The Things She Let Slip
"Excuse me, ma'am."
In the end I let myself get needled into it, and I called over the employee who was setting out side dishes some way off.
"Yes~ What can I get you?"
Maybe it was because this was a neighborhood sashimi place. Her tone sat in a strange, friendly middle ground, polite and casual braided together.
"One more bottle of soju here, please."
The woman glanced at the two of us and smiled, plainly pleased.
"Say, you wouldn't happen to be relatives, would you?"
"No. We're father and daughter."
"Oh my. You look much too young to be a dad."
"Please don't say things like that. If you talk that way for no reason, my dad gets far too happy."
"I do not, so don't say weird things, Jia."
I felt oddly embarrassed.
The woman laughed—ho, ho, ho—then took a bottle of soju from the refrigerator and set it on the table.
"It worked, Dad. I guess you really do still look young."
"If I looked that young, they wouldn't have checked only your ID a minute ago."
"Even so, you're forty before you know it. Has your conscience given up the ghost, Dad?"
"...What is 'given up the ghost' supposed to mean, coming from you to your dad?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I must have let something slip because I've been drinking."
No matter how I looked at it, nothing had slipped. She had said it on purpose. Then again, Jia teasing me was hardly a one-day affair, so I let it pass without much comment.
"But Jia. You did get your mom's permission before you came today, right?"
Not that I had any intention of letting the rest slide on that account. It was obvious at a glance that today, too, she had either never contacted her mother or come after something closer to an announcement than a request. I ought to pick at that and at least pretend to scold her. Only then, I figured, would this knot in me loosen even a little.
"Of course I did. What kind of daughter do you take me for?"
"A good one. One who quietly loves playing tricks on her mom and dad."
"Oh my. I tease Mom plenty, but I hardly ever tease you."
"Be a little good to your mom, too. Don't save all of it for me. It's just the two of you now. Think how hard that must be for her."
"I can't. When I tease you, you don't know how to play along, but Mom takes it really well."
"So that's why you only acted up around your mom?"
"Well, there are other reasons, but for the moment, yes?"
A question I had asked without a thought in my head had just undone a secret that had sat unanswered for more than ten years. It was a very Jia sort of reason, if nothing else. Even so—had she really been showing only her good side to me over something like that?
"I mean, when I act up, Mom goes, 'Hey, Han Jia!' and scolds me properly. You don't. You just say, 'Jia, you shouldn't do that...' and if it looks like I'm about to cause trouble, you don't even scold me. You just come trotting after me. How am I supposed to misbehave with you the way I do with Mom, watching you like that? I'd feel too sorry."
"...You were thinking that far ahead? If we're talking about the days I followed you around, you were in elementary school."
"Elementary schoolers think more deeply than you'd expect, Dad. Anyway, that's why I decided I ought to always be a kind, well-mannered daughter to you."
Now that I heard it, I did have a faint memory of Jia saying something like this once. Even so, I had never imagined that was why she had been good to me. From where I stood, a kid Jia's age was allowed a little cheek. And Yuna already scolded her sharply enough. I had held back because I thought I, of all people, shouldn't pile on.
"Still, it was a success in its own way, wasn't it? All through middle school and high school, whenever Mom scolded me, you stepped in and defended me. Thanks to that, I got out of punishments I should have caught more than once or twice. Thank you, Dad."
"If you're grateful for that, it makes me want to scold you."
"So what? I'm an adult now, and these days Mom doesn't really scold me either."
"...I'll say it again, Jia. You're only twenty. You're hardly at an age to be calling yourself an adult. You're still a kid. A kid."
"Twenty is how old you were when you got Mom pregnant and had me."
"And that was the proof of how young we were. We messed up at that age, and your mother and I went through absolute hell because of it."
"And thanks to that, you got a daughter as good and cute and pretty as me while you were still this young. Have a drink with me, Dad."
Somewhere along the way she had filled a soju glass to the brim, and now she lifted it toward me. A buzz seemed to have settled on her, her energy ticking up a notch. She looked happier than usual, and the polite front she showed me had fallen away.
Our glasses met with a bright clink, and I sent the soju straight down my throat. By this point the alcohol ought to have been starting to turn on me. But whether it was the mood or simply a good day, I barely felt drunk at all, and it went down in easy gulps.
