Mom's Choice Is Always Right
“Jung-woo, are you up?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Chae-yeon and her mom are coming over this afternoon.”
“Oh, okay… wait, what?! Why is Chae-yeon coming to our house?!”
“Winter break is almost over. You won’t get to see her for a while once school starts again.”
“Then we can just meet outside.”
“We’ve never invited her over since we moved.”
The last traces of sleep vanished at Mom’s sudden announcement.
Not once had I brought a friend home, and the first one just had to be Chae-yeon. It felt like a bolt from the blue.
Home was my ultimate sanctuary, and my room was its most precious treasure.
Chae-yeon was coming here?
There was no question about it. How could I possibly show her this room?!
“So make sure you clean it up before she gets here, all right?”
It wasn’t that my room was dirty. The real problem was…
The mountain of stuffed animals crammed onto my closet shelves and bed.
I’d loved cute things since I was little, and that hadn’t changed. The dolls had piled up until there was nowhere left to put them but the bed, forcing me to sleep in the corner.
I could already picture Chae-yeon’s reaction.
Even so, I couldn’t exactly hide this many dolls.
Only one option remained: greet her with the dolls exactly as they were.
“Mom, what are we going to do at home?”
“Eat together, chat, that sort of thing.”
“What if I just… stayed out until they leave?”
“Son? Try saying something that makes sense.”
At the dangerous glint in Mom’s eyes, I shrank back into my room.
If you can’t avoid it, enjoy it, right?
I left the dolls where they were and wiped away the dust that had gathered in every corner. I cleaned the spaces I used often, but the neglected spots had collected quite a bit. It took longer than I expected.
Ah, today of all days, I really wanted to leave the house.
“We’re here.”
“Come on in. Was the traffic bad?”
“The apartment complex was confusing. We got a little lost.”
“Yeah, it’s like that here. Come inside, everything’s ready.”
“Hi, Jung-woo.”
“Hey. Welcome.”
Chae-yeon followed her mom inside. Unlike the last time we’d all met, she greeted me warmly. All those messages and meetups had paid off.
“Wow, what’s all this?”
“I couldn’t just sit still when we had guests coming. I went all out.”
“The table’s going to collapse. I cook when guests come too, but this is on another level.”
Mom’s cooking skills were already impressive, but they doubled whenever company was expected. Steamed egg, braised chicken, stir-fried fish cakes—the table was loaded.
She was going to collapse the moment the guests left.
“Chae-yeon, come eat.”
“Thank you. I’ll eat well.”
Chae-yeon sat beside me. It was the first time we’d eaten side by side like this. Sitting next to her instead of across from her made every little movement stand out—the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the neat way she picked up tricky bites, the way her eyes turned into little squirrel cheeks with every mouthful.
I focused on my own food before I stared too obviously. The glass noodles in the braised chicken kept slipping away from my chopsticks.
“Want me to get the tongs, son?”
“No, I almost got it.”
“You look like you’re struggling.”
“I’m fine. I can do it.”
The noodles dodged me again and again. Just as I was about to snatch them in frustration, a pair of chopsticks reached over, grabbed a portion, and placed it neatly on my plate.
“You’re going to finish your whole meal just trying to pick up one noodle.”
“I almost had it!”
“Almost had it? It was taking forever.”
“Chae-yeon’s really good with chopsticks.”
“It’s nothing special.”
“Mom, I learned from Einstein too!”
“Then where did all that skill go?”
“It disappeared with time…”
I used to get endless praise for learning with the Einstein training chopsticks. How had my skills gotten this bad? The surgery, probably.
“Jung-woo, why don’t you show Chae-yeon your room?”
“Oh, right. Okay.”
If Chae-yeon laughed at not being able to watch horror movies or drink coffee, I could already imagine her reaction to my room from start to finish. I was already dreading how much she’d laugh.
“Come in.”
“Whoa, what the—why are there so many dolls?”
