Clocks, Tteokbokki, and a Night at the Circus
“This place is so pretty!”
I wasn’t sure what exactly she found pretty, but if Seia said it was pretty, then it was.
The students might have shared the same doubt, but none of them voiced it.
With steps only half the length of their own, Seia toddled over and guided them to seats by the window.
“Just order from Seia!”
Choi Su-yeon and Lee Chae-yeon had built up a little resistance by now, but the rest of their friends had not.
The others were so mesmerized they could barely form proper orders, so the two girls had to handle everything.
“Hehe… Seia’s so cute…”
Well, the pair didn’t exactly look unaffected either.
“Oh, we prepared fish cake stew today, too.”
Thankfully, Jeong-woo’s voice pulled the two of them out of the Seia swamp, and the mention of fish cake stew lit up their faces.
“Whoa! Then we’ll take five servings of tteokbokki and three servings of fish cake stew, please.”
These snacks were soul food for students.
Among them, these two dishes were the undisputed champions.
Unfortunately the fried items and sundae that would have made the meal even better weren’t ready yet, but those would be added in time.
“Got it. I’ll bring them right out.”
Tteokbokki and oden didn’t take long to serve anyway.
Everything was pre-made; all he had to do was transfer it to bowls and plates.
The moment the order came in, he dished up the tteokbokki and fish cake stew and served it. That was all.
The entire process—from start to finish—was quick and effortless.
In short, it offered the best possible time-to-value ratio.
“Enjoy your meal.”
He finished serving in no time. While Jeong-woo began tidying the kitchen, Seia soon covered a sheet of paper with clocks.
“Oh, this is good?”
“Yeah, it tastes even better than the snack shop near school.”
Amid the students’ glowing praise, Seia held up her finished clock and compared it to the one on the wall.
“Hmm…”
And every single student found themselves unable to look away from her.
Their chopsticks and spoons kept moving—they had already decided it was delicious, after all—but their eyes stayed glued to Seia.
Taste wasn’t something you judged with your eyes, anyway.
“Looks like she’s studying how to tell time.”
“She’s adorable…”
“The whole paper is covered in clocks?”
They whispered among themselves, careful not to let Seia hear.
“Seia, were you studying how to read a clock?”
Unable to hold back any longer, Choi Su-yeon finally spoke to her.
Seia didn’t look upset, but she was clearly deep in thought about telling time; her pursed lips poked out in a tiny pout.
“Yeees. But it’s hard.”
It really wasn’t easy at the beginning.
He couldn’t remember exactly how he had learned it himself, but there wasn’t a single person in the group who couldn’t read a clock.
‘Good thing I spoke first!’
When she glanced back, sure enough, her friends’ jealous stares were boring into her.
“Still, you drew the clock really well.”
She had boldly left out the second hand.
It seemed she didn’t yet understand that after thirty minutes the hour hand should sit between numbers, but she could learn that gradually.
“Okay, this one is…”
After that, Choi Su-yeon’s intensive tutoring session began.
She often received tutoring at home, so she had picked up a few teaching tricks herself.
“Then is this eight-ten?”
Seia gripped the pen tightly in her small hand and drew the clock with careful focus.
The clock her hand and the pen tip created pointed to eight-fifteen.
“Hehe. This one is eight-fifteen. The long hand…”
Seia didn’t miss a single word of Choi Su-yeon’s explanation.
Her ears were as small and delicate as her hands, yet they perked up at every sentence, giving her the distinct look of a kitten.
“Aha!”
She hadn’t grasped the concept of multiples of five yet, but once Seia learned something, she tried her best not to forget it.
So she clearly remembered that when the long hand pointed at the two it meant ten minutes, and therefore when it pointed at the three it meant fifteen minutes.
“You’re doing so well! Then next…”
“Su-yeon. How long are you planning to stay like that?”
At her friends’ voices she turned around and realized quite a bit of time had passed—the tteokbokki and fish cake stew had completely vanished.
Some rested their chins in their hands, others watched Seia and Choi Su-yeon with warm smiles.
“Huh? What? How much time went by?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“I was doing that for thirty whole minutes?”
She had thought maybe five, or at most ten, minutes had passed. She hadn’t gotten to taste much of the food, but it didn’t really matter.
“Unnie is a teacher!”
“R-really?”
Because she had gotten to be Seia’s teacher.
Just like last time, she didn’t want to leave today either, but they couldn’t stay forever.
‘Yes. This is how we slowly, naturally grow closer.’
Today wasn’t the only chance, and it wasn’t the only day.
This was a restaurant, after all.
It was a place open to anyone who felt hungry and could pay the price.
Parting shone brightest when a little longing remained.
Though calling parting itself radiant was somewhat contradictory.
