Life has been really weird for crooked young Director Nayoung who fires people more than she accepts them. For the past few weeks, it’s been a whirlwind of tragedies and plain weird happenings all around, from the funeral of a brother she didn’t even get to really know, Kim Sejeong, her child, to the sick twist that apparently her long-lost destined lover is her late brother’s wife all along. If her life was borderline abysmal before, now she’d like to leave it behind, drive out of the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, the very mother earth, if possible.

It’s not that the pair of mother and daughter are the problems. It’s becoming a routine for Sejeong to ask her favors, concise texts of “I need your help, please pick up Mina, I can’t make it until hours later, thank you” begetting into “can you pick up Mina for me today too? I’m sorry :( I made you two some dishes before I left, don’t forget to heat it! P.S no fish allergy I hope?”, and Nayoung doesn’t mind it one bit. It’s becoming a routine for Mina to tell her how was school that day, mumbled “good” colored into tell-tale a picture book’s length that starts with a, “today, I…” and ends with a “nayoung, you were listening right?”, and Nayoung grins, even the slightest.

Nayoung finds herself getting accustomed to Sejeong and Mina’s living space, but never the forebodings under the guise of the homey vibes. She knows about the potted plant where Sejeong hides the keys (the second one from the right). She knows which cabinet stores Mina’s supplies of sweets (the one above the stove). She’s told by Sejeong which one is her favorite tee shirt among her many others (the worn out shirt with some French quote printed, Hongbin bought it for her years back). But she couldn’t pinpoint whether said forebodings are the by-product of her self-taught pessimism, or that the small household really does carry something hidden in one of the potted plants, or in a cabinet she’s skipped scouring, or buried under Sejeong’s neat pile of tees. Actively seeking it out is a breach of privacy. Nayoung isn’t a family member or anything close, just a young director playing nanny for a busy mother and her kid.

But she digresses.

The day is Tuesday, grimy clouds interfered with Nayoung’s initial plan of chilling with Mina in the park. Mina urging her to gas back home as soon as possible to catch a cartoon she religiously watches every Tuesday mercilessly mangled the idea to pieces.

When she rounds the second to last corner until the shoddy apartment complex she has grown to tolerate, she could feel Mina tensing up beside her. She looks like she’d scramble out of the safety belt the moment Nayoung pulls the brake handle up.

“You love that dumb cartoon this much, don’tcha?”

Mina spits out in split second. “It’s not dumb. You’re just old.”

“I’ll have you know that I,” Nayoung grits her teeth when she nearly ran over a stray cat, “I’ve achieved a lot for a 28 years old with the social skills of a potato.”

“But you have a y taste. Everyone in my school likes it.”

The moment Nayoung manhandles the brake handle, Mina fishes the house key out of the beverage holder, jailbreaks out of the safety belt, and scuttles out of the car for the stairs. Nayoung couldn’t even warn her to slow down when she’s climbing the stairs – Mina has already disappeared behind the moldy wall.

Nayoung relaxes into the decorous quiet, freed of Mina’s nagging to speed the car up. Again, she’s here, kilometers away from her office in some rusty neighborhood with more pet dogs left dusted and astray, and a muddied red van parked adjacent from the cheap apartment complex. Leaving the office doesn’t feel as strenuous as before as her subordinates have stopped asking where she’s going off to. Suhyun’s mocking smile has diminished into something small, which she’s grateful of.

“Checking up on your family again?” Suhyun once playfully asked, and the worst part of it, she was about to blurt out a yes before backspacing it fast into a botched it’s my responsibility. That earned her a laugh from Suhyun.

Family? Nayoung is merely a stand-in nanny for a fatherless family with no penny to afford an actual one.

The engine’s roar ceased into silence as Nayoung turns it off, gets herself out of the car, and lightly slams the door, barely enough to close it shut. She’s even whistling! How she has grown too accustomed to the bizarre circumstance a young director like her is in.

Her mind wanders a lot during her ascend to the second floor and she does a bit of recounting as she auto-navigates to flat in the far corner. No more glances at door numbers. No more questioning whether she took the right turn or not. She’s stationed in her spot the moment her phone buzzes to life, so she sidelines herself to the metal railing across the Kims’ door. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Sejeong’s all-too-familiar voice replies, “just want to say I’m on my way back, but I’m gonna stop by to grocery shop first,” a pause, and Nayoung faintly picks up the smooth swipe of automated glass doors opening and the muffled jingle of a popular go-to mart, “you’ll stay with us for dinner, right?”

