Back to the Amusement Park with Dad (1)
The amusement park was not a place of good memories for me.
When Min-ah was six, my ex-wife and I had a fight at an indoor amusement park. It wasn't a quiet, measured argument. We shouted. We made a scene.
It was over nothing. No — my ex-wife had picked the fight.
"This is it? This is where you dragged me after scraping together a single day off?"
"My legs are killing me. You're a doctor and you don't even own a car? Does that make any sense?"
"You want me to stand in line for that cheap garbage? Forget it. I'm eating somewhere else."
It was a fight she had picked, plain and simple. It was supposed to be a happy family outing. But that bitch cared more about herself than her family.
"Don't you think you're being a little harsh? Do you have any idea how hard it was to get this time off...?"
"That's exactly my point — why the hell did we come to a dump like this?! We're not beggars!!"
"Hey! Park Ah-young!! Watch your mouth in front of the kid!!"
"Daddy... Mommy... don't fight... Min-ah was bad... I'm sorry... waaaaah!!"
The finishing blow was Min-ah's enormous wail.
"Tsk...!! Worthless brat, worthless father — the both of you!"
My ex-wife was a woman without a shred of responsibility. She felt nothing for the child she had given birth to. She left Min-ah and me standing there and walked straight out of the amusement park.
"Waaaaah!!"
"Sweetheart... I'm sorry. Daddy was wrong. I'm sorry... I'm so, so sorry......"
Looking back on it now, the whole scene was almost laughable. I — a man who didn't share a single drop of blood with that child — had poured everything into comforting her, while the woman who had given birth to her abandoned her and vanished. Has there ever been a black comedy more wretched than that?
In my memory, Min-ah had wept with a grief far too large for her body. And she had every right to. The people surrounding us were all families. Happy ones.
A child holding both her father's and mother's hands. A child with her father's hand in one fist and cotton candy in the other. A child gleefully playing a game while her parents watched. A child riding the carousel beside her mother. Every last pair of eyes had been turned on us.
That was the truth of it. We were the guilty ones. We had shattered the very premise of this place — a world you came to in order to leave ordinary life behind and be happy. A vicious, ugly ordinary life. In a way, perhaps my ex-wife and I were the ones who had dragged those memories up for everyone watching.
I wanted to grab my daughter's hand and flee that spot that very instant. But doing so would have been an even greater sin against her. It was a rare day off. To my little girl, it would have been precious.
"I'm going out with Daddy and Mommy...! Hehe, I'm so happy!"
Min-ah had been genuinely, wildly excited. And of course she had been. Our family had almost never gone out together like this. They say that the greater the expectation, the greater the chance of disappointment. Even an ordinary trip might have been enough to let her down — and my ex-wife and I had gone and ruined the whole thing. How deep must that disappointment have cut?
I scooped my daughter up into my arms.
"Want to go play with Daddy, sweetheart?"
"*Sniffle*... Daddy... are you okay? *Sniffle*... Mom's not mad 'cause she left, right?"
"Daddy's sorry. For fighting with Mom in front of such a lovely little girl."
"*Sniffle*... *sniffle*......."
She said nothing more. She just clung to me. She was barely six years old. But I remember Min-ah being mature beyond her years, even then.
"Want to go play with Daddy? How about it?"
She nodded. With her head buried in my chest, nuzzling against me, Min-ah's answer was yes.
"You okay without Mom?"
Another nod.
Having confirmed my daughter's wishes, I pushed through the crowd that had closed in around us. I didn't feel ashamed. I didn't snap at the people who had gathered to stare. For Min-ah's sake, the only thing I had to do was immerse myself in this land of fantasy once more.
"One Snow Ice, pineapple flavor, please."
I bought the pineapple slush she loved. The sniffling, with her face still buried against me, stopped.
"Daddy... what's that?"
"It's the pineapple ice treat Min-ah likes."
"Woooow......"
My daughter's eyes began to shine, bright as stars. But she didn't lunge for it. That was what made me realize how remarkable my little girl was. Most children, the moment you bought something like that, would assume it was theirs and snatch it up. Min-ah didn't.
"Daddy... I want some too."
Permission. Without her parents' say-so, Min-ah would not lay a finger on something that wasn't hers. She didn't even consider the slush her own. What a good girl. She really was.
"Here. This is Min-ah's."
"Wow, really?!!"
"Of course. Here you go."
The moment she took the cup, joy bloomed across her whole face. A straw found its way between those little cherry-red lips, and the yellow slush began to flow into my daughter's mouth.
"It's good!! Daddy!! This is so good!!"
*Slurp. Slurp.*
In an instant, a third of the cup was gone. She held it out to me, swaying a little — she'd downed the ice too fast and it had gone to her head.
"Here, Daddy. You try it too! It's really good!"
I put my mouth to the straw her lips had just touched and drank. A cold, sweet-and-tart flavor spread through my mouth. Combined with the happy smile on my daughter's face, it flooded my brain with endorphins.
"It's good. It's really good!"
"Hehe. Yay."
The foul mood my ex-wife had left behind vanished completely. It seemed to be the same for my daughter.
"Daddy! That one!! I want to ride that!!"
