Handing the leash over to Eunjung felt like an invitation for her to tie herself and her puppy in a knot around the jungle gym, but Jiyong knew she would have to learn the mechanics of walking a dog eventually.  Best to start now, he decided, and gave her the plastic retracting handle.

“Give him plenty of line, but pull him back if he tries to go somewhere he shouldn’t,” he instructed gently.  He strived to make strong eye contact when giving commands.  It kept his daughter’s attention and allowed him to gage how likely she was to listen.

“Okay!” she replied, enthusiastic to explore the corner of the city park with her new pet.  Eunjung had been all questions on the ride there: Can Gaho go down the slide?  Will there be other puppies at the park?  What if he gets sand in his wrinkles?

Jiyong mussed her hair and sent her on her way, watching as she headed for the nearby play area.  There were a handful of children on the swings, see-saw and other playground equipment, along with runners and Frisbee players and fellow dog walkers.  It was the warmest day of the year thus far, and it seemed plenty of folks in the area were anxious to shake the cabin fever of winter.

Sitting down next to Chaerin, Jiyong stretched his arms over the back of the bench.  “They delivered the new lights last night,” he said.  “Two of them were broken in the box.  We’ll have to send them back on Monday.”

Chaerin sighed, crossing her legs and bobbing her dangling foot up and down.  “One more thing we won’t have done by April.  We can’t take the old ones out until they send more.”

“I think we should just go ahead with the ones we’ve got.  This is taking too long as it is.”  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and toyed with his fingers.  “We were supposed to have this remodeling done by February.”

“Well…” Chaerin droned.  “These projects never get done in the time you allot for them.”

“Don’t make excuses,” he chided her, still watching as Eunjung stood on the third step of the jungle gym, calling for Gaho to climb after her.  He pawed at the bottom step, but wouldn’t budge.

“I’m not making excuses,” Chaerin defended herself.  She lightly grasped the top of Jiyong’s head with the ends of her fingers and turned his face towards her.  “Don’t get so stressed out about this.”

He exhaled slowly.  “I’ve just been working on our taxes—” Chaerin interrupted with a disgusted sound, sticking out her tongue.  “I know you don’t want to hear it but it’s important!  Business was downright abysmal at the end of last year, Chae.  We can’t keep losing money on this club.”

“I know business has been bad, I don’t have to look at all that crap to know that.”  She tapped her fingernail against her clenched teeth, a noise that drove Jiyong up the wall.  “It’ll be better once we get the place fixed up.  The new bar already looks great, and the tables are coming next week.  Things will turn around soon.”

“New tables and toilets and light fixtures aren’t gonna bring people in, Chae.  We need new entertainment.”

Her eyes widened as her face filled with a look of astonishment, with  just a hint of her casual sarcasm.  “Does that mean you’ve finally come around to hiring a new act?!”

Jiyong massaged the back of his neck.  “We’re gonna lose the place if we don’t get a permanent performer.  This amateur hour crap isn’t cutting it.  I don’t like the idea of replacing…” he chewed his bottom lip and redirected himself.  “I don’t like it, but it’s the only thing that'll bring people back.  This place isn’t going to go under after all the hell we’ve gone through to keep it open.”

Chaerin patted her best friend’s knee.  “Well I’m glad to have you on board.  If you want, I can start advertising for auditions?”

“Let’s just get through this remodeling first.  I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.”  He craned his neck to see where Eunjung had gone, and found her standing at the top of a twisting slide, Gaho wriggling in her arms.

“Daddy!  Watch me!” she yelled out to him.

“I am watching sweetheart!  Go for it!”

She sat down with the squirming pup and took off.  When she reached the bottom, both Jiyong and Chaerin whooped and clapped for her, shouting encouragement to go again.  But Gaho wasn’t as willing, and he broke free and bounded off the slide, ungainly.  Jiyong started to stand, ready to make after the pup if it ran off, but it only took a few hops away from Eunjung before squatting to poop in the playground sand.