Last week, Nayoung would’ve replied with a meek, “only if I’m not a bother,” but Sejeong said she’s grown tired of the humble answer. So Nayoung spares herself from a lecture. “Sure.”

“Alright. Be seeing you later!”

Sejeong hangs up with a click. Nayoung, elbows perched on the railing, lets her eyes trickle down to the mostly-empty street, saves for her own car.

The red car with decaying paint and splatters of mud dented on its rear has gone, the spot now taken by a stray dog resting into a 2 PM nap.

The quiet jogs Nayoung’s memory; every time she slums it down to this apartment complex, she’d see the car when she’s parking, but never when she’s leaving, even when she’s just dropping Mina off and leaving immediately after.

Nayoung brushes off the thought, chalking it up as her mind playing tricks on her. Memory is a relative thing, and she’d need someone else’s to confirm the authenticity of hers. She will just ask Sejeong about it later.

In the meantime…

When she enters the flat, she’s greeted by the sight of Mina sitting rooted to the floor, eyes power-glued to the TV, and jaw hanging the tiniest bit.

She doesn’t really watch TV programs herself, but she has come to know about Sejeong and Mina’s tastes, respectively. Mina would surf the channels for anything light, mind-numbing cartoons or cooking demos or sometimes a PG-rated comedy skit shown in the afternoon. Sejeong is too busy to actually watch the TV, but there was this one time where they were seated on the sofa with Mina between them, breath steady as she was way too adrift into her sleep. Nayoung hadn’t finished the coffee Sejeong brewed for her. Common courtesy screwed her in place until she was done (but she didn’t actively chug it down either). The TV showed them a late-night drama series with convoluted romantic plots. And Sejeong, although eyes droopy, remarked that if it weren’t for the lack of sleep, she would’ve really paid attention to it, and cried along with the leads, even, and added that she enjoyed the kind of show from time to time. Nayoung, at the time, laughed, never would’ve guessed that Sejeong would be the type to mush over the corniest cloying fudge that is Korean TV series.

Reminded of Sejeong’s texts, she makes a beeline for the kitchen, but stops halfway to gently remind Mina, “Change into something comfy before your mother’s home, young lady!”

Mina, still clad in her uniform including the plaid beret, responses with a hum so quick it tells Nayoung how much she has turned a deaf ear on everything else but the dumb cartoon. And the protagonist’s squeaky voice-over. It grates.

She devises a plan. After putting Sejeong’s now-cold dishes into the microwave and getting the timer set, she scurries back into the living room. Mina is still pretty much petrified and the TV being her Medusa.

“Mina?”

Mina answers her with a whiny groan. Otherwise, she remains unhinged.

Nayoung flops down, cross-legged, in front of Mina, and straightens her back instead of slouching over. Mina’s expression finally fusses into a rough mixture of surprise and anger.

“Move it, Nayoung!” Mina slants her body to the right, trying to see the monitor, but Nayoung mimics her movement. “Nayouuuung!”

“You’re ignoring me. This disrespect!” Nayoung tries to sound angry, but she couldn’t help the jovial grin skittering to her lips.

“Uuuurgh, Nayoung!” Mina takes it a step further by quick-crawling to the left, but Nayoung’s size gives her the advantage.

“Talk to me!”

Mina groans out of frustration, but the urgency urges her to peel her off the floor and steps onto Nayoung’s crossed legs, arms latching themselves on Nayoung’s shoulder the hair weaved on it as she looks over Nayoung’s head to take a good look at the cartoon, ignoring Nayoung’s high-pitched yelps. As Mina’s legs dig deeper into her bones, Nayoung turns the table by letting her body fall back and pulling Mina along with her, though her own back takes the fall. She breaks into a roaring laughter when Mina could finally wriggle free… to the credits roll.

“Stupid Nayoung! Stupid!” Mina is pretty much inconsolable at this point, swinging fists down to send pummels throughout Nayoung’s body, who avoids it by rolling to the side, leaving only her reverberating laughter behind.

And she mocks Mina melodiously, “I’m skipping work for you, and the pay is due,” and she sits up halfway, eyeing Mina who has cheeks puffed in fury, and lightly tackles the kid into a roll without forgetting to make sure it’s her back that hits the floor first, “you can pay it in attention, I’m loaded with wons already.”

