Side Story: Christmas Eve (2)
Side Story: Christmas Eve (2)
The weather outside had turned completely frigid by now.
Going out fishing was all well and good, but just in case, I dressed the two of them warmly to guard against the cold.
A-ra was bundled up so adorably fluffy that anyone would think she was cute, and Arini was so excessively padded that if you rolled her down a slope, she'd tumble along like a hoop toy.
Uncomfortable or not, it couldn't be helped.
If we were going to a mart or an indoor playground, maybe, but we were headed to a cold winter sea, weren't we?
Just stepping outside the front door was cold enough to be unbearable, and the seaside was bound to be far colder.
"What did you pack?"
"Well, the tent, the grill, the air mattress, two big chairs and one small one, the gas burner... and so on?"
Fishing was part of it, but we were going to enjoy it sort of like camping.
After all, on a cold day like this, we'd need somewhere to get out of the wind, wouldn't we?
Anyway, we'd brought pretty much everything we could think of, so we decided to buy whatever we were still missing at the mart and set off.
This time, since we had to load the fishing bags too, we had no choice but to take my car.
"Arin, you buckled your seatbelt properly, right?"
"Yeah!"
"Good job."
Arini tugged at the belt to show us she'd fastened it securely.
Since we were going on an outing, her energy was through the roof.
*
An hour after leaving home, we arrived at a quiet fishing town on the west coast.
We drove toward a spot as secluded from people as possible.
And we found a place.
Not only could we set up a tent, but we also found a location where we could comfortably set up a car-camping tent as well.
That there were no people at a spot like this.
Was it because it was Christmas Eve?
I supposed people had gone off to do other things, so very few had come here to fish.
During the true peak fishing season, a spot like this was the kind of place you couldn't get even if you offered money.
"Seong-hwan-a. Hand that over here."
As I was unloading the tent and gear from the car, A-ra extended her hand toward me.
"It's fine, I can..."
"Uh-uh, heavy lifting is a woman's job."
Next to her, Arini was nodding along in agreement.
Look at this little one.
Well, in the end, the women did all the heavy lifting.
Everything — unloading the luggage and moving it all into place.
Then they fitted the large car-camping tent over the vehicle and attached a six-person tent to the side.
The structure was set up so you could go into the tent and access the car through the car-camping tent.
At this point, A-ra could do it in her sleep — it didn't even take ten minutes to pitch the tent.
She was the outdoorsy type, so maybe she'd gotten the knack of it since she was always the one setting it up.
The tent and the heavy lifting were handled by the two of them, so the rest was on me.
First, we decided to eat a simple lunch and then go fishing.
You come outdoors and you're grilling meat to eat — if you ate a proper meal, would that even count as being outdoors?
I felt a bit sorry for the two of them, but I decided lunch would be ramyeon and gimbap just to get by.
"It's been so long since I've had ramyeon."
It seemed the last time A-ra ate ramyeon was so long ago that she couldn't even remember it.
That made sense, since I'd practically forbidden her from eating ramyeon after we got married.
When I was right there making home-cooked meals, would there be any reason to eat ramyeon?
If it were ramen, maybe, but instant ramyeon had been completely off-limits.
"Mom."
"What is it, sweetheart?"
"What's ramyeon?"
"......Um..."
For the record, our daughter had never once eaten ramyeon either.
So I'd figured she'd be trying it for the first time, but it turned out she didn't even know what ramyeon was.
Don't they teach that at kindergarten?
No, wait — there was no reason for a kindergarten to serve ramyeon in the first place...
"Arin."
"Yeah!"
At her mother's call, Arini's face lit right up.
Like mother, like daughter — her curiosity was absolutely extraordinary.
No, for that matter, her curiosity was extraordinary.
"Sweetheart, you've had janchi-guksu before, right?"
"The noodles with lots of vegetables on top!"
"It's kind of like that."
Was that really a proper explanation?
To me, since I knew exactly what ramyeon was, the explanation just made me tilt my head in confusion.
Then A-ra handed over a small paper cup with a little bit of ramyeon, some broth, and an egg on top.
She'd cooled it down enough so that a five-year-old tiny could slurp it up easily.
When Arini tasted the broth of the ramyeon she'd been given, it seemed she didn't think it was half bad.
Before long, she started noisily slurping up the noodles with her chopsticks.
"Is it good?"
"Mmm... not really!"
"Good. Ramyeon isn't healthy anyway, so it's even better if it's not to your taste."
Arini smiled and said that the meals Daddy made were way tastier.
But A-ra was silently fishing out and eating the ramyeon.
Unlike Arini, she'd had her ramyeon cut off abruptly — I supposed she couldn't help it.
Though I had absolutely no intention of lifting the ramyeon restriction.
"Tch..."
"Ramyeon's bad for you, right? You're turning thirty soon, Noona, so you've got to look after your health."
"Hngg..."
