Harsh childhood, the lack of a wise parental figure in her snotty-brat days, and the abundant amount of pep-talks about individualities succeeded in shaping her up to be a 21^st Century Miser, Grumpy Young Director Kim – so naturally, such individual isn’t well-suited in the area pertaining to children and fun things.

Two days since the school skipping incident, she’s once again asked a favor by the mysteriously busy mother. Please pick Mina up from school – I have something I really, really need to attend, said in one breath with no room for a ‘wait a sec’. There was no way of knowing the urgency of situation, but the cynical side of her deduced that she’s being used. The idea of a babysitter who asks for no penny in return must be so tempting…

Among the sea of ‘lil ducklings with uniformed red berets, she spots Kim Mina five kids away from her. She tries to call for her attention, but her voice cracks and her awkward arm flailing movement attracts unwanted judging stares from middle-aged mothers. Nayoung scurries closer to Mina instead.

“M, Mina – “

“Oh.” Mina scrunches her brows. Nayoung feels lowkey intimidated. “It’s you.”

“I. I have a name.”

“Nayoung.” Mina looks around, alarmed by the absence of her mother? “Where’s mom?”

“Not here…” Nayoung tries what she assumes is a confident grin, and places her hands on her hips, “but there’s me. I’m in charge of safely taking you home today,”
 

The next fifteen minutes is a game of cat-and-mouse with a kid carrying the stamina of three war horses. Nayoung, on the other hand, has to catch a break for every fifteen sprinted steps.

When she’s just a fine distance away from Mina (enough to track the kid down, at least), the elementary-schooler takes a sharp turn into an ice cream shop. Nayoung hears spots a giggle beneath the moderately loud radio music by the cashier… and that’s when she knows she’s being played with. Like mother, like daughter…

This isn’t Nayoung’s first encounter with the shop and its century-old furnishing and rusty vintage feel. The last time she was here, she had to buy a couple of iced sweets to get Mina to talk to her. This time around might not be any different. The kid’s just being more Machiavellian about it. Subtle coercion! She has no choice but to give chase to the kid, whose palms are flattened on the glass pane of the freezer.

She bids the old-woman on the cashier a twitchy smile as she passes by. Past her, Nayoung reclaims her scowl.

“Got anything you like?”

Kim Mina glosses over the dripping fury of her words. “That one,” she gives the glass pane some taps. Nayoung follows her line of vision.

“The one with chocolate chips?”

“Yeah.”

“Ummm… sure. But one thing first,” Nayoung proposes, “I’ll buy that for you, but you have to stop being difficult.”

Mina pries her eyes off the selections. “Being difficult?”

“Yeah. Making me run around all over the place even though I’m an adult… adults don’t run around all over the place.”

Mina quirks an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“Good.” Nayoung has a hand on the sliding freezer door until a switch in her head goes off. “Promise me first.”

“I promise.”

“No, no,” the older one of the two holds up a pinky for the much younger one, “promise me.”

For someone so young, Mina takes an awful amount of minutes before she hooks her pinky together with Nayoung’s.

Still not letting go, she asks for a reassurance. “I’m taking this promise seriously, you hear me?”

Mina’s eyes dart from hers to the freezer, back and forth. “Uh, uh-huh.”

“And you have to, um,” Nayoung struggles with her words, “trust me.”

“What?” Mina squints her eyes. “I have to promise you two things?”

Back in the days, kids are supposed to be easy for adults to fool. It’s not that adults are built smarter than kids, it’s that they’re more knowledgeable after rounds of life’s trial-and-errors. For a kid to be this skeptical, Old Soul Nayoung blames it all on the technologies!

“Trusting me isn’t that hard. I—I mean, obviously, I’m not good with interpersonal relationships, I couldn’t even speak much with people I barely met, but… I mean—“

Nayoung feels a tug on their interlinked pinkies. Mina struggles to pull her pinky away, but Nayoung isn’t letting her off the hook.

Watching Mina getting frustrated for not being able to free her chubby pinky is fun the first five minutes. When the look of despair begins to wash over her puffed out cheeks, Nayoung begins to feel guilt pooling at the pit of her stomach. When she notices the unimpressed stare from the cashier grandmother, Nayoung straightens her posture back and fishes out two cups from the freezer.

“Two for two.” Nayoung sighs at Mina’s anger-infused pout.

“Fine.”

“See? It’s not that hard to be cooperative…” oh shucks I forgot! “… also stop calling me by my name! I’m probably a century older than you.”
 