“Pay it with money.” Mina shuffles out of Nayoung’s loose hold on her and recollects herself back to sitting position. “Buy me and mom a house.”

Nayoung, on the other hand, has made an acquaintance with the floor. “What kind of house?”

“Two-stories house, with a huuuuuge yard.” Mina has her eyes up, images of Dream House projected onto the ceiling, and Nayoung can see it loud and clear, “with a dog house, I think mom would love a dog.”

“Do you want a dog?”

“A small one. But kitten is cuter.”

Nayoung lies on her side now. “Agreed. Glad we’re finally on the same page.”

“Small kitten.” Mina’s face brightens up, rivalling the polish advertisement on the TV. “Small kittens. Small kittens that nap around you, on your lap, on your feet.”

Buying a house requires a lot of works and documents to maul on. A kitten (or kittens) sound more probable as a souvenir. “Will you take care of them?”

This time, Mina pouts, “But they poop…”

She isn’t supposed to spend her afternoon like this – even when her works’ are mostly done, she would’ve taken a break somewhere else that isn’t the floor of some rundown apartment complex, with a child below the age of ten, meaning, a vile creature. She wasn’t supposed to be able to breathe in the same room as children. She was supposed to avoid this situation like plague.

But as Mina drones on, with the TV set to a frail volume, and the creaky air conditioner keeping the rippling heat away, Nayoung could feel herself getting drowsy, drowsier, and the drowsiest.
 

When Nayoung wakes up, she feels hella uncomfortable, her bones have practically molded with the floor, and she’s feeling cold all over (she hears the harsh pattering of the rain outside). She begrudgingly looks around, feeling her body sore and her hair an uncombed mess. Her phone, abandoned two arms reach away from her, has its screen lit up. Mina is nowhere to be found, but her ears pick up faint footsteps from the kitchen not too long after.

Nayoung stretches into a strategic position where she doesn’t have to get up, but could still somehow barely slide the phone closer to her with the tip of her middle finger. That’s when Mina asks her, “What are you doing?” and Nayoung looks up to Mina staring back at her with a quizzical quirk of brow.

“Phone,” Nayoung barely croaks out, trying to pull her phone – an arm reach away now – closer, as she blindly grasps for the Samsung model. Mina beats her to it by sliding it closer with a foot. “Thanks, kid.”

“You look funny,”

“I’m tired…” Nayoung still couldn’t find the willpower to punch the living daylight back into herself. Still on the floor, she sees three unopened messages notified on the top taskbar.

The latest one from a co-worker, one half an hour before it from Suhyun, and the last one from Sejeong.

She skips the first two.

“something came up. will come home before 7.”

“Minaaaa, what time is it?”

Mina has suited herself on the coach, comfy with a glass of orange juice. “Half past five.”

Sejeong’s text stirs something within her awake and she finally sits up, eyes still on her phone as she contemplates whether she should reply, call, or let it go. Something about Sejeong’s text is off. The benign, to-the-point text indicates the rush of the text. It might have been work matters. Or something personal, like a friend of hers getting arrested and she needs to save them from the slammer. Or she forgot to buy a birthday present for a dear friend.

A bile lurches in Nayoung’s throat as she realizes the negativity weighing her down comes from the link. The realization immobilizes her for a fraction of second when she remembers she’s been sleeping, and she might have slept through Sejeong’s “calls”.

But it might also just a cesspool of paranoia bringing the worst out of her imagination, driving her insane with the twofold nature of possibilities. Sejeong is either fine, or not. Either way, she needs to hear from her.

Mina must have noticed the way she scrambles around for Sejeong’s contact. The jitters must have given it away. “Don’t call mom, she told me she doesn’t like calls when she’s busy.”

Nayoung is just a click away from dialing Sejeong’s number. “Busy with?”

“I dunno.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“I don’t wanna make her angry.”

Nayoung, in a voice much smaller, admits it out loud. “I’m worried.”

“Why would mom not be okay?”

She thinks Mina might be too young for the whole ed up soulmate concept God created as a prank upon mortals. Mina’s age aside, she couldn’t really put it into words either, she herself couldn’t digests what’s left over the tugging she must have slept on, couldn’t translate it into a language she speaks. Be safe. She at least prays, to the loan God. They can collect the pay later. Those Gods that don’t harvest sacrifices for prayers seem to exist no longer at this day and age, so Nayoung feels the need to switch.

