Rookie Dad.
Rookie Dad.
Before I knew it, I'd turned four, and Dad was thinking about sending me to daycare.
"Don't wanna go."
Being a rookie dad, he took that as his little darling not wanting to be apart from him.
"No can do. You've gotta go to daycare and make some friends~"
"Haah... What's the point of getting chummy with babies?"
"Uh... um... Si-yoon, you're... a baby too, you know?"
"Waaah."
My sarcastic tone left Dad speechless.
"....."
I stared at Dad while he put my shoes on me.
"Dad."
"Yeah?"
"Hypothetically, what do you think you'd do if you got all buddy-buddy with babies?"
"Uh... play with them?"
"With kids who can barely even talk?"
"Uh...?"
"Haah..."
Dad looked at me and smiled.
"Still, Dad's friends with Si-yoon, isn't he?"
"I'm friends with you?"
"Of course~"
I fixed him with a look, him grinning at me, all shameless confidence.
"Then I'll talk to you like we're the same age, okay?"
"... Huh? Sorry..."
I watched him get flustered, then nodded.
"Instead of me going to daycare, you make up with Grandma. She said all that because she cares about you, so do it."
"... You heard that?"
"What Grandma did was harsh, but you know her personality just as well as I do."
"....."
One day, after Dad had left the room, Grandma had said something unforgivable to him.
When Grandma apologized, she'd told him she'd been so frustrated she misspoke—said a woman with no family to speak of had just saddled him with a burden and died.
Dad stroked my hair, his eyes reddening.
"Dad's been making his smart daughter worry, huh?"
"Hmm... How about this: you call Grandma after daycare today~?"
"Huh...? That's..."
"If she comes over too much it's annoying, so apologize slowly~"
".....?"
"You know what I mean, right?"
I stroked Dad's hair, and he grinned, bright and unclouded.
The rookie dad scooped me up and headed outside.
In the elevator, we ran into the young woman from the apartment downstairs.
"Hey there~"
I glanced at the young woman, then gave a nod, thinking to myself how cool and aloof I was.
"Oh my~ How can Si-yoon be this pretty~?"
"Didn't take after Dad?"
Dad wore an awkward smile, and the woman laughed and said,
"Aw, she's this pretty because she took after her dad~ You know how pretty her dad is~"
When I looked up at Dad's face, he gave an awkward little smile.
"If I were still single, I could've been Si-yoon's mom!"
"Wouldn't count on it."
"Hmph... and I'm the one who nursed you and everything..."
Dad and the woman started chatting and laughing, and the woman asked,
"Isn't Si-yoon a little too smart?"
"I thought it was strange too... but I'm not really sure."
"I've been saying, you really need to look into gifted education for her."
"Ahaha... Si-yoon said it was no fun, so..."
"Ah..."
After the chat, the young woman got off on the first floor and waved goodbye to me, and I gave a little wave back.
I stayed in Dad's arms until we reached the fourth basement level, where he finally set me down in his car.
It was the first time I'd seen Dad's car, and it looked totally different from any car I'd ever known.
'Guess I really was born with a gold spoon...'
That brief delusion vanished the moment I glanced around. Most of the other cars looked similar, and some parked in the corners were even flashier...
Swallowing my slight bitterness, I turned my attention back to Dad's car. There was another tiny seat already strapped onto the real seat—when did he set that up?—and Dad buckled me in securely.
"Don't wanna go~"
At my words, Dad smiled and said,
"Then Dad won't make up with Grandma either~"
"Sure, so how about we just do that then?"
My flat reply left Dad silent.
"....."
Who does he think he's trying to threaten? A young dad who's lived barely half as long as I did in my previous life.
I held out my hand, and Dad handed me his phone.
As I turned on Neotube and stared at the screen, Dad piped up,
"Si-yoon, you'll ruin your eyes~"
"Then buy me a bigger one."
"Uh... sure..."
When I started tapping away at the phone's keypad, Dad asked,
"Si-yoon, you can read all this?"
"What, maybe I can't?"
"My daughter... is a genius?"
I nodded, swatted the air dismissively as if to say enough, and answered vaguely.
"Even I surprise myself sometimes."
"Uh..."
Lately, I'd gotten my hands on this newfangled device called a phone and was watching cartoons on it.
It was no exaggeration to say I'd stepped into a whole new world.
I'd figured it would all be utterly childish... but in the end, I was hooked.
"Si-yoon, isn't that a bit too violent?"
"全く残酷じゃないよ."
When I answered in Japanese, Dad hastily pulled the car over.
"What... did you say? C-Can... can you say it again?"
I repeated the same words in Japanese.
"That it's not the least bit violent?"
"....."
After that, Dad stopped trying to stop me from watching foreign movies.
Even I was surprising myself.
Was it some kind of automatic translation?
When I thought of a language, thought of a word, it just flowed out in my head in a voice I'd heard somewhere before.
"Si-yoon, can you speak English too?"
"Yep."
There we were, father and daughter, holding a conversation in English inside the car.
Dad, looking at me with a deeply moved expression, seemed to have forgotten we were supposed to be driving off.
A little while later, we arrived at the daycare center.
Dad must have been a fairly big celebrity. The staff member couldn't hide her surprise when she recognized him despite his mask and sunglasses.
"Oh?!"
"Hello."
The young staff member looked at me saying hi, then her eyes started going even wider in fresh surprise.
"You're... you're so pretty!"
The other kids were stealing glances from the room, as if curious about me.
A room that smelled like babies.
I found myself face to face with the woman they called the director.
