Spinning Top
Spinning Top
"Minji, is it good?"
"Ugh... Oppa, I feel like my stomach's going to explode..."
"That's why I told you not to mess with A-ra Noona..."
A-ra had eaten two more bowls than Minji and was now playing with Tiny with a thoroughly satisfied expression.
Beside her, Minji looked like she was about to burst, and the contrast made me smile wryly.
No matter how well Minji eats, downing four bowls would be rough.
I walked to the fridge, took out two bottles of Kkaskas Hwalmyeongsu, and handed one to A-ra and one to Minji.
"Thank you, husband."
"It's nothing. Minji, you too, drink up."
"Ugh..."
I cracked open the bottle cap for my little sister who looked like she was dying.
Then I tipped it right into her mouth.
With a glug-glug sound, the entire contents went down her throat, and I heard Minji gulp.
After that came the sound of a tiny burp.
A-ra found even that cute, and stroked Minji's head.
That's when you're supposed to scold her for bad manners though.
"A-ra Noona, you indulge Minji's whims way too easily, that's the problem."
"Seong-hwan, she's your little sister, you know? And I've always wanted a little sister too."
"Well... I understand the sentiment, but still."
Eun-ji, who had originally been treated like the little sister, was now savoring her freedom.
Although apparently, every now and then she still craved A-ra's touch and would ask to have her head stroked.
So even if she acted like it was a burden, it meant she'd actually liked A-ra's attention all along.
Women... I'll never fully understand them.
"I guess it's fine to skip dinner tonight?"
Minji was on the verge of exploding, and while A-ra wasn't quite at that level, she didn't seem like she'd be thinking about dinner either.
Was I the only one thinking that?
A-ra held out her palm toward me and said, 'Stop.'
"Our lovely husband, do you see what time it is right now?"
"It's 11 o'clock. We ate earlier than I thought."
We'd headed to Costco right when it opened at 9, did all the shopping, came home, and finished eating by about 11:30.
We really did eat breakfast quite early.
I'd figured it was already around 1 PM.
"So, later on, will we get hungry or not?"
"...We'll probably get hungry..."
"Right? Just like you can only eat so much even if you starve yourself before going to a buffet, no matter how much you eat, you're bound to get hungry later."
A-ra was persuading me with a statement that felt both obvious and not obvious at the same time.
She stroked my head and then stroked my cheek, too.
Well, when has A-ra ever been wrong?
Anyway, our big eaters eat well, so they'll eat dinner just fine too.
*
"Minji, aren't you going on a drive with Lee Min-ho?"
"Huh? How'd you know?"
Minji, who had been playing with Tiny by holding his front paws, turned around with a bright smile.
She'd been learning to drive from A-ra for a while and was brimming with confidence, so she wore an expression that said she couldn't wait for that day to come.
As expected, our little sister wasn't harboring any weird thoughts or anything.
She just wanted to go hang out with her boyfriend, apparently.
"Lee Min-ho told me."
"Hehe, Oppa, even if you say you want to tag along, you can't. It's a date."
"...I'm not tagging along."
Even if I'm dense and clueless, I don't crash other people's dates.
What I was worried about was whether the two of them might end up in an 'accident' while off on their outing.
"Accident? I'm a good driver, you know?"
Did she take it as a car accident?
Well, the 'accident' I was talking about is an 'accident' like speeding, so it's similar to driving a car, but it's a bit of a different topic.
"Seong-hwan, a guy shouldn't say things like that."
"Unnie, what do you mean by that?"
"Minji, why are you so innocent... I really wonder if you're going to get eaten up by Lee Min-ho~"
A-ra wasn't worried about the guy's side, but about Minji, and she stroked her head.
Minji only now seemed to get what she meant, her face turning red as she started to panic.
"O... Oppa!!"
I laughed out loud seeing Minji's embarrassed face.
It took her this long to catch on — there are limits to how innocent you can be.
In my case, I'd already been completely devoured by A-ra and had long since given up on feeling any sort of sexual embarrassment.
It was because I'd figured out that being embarrassed about that sort of thing was pointless anyway.
"Still, you'd better not do that sort of thing anywhere else, got it?"
"Do what?"
When I tilted my head saying I didn't understand, A-ra's face grew a little scary.
For A-ra, whose face was always beaming cheerfully, to look like that...
I swallowed hard in an instant.
"Our husband... want Noona to properly devour you tonight?"
"O... okay... I'll keep that in mind."
If I end up getting eaten alive tonight, there'll be problems with going to school tomorrow.
On nights before weekdays, I should be moderate...
***
"I'm back."
"Woof!"
"Mung."
The front door opened and Hojun, who had come inside, washed his hands at the sink in the entryway.
Then he picked up Lil' One and Pipsqueak one by one, wet a towel, and began wiping their paws.