Her prayer is answered by the sound of keys fumbling, the door unlocking, and Mina chirping, “Mom!”

Okay. Too fast, God. Now I gotta pay you double.

Sejeong scrambles inside, hair wetted and eyes blinking behind a curtain of soaked bangs, the plastic bags she’s holding carry trickles of rainwater inside. Still, when their eyes meet, Sejeong laughs, and she’s got a laugh that’s a bark but far from strident; that’s laughed by an adult but still somewhat sincere; that’s vulnerable and exposed like they’ve known each other for centuries, but at the same time, entices Nayoung to inquire further.

When she takes the plastic bags out of Sejeong’s hands while Mina scuffles to her mom with a towel in hand, Sejeong wipes her bared feet for a bit against the sprawled doormat and speed-walks into the bathroom, towel made a tarp around her head, leaving an afterglow of chunky laughter and a sung thanks.

Mina goes back into the living room. Nayoung’s left wondering.

Sejeong probably thought she would miss the pained mix of blue and purple smeared across her right cheek. She can picture her own gaze towards the distant bathroom door right now; equally distant, wistful, and plain somber, in contrast to Mina’s hum of her favorite cartoon’s opening jingle.
 

“This?” Sejeong points to the dressing held together by two band-aids on Sejeong’s right cheek, burying the ugly blue-purple under, “I got this when I slipped on the floor and hit my head on the table. My cheek took the blow, .”

“,” Mina parrots, with a frown, then goes back to her bowl of japchae noodles.

She didn’t sound dismissive at all, but certainly, there was a hint of routine in all this.

Nayoung thinks, and to the rest of the world, she must have looked like she’s picking on her food.

“You’re way too old to play with your food like that,” Sejeong nudges her forearm with the back of her hand, her grin present, but the gauze plaguing her cheek is the disenchantment. Nayoung only hums in reply as she takes a tasteless bite.

On the small coffee table that’s previously pulled up when unused (that’s why Nayoung could roll around like she’s in some kind of dreamy flower field), the three of them occupy each side, a large plate of stir-fried japchae noodles take up the center space. Sejeong shooed both of them to the living room and slaved over it herself. She cut Nayoung off when the latter said that she could leave now that she’s home with Mina, but now Nayoung’s thankful for the warm dinner.

(That, and Sejeong practically spared her from the quiet times back in her own apartment where she mulls over Kim Sejeong and Kim Mina, befuddled by neurotic questions and hazed by the fear of what’s to come.)

“What did you guys do the whole day?”

Mina answers her mother not even a beat after. “This sloth slept on the floor the whole day!”

On her own defense, Nayoung speaks up after she has swallowed. “I’m an adult, I get tired easily.”

Mina sticks a quick tongue. “You’re so weak compared to mom.”

Nayoung leans over to Mina’s side, attempting to intimidate with her size. “Did your mom save the whole planet of Krypton or something?”

“No, but she works till late without flopping down on the floor.”

She laughs at the kid’s low jab, but ends it with a playful whine as she prods Mina further. “But I work late till morning even when I’m back home. You just don’t know about it ‘cause I don’t flaunt it around.”

Still, she’s slightly taken aback when Mina counters with a smug, “But do you come home with a bunch of band-aids?”

“What?”

“Then mom worked harder than you—“

Sejeong’s loud cough cuts their banter off. “How’s my cooking, kids?”

Mina chirps in a compliment. Nayoung tries to sound like she isn’t iffy with the sudden cover-up. “Not too shabby.”

“I can’t cook like your five-starred family chefs. I’m just a shabby teacher from a shabbier high school.” Sejeong replies in a mock-sad tone, with a mocking frown that dissolves into a smile not soon after.

The conversation takes a much lighter turn to Sejeong’s doleful days teaching difficult students in the public high school she teaches in. This is how “family” dinner looks like – Mina and barrage of curious questions, Sejeong retelling her day with the surest smile and sunshine smuggled in her eyes, and Nayoung. Just Nayoung.

So she gulps down her glass of water to swallow the curiosity over the gauze, and the many, many gauzes before this one, and nods when Sejeong asks her if she wants a refill.
 

“Are we going to pretend like nothing happened?”