Cooperativeness is, perhaps, a skill in and of itself, with only a few select people in the world could possess such noble quality. Nayoung glares at the road, spent from the fist fight that took place the moment she tried to buckle Mina up for a ride. Obviously, the girl hates sitting in the front, but Nayoung’s backseat is littered with her piling paperwork and a laptop. She couldn’t risk a kid with two cups of frozen treat to be anywhere near her things. Chocolate drips don’t look good on documents.

She brakes at the red light. To fill in the asphyxiating silence, Nayoung attempts a conversation. “Is it good?”

She’s answered with slurping noises. Nayoung mentally scribbles circles on her steering wheel. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

The light flickers to green. It looks bright against the murky 4 PM sky. Will it rain? “Hey, Mina,”

“Uhh?”

“Do you want to talk to your mother? I can give her a call for you.”

There’s some more slurping. “Umm, no.”

“Why…? Don’t you want to ring her at least a hello?”

Mina finally looks at her in the eyes, brows askew into a question. “She’s busy… if I call, I’ll be a bother.”

“Why?”

“She said not to.”

“That’s weird. You’re her baby kid… who doesn’t want a call from their baby kid?”

“Mom.”

Nayoung sighs and wheels the car to a rather sharp turn around the neighborhood. They should be close – Kim Sejeong said their flat isn’t far from school, to the point where Mina could’ve just walked home by herself, usually with her friend who lives nearby.

With each turn, the sky gets darker, the tug gets a notch more uncomfortable, and Nayoung finds herself contemplating whether she should punch in Kim Sejeong’s number onto speed-dial or not. When they reach their target, a rundown apartment complex at the edge of the district, Nayoung parks carefully to avoid a jogging senior citizen.

The engine’s low droning quiets in a tight shut as Nayoung turns off her car. Nayoung watches Mina trying to unbuckle herself, and though she looks like she’s struggling by a bit, the girl can manage. She exits the car and skips to the other door and opens it for her soulmate’s one and only child.

“Thank you, Nayoung.” Mina hops out with the emptied cups on each hand, then she tuts to the nearest trash can. She knows manner and stuff.

“Sure,” Nayoung answers her a beat late or two, before realizing, “don’t call me by my name!”

Mina chooses to be selectively deaf, and instead, takes the stairs, with a frowning Nayoung on her tail. Accepting that 21^st century generation kid’s heart wouldn’t budge with a polite warning, she swallows back her grumps, and begins to take in her surroundings.

A relatively old apartment complex that’s home to senile knitters in their rocking chairs. Hongbin, while he was quite an outgoing person, was also a family man. It’s a place isolated from the bustling industrial complex and zooming cars and dull smokes that seep into unsuspecting lungs – a little heaven in the murkiest corner of Seoul. For a trash who trashed his everything for a woman and an unborn, this place (a glorified garbage bin, if Nayoung may sum up,) was made for him.

Nayoung unconsciously avoids having any part of her body touch the unwashed wall and its peeling paint.

Their flat is in the third level, a place in the far corner, rather hidden from the sunlight. The view isn’t that good – a picturesque sight of a socks factory must be so entertaining to witness first thing in the morning.

Mina sweeps the key away from under the rug and unlocks the door for them. For us?

“Are you coming in, Nayoung?” Mina asks her, halfway into her home.

According to Kim Sejeong’s favor, her job is only to bring Mina home safely, even though the girl has probably mastered the art of coming home by legs. So she could’ve just dropped Mina here and excuses herself and speeds back into her office and washes her hands clean and makes Suhyun take overtime because she needs to get a lot of things done.

And, she should really be ditching this ‘apartment complex’ and its sunlight-draining dulled paint and old Seoul scent. No one is trying to quicksand her into staying.

“Mm-hmm,” she nods, and joins follows after Mina.
 

“Stop calling me Nayoung.”

Mina falls into a pensive silence before her eyes dart back to her 5 PM cartoon. “Nayoung.”

“I’m in my late twenty.” Nayoung sighs and sinks further into the couch, her thumb absent-mindedly unlocking her phone’s screen. “Do you think it’s okay for me to call your mother now? I just want her to know her child is safe with me. She might gush at the news.”

The link has been giving her uneasiness since an hour ago. Her imagination wanders to the ugliest guesses on what could be happening on the other side of the line. To kick the bad thoughts away, she laughs along to the cartoon mascot’s juvenile act of -raiding and tries to make it the funniest thing since Seinfeld, but all she gets is a questioning stare from Mina, who sits on the other side of the couch.

“Nayoung,”

“Yes?” Nayoung wipes a stray tear from her forced laugh.