“I’ll pay for everything today.”
“Oh, really?”
“Whoa, Choi Su-yeon, what’s the occasion?”
She was even going to cover what her friends had eaten.
Seia, who had disappeared somewhere, was waving from behind the counter.
“Seia will do it!”
“Huh? Seia?”
There was no need to ask what she wanted to do.
All that remained was the checkout.
But could Seia actually handle a card transaction?
Wondering if the owner knew about this, he glanced over and found the owner watching with an equally intrigued expression.
“All right. Can Seia handle the payment for us?”
“Yeees!”
Seia took the card with determination.
She recalled how the customer nicknamed Cat Unnie had paid, and followed that memory exactly.
After staring at the POS machine for a moment, Seia tapped the screen with a tiny finger, then swiped the card through the reader as if the task were finished.
“……”
The reader stayed silent.
Wondering what had gone wrong, Seia’s gaze slowly drifted toward Jeong-woo.
He had been watching with his arms crossed. A small laugh escaped him before he stepped in to fix the problem.
She had swiped the card correctly, but she had forgotten to select the ordered menu items first.
“Here, you do it like this.”
Rather than doing it himself, Jeong-woo gently guided Seia’s finger to tap the screen.
With a few cheerful beeps the order amount was entered, and the card was swiped again.
“Do it like that and the payment is complete.”
“Hmm! Next time Seia will do it!”
“Hehe. Okay. Next time we’ll let Seia handle it. Payment complete. Thank you.”
Even an ordinary checkout became something special.
“Oh, right. Have you watched it on Newtube?”
Lee Chae-yeon’s face carried the quiet confidence of someone who knew exactly what she was talking about.
Had something interesting happened?
“I only saw the separate video you sent last time. I haven’t checked Newtube yet.”
“Then you should take a look. You’ll be shocked.”
With that, Lee Chae-yeon left the restaurant along with the rest of her friends.
“Seia, bye~ I’ll come again next time!”
For some reason, that “next time” felt like it would be tomorrow.
But why had she told him to watch Newtube?
Last time he checked, the channel didn’t have many subscribers, and the other videos only had between a hundred and two hundred views.
Since the video was public, Jeong-woo decided to watch it first before showing Seia.
“Oh?”
Seia’s video had nearly twenty times the views of the others.
But the real importance lay not in the view count, but in the reactions beneath it.
‘She even used Seia for the thumbnail?’
The Seia in the thumbnail possessed a completely different charm.
Her large eyes were squeezed shut as she opened her mouth wide for a bite of tteokbokki.
Honestly, anyone would feel compelled to click.
Just from the thumbnail he could guess what the comments would be like.
Still, he needed to see them for himself.
While Seia was busy studying the clock-reading lesson Choi Su-yeon had given her, Jeong-woo checked the comments.
All the remaining comments were full of praise as well.
Just reading them put him in a good mood.
‘Thank goodness.’
He had worried there might be malicious comments, but thankfully none appeared.
He could have shown Seia right away, but he wanted to show her everything at once later.
It felt like giving her a bigger present that way.
“This one is five-fifteen!”
He also hoped her adorable concentration would continue uninterrupted.
After sending the students off and finishing the cleanup, it was time to prepare for closing.
It was only eight o’clock, but there were many things to get ready in advance.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
“Yes, Seia?”
“It’s eight o’clock now, right?”
If nothing else, the shape of the number eight seemed permanently burned into Seia’s memory.
“Haha. That’s right. Perfect.”
“Circus! It’s the circus!”
Realizing the time to see the circus was approaching, Seia made no effort to hide her excitement.
It made sense.
Today must have felt longer to her than usual.
Lately Seia had been experiencing many things for the first time.
With her eyes, her ears, her hands.
After finishing the cleanup they stopped by the house for a quick change of clothes.
This wasn’t just about seeing the circus.
Although she had been outside this late before, this was her first time actually going out at night.
What would the night streets look like?
And how brightly would Seia’s eyes sparkle while taking them in?
Both Seia and Jeong-woo were excited to see the circus, but the circus itself could be seen again another time.
Yet the Seia who watched her very first circus performance could only experience that wonder today.
Picturing how happy she would be, he finished the last of the closing tasks and realized it was already time to leave.
Seia, bursting with excitement, didn’t even bring the doll she usually carried when going out.
She simply pinned on the easy-to-carry brooch, her body and heart both light as she finished preparing.
“All right. Shall we go?”
They closed the restaurant door. Father and daughter, hands tightly clasped, stepped out into the street.
The darkness had already settled, and only streetlights illuminated the road, yet somehow it didn’t feel dark at all.
They arrived at the shopping district.
Perhaps because it was night, the atmosphere felt completely different from the morning or daytime streets.