The Kind Who Knows How to Be Truly Grateful for a Gift
On the day of Sia's high school graduation, special guests came to see her. The first of them was Seon-a.
"Seon-a! Sis!"
"Congratulations on graduating, Sia. I wanted to bring your brother-in-law and Jia along too, but Jia isn't on break yet, so I couldn't. My husband said he couldn't leave her on her own, so he had to stay behind as well. They both asked me to pass along their congratulations."
"It's okay. I already talked to Jia."
The second guest was Mina.
"Ah, umm... H-hello, Auntie..."
"Oh, Mina! Come here!"
Mina hid behind Seon-a's leg and offered only her face, peeking out as she ducked her head in greeting. She was so adorable that Sia stepped in to gather her up.
"H-hiiik..."
At that, Mina vanished completely behind Seon-a's leg. When Sia drooped in disappointment, Seon-a gave her shoulder a few light pats.
"Sorry. She still gets terribly shy around people. She doesn't dislike you, though, Sia."
"I know. It's fine. Nothing to be done about it."
No matter that they spent time together twice a year, the stretches they went without seeing each other were far longer. Under those circumstances, Sia could be content that shy little Mina had come all this way with them at all.
"You said you're heading back tomorrow evening, right, Sis?"
"Yeah. I had a little time before this business trip, so I came to see you. Oh, and here—a present. Congratulations, Sia."
With that, Seon-a handed over the paper gift bag she had been carrying in her right hand all this time. And inside it...
"Sis? Is this real?"
"Of course it's real. What, did you think it was a fake?"
Nestled inside was the latest display tablet, worth more than two million won.
"It's a gift that means don't you dare give up from here on out. You didn't go to university, so you'll have to work even harder. You understand?"
"...Yeah. Th-thank you. Truly, Sis."
"Whoa. What's with the sudden manners? Doesn't suit you."
"I was thanking you honestly, okay?"
"Um, e-excuse me..."
While Sia and Seon-a were still talking, Mina quietly opened her mouth.
"Hm? Mina, is something wrong?"
"A-Aunt Sia. C-congratu... lations..."
"...Mina. Could I hug you, just once?"
"Hiiik...!"
"Ughhh. Can't I just live in Japan?"
"Do you have the money?"
"Let me live at your place..."
"I wouldn't mind, but what about your family? With your skill, Sia, you're only going to get busier. Slipping away for a day and coming back won't be a problem, but setting aside a stretch of time long enough for a real trip won't be easy. As your sister, I can't say I'd recommend drifting too far from Mom and Dad."
"Yeah... that's true, I guess."
Once the ceremony was over, Sia wandered the neighborhood with Seon-a and Mina, then came home and started drinking with Seon-a, just the two of them. Her parents had left for work the moment the graduation ended and would not be back until tomorrow, and Mina had fallen asleep. Alone together at last, Sia did not hesitate to pour out what she really felt to Seon-a, the person she owed so much.
"We're not exactly well-off, but it isn't as if the family gets along badly, either. I know how hard Mom and Dad have worked because of me. From now on, I ought to be the one working for them."
The house was carrying a considerable debt, and paying all of it off would take a very long time. That meant she would have to work hard enough that a trip-length schedule, just as Seon-a had said, would be difficult to manage. And Seon-a herself was a director at a well-known Japanese company, so arranging a visit to Korea the way she had this time clearly would not be easy either.
"So we really won't be able to see each other for a while, huh?"
"Well, we can still keep in touch. The company will probably be sending you freelance work pretty often, so it isn't as if we'll lose contact."
"Haa..."
"I come to Korea fairly often myself, you know. Seeing each other then will be enough, won't it?"
I really do like her. Sia swallowed the thought. Seon-a's face was blunt, but in truth she was kinder than anyone, and now there would be fewer chances to see her. Sia knew it could not be helped. Even so, she could not help feeling the loss.
"I really do want to live in Japan..."
She drained the can of beer and let the sigh out in earnest.
"I'm tired..."
After that light round of drinks with Seon-a, Sia returned to her room and got back to work. Even if she had been drinking on a day as special as her graduation, there was little time for her to rest. The family's circumstances would not allow it. Working with alcohol in her was hardly what anyone would call efficient, but she still had to push the job forward, even a little.
"This is tough..."
The client on this commission wanted a very high level of quality, as if to justify exactly why the rate had been so good. It also meant Sia's name now carried enough weight to land work of that caliber. She took pride in the fact, and at the same time the pressure in one corner of her heart kept growing—all the more because of the display tablet worth over two million won that Seon-a had given her today.
"Hoo..."
