Oppa, Just for Today
"Uh… do you want a drink, Jia?"
I couldn't quite make sense of what had just come out of her mouth. A bar—but what kind of bar? Not the sort middle-aged men haunted, surely. She had to mean one of those cheap places college kids went to. Either way, it wasn't somewhere you took your parents.
"It's not so much that I want to drink… I just want to try it once, with you, Dad."
"Then let's just go to a sashimi place, or barbecue. A college-town bar isn't somewhere a guy like your old man ought to be walking into."
"Oh, come on. Why are you an ahjussi? You're still in your prime. You're the one who's always bragging that you're still in your thirties."
"How am I not an ahjussi when I've got a daughter your age?"
"Then just for today, I'll call you oppa instead. Oppa~♥"
Jia suddenly turned on the charm and called me oppa. A rush of feelings I couldn't even name poured through my head, and I felt my face go hot.
No.
What was I even supposed to call this?
It wasn't a feeling I could simply say I disliked, and yet being glad about it was absolutely out of the question. I had no idea how I was supposed to react, and my mind went blank.
"Dad. If I tease you, you're supposed to play along. If you don't react at all, I get embarrassed too."
"…There's a limit to how far a joke can go before Dad plays along. What kind of thing is that to say?"
"Why? Do you hate it when I call you oppa?"
"No, it's not that I hate it…"
"Wow, Dad. That's kind of creepy. Don't tell me you've actually fantasized about me calling you oppa."
"That's not what I meant. What, am I supposed to say I hate it when my own daughter acts cute?"
"Oh my. The way you're getting worked up, it really is a little suspicious. I've never seen you raise your voice at me before…"
"I'm not—"
Somehow, the older Jia got, the better she seemed to get at needling me. In that, she was the spitting image of her mother.
"Haa… anyway. Jia. Where do you want to go?"
I let out a small sigh and asked. The two of us had been wandering the movie theater building with nowhere to be, drifting without a destination, and I just wanted to get into some restaurant—any restaurant—and talk sitting down.
"I want a bar… Then you pick, Dad. Somewhere a dad who's forty any day now, who loves hearing oppa from the daughter he hasn't seen in forever, can drink with her and not feel awkward at all."
"You going to keep teasing me? And it hasn't even been that long. How long has it been since we saw each other?"
"I told you. One day apart and it's been forever. Anyway, you decide, Dad."
I sighed and started running through a list in my head. Then, all at once, a place came to me.
"Do you like sashimi, Jia? Let's go to a sashimi place."
"Sashimi?"
"A barbecue place might leave us smelling like meat, and a proper bar… you're too young for that."
"A tent bar near campus would be fine too…"
"Like I just said, that's not a place a father and daughter go."
"Which is why I'm calling you oppa."
"Are you trying to get me arrested? Do you have any idea how many years apart we are?"
I'd been talking without thinking, and the words just slipped out. Jia looked at me, a little startled, and then a strange smile crept over her face.
"Oh my. That's not something you say in front of your daughter, is it? That sounded a little dirty."
"…You're an adult now. You said you already know everything there is to know."
"Yeah. I do know."
I hadn't expected her to call me out on something like that. Well. It wasn't as if I'd said anything I shouldn't have. Men in their forties sweet-talking young college women were hardly a rare breed, and there was a reason the term Young Forty had started going around.
"Then let's go to the sashimi place, Dad."
"You're sure that's all right?"
"Yes. It's been a while since I had sashimi. I want some."
"Good, then."
With that, our destination was settled. We pulled up a map and headed for a sashimi place nearby. Walking there with her, it struck me that the mood had loosened—enough that I was talking with Jia more easily, more like we usually did, than I had the last time.
We looked around the neighborhood and couldn't find a decent spot, so in the end we headed for a place near home. I'd only ever ordered delivery from it once, but I didn't remember it being bad. I'd been the one to suggest sashimi, and you couldn't exactly get anything special in the middle of the city, so we kept it simple: rockfish, flounder, and, as Jia had asked, a bottle of soju.
