Neighbor (2)
I came home and flung myself onto the bed. Then I buried my face in the pillow and started tearing into the me from a few minutes ago.
"Watashi is a lost cause..."
Why do I only ever regret things after the fact?
If I'd just fixed it on the spot—even if I'd fumbled a little—it wouldn't have been a problem at all. If I hadn't run away. If I'd just scraped together a scrap of courage.
Regretting it now was already too late, wasn't it. The man who'd moved in next door might even think I was some kind of unwell person.
Greet the Neighbor Who Moved in Next Door
I opened the information window and stared at the quest. I'd never paid it much mind, but down in the corner of the quest window, there was tiny text.
If I pressed that, the quest would probably vanish. I'd never used it before, but right now it was probably the right choice. It was a quest I couldn't succeed at anymore anyway.
I let out a sigh and slowly reached out. And the instant I was about to tap Abandon—
Ding-dong—
The sudden chime of the doorbell made me jump, and I clicked the wrong thing. Thanks to that, the quest wasn't abandoned; it simply winked out of the air.
"Who is it?"
Nobody should have been coming to my place at this hour. If it were my parents or Sea, they would have called first. Beyond that, I didn't have anyone close enough to show up at my door in the first place.
Wait—was it the chicken? Had I been wrong about it being delivered next door, and it was only arriving now?!
Sure, the shop owner had said the delivery was complete, but maybe they'd been the ones who mixed it up! And now they'd realized the mistake and come back with it after all! Then nobody would have done anything wrong, and the world would be complete!
I rallied at once and scrambled for the front door.
"Hai! Coming!"
As if I were about to be reunited with family separated for decades, I didn't waste a second. I threw the door open for the long-awaited audience with my fried chicken.
"Hi!"
"...Eh?"
I dropped my gaze toward the voice, and a cute little girl was standing there with her hand up, greeting me brightly. She didn't lower it, either—just stared up at me with sparkling eyes—so I found myself answering before I knew it.
"...Ah. Hello?"
"Tsk. You gotta talk polite to Unnie."
"Hello-yo!"
It was a thoroughly mangled attempt at honorifics. That aside, the low voice that had come from behind her was unmistakably a man's. The moment I realized that, I noticed—late—that the man I'd run into earlier was standing behind the girl.
Our eyes met again, and once more he was the one who spoke first.
"I'm sorry."
"...Huh?"
"It looks like my daughter took a chicken delivery that wasn't even hers and ate it. That chicken you mentioned earlier—that was it, wasn't it?"
"Ah..."
Starting a conversation with a stranger isn't easy. That goes not only for someone with zero social skills like me, but for other people too. Apologizing to a complete stranger is even harder. And yet here he was, bowing his head, offering a proper apology—after coming all the way to my door.
Amazing. That was the first thing I felt. It was a painful contrast to me, who'd panicked and run away on the spot.
"Hana. You apologize too."
"Hai. Gomen nasai."
Even my inner voice was telling me to apologize. Right. That was probably the correct thing to do. I should apologize as politely as the man next door had. So I lowered my head and bowed just as he had.
"Uh... I like strawberries better than apples, though!"
"Not the kind you eat. The 'I'm sorry' kind of apology."
What on earth was my inner voice rambling about? Not that I wouldn't pick strawberries over apples if I had to... but if I were naming my favorite fruit, it would definitely be tangerines.
"Aha! Like what this big bro is doing?"
"Ahem. Not big bro. You say unnie. Unnie."
Huh?
I noticed something off a beat too late. He seemed to as well; his voice turned awkward.
"...Listen. You don't need to apologize. We're the ones who were in the wrong."
"But just now you told watashi to apologize."
He looked startled and asked back,
"Pardon? Did I? ...I thought I was talking to my daughter."
"That's right! Daddy told me to eat an apple! He clearly said Hana!"
Ah. So that was it. I understood the situation now.
"I didn't mean eat an apple... ah, forget it. Eat all you want."
"Not apples—strawberries!"
"Fine. I'll buy you strawberries next time."
He sighed at his daughter's wide-eyed innocence, then steered us back to the point.
"Anyway, I'm sorry. I'll of course pay you back for the chicken, and if there's anything else you need, please tell me."
"What's your name?"
"...Sorry? Uh, I'm Bae Hyunsoo."
"Ah, I was trying to ask your daughter's name..."
"Ah..."
The one who broke the slightly awkward silence was a little girl with no sense of atmosphere whatsoever.
"Bae Hana, seven years old!"
"Same as me."
"Huh?"
"My name is Yukino Hana. I'm twenty-one."
Hyunsoo watched the girl from next door chatting happily with his daughter. They had moved over to his apartment by then. The girl had insisted she didn't particularly want the money, so Hyunsoo had practically begged her to at least let him treat her to dinner.
Call it an astonishing coincidence. The girl's name was the same as his daughter's.
Bae Hana.
Yukino Hana.
Their surnames, of course, made it clear their nationalities were different.
Her self-introduction had startled him into asking,
"You're Japanese?"