Nayoung asks her, eyes on the bowl she’s washing. The one Mina used. She couldn’t really see the face Sejeong’s making right now, since she’s crouched in front of the open fridge, stocking it with the things she shopped this noon.

“Really, Sejeong?” She tries again.

Sejeong’s answer is way too easy and nonchalant. “I see that the meek, fishy Kim Nayoung has long gone. Who’s this curious animal?”

“Kim Sejeong makes me question stuff.”

“Like, what? Your uality? I guess I do that to people.”

Nayoung rolls her eyes at Mina’s pastel blue mug. “Eternally humble.”

The fridge’s door is closed firmly shut and Sejeong walks over to the counter, back leaning against the corners with her elbows perched to support her threadbare weight. “I’m not really in the mood to answer questions, you really should’ve asked them during class.”

Sejeong meant it as a joke, but Nayoung uses the opportunity to steer the conversation into a direction she likes. “Mina told me to never phone you when you’re ‘busy’.”

“Yeah, I’m a rather busy person. Gotta make ends meet now that it’s just the two of us.”

Nayoung turns the faucet off when she’s done, and grabs a wipe to dry her hands, and shoots, “Are you hiding something from us?”

“Who’s ‘us’?”

“Me and Mina. Who else? Your senile neighbors, I guess.”

Sejeong’s sigh doesn’t sound fond, not exhausted either, it sounds like something she put out just for the sake of sounding like she’s sighing out of something not fond or exhaustion. Perhaps to shake Nayoung’s prying off her. “Nayoung, I have plenty of things to hide from you and Mina. Especially Mina. We all live in three different worlds; like, she’s a kid. Too tiny for the bleak world. You’re some kind of high-achieving young director with more things to worry about than me, and Mina, and the both of us. I,” Nayoung turns around to Sejeong, who has her eyes trained on her, and a finger jabbed at her own chest to emphasize, “I am a widowed woman with things to deal with. There’s a grocery list of things I gotta deal, but it’s password-protected. You pry further and you might piss the system off and it’s locked forever. Understood?”

Nayoung nods a little, not out of cooperation. She parrots, “We all live in three different worlds,”

“Yes. I mean, I’m happy you’re here right now. Mina likes you, and it takes her mind off—her dad. And you’re not a pushover to have around, either, and you’re no longer the bumbling bundle of awkwardness you were the first time we met, and you clean up your things yourself, so it’s all nice, but—“

“We all live in three different worlds? When we’re each other soulmates? When we could practically feel what the other’s feeling through this stupid and hypersensitive as hell link between us? Not to mention that Mina is your kid. We’re pretty much affected.”

Nayoung feels bad for meddling. Nayoung feels bad for raising her voice. She wants to cower at the harsh tug she’s experiencing at the moment, she wants to bare-knuckled herself at the sight of Sejeong losing all the glimmers in her eyes, brows scrunched, posture straightened facing her, movements guarded.

“See, even now,” Nayoung’s hands gesticulate the emphasis, “even now, I can feel what you’re feeling.”

Still, Sejeong has no intention on loosening up. “And you thinking you could just meddle your way into whatever I’m hiding from you right now wouldn’t clear up the smog.”

“What’s this tugging then?” (Aren’t you asking for a help?)

Nayoung knows she’s fighting a losing battle, but the tugs – the intensity hiking up in crescendo – peg her into pestering further. She continues on with her pursuit of Sejeong’s offender, or the shadow of it that remains, and a hand comes up to Sejeong’s right cheek, thumb thumbing the gauze and the childish band-aid, and Hunchback Nayoung pursues the slightest scent of the Unknown lurking behind the metaphorical wall Sejeong has put up, and Hunchback Nayoung peers closer as she leans closer, pulled by the link between them, now two-fists away from Sejeong’s frozen face. Nayoung searches for a second longer, but then again the remains are so slight that it could’ve been practically undistinguishable from what her mind conjures out of the situation. Nayoung questions further, Sejeong’s expression thaws into something darker, and she lightly brushes Nayoung’s hand off her cheek, and she shrugs Nayoung off with a shake of the head, a mumbled, “No, Nayoung,” and suddenly, Sejeong has put their little act into a closure as she leaves the kitchen for the living room. The link stops with the fervent tugging, but there’s still the slight tremor along it, and Nayoung is still uneasy.

At 11 PM, on the way home, she realizes that she’s forgotten to ask about the red car.
 

 Notes: [1] this fic lived, binch