The Beachside Villa
With a chill running up the spines of two civil servants—and a few thoughts that felt an awful lot like lament—they arrived at a certain villa in Sokcho.
Not a bunk bed, either. An actual two-story villa, sprawling and wide open.
Air conditioning, of course. A refrigerator that looked about three times my height. A long, invitingly soft sofa, and a monitor so big it made the TV back home look like a joke. A second-floor balcony roughly the size of six of our home verandas put together. Spotless interiors without a speck of dust in sight, and a view of the ocean to top it all off.
"Kyaaa—!"
With tiny little strides, Siyeon went scampering every which way through the villa. Ever since she'd learned this was where we'd be staying for the next two weeks, she hadn't been able to contain her excitement.
She's still going to have to do her homework, though.
While I was coldly considering Siyeon's more practical reality, one of the civil servants held out a business card.
On it was the name of his department—the National Security Office—his name, and a neatly printed personal phone number. I never thought a body like this would ever have occasion to receive a business card.
"If you need anything, call this number. We'll be staying in Sokcho ourselves, so we can help you out."
"Yes, thank you. Take care."
"Right."
The two civil servants closed the villa door behind them and left.
"Whoa…."
Once they were gone, I looked out over the absurdly vast interior of the villa and let out a pure, genuine sigh of admiration.
While Siyeon was in the bathroom, I'd asked the man still waiting by the car. Apparently high-ranking officials often used the place as a vacation spot. And true to that claim, the villa was stocked with amenities good enough to live in like a real home.
Just how many air conditioners did one villa need? One in the first-floor ceiling. A second next to the TV. A third in the kitchen. Then a fourth and fifth upstairs. The cost of the air conditioners alone probably blew past the entire value of our house's furniture.
With every other human presence gone, the mascots finally crept out into the open.
"Wow, nice place."
"Yeah."
I gave a short affirmative to the almost absurdly improved living conditions we were about to enjoy for two weeks. I'd always thought houses with a second floor only existed in Japanese manga. I wasn't even double digits yet, and already life was full of surprises.
A sofa wide enough for two people my size to lie on side by side. I flopped down sideways and settled into a comfortable position.
"So why didn't either of you say a single word?"
A thought struck me then—the mascots' complete silence in the car. Sure, there had been other people around, but given the situation, those people clearly already knew we were magical girls. Which meant they should have known the mascots existed too. Their total refusal to speak had been strange enough that I asked.
I fully expected something like, We just didn't know.
What came out of the bear's snout instead was a surprise.
"Adults are, like… kind of awkward to talk to. And responding to every little thing is a pain…."
"You crazy bastard."
So they just didn't feel like it. Unbelievable.
I stayed sprawled on the sofa for a good while. Then Siyeon, having finished touring the villa, came over and asked,
"Mari, when are we going to the beach?"
"Uh…."
I trailed off and thought it over. Nestled into this sofa soft enough to put me to sleep, I'd completely forgotten.
The drive had taken about three hours. After spending a full three hours on the road, it was already late afternoon. If we went to the ocean now, it would get cold before long. Risk of catching a cold. Not today.
Nothing more miserable than getting sick on a trip.
"Not today."
"Whyyy! I wanna go to the beach! I'm goooing!"
Siyeon was actually whining at me—rare for her. She must have been thrilled just from coming this far from home.
How was I supposed to talk my way out of this and push it to tomorrow…? I racked my brain for a moment, and then the essentials of any beach trip floated into my head.
Ah.
"We don't even have swimsuits or floaties. We should go to the supermarket today."
I'd just realized we didn't have a single necessary item for the beach.
"Ah!"
Siyeon's eyes went round, and she finally accepted it. I got ready to leave and redirected our destination straight to the supermarket.
I pulled up the maps app to get a sense of the area. We'd have to use public transit, but that was still a hundred times better than having no supermarket at all. In a true backwater, even a big-box store would be rare as rain in a drought.
And asking a pair of scruffy-bearded civil servants to buy swimsuits for first-grade girls would have been way too awkward. Better to go ourselves. If we'd asked them, I could already picture the clerk giving those men the side-eye. Fortunately, I am not that shameless a boy—no… girl. I take care of my own responsibilities. A proper child.
We took a taxi to the first floor of a big-box supermarket. True to the height of summer, the place was decked out with giant whale-shaped floaties and every other beach icon you could name.
Floaties could wait. Clothes first.
"Swimsuit, pwease!"
"Oh my, welcome!"
Siyeon dashed ahead, excitement pouring off her, ran straight to the swimsuit section, and immediately demanded one. The lady working there seemed charmed by her tiny customers; she murmured a little coo of delight and rose from her seat.