This must be what they mean by 'teach one, and they figure out two on their own.'
He does things well without being told, and even without being taught, he just figures things out — that was so like Hojun.
"I saw you do it before, Hyung, and copied you."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Did I do it well?"
"You did well, you did well."
To think my twenty-year-old little brother is this much of a baby.
He looks like a middle schooler, so as his older brother, the worries come first.
I just hope he doesn't end up getting caught and bossed around by some weird women...
"Oh right, Hyung, earlier while I was on a walk, I picked up something fun."
"Something fun?"
Hojun, who had said that, took something out of the bag he was wearing on his front and held it out to me.
He told me to hold out both hands, so I did, and something slightly weighty settled into them.
"Huh?"
"Look what it is. You'll be surprised when you see it."
Grinning, Hojun took Lil' One and Pipsqueak and headed to the living room where A-ra was.
I checked what I was holding tightly in my hands.
"Huh? This is..."
What Hojun had placed in my hands was a spinning top that had been all the rage when we were kids.
The kind with the Four Guardian Spirits dwelling inside the tops, where they'd crash and bash and fight — those spinning tops.
"Whoa, this brings back memories."
"What does?"
A-ra was so curious about what it was that she had come up beside me before I knew it and was peeking her face in.
I held the object, which I hadn't seen in ages, out to A-ra.
"Noona, do you know what this is?"
"Oh! Isn't this Deu X Sael?"
The spinning top Hojun had picked up on his walk was a green one.
It was the Deu X Sael containing Hyeonmu, the Black Tortoise, among the Four Guardian Spirits.
On top of that, this model was the early model — I remember it as the Deu X Sael S model.
When I was little, forget ever touching one, all I did was watch my school friends play with them.
The memories are really coming back...
Do kids these days still play with these things?
From what I knew, everything had completely changed with Metal Bey and all that...
"Haa... when I was little, I had a ton of spinning tops... but my mom threw them all away."
"Your mother did?"
"Yeah, she got the wrong idea and thought they were stuff I played with when I was little, so she just threw everything out, right?"
So it wasn't a 'how dare a grown girl play with stuff like this! She deserves a scolding!' kind of vibe, apparently.
Well, that makes sense — wasn't A-ra raised showered with love since she was little?
She even dropped out of school to pursue music, so her parents were probably pretty free-spirited in many ways.
"But these days, if you want to find stuff like this, you can only get Chinese knockoffs or used ones..."
"Really? But the Metal Bey or whatever is—"
"Seong-hwan, that's fake spinning tops."
"No, that's also genuine—"
"It's fake."
"Yes, ma'am..."
I had no choice but to quietly shut my mouth.
Against an A-ra who had already fallen deep into nostalgia, I was helpless.
"Don't tell me you're thinking of trying to collect spinning tops too?"
"Huh? No, these guys... actually... no... should I try collecting them?"
A-ra was stroking her chin as if pondering it, saying each one cost less than 20,000 won anyway.
When I stroked her cheek, she finally emerged from her swamp of deliberation and looked at my face.
"Noona really has a lot of hobbies."
"You only live once, so shouldn't you play and have fun?"
"Well, that's true."
When I chuckled, A-ra smiled too.
I could feel my own attitude toward life gradually changing, and the smile came automatically.
But where on earth had Hojun picked up this spinning top?
Something like this wouldn't have been just sitting out in the open by itself.
"Hojun, where'd you pick this up?"
"You know that big flower bed next to the walking trail? It was half-buried there."
"It was buried?"
So did someone drop it there and it got lightly covered with dirt over time?
It had rained yesterday, so maybe the dirt had been slightly washed away.
"Then does it not have an owner..."
"Seong-hwan, can Noona have this?"
"Haha... Hojun, is it okay?"
With an expression all but saying 'I want it,' A-ra looked at Hojun.
Hojun smiled brightly and spoke.
"Ah, I'm fine with it, Noona."
"Thanks."
Now he even says 'Noona' without getting all shy.
That's truly a monumental improvement.
"But what do you plan to do with that?"
What Hojun had picked up was an item with stickers not even properly attached, and it had marks as if it had been broken or scraped down.
Simply put, it was an item at a level hardly worth even being rated D-grade.
When A-ra collected cards, she always looked for ones with absolutely no flaws.
She filtered out all traces from the factory or whitening and would pay several times the price for clean, pretty collector-grade cards.
So the item she was holding could be described as something that didn't suit her at all.
"Seong-hwan, if you want to find one close to new for these tops, you'd probably have to buy one that hasn't been assembled at all, you know?"
"Is that so?"
"But if it's unassembled, there's no point, right? So I'm just planning to find ones that are decently assembled and clean."
For once, A-ra had given up on hardcore collecting.
Normally, she would never have said something like that.