Kindergarten
“Oh my goodness, she’s so cute!! Does she take after her mother? Chaewon’s going to be very popular~”
“Hohoho. Do you think so? You flatter me~”
My mom and the teacher were oddly in sync, like they’d been rehearsing for this moment all their lives.
While the two of them chatted away, I sat in the director’s office chair and swung my feet in the air.
Boring.
What a disappointment, Mom—getting played by pure lip service like that.
I was half terrified she’d get charmed into signing me up for the afternoon English play class too, because I had seen it on the schedule when we came in.
“Mom.”
I tugged hard at her skirt hem, trying to make her come to her senses.
“Hm? What is it?”
“Aigoo, Chaewon must feel uneasy in a strange place and want to stay close to her mother,” the teacher said.
“That’s not it….”
“Saying ‘that’s not it’ to the teacher is rude, you know.”
“That’s not it, ma’am.”
It wasn’t because I was bothered, okay? It was to protect our family’s money.
What a waste. What would I even use English for?
Thankfully, maybe because I’d drawn the attention to myself, the English play class never even came up.
You could say I was the unsung hero who had saved the family budget that day.
“Mom’s going now, okay? Don’t cry, all right?”
“Why would I cry? Hurry up and go.”
“My, what a brave girl! Have fun playing~”
Hmph. Treating me like a baby.
“Go already.”
“I can’t go until you let go of Mom’s skirt, you know?”
“Hah? What the—my hand did that without me noticing.”
“Aigoo, you’re adorable.”
Embarrassed, I let go of her hem, and my mom got to her feet under the teacher’s send-off.
“I’m off~”
Huh. She’s really leaving.
The emptiness after my mom disappeared beyond the doorway was something else.
It suddenly hit me: this was the first time in six years I’d been without my parents right next to me.
Tch. So what?
Humans are alone to begin with, right?
I didn’t have family in my previous life anyway.
What was a few hours, really?
…Wait, what the heck.
Why were the corners of my eyes stinging?
“Chaewon, shall we say hello to your new friends now?”
“…Y-yes.”
If the teacher hadn’t spoken to me then, I might have actually teared up.
I forced my eyes wide open and held it in, terrified I’d become a laughingstock.
Now that I’m a girl, I’ve probably become more emotionally sensitive. Crying over something like this, seriously….
“These friends are all very kind too, so you’ll make friends in no time.”
“Yesaaah.”
“If the kids end up liking our Chaewon too much, that might be the real worry~ Oh my, how can she be this pretty?”
Led by the teacher, I plodded along until we stopped in front of a door labeled Sun Class.
Rattle—
“Kids, we have a new friend today~”
At the teacher’s words, the children scattered around the room all turned to look at me at once.
I flinched.
Whoa, this is kind of a lot of pressure.
It felt almost like someone had shoved me forward and said, “Kids, Chaewon has something to say—!”
“How about a quick introduction?”
In all my life, both in this one and the last, had I ever been this much in the spotlight?
Well, they were just a bunch of snot-nosed brats.
I lifted my chin and spoke proudly.
“Hic—! My, m-my name is Lee Chaewon… y-yo.”
“All right, let’s give her a big hand~~”
Clap, clap, clap.
Shit… why did I have to stutter?
My ears burned red all the way to the tips.
.
.
.
……It had just been an accident born of unfamiliarity.
In the blink of an eye, I recovered my composure.
“Chaewon, do you want to color with me?”
“Sounds boring….”
“Ah, s-sorry…?”
“…Bring it here. We’ll do it together.”
With her little face drooping at the corners, I couldn’t possibly turn her away.
See, Mom? I knew this would happen.
I end up having to play with the kids.
“Heehee. My name is Kim Siyeon.”
“Mm-hm. Nice to meet you.”
Was this just one of those things where you scribbled on paper and that was it?
I took the picture book and a cup of colored pencils, then studied the outline first.
To make it easy for children, the lines were thick and black.
So I just fill in the inside, huh.
Apples are red.
Bananas are yellow.
The clouds are blue, but I’ll mix in a little white.
Hm, tomatoes overlap with apples, so I’ll make those a bit lighter, more salmon-colored.
Careful not to go outside the lines… huh? What am I doing?
Before I knew it, I had my tongue out and my face practically buried in the page.
I set the colored pencil down with a tap and looked over at Siyeon’s drawing beside me.
“If you color chocolate with black, that’s charcoal. Use brown.”
“Chock? What’s chock?”
“Charcoal. You know, charcoal?”
“Mm.”
“…”
Right. She really was an actual child.