"I think I finally understand why people drink. When I drank with my friends, I didn't understand it in the slightest. Somehow I feel good, and things I could never usually say just come right out..."
"That's more or less what it's for, but... don't get too fond of it. Saying the wrong thing when you're drunk is the scariest thing in the world."
"There are times when it's better to let your real heart show, even if it takes a slip of the tongue, aren't there?"
"Well... I suppose that's true."
Jia was talking like some worn-down middle-aged man. It wasn't entirely wrong. I just had no idea what she was thinking as she said it.
All at once, she started watching me.
She looked at my face with a complicated expression, glanced back down at her soju glass, and little by little a hesitant look came over her as her eyes moved between the two. Then, suddenly, she muttered something fast, as if to herself.
Her voice was small, but it reached me. Perfectly clear—each syllable drove itself into my mind, sharp and distinct.
I didn't answer. I said nothing, but I had already known, at least a little, that Jia carried a thought like that. And if I reacted, I wouldn't have known what I was supposed to say to her. So I made a point of pretending I hadn't heard, sloshed soju I couldn't even drink into a glass, and tipped it into my mouth.
"Your mom's doing all right, isn't she, Jia?"
As long as the subject had come up, I might as well steer us toward something a little brighter. The last time I had asked, I couldn't quite remember, but I was fairly sure she had said Yuna was getting along well enough. Turn the conversation that way, and maybe this feeling would ease. That was the thought behind the question I tossed out.
But.
"She's trying to be all right..."
Jia said it on a sigh.
The moment I heard it, a great many thoughts rose at once. I couldn't tell whether I was supposed to be glad or sorry. What I did know was that the words closed tight around my chest.
The walk home.
It was an awkward hour for sleep, and this was the first time Jia had stepped out of line like this. Putting her straight to bed felt wrong, so I ducked into a convenience store, thinking I would at least pick up something simple for a late snack. I bought the imported beer she had said she wanted, and an assortment of things that could pass for bar snacks. Then I caught sight of her in a corner of the store, brooding over something with fierce concentration.
"Jia, is there something you want to get?"
She looked at my face, a little startled, and then suddenly broke into a grin. It was not a reassuring expression. A chill ran down my spine as I went over to see what she had been looking at, and she pulled one of the items she had been turning over in her hands off the rack and headed for the counter at a pace just short of a run.
Printed clear as day on the thing she had picked up were the numbers 0.01.
I knew exactly what it was.
I was so badly thrown that I turned to give her a piece of my mind, but Jia clapped a hand over my mouth, her face full of mischief, and slipped her arm through mine. She spoke to me the way lovers tease each other.
"Shh... Oppa. Let's just buy it and go."
The part-timer, bored out of his mind a moment ago, went through an expression too complicated to name. He had reason to. However generously I counted, the gap between Jia's age and mine came to nearly twenty years, and Jia looked even younger than she was. No one was going to take the two of us for an ordinary couple.
I forced her hand off my mouth, glared at her, and said,
"Jia. Put it back. Stop messing around..."
She only clung to me harder.
"Why not... Oppa. This isn't enough for you after all, is it? Should I go get another?"
I came within a breath of saying fuck out loud.
What was wrong with this girl. Was she drunk. Well, of course she was drunk—she had been drinking. Even so, I couldn't believe a drunk spell looked like this.
A shiver crawled up my spine, and I glanced at the part-timer. He was staring at us, eyes wide, as if his face had given up on him entirely. Any more of a struggle, and I would only be making his night worse. With no other choice, I took out my card and handed it over.
"Goodbye."
"Take care."
The moment we stepped outside, I could see him attacking his phone like a man possessed. He was obviously recounting what had just happened to everyone he knew. All I could do was pray he hadn't heard anyone call me Dad on the way in. If that word had reached him too, there was no telling what kind of sordid story would come of it.
"Have you lost your mind, Jia?"
"Why, Dad?"
"You're asking because you don't know? What the hell did you just do in there?"
"It's been ages since I saw you, and it felt like we only ever do the same boring things, so I tried something a little different. Something fun."
"Even so, this is way over the line."
"So what? We're never going to see him again anyway."
"You might see him once. I come to this convenience store all the time."
"Then that's perfect. You can brag about it, can't you? Dating a younger woman. For a man, that basically means you're winning."