"Hello~ Wanna try calling me Director?"
"Director."
"Oh my~ Our Si-yoon is so smart~"
"I know."
Dad, maybe because he didn't want to leave me, lingered by my side for a long while, then slipped out while staring back at me.
And then he was secretly watching me from outside the window.
Pretending not to notice, I spoke up.
"So what shall we play with?"
"Got any snacks? Dad won't let me have any."
"Huh?"
The head teacher, as if under some spell, handed me a snack.
I took the snack bag—roughly the size of my entire body—leaned back against a backrest, and said to the head teacher,
"Tell Dad to go."
"....."
Sensing something not quite ordinary about me, the head teacher sent Dad away.
For some reason, Dad complied and disappeared without a fuss.
"Aren't you scared, Si-yoon?"
"Of what?"
While munching on the puffed rice snack, I thought it tasted better than I'd expected and read the name.
'Let's Eat the Moon... I'll have to tell Dad to buy some~'
"It's your first time apart from your dad, isn't it?"
"Mmm... I guess so?"
"Don't you miss your dad?"
"It hasn't even been five minutes. Ask me again in five hours."
"....."
The head teacher was at a loss for words at my vocabulary and my reaction, which didn't match my age at all.
The staff member I'd first seen led me to a room with kids my own age in it.
"Si-yoon, you go ahead and play with your friends now~"
"'Kay."
"You're supposed to say 'Okay,' sweetie."
A young teacher who hasn't even lived half my lifetime trying to teach me a lesson.
"Okay."
But what can you do? Right now, I'm four years old.
The kids, noticing the snack in my hands, started showing interest. Since it was perfectly obvious it'd turn into a nuisance, I just handed the snack over to them.
The young teacher, seeing me glance around, must have thought I was looking for something fun to play with.
Ignoring the teacher's expectations, I simply staked out a corner with minimal foot traffic and lay flat on the floor.
"...?"
I didn't see a pillow, so I put my bag down by my head and lay down, and the young teacher was thrown into confusion.
"Si-yoon, are you tired?"
"No?"
"Uh... it's not naptime yet, sweetie?"
"There's a set time for that?"
"....."
"Then let me be. I need to grow tall."
"B-But you need to make friends~"
"Even if I get friendly with them now, they won't remember any of it by tomorrow."
"....."
"Don't bother me. I'm gonna sleep."
"O...Okay..."
As the kids started running around and playing, the place began getting incredibly loud.
Then a child who'd tripped over my foot while I was lying still started bawling at the top of its lungs.
"... Wow, shit... is this really happening?"
I got right up and fiddled with the fence put up to keep the kids from crossing over.
The young teacher came rushing over at the sound of crying and said,
"Did Si-yoon do that?"
I ignored her question and said,
"A little help here, please?"
"Huh?"
With the young teacher's help, I set up a barricade around the spot where I'd be lying down.
Then I stumbled upon an extra blanket, folded it into a pillow shape, and lay down.
"Now, get back to work."
"....."
The young teacher rubbed her own head and muttered under her breath as she got up.
"I wonder what Si-yoon's dad would do if he saw this..."
Acting like I'd just overheard something I wasn't supposed to, I asked,
"Teacher?"
The young teacher turned to look at me.
"What do you mean, Dad's going to see this?"
The teacher shot a glance at one spot and said,
"That square box over there, so Daddy can see what our Si-yoon is up to~"
"....."
Now I finally understood why Dad had disappeared so compliantly.
"What's the matter?"
I sat up and started thinking.
'Ah... shit. If I just lie here by myself, he'll think I have issues and then whine at me when we get home, which'll be a pain...'
I looked around for whatever I could kill the most time with, and then a piano caught my eye.
"Teacher, you know how to play the piano?"
"Of course~"
"Okay, let's go."
"... Huh?"
I shook the barricade with my tiny body, and the teacher opened it for me.
"Teach me piano."
At my words, the young teacher's eyes lit up at last, and she picked me up and sat me down at the small piano.
Maybe because she was only making me do the simplest things, I yawned as I pressed the keys.
"What's this one called?"
"That's 'La.'"
"Wow~ Our Si-yoon is super smart, isn't she~"
I felt a suffocating frustration at being treated like your average four-year-old being taught, and I said flatly,
"How long are we going to keep this up? Just show me the sheet music and leave."
"... Huh?"
Every single person who looks at me gives the exact same reaction.
The young teacher showed me the sheet music with a slightly sulky expression on her face—
she seemed to be trying to stump me just for fun.
But with my overwhelmingly sharp memory, a single glance was all it took to memorize the whole piece.
And when I started pressing the keys without even looking at the sheet music, the young teacher's eyes began growing wider.
"Like father, like daughter, I guess..."
As if the thought had just struck me, I asked the young teacher,
"Oh, right! Do you happen to know what my dad does?"
"Of course!"
Only then did I put on a face full of curiosity and look at the teacher.
"He's a super famous rapper and composer~"
"Rapper? What's that."
The young teacher, as if she were a fan of Dad's or something, excitedly pulled up Neotube on her phone.
There, Dad was on screen, singing a song.
"Ah~ an entertainer?"
"...? An entertainer?"
It was a kind of song I'd never seen before—no, it was similar to stuff I'd heard back when I was staying in the United States.
"This is a song?"
"Of course~ He's super popular in Korea, you know~"
"Not a fan."
"... You don't like your dad's music?"
"Yeah. You call this music?"
"I... I see..."
Thrown off by my reaction, the young teacher silently put her phone away.