She'd be thirty next year, yet she looked like a high schooler, which made the conversation feel all the more ironic.
***
We'd finished eating.
The two of them began fishing in earnest.
A-ra started fishing using two long fishing rods, while Arini was catching godori at the shallow surface with a short whip rod meant for tinies.
Normally, when people say young kids go fishing, it's a lot of work.
That's because most of them struggle to bait the hook and remove the hook from the fish on their own.
But our Arini was different.
From baiting the hook to pulling out the fish, she knew how to do it all herself, so both A-ra and I could enjoy ourselves without trouble.
What was I doing, you ask?
I was lying around and lazing about in the tent.
Of course, I wasn't just lazing about — I was hard at work.
Taking photos of my wife from behind.
Was secretly photographing my wife from behind considered voyeurism?
Since I hadn't gotten permission, maybe it was voyeurism, or since I was just taking pictures during a family outing, maybe it wasn't...
"Hwaaahmm... lying down is making me sleepy."
Killing time with pointless thoughts like that — that was a luxury you could only afford when you had the leisure for it.
It seemed like getting out of the house was a way better call than being cooped up inside.
"Daddy!"
Just then, Arini suddenly called out to me and came running over.
The pit-pat-pit-pat sound of her running was so adorable.
"What's up?"
"Look!"
I figured it was just another godori she'd been pulling up, so I looked...
But what was hooked there was a fish I really hadn't expected.
Elegant in form.
A fish that clearly looked like a high-grade species to anyone.
"A barred knifejaw?"
"What?!"
The moment A-ra heard the words 'barred knifejaw,' she set her rod down and dashed over.
Panting, A-ra peered closely at the fish hanging from Arini's short whip rod.
I had no idea how she'd managed to pull it up, but it was a barred knifejaw that easily looked over twenty-five centimeters.
She'd eaten spicy fish stew made with barred knifejaw before, but A-ra had never caught one herself, so she pouted out her lower lip slightly.
"Our little girl. You're seriously good at fishing, huh?"
"Hehe."
Still, proud of her daughter, A-ra gently stroked her head.
This time she did it herself — extracted the hook from the barred knifejaw and placed the fish into Arini's bucket.
Two godori and one barred knifejaw.
Thinking about how that single barred knifejaw would go for over fifty thousand won, I felt a little dumbfounded.
Those godori, even fully grown and plump with flesh, went for less than ten thousand won each at the mart.
"Mom, Mom."
"Mm."
"Your fishing rod is shaking over there."
"Oh...!"
A-ra's rod was trembling — chattering — as if she'd gotten a bite.
Seeing that, A-ra bolted straight back to her rod and shouted at the top of her lungs.
"Hiiit!!!!"
A-ra had set the hook so hard it looked like the rod might snap.
It seemed the fish that had been enjoying the bait was now well and truly hooked.
Whoa... just how big was it to make waves like that?
Seeing the fish being pulled in thrashing and splashing wildly was seriously fascinating.
"Barred knifejaw! It's a barred knifejaw!"
"Arin. If that turns out to be a barred knifejaw, Daddy will buy you a toy."
"Hngg... so if it's not a barred knifejaw, you won't buy me one?"
This perceptive little tiny.
Of course, it was just a setup to maximize the gratitude of a child who'd just received a surprise toy.
"Seong-hwan-a! The landing net!"
A-ra was looking for the landing net, so I picked up the net sitting off to the side and lowered it toward where the fish was.
It was thrashing pretty hard and was tough to lift, but midway through, A-ra handed me the rod, took the landing net, and hauled it up herself.
"Whoa... it's huge..."
Arini, watching from the side, let out an exclamation of awe.
That was only natural, because a black porgy that looked like it easily exceeded half a meter had been pulled up.
Catching a fifty-centimeter-class black porgy on a shore-casting setup.
That was no small feat.
"Ahem... with this, Mom's dignity is preserved."
I suspected she'd been feeling a little deflated because her daughter had reeled in a barred knifejaw that surpassed the minimum size limit.
Well, it made sense — the amount of time A-ra and Arini had spent fishing was completely different.
"Seong-hwan-a. Let's slice this up as sashimi right away."
"Should we? Arin, shall we slice your barred knifejaw as sashimi too?"
"Yeah! But take a picture before you turn them into sashimi!"
"Alright, alright. Let's take the photo first, quickly."
I thought for a bit about how best to take the picture, but since both were upper-grade sashimi fish — if not quite top-tier — I thought they'd look good together.
So it seemed best to photograph A-ra holding the black porgy and Arini holding the barred knifejaw, standing side by side.
"How is it? Does it look good?"
"Yeah. It'll be perfect for showing off, too."
"Showing off! I'm gonna show off to my friends!"
With that decided, before taking the picture, I performed shinke-jime first so they'd be easier to hold.
Simply holding them as they were would have been too floppy and easy to accidentally drop, after all.