To be very, very honest, Privileged City Kid Kim Nayoung isn’t all about the no-air-conditioning, fireflies-laden countryside life. But alas, a week-long stay at granny-in-law’s house is an obligatory visit one must do once in a year, and it’s a necessity to keep her household afloat. Sejeong would just pester her until she agrees to it, anyway.

Or, alternatively, her little spawns – Mina and Hyeyeon – would just pounce on her and smack her down into an agreement.

Nayoung is the last to hop off the bus with their largest suitcase in tow and a backpack slung around her shoulder. When she nearly topples off balance, Sejeong pulls her straight back, pats her shoulder twice, tells her to stop being a klutz next time, then walks forward with their children scurrying behind, leaving a grumpy and unloved Kim.

“What’s with the hurry?” Nayoung half-shouts. Thank god the bus stop is empty saves for them and an old man occupying the whole bench to himself. The by-product of seniority throughout generations!

Sejeong turns around with a brow arched. “We need to get there before two.”

She made it sound like they’re just half an hour away till two, but the sun settling so high up in the sky begs to differ. Especially the trickle of sweat unclimbing its way from the top to her creased brows. “What’s with the hurry?”

Mina huffs, her cheeks puffier than her backpack. “I wanna fish!”

“Haha, nope, I don’t think our ceramic vase-loving grandma would have fishing tools with her – “

Hyeyeon intercepts her with squinty eyes, “Granny does have some.”

She hears a sigh coming from Sejeong, who’s already walking off with her back to Nayoung, “Quit it Nayoung, you’re fighting a losing argument. Less no’s, more walking. Chop chop!”

It to be the last one heaving out a resigned sigh, but Hyeyeon is already skipping beside her mother and Mina shoots her an obnoxious tongue before joining the two, and Nayoung’s left childishly kicking up dusts and regretting it once some got into her eye.

Well, it’s been a while since we spent some time together as a four, I guess…

“Stop whining and get your Seoul- moving!” Sejeong calls out in a playfully stern tone without even turning to face her, from the significant distance they’ve formed because Nayoung’s too busy rubbing her reddening eye. Sighing for the umpteenth time already, Nayoung closes the distance with a power-walk and a stretched out ‘yes, ma’aaaaam…’
 

The best thing about hours after arrival is, she could lie down on the floor and feigns life-threatening exhaustion to avoid menial jobs Sejeong lined up for her even though she’s clearly the wimpier of the two. Nayoung crawls along the floor to an open space closer to the electric fan and makes out grumbling noises as a response to Mina and Hyeyeon’s loud chatters and squeals from the first floor.

The door creaks open. Nayoung instinctively rolls to her stomach, not having the required self-restraint to stomach Sejeong’s smug grin.

“Guess who just ransacked the shed for some fishing tools?”

Nayoung turns her head to the left side, since she could hear Sejeong’s approaching steps coming from right. “Your devil spawns.”

A shadow looms over her and strands of hair that isn’t hers tickle her cheek from above, so Nayoung begrudgingly turns on her back and faces Sejeong’s winning grin. In high-definition. “You have ten minutes before we drag you outta here.”

“Sejeong, I love you, but can I  at least have three hours of some Me Time?”

“Nine,”

Nayoung tries to turn around, but Sejeong has her arms on both sides of her head. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“We had a discussion about this fishing outing a long time ago, though.”

She hums at Sejeong’s statement and tries to jog up her memory. A long time ago. Nayoung averts her eyes and searches her head for anything remotely close to fishing outing.

Not that she minds fishing outing that much, but she’s indoor at the moment and she’s still sweating bullets from the heat. Sejeong’s looming presence only makes it worse – it feels like she’s getting a free sauna for simply refusing to step a foot outside.

“Um… when?”

“A loooong time ago.”

