You’d look around. Your brain would be telling you that it’s not possible. That he’d be just there, standing his ground just as the way you told him to. Just like what you saw him the last time. Then, after your vision realizes that they couldn’t find the familiar figure it’s been memorizing its details, your heart would skip its beat. Just one though, because the next moment, it’d be running, pondering in your ribcage. Your throat would be closing and panic sunk deep in your stomach, making you sick. Tears; tears would find its way to your mouth, coating it with bitterness, before it claimed your eyes in a swept of a storm. So your legs would begin to kick, to roam your way, making weird patterns as if they had forgotten how to walk.

Your head, as it was the first to deny, was the last to admit; that your child just went missing.

***

“What?” the manager sounds unimpressed, annoyed. “It’s Sunday, come on.”

“I’m serious,” Seunghyun whispers. He balls his fist, his nails piercing onto his skin. “Please.”

“It’s not funny,” the man on the other line sighs. “Let me speak to Daesung.”

“He’s not here,” Seunghyun tries to swallow the lump in his throat, his chest hurts from the fear. “He’s sick, he’s at home.”

“What the hell did you actually do, Seunghyun?!” a sound of rustling and finally, finally a closing door. “I’m on my way.”

“Thank you,” Seunghyun wants to break down on his knees, probably weeping until it’s all back to how it’s supposed to be.

“Look around,” his manager commands. “He’s four! He can’t be too far.”

“I am looking!”

“Did he scream?”

“No!” Seunghyun runs his hand through his hair in frustration. “Just –I don’t hear anything!”

“Don’t tell anyone just yet, okay? If people know that he’s your son, they’d probably –”

“Probably after him, I know,” the reply comes a whimper. “Come here and help me, please? Or else I’d be calling police or whoever is in charge.”

A pause; seconds are ticking. “Have you called Daesung?”

“No,” a sob escapes past his lips. Seunghyun resists the urge to let himself cry. “I can’t, he’s down with fever last night.”

“All right, I’ll be there soon. Keep looking, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Seunghyun?”

“Hmm?”

“We’ll find him.”

“We will,” he repeats it like a chant. “We will.”

The connection goes dead. In front of him, there’s a long aisle of bottles, toothpaste tubes, bars of soap; of things he would happily describe to his son if only the boy was there, with him. He starts to walk around, steps aren’t following any maps but not aimlessly.

Ken, Seunghyun says in his mind, wondering if one could really develop superhero power from a very critical situation. Where are you?

***

A baby, Ken nods to himself. A brown baby kangaroo.

It’s so tiny and lives inside a box. A transparent box that allows him to see through. There are a lot of the others but there’s only one of him. He knows the others’ name, he’d watch about them once and learnt about their names from his Yeonjun–hyung but this one, this kangaroo one, he can’t remember it.

Boo? He asks quietly. Moo?

His eyes shift to its left, to another small box containing another baby. He knows about this yellow one. Although it’s not his favorite but it’s the easiest to find. He saw it in his appa’s old shoes and one of his grandma’s plate. He saw it in the bed lamp his appa bought for him but then being knocked down accidentally when he climbed off of his bed last summer. His grandmother gave him stickers of this yellow bear and there were a lot of it in a letter his appa received from a girl they met in an airport.

“Pooh,” he smiles to himself. He had seen bears in the zoo but none of them look like Pooh. Maybe he should go to another zoo? His Youngbae–samchon said that there is place in another country where he could literally touch a kangaroo. Probably that place also has a yellow bear with red shirt. Or shirt with another color, perhaps. The bears he’d seen didn’t seem to fancy wearing any clothing piece but nobody was bothered by it.

Maybe if he were born bear, his appa wouldn’t be yelling at him for greeting their guest again. It was just one time and it was his grandfather, why would his appa be so embarrassed? His Daesung–appa’s face was as red as cherry!

That, and he could eat more sweets, just like Pooh.

“Excuse me.”

He looks up and see a lady, probably about his Seunghyun–appa’s height, is smiling at him. She has a big green bag and huge ribbon on her hair.

“Do you want this one?” she asks, pointing at a box with pink Piglet inside.

Ken shakes his head. Piglet is cute, yes, but too pink. He can’t find anyone else as pink as Piglet other than his Seunghyun–appa, maybe.

“Well then,” she reaches for the small box and take it. “I’m going to take it.”

Ken nods at her when she pats his cheek softly. Then he remembers something when the lady is almost disappear from the aisle.

“Here,” he gives her a box of Pooh. The lady frowns but he’s ready with a reason. “Pooh is friend.”

“Friend?” she looks amused, half–smiling.

“Piglet and Pooh,” Ken explains to her. “Friends go together.”

She grins. Her cheeks are showing dimples, deeper than his Daesung–appa’s. “All right,” she nods his head. “I’ll take him too.”

Ken grins proudly before resuming back to his previous position.

***

Seunghyun has been looking for his son in the aisle of jams, aisle of cooking utensils, through the breads section, even checking the ice cream corner near the cas