“They just… kept accumulating.”
Chae-yeon’s reaction was nothing like I’d expected. She wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t teasing. She was gently touching the dolls, eyes sparkling with genuine curiosity.
“I’ve never seen this many in one place.”
“Everyone says that.”
“Oh, this one’s a lion.”
“Yeah, I like lions, so there are more of them than the others.”
“There really are a lot. There’s even a massage one, a Santa, and one with a hoodie.”
“Do you want any? If I bought it myself, you can have it.”
“Really?! I can take as many as I want?”
“Yeah. Anything that wasn’t a gift from family is fine.”
Chae-yeon’s eyes lit up as she searched through the collection. Watching her, I couldn’t help but smile. It was a side of her I’d never seen before, even when we were kids.
“Hey, aren’t you only picking specific characters?”
“I just really like these ones.”
“And you didn’t pick a single one that your family gave you. You’re good at this.”
“Can I really take all of these?”
“Yeah, go ahead. They’ll probably like going with you more anyway.”
“Huh?! Wouldn’t they rather stay with their original owner?”
“You’ll take better care of them than I did. I just left them as decoration and ignored them.”
“No wonder. Look at all this dust. I should clean them.”
Chae-yeon set the chosen dolls aside and began wiping the dust off the rest. I sat down next to her and helped.
“What are you two doing?”
“Getting the kids ready for adoption.”
“You’re giving them to Chae-yeon?”
“Yeah. They’re all ones I bought myself.”
“This is the first time Jung-woo’s ever given anyone a doll.”
“Mom!! Why would you say that?”
“Really? You’ve never given any to other people?”
“I told him to give some away, but he kept asking why he should.”
After Mom dropped that bomb and returned to the living room, Chae-yeon looked at me while dusting a doll, her gaze suddenly heavy.
She was definitely going to ask.
“Why are you giving them to me?”
“Because I bought them, so I can give them away.”
“But your mom said you wouldn’t even give away the ones you bought to other people.”
“That’s because they kept picking the ones my family gave me.”
“Hmm, I guess you can’t give those away.”
It wasn’t the real reason, but at least the moment passed.
“Do you work in here?”
“Yeah. Coding too.”
“I want to see you code.”
“Why are you making me work during my perfectly legal unemployed period?”
“Can’t I see?”
How was I supposed to say no to that face?
With a sigh, I finished dusting the dolls and typed out a simple C-language snippet.
“You type the code like this, hit the Run button, and the result comes out.”
“Whoa, that’s cool! When do you get errors?”
“When you write code that can’t possibly produce a result. Usually just mistakes. Like this.”
“It really shows up in red.”
“Now, when an error appears? We coding slaves desperately search Google and our textbooks.”
“You don’t do that during exams, though.”
“That’s why you have to study hard. If you want good grades on the test.”
Everyone gets excited about things they’ve never tried. Chae-yeon stared at the coding screen with the wide-eyed wonder of a child. That bright expression was…
Really cute.
“Show me how you write novels sometime too.”
“I can’t write when someone’s around. I need to be alone.”
“Even if I’m quiet, it’s still distracting?”
“Just having someone there feels distracting.”
“Then I guess I won’t get to see that. Too bad.”
When she said it with that expression, it was hard to refuse outright. She’d been making things difficult for me all day.
“I can’t show you a whole chapter, but I’ll let you see the beginning.”
“Really?!”
“Yeah. Just to give you an idea of the style.”
“Awesome!! Next time I come over, I’m definitely seeing that.”
One sentence and she was beaming. One sentence and she was sulking. Had her expressions always been this varied?
I’d been nervous about her coming over, but getting to see this new side of her was surprisingly refreshing.
Mom’s choices really were always right.
“Kids, want to see this? It’s the old photo album from when you were little—”
“Auntie, no!!”
I jumped. What the—why was she reacting so sensitively all of a sudden?