“Be specific…”

Sejeong laughs, and dips her head low, and Nayoung closes her eyes thinking she might be getting a peck somewhere. Instead, she feels Sejeong’s chin closing in on forehead, and Sejeong whispers into the top of her head, “We held a meeting about this over a pot of chicken soup, but you missed it.”

“I did?”

“You had work, so…”

“Oh…”

Before Nayoung’s mind sets off into thoughts she’d rather not gloss over about in the middle of a family vacation (of works, of coming home to the hour hand just centimeters away from the number twelve, of missing the living room at its liveliest, of sneaking into their room as quietly to avoid waking Sejeong up, of…), Sejeong pulls back and bops her nose with a playful finger.

Nayoung frowns, and Sejeong cranes her head up high from laughing, and Nayoung tries to quell her laughter by wrapping her arms around Sejeong’s waist and pulling her wife closer to her, and for a second, it works –

Until the door slams the wall behind it real loud, and they swing their heads towards Mina. Whose mouth is shaped into a wide ‘o’.

“Ewwww,” Mina respectfully shows her disgust and walks away, obviously repulsed at the sight of her parents being even slightly touchy.

Nayoung snorts. Sejeong pulls herself back into a proper sitting position while laughing even louder.

“You have two minutes before I drag you by the legs.”

The worst thing about Sejeong’s ultimatum is: she has the strength to follow through the plan, and Nayoung prefers to go through this unscathed, so she unglues herself from the floor and deludes herself that, no, Sejeong eye-smile that’s directed at her doesn’t push her heart into a beat that warrants a speeding ticket. (Even though they’re eight years into their marriage… Nayoung will never, ever get used to it.)
 

Sejeong knows how to make it worse for her. Not only they’re going to spend the rest of the scorching noon outside, they’re getting there by bike, and while Mina and Hyeyeon are enthusiastic enough to pedal their own bikes, Sejeong just had to hop onto the passenger seat even though there was one more bike in the shed. Sitting sideways on top of it!

Hell, Nayoung even volunteered to pump the tires of the other bike. Sejeong declined her with a grin that asked for a punch. In the end, Nayoung wore the backpack carrying their stuff on the front. Sejeong generously willed herself to hold their fishing rods for her only because Nayoung wasn’t born with more hands.

“Stop frowning,”

Nayoung huffs in response. And keeps her eyes on the road as her kids cycle past her. “You can’t even see me.”

“I can hear you frowning.”

“Oh, shush. I could be scowling right now, I could be grinning, hell, I could be… I dunno, looking pensive as I predict the fall of the Democratic Party. And all you’ll ever get is the view of my back. Which is sweating like hell because not only it’s crazy hot right now, someone is making me slave over a bike while she sits merrily at the back, complaining about how quiet I’ve been.”

“Well, I’m getting lonely.”

“Well, I can’t talk while I’m frowning deeply.”

Nayoung narrowly manages to avoid a pointy looking rock and voices out her fear in the form of a high-pitched yelp. With the road empty saves for them and a whole bunch of plantations on both sides of the road, she could hear her kids yodeling degrading laughter at her. Hyeyeon even turns back for a split second with a tongue stuck out. Guess who needs a good ‘ol Asian paddling after we’re back home!

“Cycle safely!”

She resists the urge to twist her back and shout right at Sejeong’s face, “Teach yourself how to stop being a bugger first! You’re,” Nayoung inhales a sharp intake of breath as the bike is thrown unbalanced for a second before she pulls it together in a desperate fit of surviving through this countryside ordeal without a single band-aid around her body, “you’re, I – stop swinging your legs unless you wanna dive head-first into the field!”

“That would be nasty.”

“Like you.”

“And we might disrupt the flow of ecosystem. I object; I’m actually warm and soft.”

“I rescind. You’re deranged and in need of some spanking.” Everything’s quiet for a second. Before Nayoung quickly backpedals on her words. “As in, the disciplinary kind of spanking. Y, you know. Like – “

“If swinging my legs around would make you spank me, then…”

“Don’t finish it,” Nayoung sighs, and cycles harder to catch up with her kids, “I beg of you. We need to keep this rated PG.”