"Every time I drink it, I think the same thing. I honestly don't get soju."
Jia said it as she took the glass I poured for her. Pouring a drink for my own daughter felt strangely awkward. I had no interest in trotting out that tired line about how drinking made you an adult. It was just that I'd spent so long seeing her only as a kid on her way to school, and now here she was with a glass in her hand. I couldn't help feeling the years.
"Honestly, adults always look like they love it so much, I thought it would taste good. But it's just bitter."
"Says the one who wanted to drink."
"Right. That's why I wanted to try it with you. I thought it might be a little different."
She said it smiling. It wasn't a particularly funny moment, but her expression pulled a smile out of me too, and I poured soju into my own glass.
"It's poured. Want to toast with Dad?"
"Sure."
Jia shyly clinked her glass against mine, then turned her face away, covered her mouth, and drank in a slightly clumsy pose. No one had taught her, but she was imitating the gesture well enough that I laughed again in spite of myself.
"You don't have to do that in front of Dad. Just drink however you want."
"But who else am I supposed to practice this with, if not you?"
"You could do it in front of your mom. Or other adults."
"Come on. This is a historic day—my first drink with Dad. Teach me a little. This and that."
"Dad doesn't really know either. I probably only know as much as you do."
It wasn't as if I'd ever done sales, or worked somewhere I had to curry favor with a boss. All through my twenties I'd drifted from one contract job and factory floor to another, until at some point I'd landed at a decent company and ended up behind a desk. The only elder who'd ever taught me anything was my father-in-law, and all I remembered was taking a soju glass from him back when I was about Jia's age. You could call it similar enough, but that was the whole of the memory. There were fragments—something about not aiming the label at the other person when you poured, which way to hold your hand, whether you were supposed to touch the bottle to the glass or keep it clear—but I'd never really used any of it, and I didn't know enough to teach. She'd probably learn it more accurately from a YouTube video later.
"Really? I heard drinking etiquette is incredibly complicated."
"So complicated that nobody actually knows it, and everyone says something different. Anyway, don't worry about it in front of Dad. And that stuff's going out of fashion. By the time you enter the workforce, nobody's going to expect a new hire to know it."
"Oh, I saw that on the news. The MZ generation, or whatever they call it."
There was plenty I wanted to say about the word MZ. But if I went any deeper, I'd end up dragging my daughter into some pointless talk about current events, and I didn't want that.
"Anyway, when you're drinking with Dad, just drink comfortably. You're in college. Until you graduate you'll only be drinking with your friends, so you ought to get used to that."
"You never know. What if I end up drinking with a professor? Or some other adults."
"When the time comes, you'll be nervous enough to be polite on your own."
"Your parenting score is a zero, Dad. Keep that up and your daughter turns into someone with no manners."
I'd only said it to put her at ease, and instead Jia scolded me. Even so, one glass became two, and the mood slowly warmed. Jia kept insisting she didn't like it, and yet she took the soju as naturally as anything. And maybe because it was my first drink with my daughter, it went down more easily than usual.
"Should we order another bottle, Dad?"
"No. Let's stop here."
My tolerance was pitifully low. I couldn't afford to get swept up in the mood. There was nothing more embarrassing, or more pathetic, than getting drunk in front of your daughter. Jia, for her part, looked perfectly fine. Yuna could hold her liquor pretty well, so if that had been passed down, of course Jia would too. Back in our twenties, if the two of us went through four bottles, it was routine for Yuna to finish three of them herself—and then I'd be the one suffering the hangover while she giggled at me. That picture was still vivid.
"Just like Mom said, Dad."
"What is?"
"Mom said you can't hold your liquor."
So Jia already knew.
"…I can't drink much, but I'm not this bad."
Hearing it to my face stung my pride a little, and the words came out on reflex. Jia let out a puff of laughter, full of mischief.
"Come on. You look drunk already. Okay, Dad. I'll stop."
No matter how I looked at it, she really was Yuna's daughter. How was it that even the things she did were exactly like her mother's?