She was pointing at a hot-air-balloon-shaped attraction that drifted along the ceiling of the indoor park.
"Alright! Let's go ride it!"
"Yay, this is so fun!!"
Something ugly had happened. But in the end, we managed to finish on a good note. That first — and last — trip to an amusement park with little Min-ah ended that way.
After the divorce, I quit my position as a thoracic surgeon at a university hospital and opened a small neighborhood surgical clinic. I bought my daughter a foreign car, and whenever we had time, we traveled. But we never went to an amusement park.
I had asked her about it once, in passing.
"Ah... let's just go to the ocean, Dad. I want to see the ocean."
Min-ah had turned it down too. I had asked for her sake — but if I was being honest, I hadn't wanted to go either. Neither of us had. The memories we'd made there were simply too hard.
That unofficial tradition of ours was broken when Min-ah was twenty, right after she got into Hankuk University off the waitlist.
"Uh... huh? The... amusement park?"
"Yeah. The one we went to when I was little."
Her face was set, resolute. She seemed to have decided that this was the perfect chance to overcome that old trauma.
"...Alright. When do you want to go?"
I didn't ask her anything. I had a fairly good idea why she was doing this. This was the season in which she had achieved everything — as a student, as a daughter. The season in which she had crossed the mountain of childhood and set foot on the new earth of adulthood. She wanted to shake off the uncomfortable feelings she'd left behind on that childhood mountain, and move on.
"Today."
"Huh? Today?"
"My friends say weekday evenings are the best time to go. Let's go now."
It was three in the afternoon. By the time we arrived it would be past four, at the earliest. We'd be playing from evening on, just as she'd said.
"A-alright. Let's do that."
"I'll get ready and come out! You hurry up and get ready too, Dad!"
The door to Min-ah's room slammed shut, accompanied by the bright, excited sound of her footsteps. Right. I needed to get ready too. I stepped into the dressing room and started trying to figure out what to wear.
Should I go with something casual, the kind of thing I'd wear for a light outing? It's going to be crowded, and my girl's an adult now — I should put a little thought into how I look. I don't want her feeling uncomfortable because of me.
"You dressed yet?"
While I was still standing there agonizing over clothes, Min-ah finished getting ready and started hurrying me along.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I haven't even put anything on yet."
"Just wear whatever, wear whatever! That's what I did!"
"Still, we're going somewhere packed with people. I should at least look presentable."
"I told you not to worry about it! More importantly, hurry up and get ready! I want to go play! Come on, come on!"
Just from her voice, you could tell she was already running hot. The girl who had left her teens and stepped into her twenties had the roaring power of an engine that had finally been broken in.
"Alright, alright. Daddy'll get ready fast — can you wait just a little?"
"Okay! Got it, Dad!"
Ah, to hell with it. I'll just wear whatever.
I grabbed the same jogger pants and hoodie I always wore whenever I took her out for a drive.
"Hmm-hmm~ hmm-hmm~ hmm~~"
The amusement park was about an hour away. We lived in northern Gyeonggi, and we were on the outer ring expressway.
"If you're going to Hankuk University, you'll probably need to get a place of your own, won't you?"
Our house was a long way from Hankuk University. The subway ran there, but it was a nearly hour-and-a-half ride one way. Driving yourself didn't cut the time down by much either.
"I'm not getting my own place, though?"
Min-ah shot the question back as if I'd said something absurd. She'd only ever gone to schools close to home, so I supposed she didn't understand — how exhausting it was, having that kind of commute eat up your day.
"The round trip from our house to Hankuk University is three hours. Can you keep that up for your entire college life? I don't want to watch my daughter suffer."
"Dad. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for a girl to live alone?"
"......"
"On top of that, people talk. Ugly rumors."
She wasn't wrong. Even in my day, there had been girls who lived on their own. Not just the ones who had no choice because they'd come up from the countryside — some of them did it simply because they were adults. The rumors about them had never been kind.
But I trusted Min-ah. She was not that kind of girl. Not ever.
"I don't want to. I'm commuting from home."
She was immovable. Fine. I would respect her choice for now. If it started wearing her down later, it wouldn't be too late to ask again.
"Alright, Min-ah. We'll do it your way."
"Thanks, Dad. For respecting my decision."
My daughter's hand settled gently over mine on the gearshift. Her long, soft fingers wrapped around a hand roughened by alcohol, as if she were wrapping it in silk.
We arrived at the amusement park. I parked and started heading straight for the entrance, but my daughter stopped me.
"Dad! There's somewhere we have to stop before we go in!"
The amusement park was attached to a massive shopping mall. That was where she led me.
"Sweetheart... what is this?"
"What do you think? If we're going to a land of fantasy, don't we have to look the part too?"
It was... a shop that rented out costumes.
"Hmm~ hmm-hmm~ hmm~ hmm~"
Min-ah stepped into her room and opened a drawer. Inside, her panties were folded in neat, orderly rows.
"It has to be in here."
She shoved her hand deep into the back of the drawer and started rummaging.
"Found it!"
What she pulled out, her face deadly serious, was a pair of panties. But these were different. Not the ordinary kind — a black T-back with far too little fabric to its name.