“Psh. They’re too far in the front to overhear. So, about the spanking – “

“Nope. NO MORE. I HAVE TO CYCLE SAFELY,” is enough to end their conversation. Mentally-exhausted, Nayoung keeps mum even when she hears the deflated-sounding sigh coming from behind her, and focus on the road instead while keeping her eyes on their kids.

And, even though her attention is divided into things already, something tells her Sejeong is making a face.

Five minutes. Nayoung is finally not that far behind her kids because she’s not busy trying to shut Sejeong up. Sejeong starts to converse her again. “Sorry. I just… I kind of miss talking to you.”

“Um, yeah. I mean, I find talking to you… fun and thrilling, too. I tolerate you.”

“But lately, you’re never around.” And maybe it’s from eight years of living together and the additional years they spent trying to get into each other’s pants, but Nayoung could picture the wry smile Sejeong must be donning on right now, almost inch by inch.

The reply hangs onto the end of her lips. I have works. So does Sejeong – she’s teaching in a high school nearby, and at the end of the day, the realization that she’s the one at fault doesn’t devastate her, because as much as she wants to justify her reason with work, she’s also the one half-purposefully missing 7 PM dinners at home with a short call of I’ll be home late.

The worst thing is, she’s not the one feeling the glaring absence of herself back home. Something bitter pools in her abdomen. She’s muted for a while until Sejeong makes an out-of-the-world remark about the corn stalks and it pushes a chortle out of her, but the uneasiness is still there.

So, Mina and Hyeyeon’s persistence for a family outing is very much reasonable. In this small, quaint town far from the bustling Seoul, is an alternate universe where Mommy Nayoung is not a career woman with blueprints cluttering her desk and overgrown amount of post-it notes covering some family photos they took years ago.

So, she doesn’t quack a complaint when she feels Sejeong resting her head against her back. Nayoung slows down her pedaling, and listens to their unsynced breathing.
 

She mumbles gratitude to all the gods up there – thank god one of them knows how to set up fishing rods!

Nayoung kicks away some gravels aside and sits beside Sejeong, who’s working on their rod, to observe the work closer, since Sejeong will definitely make her set up the kids’ rod later. Freshwater fishing isn’t her thing, and no amount of boredom could push Privileged City Kid Kim Nayoung into WikiHow pages about setting up a fishing rod for bass fishing. Sejeong’s threading the line through the ceramic guides, and Nayoung’s “what’s this” and “what’s that” comments downsized to a silent appreciation of Sejeong’s side-profile, jaw taut in concentration.

On the other hand, Mina and Hyeyeon went off to a field of flower near the river the moment they spotted a cluster of dragonflies.

“I’ve been wondering why they wanted to fish in the first place. It’s an old man game.”

“Hmmmm. Nope. Not really.”

“Yeah, okay, but fishing in real life doesn’t have krakens submerging themselves from the deep ocean. No thumpthump-thump-thump background music as the oceanic man-eating critters creep on you.”

“You’re not paying attention,”

“I’m not.”

“You’re still doing the other pole.”

Nayoung shrugs, “I’ll just WikiHow,” and takes a piece of gravel and skip the stone along the calm river.

Sejeong stands up, the rod’s 80% done, just short of a proper bait on the hook. Nayoung pretends she didn’t see that and skips another stone. It doesn’t take a minute for Sejeong to poke her in the with her sandaled foot. “At least set up the bait.”

She looks up to the scowling Sejeong who’s towering behind her. “Are you indirectly telling me to touch those squirmy earthly creatures? ‘Cause the answer is a no.”

“I’m directly telling you to stab a worm with the hook and watch it spurts out its clear-colored earthly insides.”

Nayoung voices out her discomfort with sharply-angled brows. “What the , no, eww.”