“If you wanna go home, it’s okay.”

“When will your mother come home?”

“I dunno… she goes out a lot. Sometimes she comes home early.” A shrug. “Sometimes I wake up and she’s already home.”

Nayoung unsinks herself from the cuddly cushion while sweeping her now-unkempt hair back. “Then who’s going to feed you?”

“She left me food. I know how to microwave.”

“What about – “

“Nayoung,”

But it’s not like she could just skirt around and leave Mina alone. It’s not about fulfilling Kim Sejeong’s favor.

Nayoung hates the self-fabricated image of Mina sitting alone dining by herself to the sound of drizzles outside. Occasionally thunder. Lightning might knock the electricity out. No one’s going to help her out searching candles around the flat. The mere image suffocates her, in a way, that she reflexively loosens her tie around her collar.

“I’ll stay with you ‘till your mother’s back.”

The child blinks. “Okay,” and a small smile blooms out at the prospect of a companion. She raises to her feet, then bolts power-walks into the kitchen.

Nayoung doesn’t follow her, but she keeps an eye on the girl. “Mina?”

Getting no reply whatsoever from Mina, Nayoung grows curious, especially with the noises of something heavy dragged across the floor. The partition doesn’t allow her a peek into whatever Mina’s doing right now, so she unglues herself from the couch and goes after Kim Sejeong’s kid. “Hey, Mina?”

She finds Mina standing on the chair with a leg already on top of the counter, neck turned some degrees to face Nayoung, hands outstretched to the top shelves. Nayoung skips to her side for a rescue mission.

“What are you doing??”

“I wanna get something.”

“You could’ve told me! Psh, geddown!”

“I can get it by myself!”

As much as she wants to keep her cool and projects the image of a stable adult with a fine head on her shoulders, Nayoung’s already halfway panicking while flailing her arms because it’s Mina, if something were to happen, Kim Sejeong might wring the life out of her. Mina’s brows scrunch up to showcase her disagreement. “No! I’ve done this before.”

She takes a deep breath and watches Mina monkeying on top of the counter, opening the top shelf with a practiced ease, and pulls out a snack jar. To be of any help, Nayoung stretches a supporting arm for Mina to pass the jar on.

Nayoung eyes the content inside, quick-counting the homemade cookies lined up inside. Mina safely lands back to the floor from the corner of her eyes, and guides her back to the living room with the loud jingle of a CF greeting them back. Though unfocused, she hears Mina whining about missing her favorite part of the episode while plopping her back onto the couch, while Nayoung busies herself with the thought of Kim Sejeong and Hongbin baking together. Sounds like something a family would do. (I wouldn’t know.)

She spins the lid until she could peel it off. “May I?”

“Mm-hmm.” Mina excitedly nods. “Mom’s really good!”

“Oh?” She passes the jar to mina and bites on the crisp treat, the crunching noise partly covered up by the loud afternoon shower outside. “It’s good.”

“Mom’s is the best.” Mina laughs, and it uncurtains her dimples. Nayoung’s reminded of Hongbin’s one of many.

While she leans back into the couch, she thinks of Kim Sejeong while taking another bite. The link shakes a bit, but it’s been like this since an hour (or more?) ago, and the only thing she could do is to wait it out. It’s 6 PM and the evening will only get darker from here, and the rain dulls all of the shines into gloom. Is Kim Sejeong okay?

She snaps herself back to reality. “What do you want for dinner?”

“You can cook?”

Nayoung chews on her bottom lip before giving her a non-reassuring answer, “A little…?”

But Mina’s a smart kid. “Mom should have some cup noodles.”
 

At 8 PM, Nayoung hears the faint sound of footsteps under the furious rain. Mina has been asleep with her head leaning against Nayoung’s side since half an hour ago, so she gently corrects Mina’s position by pulling her rear lower, so she won’t fall over, and quietly runs to get the door.

She’s face to face with a drenched Kim Sejeong, who looks twice more surprised than her, pupils dilated and jaw slacked low. “Nayoung?”

“Me,” she nods, before holding up a hand, “wait a bit – I’ll grab some towel,” and dashes back into the house before realizing the grave error. This is not her house. In frenzy, she brushes off Kim Sejeong’s do you even know where it is?! outcry and hooks her suit from the couch’s armrest, and darts back to the door.

“Nayoung, this isn’t a towel. Not even close.”

“Yes. This is my suit.” She replies Sejeong’s tired frown with her own. “Which I lend as a towel.”