She set the tablet pen down for a moment, lay back, and stared up at the ceiling. She had given up on university because the family could not afford the tuition. It was true she had never particularly wanted to go in the first place, and yet the biggest reason she had made that decision was still the state of the household. If she claimed she had never once dreamed of a life like her friends', of going off to college and traveling, that would plainly be a lie. And today's ceremony had forced her to look at her reality all over again.
"A little... tired..."
"A-Aunt Sia..."
"Hm?"
Sia turned her head. Mina stood in the open doorway, hesitating.
"Did you wake up, Mina? Do you need the bathroom?"
"Mm-mm. No..."
"Then how about a little talk with Auntie?"
"Okay..."
Sia rose from her chair, glad of the excuse to catch her breath, and went over to her. Mina shrank in on herself a little, but she did not bolt for the hall. The sight was so cute that a smile came to Sia on its own.
Mina was always like this with her. Always, in this case, meant only about two years, and yet from the time Mina had learned to speak, the pattern had never changed. At first she would hide behind Seon-a's legs, or Jia's, and show how shy she was. Then, after a day or so, she would come over calling her Aunt Sia and actually talk. To Sia, still young and without a child of her own, it was an unbearably sweet little routine, the kind that stirred something maternal all by itself.
"Auntie was actually working just now, but thanks to you, Mina, I get to rest."
"Is that a good thing?"
"Of course it is."
From the perspective of someone who had only just graduated high school, being called Aunt was, in truth, a little awkward. She had been called that from the very start, though, so by now it hardly stirred anything in her. She had once considered having Mina call her Sis, the way she called Jia, but at this point being Aunt felt the warmer of the two.
"I-if it's what Auntie does for work, th-that's the skritch-skritch thing, right...?"
"Pfft! Yeah. That's right. The skritch-skritch thing."
Mina took after Seon-a's husband, so whenever she spoke Korean her words came out clumsy. She was still so young besides, and her vocabulary so thin, that the charm of that cuteness multiplied on itself. Watching her, Sia forgot her fatigue and could not help smiling. A child this cute, talking this cutely—Sia had always thought that was simply how it had to be.
"I wanna try the skritch-skritch thing too..."
"Our Mina wants to try? Then of course I have to let you."
At that adorable request, Sia handed her the stylus without a moment's hesitation.
"Hehe..."
Mina let out a silly little laugh and started waving the pen around.
"How do you do black?"
"Auntie will handle that part."
And the finished piece—
"I-I'm done."
"...Huh. Is this Jia?"
"Yeah. It's my big sister. Pretty, right? Hehe..."
It was a portrait of Jia. Sia had no intention of calling it well drawn. She was a professional, after all. Even so, she was startled that the child in front of her, all of five years old, had drawn it. The proportions were nowhere near right, and yet the features were caught clearly enough that anyone who knew Jia would have recognized her at once.
Mina had a gift for drawing. That was the conclusion Sia reached.
"Mina. Have you ever thought about keeping on with drawing?"
"Draw...ing?"
"Yeah. That skritch-skritch you just did. How about you keep at it after you go home tomorrow?"
"But at home we don't have this thing Auntie uses..."
"You don't need it. Any old notebook is fine."
"Okay. Dr-drawing? It was fun. Hehe..."
This was how Mina came to start drawing.
"Well, I got so busy after that I never even had time to come to Japan just to play, which is a shame... Anyway, that's what happened back then."
Just as Aunt Sia had said at the start, it was not quite that she had taught me how to draw. Even so, the reason I ever began was unmistakably Aunt Sia. To think something like that had happened in a time I could not even remember.
"So when I heard you were still drawing, I was over the moon, you know? And you're this good, on top of it. Incredible!"
"Heh, ehehe... hehe..."
"Which is why! Your aunt has an announcement. She prepared a little something!"
So saying, Aunt Sia sprang up from her chair and went out to the living room. And what she came back carrying—
"E-eh, h-hiiik? A-Auntie, this is..."
"It's all right. I got a lot of help from Seon-a back then, too. I want you to use it freely, without holding back."
What she held out was the latest model from a famous pen-display company, a machine that cost more than two hundred thousand yen.
"In exchange, even if it's only a hobby, keep drawing with everything you've got, and someday let's do a collab on an art stream. That'll be plenty for me."
"B-but..."
"Th-thank you... thank you so much..."
I was happy. The illustrator I loved most in the world was looking after me to this extent, and the happiness of it welled up until I thought I might cry.
"Y-yeah! Let's both give it our all!"
I thanked her with all my heart.
"Mama and Aunt at the same time. My family tree is a complete mess, haha..."
"Hehe..."
The hand that stroked my hair as she said it was impossibly gentle.