A Strike?
Hana's fall from grace was a terrifying thing—every bit as frightening as Lucifer in full.
Haru went to wake her again today. It was the weekend, so there was no school, but getting up early still mattered. Hana slept in now and then, yet most mornings she was already awake by the time Haru stepped into the room.
Which meant the errand was little more than a formality, an excuse to say good morning on the way in. Today, though, something felt off.
Hana had wound the blanket around herself like a caterpillar. Haru let out a soft laugh. Rolled up tight inside the covers, she was simply too cute.
"Hana, time to get up."
Haru said it as she climbed onto the bed. Hana didn't react. On any other morning she would have kicked the blanket aside and thrown herself into Haru's arms.
"Hana...?"
Something was wrong. A Hana who gave no answer—how could that not be strange? Startled, afraid something might be wrong with her body, Haru leaned in to look at her face.
It had puckered into the very image of a sulky old man from a fairy tale. Both cheeks were blown out like balloons, and her eyebrows stood at sharp, angry diagonals. She had become a person whose entire face announced, I am extremely mad!
One look, and Haru understood that something had gone very wrong.
The moment Hana declared a strike, the department at the Starlight Institute responsible for her flew into an uproar. The people who mainly looked after her gathered, though in truth not many managed her face to face.
Aside from Bora and Haru, everyone else supported her from a distance. They never dealt with her directly. Looking after a small child was something women simply did better, wasn't it? And while Hana herself wasn't especially shy around strangers, unnies were obviously preferable to middle-aged men.
For the record, the institute contained not a single man handsome enough for Hana to fall for. All that remained were uncles ground down by society until there was nothing left to grind. Had Hana known, she would have been appalled. She didn't much care for men.
At any rate, assembled in the conference room from early morning were Haru, Bora, and Department Head Kim Jaeman, who oversaw the two of them.
Kim Jaeman spoke first.
"Does anyone know why she's like this? Did somebody do something to Hana?"
He was the sort who liked the variety shows about those so-called golden children, the troubled little ones the experts were forever trying to fix. Having raised kids of his own, he watched with real investment. He had never imagined a golden-child crisis would land on him. His own children were long past puberty, so he no longer had to handle them the way those shows handled their problem cases.
Raising little ones had been so long ago that he couldn't even remember how he had done it.
"I don't think we did anything particularly wrong..."
"Could she be angry because we sent her to school? From her point of view, the change was pretty sudden."
"Even so... she doesn't seem to dislike school all that much."
In Korea, where compulsory education was the law, there was no way for Hana to skip school.
There was exactly one way not to go: lock her in a basement and draw out only the materials they needed, with the occasional trip to a park so she could get some sun. They were not about to do anything so inhumane, which meant Hana had to go to school.
Even prodigies and gifted children went. Nothing cultivated social skills like a classroom. Scraping by with a qualification exam was always an option, but living through school once wasn't a bad experience either. When else would Hana get to spend time with children her own age?
She had been living beyond a barren, savage gate with nothing at all, so if she was going to adapt to modern society, school was all the more essential. There was a limit to what Bora and Haru could teach her by talking alone.
"For now, we'd better find out why she's angry."
"What's she doing right now?"
"She's watching TV."
"She is...?"
They had the weekend, so they decided to take their time uncovering the reason. For Bora and Haru, who usually played so easily with her, the sudden change was hard to adjust to.
"You don't think puberty's hit her, do you?"
Having raised children, Kim Jaeman knew puberty didn't arrive at Hana's age. These days his kids barely greeted him when he got home before vanishing into their rooms, but at her age they used to plaster themselves to his legs, delighted he was back.
He missed those days. He dabbed at a tear, then said:
"Isn't she a little young for that?"
"But kids these days are so precocious."
"Puberty comes in middle school. Elementary kids can go through it, sure, but that's fifth and sixth graders. Hana's only in third grade."
"Hiiing..."
Never having raised a child, Bora and Haru felt their heads start to ache. Perhaps because they had never done the work of parenting, they were short on the knack for handling small children.
Then again, she seemed angry—but was she truly angry? Even now she was in her room, rolled up in a blanket, watching anime.
In the old days they might have settled it with the rod of love, but this was unmistakably the modern world. Violence could not be justified. When children went astray, the cause was usually the parents. On rare occasions the parents were perfectly fine and the child was the problem, but in most cases the fault lay with the parents.
Didn't people say a child was a mirror of their parents? The old folks had never been wrong. If Hana had ended up like this, it meant the problem lay with them—the ones playing the part of her parents.
"For now, let's not do anything she dislikes, and wait it out calmly."
"I'll do the things she likes and cheer her up."
With that, Haru started thinking about the tasty snacks Hana would enjoy. When your mood was bad, delicious things were exactly what you craved.
"Don't force the things she hates. She's still a little kid. And don't smother her with so much attention that it becomes a burden. Raising a child is incredibly hard work, but that doesn't mean it's impossible."
Kim Jaeman said it while unpacking the child-rearing he had lived through himself. In this room, he was the only one who was married.
Then he went on.
"And read those books I gave you today, properly. You're researchers, yes, but to Hana you're also like mothers, so the two of you—Bora and Haru—are extremely important to this institute."
"Yes, sir!"
The Easiest Way to Raise a Child in the World
Our Child Is Angry. What Do We Do?
How Do I Handle My One and Only Golden Child?
In Bora's and Haru's hands were parenting books pulled straight off the bestseller lists. If you were short on practice, you learned the theory. Study parenting the way you studied at school, and wouldn't it work out to some degree? That was their thinking.
Blackened Hana was boycotting nearly every part of daily life, with the single exception of watching anime.
Which meant Haru and Bora were the ones left to suffer.
"Bwoooong~ Here comes the airplane~ Open up, please~"
Haru pinched a piece of vegetable between her chopsticks and ferried it toward Hana's mouth. The mouth did not budge. It might as well have been a fortress.
"Mmm!"
Hana shook her head from side to side. A firm refusal. Haru set the chopsticks back on the tray.
Still, a person had to eat three meals a day, didn't they? Sunlight could fill her to some extent, but for Hana, who was still growing, actually eating mattered.
Haru had no idea the girl was secretly sneaking crackers, and the thought that Hana had gone hungry all day gnawed at her. Children were like that. Neglect to feed them because it was a hassle, and they collapsed from hunger.
By middle school they would boil instant ramen or do whatever it took to deal with an empty stomach, but a third grader skipping meal after meal was not a good idea.
Hana hadn't gone to the cafeteria today either, so Haru had loaded a tray with side dishes the girl was likely to like and carried it all the way to the room herself. Hana sat on the bed, watching nothing but anime.
"Spicy pork stir-fry—Hana's favorite!"
Haru deployed her finishing move. Hana's eyes wavered hard. Seeing it, Haru broke into a triumphant smile. Just as she'd thought. Hana was still a child!
Hana stole a glance at her. Then she opened her small mouth and ate the spicy pork.
It was a strike, all right. A strangely half-hearted one.