddamn situation.
Not just that I'd been here—I had to act like someone who had shared this exact place with her before.
"It's been a while, huh?"
...Wait, was this even the same arboretum?
There were several around the outskirts of Seoul.
Ah, whatever. A kid wouldn't remember that kind of detail.
"Let's head in before it gets crowded."
I strode toward the ticket booth like I knew the place by heart.
Yuna took my hand and followed me in silence.
The ticket booth staff didn't seem the least bit surprised by winter visitors; their reaction was purely mechanical.
One adult, one child.
I bought two tickets and we stepped inside.
I'd expected it to be expensive, but the price was surprisingly cheap. Of course I didn't show it.
"..."
The silence that had started on the bus continued.
Yuna held my hand and simply turned her head this way and that, taking everything in.
Was she quiet because she was fascinated, or because her mind was somewhere else?
Maybe I shouldn't have brought her here.
Did she really have some bad memory tied to the arboretum?
Or was she just bored...
Ever since we'd passed the entrance, Yuna had looked thoroughly uninterested, and it kept nagging at me.
If I'd known, I would've just taken her to a zoo or something.
This wouldn't do.
"Yuna."
"...Yeah?"
I stopped in front of a nearby bare tree.
"Does this tree look dead to you?"
"...Yeah. Everything dies in winter."
Yuna looked up at the leafless branches.
No leaves, no flowers.
To a kid who didn't know any better—hell, to most people—it would look completely dead.
"Look at this."
I scooped Yuna up so she could see the tips of the branches.
"See that at the end of the branch?"
"...The tiny thing?"
A small brown bud clinging to the tip.
"That's called a winter bud."
"Winter bud?"
"Yeah. During winter, the tree hides its flowers and leaves inside these."
I'd never thought the knowledge from university would come in handy in my lifetime.
But here it was, finally being put to use.
Yuna stared hard at that little bud.
She reached out as if to poke it, then stopped herself.
"...There's a flower inside?"
"Yeah. It comes out in spring."
"For real?"
"For real."
Yuna gazed at the winter bud for a long time.
"...That's amazing."
She murmured softly.
A little life began returning to her previously subdued face.
"How do you know stuff like this, Daddy?"
"Daddy used to study this kind of thing."
"...You said before you weren't interested."
A question that nearly made my heart stop on the spot.
"When I came here with you before, I wanted to explain things like this, but I didn't know anything and it was embarrassing."
So after that I studied really hard?
I added it with a faint smile.
Would Yuna realize it was a lie?
"..."
She stared at me for a moment after my answer, then...
"What about that one?"
She suddenly pointed at the tree next to us.
"Maple."
"Then that one?"
"Uh... metasequoia."
"Meta, metase, mate..."
I corrected her carefully.
"Metasequoia."
Close enough.
After that, Yuna pointed at every tree she saw and asked its name, and I answered the ones I knew properly and faked my way through the ones I didn't.
Most of them I actually knew, luckily.
The strangely heavy atmosphere from earlier had long since vanished.
Yuna bounced along, tugging me from one tree to the next and the next.
After we'd made a full loop of the bare walking paths, a large glass building came into view ahead.
The greenhouse.
"There's the greenhouse."
"Let's go!"
Through the glass walls, a faint green light was visible.
The moment we opened the door and stepped inside, warm, humid air wrapped around our whole bodies.
A completely different world from outside.
Green leaves flourished everywhere, and between them flowers of every color were blooming.
"Whoa."
Pretty.
I glanced over to see Yuna's reaction.
As expected, a small look of wonder on her face.
After nothing but dead trees just moments ago, the contrast must have hit even harder.
"Take your time looking. No running."
"Ung."
Already feeling warm, Yuna unzipped her jacket and began wandering around looking at everything.
What flower is this? What about that one?
The same barrage of questions from the walking path poured out again, and I answered each one in turn.
"..."
After roaming for quite a while, Yuna's footsteps finally stopped in front of the last remaining flower bed.
"...Daddy, what's this?"
Where she pointed, a few red flowers were blooming.
"That's an anemone."
"Anemone-ne?"
"Anemone."
Yuna rolled the name around in her mouth.
"Anemone. Anemone."
She seemed to like the sound of it.
She squatted down and quietly peered at the red blossoms.
Girls really do love flowers, after all.
Or maybe it had something to do with magical girls.
"They're pretty."
"Right? This is one of Daddy's favorites."
A lie. I didn't actually care much for flowers.
That was part of why I'd dropped out of horticulture in the first place.
"...Really?"
"Yeah. The flower language is pretty."
What is it?
Yuna looked up at me with big, sparkling eyes and asked again.
"The flower language of the anemone is..."
I dug through my memory for a moment.
Anemones have different meanings depending on the color.
And for this red anemone...
"I love you."
"...I love you?"
"Yeah. It's a flower you give to someone you like."
There was actually one more meaning: the pain of love.
But I didn't bother saying it out loud. What use was "pain" to an eight-year-old.
"..."
After hearing me, Yuna looked back at the red flowers.
A thought suddenly struck me—would this moment remain in Yuna's memory someday too?
Maybe it would even shape the direction of her life.
I waited for her while entertaining those fleeting thoughts.
A little girl looking at flowers really was beautiful.