“Ugh, girl, it’s just a worm. Unclench.” Sejeong sits back beside her, fishes out a lunch box with fishies’ lunch inside, and slowly uncaps the lid.

Nayoung chases her eyes out in disgust. “Squirmy!”

“Oh my god.”

Still not looking at the Pandora Box, Nayoung pulls the backpack closer to her and opens the lid of their real lunchbox. Her eyes land on the fish sticks lined up at the side. “Can’t we use this instead?”

“What?”

“What what?”

“You can’t expect a fish to eat its kin,”

“Its deep-fried kin.” Nayoung frowns and places the lunch box back into their bag while eyeing Sejeong with the intensity of The Grudge. “Bottom line is, I’m not touching any worm any time soon.”

Years of befriending, not-so-secretly chasing after, and googling ways to enrapture Sejeong, Nayoung knows all about Sejeong’s go-getter attitude. If she can’t have it, then she will wrestle her way to it. And it’s exactly what she’s doing – lunging at Nayoung hard and grabbing her wrist as Nayoung screams in the frequency of a dolphin.

“Sejeong, you’ve gotta be ing kidd—“ Nayoung stubs her sentence away the moment Sejeong pulls her wrist closer to the cursed box, “—ing hell, have some mercy!”

Nayoung has an arm secured, another arm pinned down by Sejeong’s leg,  her eyes wide and pupils dilated. Master of Multi-tasking Kim Sejeong easily uncaps the box of worms with a hand and Frisbee-throws the lid aside. One of the squiggly bunches pop its head out and Nayoung loses half of her sanity as her trashing grows more vigilant and desperate.

“Nayoung, what the , you’re making a scene!”

She manages to free her leg, which she quickly swings toward the box. It flies out of Sejeong’s unsuspecting hold, and is kicked far enough for Nayoung to laugh in triumph, even though it’s upside down and the worms are worming their way out. Her laugh is put into a stop when Sejeong lunges back at her and soon, a fated fight breaks out.

Sejeong is of course the stronger of the two, but it doesn’t stop Nayoung from dragging their fight closer to the river until Sejeong’s plowing arms, clutching the front of her shirt, pushes one of her feet into the river, the water pooling halfway up her shin. Sejeong’s been pushing her onto the river, and if anyone asks, Nayoung doesn’t mind getting wet… if it means she could drag Sejeong with her.

A smart way out, since there’s no way in hell she could overpower toned Sejeong who has involved herself in activities double the amount Nayoung has ever done.

Nayoung lets herself free-falling into river, making a huge splash followed by loud cooing from Hyeyeon and Mina, spotting the two kids running towards them with an eye as her other one’s squinted shut as the reaction to the pain her rear’s getting.

“Nayoung, what the ,” Sejeong says through gritted teeth, eyeing her wetted t-shirt.

“Thought you would like some clothed dipping.”

“I’m wearing a t-shirt twice my size right now and it’s gonna get super heavy with water.”

“Your misery is my happiness, my lady.”

Sejeong makes a splash by flailing an arm. Nayoung closes her eyes, but opens it quickly since she doesn’t want to miss the pout permeating Sejeong’s face. “Not cool. You’re so childish.”

Nayoung laughs, hardest since the past few weeks, her head thrown back and even though her neck is hurting from the craning, she still couldn’t push out all the laughter; and it feels easier, especially when she feels two additional weights pouncing at her, Mina cannonballing herself to her abdomen and Hyeyeon wrapping her arms around her shoulders.

Even though she’s drenched, pained, and most of all, half-scorched, half-cooled, with fishes bumping their soft heads against her outstretched legs, and molded rocks under her palms squishing their way into the crevices between her fingers – Nayoung feels home. Even though she’s miles away from their two-story house in Seoul.

“Soooo, fishing?” Hyeyeon asks her the most important question.

Nayoung’s answer is a dodgy act of hooking Hyeyeon closer to her and squish their cheeks together. “Come here, you lots; let’s just play in the river. We can fish in a fishing house. The city has plenty of those.”

