The Only Man for Me Is Dad
Of everything I poured care into while raising my daughter, special occasions were what I tended to most carefully.
When I was young, my parents never made much of them. They were good people, but the child I was found it genuinely disappointing — and sad.
"Look! I got this for my birthday!"
Birthdays. Christmas. Children's Day. I cannot describe how envious I was of the friends who showed off the gifts they had received.
Of course, my parents seemed to figure gifts weren't really necessary. On ordinary days I could have whatever I wanted; whenever I mentioned something, I would have it by the following week at the latest. Looking back now, that was one of the ways they loved me.
Even so... I believed it was better to hold back a little in daily life and make a real point of giving gifts on the days that counted. And so I made a vow: I would celebrate my daughter's special days better than anyone.
February 29th. A leap day that comes only once every four years. That was my daughter's birthday.
I threw her a party every year, in part so Min-ah's friends could share it. But just before she started high school, at one of those parties, a friend of hers spilled food down my clothes. After that, my daughter never brought her friends home again.
"Dad, you don't have to throw me birthday parties anymore. It makes me uncomfortable watching you go through all that trouble because of my friends."
Was it because she felt sorry for me? Or guilty? Or... because it was a burden?
That was right — she was in high school now. She might well have seen her father fussing over her birthday as overbearing interference. She might have wanted more time with her friends in a space where I wasn't around.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I was being too much of a busybody, wasn't I?"
"No, Dad. I just don't want you to wear yourself out."
She buried herself against me. A high schooler, and still such a child.
"You're the best present I could ever get."
"......"
"When you're here, it feels like I get a gift every single day."
It was a strange feeling. A peculiar fullness swelled in my chest.
I had heard it from friends. Once a child hits high school, they start pulling away from their parents. I had taken it as a given. Even I, who had gotten along well with my late parents, had started locking my bedroom door the moment I entered high school.
But Min-ah was different. Even as a high schooler, she still stuck to me like a burr. It was almost too much.
Not long after she started high school, evening study hall began.
"Dad. I don't want to do evening study hall. Get me out of it."
I was startled. I assumed she simply didn't want to study.
"Online lectures are enough. You can't keep up with the college entrance exam on what the schoolteachers cover."
Min-ah's assessment was accurate. While I was at it, I tried to hire her an expensive private tutor, but she refused.
"I don't want other people coming into this house. And Dad — don't you trust me? Online lectures are plenty, I'm telling you. Let's not waste money for nothing."
My adorable daughter was, before I knew it, growing into a composed young adult who thought of her father first.
And yet a part of me was uneasy. Middle school and high school are different animals. Plenty of children who excelled in middle school fell apart once they hit high school.
But my fears were unfounded. Her first-year, first-semester finals put her at the top of her class — inside the top twenty in the entire school. There was no real need to worry. She wasn't first in the school, but with grades like that she could get into a perfectly good university and find work that would let her stand on her own two feet.
I wanted Min-ah to live without aiming too high.
The single greatest regret of my life was that I had ever dreamed of going into cardiothoracic surgery. The time I might have spent on myself, and the time I might have spent with my family — all of it vanished.
Materially, I became well-off. Society recognized me. I gained a beautiful wife. None of it had anything to do with my happiness. My wife had come to me because of the title of doctor and the money that came with it, and it had ended in catastrophe.
During the divorce, she said only one thing.
I won the case with an expensive lawyer. But she was right.
I had believed that a man who wanted his family to be happy was supposed to work himself to the bone. I had a memory of a household shattered over money. The entire family had been miserable, and my parents had ended their lives by suicide. That was why money had mattered so much to me.
After the divorce, my thinking changed. You have to leave time for your family. That was my happiness — and theirs.
So I resigned as a cardiothoracic specialist at Hanguk University Hospital, the most prestigious institution in the country. I threw out the vow that I would never borrow a single won, and I opened an orthopedic clinic as close to home as I could get.
Luck was with me. An emergency trauma patient came in at a moment when the regional ER was too far away, and the paramedics brought them to us.
It was a fairly difficult surgery. Our operating room was laughable compared to Hanguk University Hospital, but I gave it everything I had, and we managed to stabilize the patient in those first critical hours. Somehow word got around, and from then on the patients kept coming. The practice grew large enough that I could hire a Pay Doctor.
And just like that, I had both the money and the time to spend on my one and only family — Min-ah.
I wanted her to study in moderation and find a comfortable line of work.
"Me? I'll take any job as long as I can live with you, Dad! Oh — and I'll make lots of money so I can take the load off you too!"
"You little brat. Planning to live with your old man forever?"
"Yep!"