"Hai. Nihonjin desu."
Honestly, he hadn't noticed at all. Her Korean was far too natural for him to think of her as a foreigner. She did drop unexpected Japanese into the middle of sentences, but didn't that sound a lot like the way young people talked these days? Plenty of trendy slang was Japanese anyway. He'd just figured she was a young woman with an unusual way of speaking.
Once they were in Hyunsoo's home, the two Hanas chattered away at full speed, and he mostly listened from the side. When something piqued his curiosity, though, he did ask.
"So why did you come to Korea, Ms. Yukino? Immigration? Studying abroad?"
"Ah..."
For the record, they'd agreed to use her surname so the identical given names wouldn't get mixed up. He'd also vaguely remembered that in Japan, given names were only permitted among close friends.
Ms. Yukino hesitated a moment, then explained with an embarrassed little smile.
"Watashi watched K-pop and started dreaming of becoming an idol. But the wall of reality was terribly high... In the end, I gave up on that dream..."
"Ah... Well. Chin up. Even if you're not an idol, I'm sure you can succeed at plenty of other things, Ms. Yukino."
"Arigato."
Hyunsoo nodded and offered what comfort he could. If that was the reason, it was reasonable enough. He'd heard that plenty of younger foreigners were into K-pop. And the encouragement hadn't been empty, either. Looking at Ms. Yukino's face, it wouldn't have been strange at all to call her an idol—her looks were that striking.
"Then is big bro an idol?"
"I'm a jobless girl who used to dream of being one..."
"Bae Hana. Why do you keep calling Ms. Yukino 'big bro'? I told you, it's unnie. Unnie."
Every time Hana said big bro, Ms. Yukino could only offer a strained little smile. Unfortunately, Hyunsoo had no idea about her circumstances, so he couldn't understand why she kept flinching.
"Big bro! Want some chicken?"
"Chicken..."
"You can't give a guest what you already started eating. Hold on. Daddy will make dinner."
Hana shook her head hard.
"Mm. I'm full from the chicken! Daddy and big bro can eat together!"
"I'm sorry. I'll apologize on her behalf."
"Haha..."
Hyunsoo headed for the kitchen and asked Yukino,
"Is there anything in particular you'd like for dinner?"
"Anything's fine."
"Hana wants kimchi stew!"
"You just said you were full. You can't even eat kimchi stew. It's too spicy."
"It's fiiine if you rinse it in water and wipe off the chili powder."
Where had a palate that cursed even come from? He'd never taught her to do anything like that. Was kindergarten the culprit?
"This dad does not recognize that kind of cursed food."
"I want kimchi stew! Kimchi stew! Kimchi stew!"
After a stretch of whining, Hana cleverly found another angle of attack.
"Big bro! You want kimchi stew too, right?"
"Hey! That's cheating...!"
"Watashi likes kimuchi stew too."
"See! Big bro wants it too! Let's have kimchi stew!"
"...Fine. So sit quietly on the sofa. Ms. Yukino, keep an eye on her for me, would you?"
"Hai."
Hyunsoo pulled out the ingredients for kimchi stew. Their conversation had run long, and quite a bit of time had passed, so he set out to make it quickly.
"Whew... Now we just wait."
While the stew came to a boil, he turned his head to see what the two of them were doing.
"Ack!"
"Hiiit!"
Yukino had been watching him intently from right behind his back, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. The chain reaction sent her letting out an adorable shriek of her own, trembling all over.
"You startled me. How long have you been standing there?"
"Uh... about a minute?"
"You could have said something."
"Hehe. You looked so focused..."
Hyunsoo glanced toward the sofa.
"Where's Hana?"
"She's out cold. Snoring."
"She threw a fit about wanting kimchi stew, so I went and made it, and now..."
"Hana-chan is so cute."
"She does look like an angel when she's asleep. It's when she's awake that's the problem."
While they were talking behind his daughter's back, the kimchi stew finished.
"Ah, the stew's done."
"Should I wake Hana-chan?"
"Mm... that's all right. She looks like an angel when she's sleeping, so let's just leave her. She already stole your chicken, Ms. Yukino. We'll eat, just the two of us. If she gets hungry, she'll wake up on her own."
And so the two of them sat down at the table for a somewhat late dinner. Kimchi stew and white rice, plus an assortment of side dishes.
"Thank you."
"Haha. I just hope you don't change your mind after you've eaten."
"And I'm sorry about earlier. For running off all of a sudden."
"Sorry? ...Ah, it's fine. If anything, I should be the one apologizing. Just eat. You must be hungry."
She took him at his word, picked up her spoon, and first sipped a mouthful of the stew broth.
"Wow... oishii!"
"I'm glad. Honestly, other than Hana, I almost never cook for anyone."
"Did you make all of this yourself?"
"That's right. If I lived alone it might be different, but when you're raising a daughter, your cooking improves whether you like it or not."
She nodded in admiration—then suddenly stared hard at empty air. And then, out of nowhere, she said,
"Hyunsoo-san."
"...Yes?"