Too drained to fight back, Kim Sejeong reluctantly accepts the multi-functional Versace suit and hurriedly dries herself with it. Even amidst the shivering, Kim Sejeong bids her a thank you. Nayoung answers her with her back turned, as she’s already on the way to the kitchen to homebrew something warm.

“Coffee or tea?”

Kim Sejeong’s answer is weaker. Too weak. “There’s no need – “

“Okay, tea it is…”

A door clicks shut. Nayoung concludes it’s the bathroom door after striding back into the living room and notices the trail of water ending near the bathroom, and heaves a sigh of relief.

Taking care of a whiny child, ruining her suit with rainwater and other earthly things, cooking up a warm tea… they’re not in the list of Kim Sejeong’s one-sentence favor. It would be a lie to say that she’s doing all this out of virtue, yet it would be far too cold for her to shrug it off as a deemed effective method to re-stabilize their shaky link. At the end of the day, she’s doing this for Mina, for Kim Sejeong, for Hongbin who watches over them, and, sort of, for herself.
 

She could see the way Kim Sejeong warily approaches the couch where she sits with Mina fast asleep against right side. The light’s turned off as per Mina’s request, and the only source of a proper lighting is from the TV murmuring political news, but it’s enough to cast pale light against Kim Sejeong’s waning figure. Thin limbs. Taut muscles, far from relaxed. She sits at the other end of the couch with a blanket in her arms.

“Thank you for staying… I don’t know how to repay you. The bills probably hit the roof already. On top of everything…”

Nayoung quietly lets out a wry-laugh, directed more at herself. “I’ll charge you exactly zero pennies.”

“I might get too used to your babysitting service, you know.”

They look at each other for more than five seconds. Kim Sejeong drags herself closer to where she and Mina is, but her attention is all on Mina.

“Don’t even brush her off as a good kid. She breathes out troubles, I know because I’m her mommy.”

Nayoung objects, “She’s… fun,” while Kim Sejeong slowly pulls Mina’s head and leans her against her left side instead and drapes them under the blanket. Nayoung silently rejoices at the newfound freedom for her right arm.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes. Cup noodles… is that okay?”

“Don’t worry, it is.” Kim Sejeong continues, while she sweeps Mina’s hair out of her round face. “You’re a worrywart, aren’t you?”

“Y, you barely knew me,”

“Please, the link.”

That makes her wonder what it feels like to be Kim Nayoung’s soulmate. She couldn’t feel it, but she’s sure her emotions are a disastrous mix of anything and everything, twenty-four hours nonstop. “True.”

They stay silent for a minute. Nayoung gives the mother her much-needed time with her child, while she herself feigns interest on the shares news. Internally, she’s scheming up ways to excuse herself without sounding like she wants to drive the hell out of their flat, but she couldn’t just break the ice.

And maybe, the reason why Kim Sejeong beings to look up at her is because she could feel her frustration through the link. “Do you want to leave?”

“Um…”

“The rain is really bad outside. I suggest you stay for a bit; we’re welcoming to people who need a shelter.”

Even with the dim lighting, even though Kim Sejeong looks spent and even dimmer, her smile is still the brightest thing in the room. Not the news announcer in expensive white designer suit. Not her own sleek white shirt. I want to see her smile with the light popped on. Will there be a next time? “Thanks.”

“No worries.” Kim Sejeong giggles, and it sounds so easy on her ears. “Hey, scoot closer.”

“What?”

Kim Sejeong repeats herself, and Nayoung numbly follows her instruction, scooting closer to them as the widowed mother throws the blanket around her, too. As much as she wants to decline because she’s nowhere near freezing, she appreciates the warmth, and the alien feeling of sharing a blanket with another two.

“It’s cold to be alone when it’s raining so heavily outside. I know what I’m talking about.” She says, and Nayoung agrees. I know what you’re talking about.

“Thank you… Sejeong.”

And they spend the next hours like this, the three of them huddled up under a fake fur blanket, Mina between them, and they don’t converse through words, but through the tugs on their link – and even though there’s a ton of things Nayoung wants to ask Sejeong, she’d rather not further break the woman. It’s not just her distraught entrance, the way she looks like half of her life was vacuumed out of her body, or the light in her eyes that’s slowly dying, or the subtle tremor along their link. Nayoung chooses to ignore the ugly smattered bruise coloring Sejeong’s left cheek purple and leaves it for another day. They should have plenty of days. They probably do have a plenty and another two. They. They. She, Sejeong, and Mina.

She drowns herself in warmth to sleep.
 

Notes: [1] I’ll be back to updating my stuff. Tell me your thoughts in the comments – and thanks for sticking with me! D; thank youuuu so much for reading!