I was relieved that Min-ah, too, seemed to have no interest in grinding herself down for a career. She understood that time with family mattered.
And yet I worried. She was in high school, and all she wanted was to stay glued to me.
I wanted Min-ah to be ordinary. And by ordinary, I meant I didn't want her to miss out on the things other kids her age were doing. Dating included.
One of the main reasons I had fallen for my ex-wife's act was that I had no experience with women. I didn't want Min-ah repeating my mistakes.
By the time she entered high school, Min-ah's body was, in every respect, a woman's. I have no desire to look at my own daughter that way, so I won't go into detail. But one thing I can say with certainty: she was far more beautiful than my ex-wife.
My ex-wife had been the most popular woman in the College of Arts at the university I attended. If Min-ah was more beautiful than that... well. That says it all.
Human beings are animals. We have social natures, but in the end we are animals with instincts. And the greatest of those instincts is the drive to reproduce — a drive that kicks into high gear in the late teens.
Boys were surely hovering around Min-ah at all times, trying to get in her good graces, trying by any means to make her theirs. Girls would flock to her too — to seduce the boys who couldn't have her, and to linger beside an absolute being who wielded beauty as power, picking up whatever scraps fell their way.
I had only one worry: that in the midst of all that abundance of choice, Min-ah would choose wrong. Too few options is a problem, but too many is a problem too. The sweet temptations waiting to lead a daughter astray were endless.
I was worried. But I couldn't check. I didn't want to earn the label of overbearing father.
Then the opportunity came.
Even her reason for refusing had been consideration for me. I was grateful. But it was the perfect opening. She didn't bring friends home anymore, so this was my chance to see what kind of people she spent her time with.
These days, they say it's perfectly normal to pick your kids up by car when they finish late. What I would have called overkill in my day had become the most natural thing in the world. At any rate, that gave me an excuse to watch Min-ah leave school — a golden opportunity to get even an indirect look at her social circle.
It was the moment for the luxury foreign car I had bought — because Min-ah had said she wanted to see the ocean — to earn its keep. Friends had told me that among kids, a parent's car was one more thing to show off.
Ten o'clock at night. Plenty of cars had come to collect their children.
There. I saw my daughter.
She was walking out the school gate, chatting with three girlfriends. Thankfully, there were no boys with them.
"Huh?"
A male student approached Min-ah in a manner that was, to anyone watching, a come-on. He tried to hand her a letter, reaching for her hand.
A surge of heat shot through me. I wanted to get out of the car right then, grab that bastard, and throw him.
Should I? Shouldn't I? What do I do?
I don't want to see Min-ah looking cornered like that...
And then, in an instant, Min-ah slapped him across the face.
Every student leaving school turned to look. I was too far away to hear what she said, but she shouted something short and sharp, took her friend's hand, and started walking.
Something about it... if I showed myself now, it would only make things worse. I started the car at once.
A smile spread across my face as I drove. With a reaction like that... I was certain she would never take up with the wrong kind of boy.
"You came."
"Y-yeah."
The gym storage room was dark. A boy who looked to be in Min-ah's year stood there with her. He had an ordinary face, but everything about the way he held himself marked him as an introvert. Even so, he seemed to have wrung a great deal of courage out of himself to win the girl he liked.
Min-ah wore a satisfied smile as she walked toward him.
"Coming here means you'll do anything, right?"
"Y-yeah... I'll do whatever Min-ah wants. As a man, I..."
She snatched his necktie.
"Ghk!"
The boy's face went ashen.
"I don't see you as a man. So there's absolutely no chance I'd ever date you. Don't get the wrong idea."
"Y-yeah. I know... I get it... just let go of this..."
"But I won't make a one-sided demand. Dad said that's a bad thing."
Min-ah pulled the tie taut and whispered in his ear. The boy's face flushed red in an instant.
"I... I can't!! That would ruin my entire school life! I can't! I absolutely can't!"
"Oh? Is that so? Didn't you say that showing up here meant the deal was done?"
"You didn't even tell me what it was!! I won't! I can't!!"
"What a naughty boy."
She squeezed.
"Ghk!"
Min-ah's grip was the opposite of her delicate appearance. She overpowered him completely. Then she leaned in and whispered in his ear again. Sweat beaded on the boy's forehead.
"...Well? Starting to look a little more tempting?"
"I-is that true? For real? You can actually give me that kind of money?"
The boy's breathing had grown ragged, though he hadn't been exercising at all.
"Of course. Obviously."
Color returned to the boy's face. It was greed.
"I'm counting on you. On the way home from school today."
"Yeah...! Yeah!!!"
Between the dust and the heat pouring off the boy, a dank haze began to gather in the gym storage room.