Mina mumbles a protest, Sejeong sighs and follows it up with a snark, and Nayoung envelops the rest of her little family into a group hug.

And maybe this is what her family has planned all along; not fishing, just the four of them messing around.
 

“How come we’re dying but the kids are, like. Charged. By the power of… freshwater? What the ? Is that even possible?”

“Uhh, I dunno. I’m kinda sleepy.”

“And I’m, like, super drenched, so why’s your head on my back?”

“I dunno, I’m kinda sleepy.”

Nayoung hasn’t exhausted her patience quota, after all. She huffs, and pushes through the pedaling even though her clothes are weighing her down. “We’re so gonna catch a group cold.”

“Then we should stay here for another week.” Sejeong mumbles through her words, rubbing her head against Nayoung’s back. “No way I’m gonna take care of three babies on top of sneezing like mad myself.”

“’Scuse me? Last time I caught a cold you still made me help you grade your students’ papers!”

“Oh. That was one time. I was dying, you want to be widowed that much?!”

Nayoung clicks her tongue and watches her kids cycling merrily as the crickets’ chirping close in on them, signifying afternoon. Nayoung could faintly spot a tint of orange in the sky. “What time is it?”

“I left my phone back at grandma’s .”

Nayoung jeers at her. “I brought mine. It’s in the bag, can you – “

“Too much effort. Just keep cycling.”

“No offense, Sejeong, but why are you being such a today?”

Before she gets a response, she feels Sejeong’s head unsticking itself from her back. “You’re also especially grumpy today.”

“I’m lumpy, wet, tired, and overall miserable. Let me be.”

And her eyes are getting droopy from the excessive shouting, juvenile splashing “family activity” they did. At least Nayoung got slip flopping fish into Mina’s shirt; Mina looked absolutely horrified and the whole thing was priceless.

Plus, as she gets older, a reenactment of their earlier free-for-all river smackdown is unlikely. She’ll get cranky backs. Sejeong… would probably stay the way she is. Sejeong is probably immortal.

They’re muted now, but somehow Nayoung could feel the discomfort lying under the pretense of ‘quiet’. At the same time, she needs a conversation to keep herself awake – her body demands a shut-eye, but there’s still a fair distance between them and the house, and the hiking road’s making her spent.

After giving it some more thought… could Sejeong be… feeling… guilty?

For bossing Nayoung around and whipping her into submission since day one?

For making them do such pointless outing?

Nayoung grins, but she keeps it to herself.

Near the highest peak of the hiking road, Nayoung pedals thrice harder, and Sejeong’s calling out to her from behind and she could spot words like “are you nuts” and “NAYOUNG,” in uppercase between Sejeong’s rapid-fire sense-talk. Nayoung ignores them all.

Past the peak is a steep road that’s not too high, but enough for Nayoung to lift her legs off the pedals and lets the laws of gravity and velocity and everything physics do its magic, pushing their bike into a vertigo-inducing speed.

Nayoung shouts like she’s on a rollercoaster; Sejeong wraps her arms hard around Nayoung’s waist. Their shouts mold into one.

“Oh my god – Nayoung, the bike!”

At the end of the steep, Nayoung laughs into the wind and wings her legs back to the pedal, but instead of going back to the usual speed, she pushes through the pedals hard, her body bending slightly backwards from the pushy wind, and Sejeong’s arms tighten in reflex.

Miles from Seoul, away from air conditioning, skyscrapers, high-end malls and zooming vehicles, she tells the sky the headline, “I loooove you, Kim Sejeong!” loud enough for her kids to turn around to check whether their parents still got themselves together, and her grin reaches her eyes when she feels Sejeong’s forehead lightly bumping against her back and a tepid laughter digging into her spine – and that is the story of how Privileged City Kid Kim Nayoung finds her way back home, not Seoul, not the house at the end of the rural town, but the family that’s been waiting for her to complete the whole four.