What am I even doing? Why am I taking this so seriously?
By the time I snapped out of it, I’d already blasted through twenty picture-book pages.
…It was a little fun, okay. But only a little.
“I’m losing interest….”
I’ve cooled off…
“Finish the rest for me… I’ll check it.”
“Huh…? Is that homework?”
“Mm-hm.”
I wandered off to a corner by myself.
Ugh, don’t they have computers…?
If I were at home, I could kill time by playing with Mom and Dad.
But being told to play by myself was really underwhelming….
Even when I tried to enjoy my solitude in a daze, kids kept drifting around me like little moths.
“H-hello, Chaewon?”
“Oh, hi.”
“Your hair’s pretty.”
“Thanks.”
They were all girls.
They all seemed quiet and timid, just like the teacher had said—good kids, every one of them.
What did I even do for fun back then?
Not now. When I was a boy.
My memory was fuzzy, but I seemed to remember running around outside in a complete uproar.
It had been an orphanage with barely any toys, so at best I probably just ran around swinging sticks.
Come to think of it, what do the boys here play?
I hadn’t noticed when I first came in, but as if someone had drawn a line in gold ink, the girls and boys had gathered in separate clumps.
So the little cluster on the far side must be the boys.
Since they’d been sneaking glances at me ever since I arrived, it didn’t seem like they were staying away because they disliked me.
Some kind of rule?
Curious, I asked the kid next to me what they were doing.
“Don’t know? Not interested.”
“Ignore them. They’re bad guys.”
“Don’t look at Chaewon, you’ll catch stupid.”
Just from asking one kid, a whole cascade of reactions came tumbling out.
Ah, so they don’t get along.
“They all look so well-behaved, though.”
“It’s because the boss monkey didn’t come today.”
“The boss?”
“Yep! There’s this kid called Ha Jinsoo. He used to bully Siyeon all the time.”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s mean!”
There’s always one wherever you go.
The type who struts around with his shoulders all puffed up in a group.
Leaving aside the fact that such a kid existed at all…
I’m bored.
Wouldn’t it be more interesting to play with the boys than the girls?
Like sword fighting or something. That kind of thing.
“H-hey, where are you going, Chaewon?”
Despite Siyeon’s attempt to stop me, the picture book still clutched in her hands, I headed for the group of boys.
If she was scared, why didn’t she just sit over there instead of following me again?
“Hey, what are you guys doing?”
“Huh?!”
“W-what the—”
With the new kid barging in and breaking the unspoken rules all of a sudden, the boys all jumped in shock.
Wow, they’re really startled.
I ignored their petty reactions and looked down at what they were doing in a little circle.
Cards? Maybe?
…Huh?!
As I leaned closer, my eyes flew wide open.
Could that be…?
Pokémon!!! Duel King!!!
“W-where did you get those?!”
“Huh? The stationery store…?”
“My dad bought them for me.”
“D-do you have any idea how valuable these are? You can’t just treat them like playing cards!”
So card games really were in style right now!
These cheap-looking scraps of paper would skyrocket in price later on!
I didn’t know exactly which cards they were, but I clearly remembered some gamer I used to trade with bragging about them.
I’d even checked the internet to make sure he wasn’t bluffing.
“Do you like Duel King too?”
“Pfft, girls only like dolls, don’t they? Not interested.”
I am interested.
More precisely, in the cards’ value.
“I love it.”
“Ohhh, really?”
“You’re lying! Name a character.”
“Uh, I know that one… dragon.”
“Tch, you don’t even know what it is.”
Such innocent fools.
Those cards aren’t ordinary toys.
They’re my stocks and real estate!
“Hey, get lost. You’re annoying me.”
“Ugh. What kind of girl is this… sniff….”
I shoved aside the one who was picking a pointless fight and stepped into the center.
A dazzling spread of cards in every color imaginable.
Ah, how radiant my future assets are.
From now on, I was going to tell Dad to buy me only Duel King or Pocketmon cards whenever he wanted to give me a gift.
Leave it to me, Mom! Dad! Your little girl is going to make us rich!
First, I needed to figure out what was what.
“Hey, Greenie. Which one of these is expensive… no, I mean, a good card?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Who else would I be talking to? The one in the green clothes.”
“…That white dragon. The one with high attack.”
With the card owner’s permission, I examined it from every angle.
This one reeks of money at a glance. I need to remember its name.
“Ch-Chaewon. I’ll give you a different picture book… let’s go back….”
“It’s fine. This card game is way more interesting right now.”
“Nngh….”