Even a lady who found little kids adorable must have found the absence of parents a bit odd, because she glanced around. Naturally, no one who looked like a parent was anywhere in sight, so she turned to us right away.
"Where are Mommy and Daddy?"
"Well…."
I was just starting to cobble together a decent excuse when—
"We came by oursewves!"
Ah.
Siyeon's bold, excited answer made the lady's expression harden. I should have told her to keep quiet.
The lady's next questions took a slightly different turn. They came from kindness and concern, but they were the kind of questions that could sting a child's heart.
"Do you know your parents' phone numbers?"
"Uh, w-well…."
Siyeon floundered. To break out of this hopeless situation, I had no choice but to claim the first number I could remember as Dad's. The business card in my pocket.
"I know Daddy's number."
"Go ahead and tell me."
"Zero-one-zero…."
The moment I recited it, the lady stepped away—if only to say something unkind—and called the civil servant. After a few rings, the line connected. As she moved farther off, her voice drifted back.
"Hello, are you these children's father? What kind of parent sends two kids shopping for clothes by themselves?"
I couldn't make out the muttered reply from the man on the other end.
"What do you mean, 'what do I mean'?! Two little girls just walked in here to buy swimsuits, and their so-called dad is off doing what? Excuse me? Mulhoe? Mulhooee?"
In the span of a single phone call, the civil servant had been transformed into some deadbeat bastard stuffing his face with raw fish stew on a Sokcho street, completely unaware that his two elementary-school "daughters" were at the supermarket.
Well… sorry about that.
I'd tried not to impose. Things just turned out this way.
About twenty minutes later, the civil servant—who had abandoned his mulhoe mid-meal without the faintest idea why—showed up at the supermarket, only to stand there with his arms crossed while the thoroughly riled-up lady gave him a lecture he didn't understand.
Only after the situation had more or less sorted itself out could I actually talk to him.
"What in the world just happened to me?"
"…I'm sorry."
I told the endlessly cheerful Siyeon to go pick out a swimsuit she liked. Then, wearing the expressions of men dragged out shopping for clothes, the civil servant and I sat down on the backless chairs near the register.
"Mari! How about this one?!"
"Pretty."
"And this?"
"Also pretty."
Siyeon shoved swimsuit after swimsuit at me as if she already owned them, and I answered every single question like a parrot that had only learned one word: pretty-pretty-pretty.
A solid blue one-piece. A pale pink one with a raccoon character on it. Being the practical type, I figured a first-grader growing like a weed would outgrow anything in under a year, so the pattern didn't really matter….
"What about this?"
…Or so I'd thought. Apparently not.
Siyeon pulled one swimsuit off the rack and held it up.
"That one's a no."
A deep purple background with a mix of blue and light pink flowers. It had the exact color scheme of the clothes a rural grandmother wears to work the fields. I shook my head. No meant no.
Who on earth was demanding these things get manufactured?
Leaving that vague question unanswered, we each picked a swimsuit, paid for them, and headed over to grab floaties too. Two tiny kids' swimsuits for seventy thousand won. Floaties at twenty thousand each—another forty thousand. A hollow hundred and ten thousand won blown on a beach we'd only be playing at for two weeks.
For that money I could buy three full sets of summer clothes that would last a year….
Pushing aside my increasingly housewife-like sense of thrift, we gathered our summer supplies and stepped outside the supermarket.
The civil servant had been summoned so urgently he'd left the official car behind and taken a taxi. We were walking toward the first taxi in the line out front when—
An unpleasant siren blared. Waa-waa-waa.
Things had been quiet lately. Of course an alert would go off before a full day had even passed. Come to think of it, our region had an unusually low monster appearance rate. This place was different.
"Ugh, damn it…."
"Oh dear. Looks like I have to go."
Finishing a nice shopping trip only to get hit with work right after. The man understood the misery well enough to let out a sympathetic "oh dear." It felt exactly like being told to come into the office while you were sitting at your computer on a weekend.
I held out the bags in both hands and said,
"Mister, could you take Siyeon and the bags back to the villa?"
"Huh? You're not coming?"
"I've got things to do. I've been handling the cleanups solo these days. Thanks!"
With that announcement delivered, I took off running, hunting for a spot with no eyes on me.
Of all places, right by the supermarket—and the people were only halfheartedly going through the motions of evacuating. The appearance site was pretty far from the store anyway. The citizens treated it like a civil defense drill, streaming out of the supermarket and ducking into the shade just enough to get out of the sun.
Safety culture in this country is completely shot.
Just like a nation that assumes a fire alarm going off in the middle of school is a false alarm. One of these days, something was going to go really wrong.