Siyeon, who had followed me all the way over with reluctant persistence, looked ready to leave at any moment, but she stayed right beside me.
And after watching them for quite a while, I realized something.
They don’t even know how to duel.
Since they couldn’t do the number math, all they did was bicker over things like, “This card is prettier,” or “That one looks stronger.”
Hm. Maybe these aren’t even valuable to them?
I rested my chin on my hand and thought hard, then took off the beaded bracelet I’d been wearing.
“First come, first served! Whoever brings me a card I like gets this bracelet!”
“What’s first come…”
“Sounds like a name….”
“You’ll give us a bracelet if we give you a card?”
I realized too late that I’d used a difficult phrase, but fortunately they got the gist of it.
“I made this myself. It’s precious to me!”
While the actual card owners hesitated, the one who rushed forward first was, unexpectedly, Siyeon.
“Me! Me, me! Chaewon, give it to me!”
“Do you have any cards? I’m only taking Duel King or Pocketmon.”
“Uh, I don’t… I’ll buy some tomorrow!”
“Then come back tomorrow.”
“Hiiing.”
I’d noticed it even during the coloring earlier.
This girl’s utterly heartbreaking expression was, honestly, a work of art.
Murmur murmur—
“The bracelet…”
“Maybe it’s super rare.”
“Yeah, look at how much Siyeon wants it….”
“I’ll give you mine! Trade with me!”
Thanks to Siyeon’s dramatic performance, once the floodgates opened, everyone started shouting for me to take their cards too.
Heh heh heh.
I handed the bracelet over to the kid who brought me the card I liked best.
Ah, this was the thrill of trading!
It reminded me of my days selling items in games.
Anyway, I could always make another bracelet from the bead set Dad bought me.
“Hehe, thanks—!”
I was grinning at my unexpected haul when—
“I-I’ll just give you mine for free…!”
“Chaewon, should I give you mine too?”
What the hell, even the ones handing me cards without expecting anything in return had started to show up.
What is this?
“Thanks!”
“It’s nothing!”
“Yeah, yeah, we have lots of cards.”
Heh-heh-heh.
I am rich!!
***
Chaewon’s father, Lee Jeonghwan, and her mother, Park Eunjeong, were beside themselves with worry over their daughter.
“I’m worried. Will our Chaewon adjust all right?”
“She’ll be fine. Who do you think her parents are?”
People around them had told them not to, but the two of them had once caved in to their daughter’s whining when she said she didn’t want to go to kindergarten.
Honestly, they’d also been a little greedy to keep her home and spend more time with her, and since she was such a smart child, they’d wondered whether it was really necessary to send her at all.
But then they happened to see a TV expert on early childhood development say:
Daycare and kindergarten are a small society outside the shelter of home, where children first learn social skills like compromise and rules by meeting peers and adults who are not their parents, and where they begin to develop independence.
So in the end, they hurriedly sent her off to kindergarten.
“Chaewon is a good kid, but… will she really follow the rules?”
“Mm, well….”
Even Jeonghwan, who was usually endlessly optimistic, trailed off awkwardly.
Hmph. Don’t wanna?
The image of their daughter pouting with her lips stuck out came vividly to mind.
She had a strong sense of self.
She never threw tantrums, so as parents they found her wonderfully well-behaved.
Kids don’t really have right and wrong when it comes to each other, though.
Once emotions got involved, there was no telling how it would end.
“Still, she’s a smart child. I’m sure nothing will happen.”
“Mm.”
Carrying all their worries with them, they arrived at the kindergarten.
“You’re here?”
“Yes, has Chaewon been good?”
“Of course. Chaewon, your mom and dad are here~”
No sooner had she finished speaking than their lovely daughter popped into view from far away.
“Mommm—”
“Did our girl have fun?”
“Mm-hm! I worked hard!”
“Worked…?”
“I’m going to raise our family back up.”
“Yes, yes, our daughter. Let’s go home now.”
They had no idea what sort of game she’d been playing, but she seemed to have spent the day happily enough, which put them at ease.
.
.
.
...And then, the very next day.
“I’m calling because, well… ma’am, Chaewon got into a fight with a boy. I thought you should know.”
“W-what?! I-is our Chaewon all right? W-what do you mean!”
“No, no, ma’am, please calm down….”
“How am I supposed to calm down? You’re telling me my child got hit only two days after starting kindergarten…!”
“What? Uh… no, ma’am, I think there’s been a slight misunderstanding….”
The flustered director cautiously added one more thing.
“Chaewon… was the one who hit the boy.”
“Whaaaat?!”