Chaerin in her lips to keep from laughing.  “That’s all you, Daddy!” she called after Jiyong while he made his halfhearted way to the mess, pulling a plastic bag from his back pocket.

~~~~~

“I want Minji to push me on the swing,” Minhee was saying as they crossed the grass to the playground, the soil soggy from the recently melted snow.  Her father and babysitter each held one of her hands, lifting her over puddles by the wrist when they happened upon them.

Seunghyun exaggerated a pout to hide an actual twinge of jealousy.  “Why can’t I push you?”

But Minhee was less than kind.  “You push me like a little baby!”

Minji thought that was hilarious.  “He does push like a big baby doesn’t he?”

“She means I push her like she’s a baby.”

“No I didn’t,” Minhee shot him down, and Minji found that even funnier.

Seunghyun’s wrath came swiftly, and he scooped his daughter up and held her upside down, legs flailing.  “I’m going to push you whether you like it or not!” he growled in his deep, gruff voice that would have frightened children he was unfamiliar with, but Minhee was unphased.

A half dozen or so kids, most Minhee’s age or older, ran about the playground equipment with a winter’s worth of pent up energy.  They clamored about on monkey bars and slides, a few stopping to pet a small brown puppy digging in the sand.  The swing-set was newly empty however, after a young boy jumped from his seat at the height of his forward rush through the air.  Seunghyun held his breath while the child plummeted to the sand, only to land impressively on his feet with a yell.

Minhee plopped onto a swing and kicked her feet impatiently.  “Come on!”  Her father pulled back on the plastic-wrapped chains and let go, pushing gently as she swung back to him.  He was barely three pushes in when his cell phone rang from his pants pocket.  He quickly removed it as Minhee swung away, pushing her again when she returned.  He then touched the screen and pressed it between his ear and shoulder before she came back.  “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me!” Daesung yelled on the other end over the cacophony of the kitchen where they worked.  Seunghyun winced and wished he could hold the phone just a bit further from his assaulted ear drum.

“What’s up?”

“I hate to even ask you, but can you come in tonight?  This place is absolutely ridiculous right now!”

Seunghyun watched as Minhee leaned back, her long black hair streaming in the air inches from the ground.  She smiled up at him, the gap from her most recently lost baby tooth showing cutely.  “Really man?  Surely you can find someone else…”

“Everyone’s either out of town or not answering my calls!” A deafening clash in the background made Seunghyun jump.  “HEY, WATCH IT!” Daesung yelled at the offender, sounding less than threatening.

Seunghyun whined, but he doubted his coworker could hear.  Why hadn’t he just not answered the call?  But then, he was with Daesung’s sister; he would have been tracked down one way or the other.

“Alright, but not right now!  Give me a couple hours, I’m with the kid.”

“That’s fine, just get here soon.  These new guys they brought in are killing me…  Not that pot, that one!  Just move, let me—” and the call ended.

Somewhere in midst of their conversation, Seunghyun had become distracted enough that he’d stopped pushing, and Minhee had slowly come to a stop, her feet no longer kicking gleefully.  By the time he put his phone away and turned back, she had disappeared somewhere further into the playground.

Seunghyun wasn’t worried.  She had a right to be angry, and tended to go off alone to sulk when in a foul mood.  But they were in an unfamiliar park, and he thought it best to track her down.  “Minhee!  Honey where are you?” he called, but he knew it would be to no avail.  She probably wouldn’t speak to him until the next day.  His recent promotion at the four-star restaurant had taken a huge bite out of their father-daughter time, and he knew Minhee resented him for it.

A low-hanging wooden swinging bridge connected the platform for the monkey bars to a series of colorful tubes, culminating in a twisting slide.  He figured that was as good a place as any to start looking.

~~~~~

“Did he get any on you?” Jiyong asked as he dusted off Eunjung’s blue floral sweater and green jeans.  He knew that would be just his luck: the outfit was a present for her birthday.

“Nooo, let go!” she whined, struggling against him.  A look at her father’s face and she added a meek, “please?” to satisfy him.

He abided, and she took off up the ladder to the top of the slide again, forgetting Gaho on the ground below.  Jiyong had seen this coming; he wanted to be indignant, to say “oh no you don’t, this is your responsibility now!” and call her back down, but it wasn’t entirely true.  Minhee had never actually asked for a dog for her birthday, at least not with any more persistence than she has asked for a giraffe or a space ship.  It was he who had seen the wrinkly pup in the pet shop window and fell in love, using his daughter as an excuse to indulge himself.

Gaho’s leash bobbed through the sand behind him like a boat rudder, the line rewound up to the last foot.  He caught it and extended it once more, while the pup ran in wobbly circles around him.

A pudgy boy with a bowl cut came around the final bend in the slide, scurrying off when he reached the bottom.  He was followed by a smaller boy in flip flops, then a girl with ribbons tied around her pigtails.  But where was Eunjung?

“Jungie?  Baby?” he called up the tube, only to have the first boy nearly barrel into him.  Then the girl, then an all new child.  He frowned with his hands on his hips.

“Eunjung, come get your dog!” he tried, but still no response.  Tying Gaho’s leash to a metal pole on the jungle gym, he ascended the shallow rungs of the ladder two at a time.  It led into the mouth of a red plastic tunnel leading away from the slide; large enough for two children to pass, but Jiyong felt more than a bit ridiculous as he ducked inside.

~~~~~

“I’ll never come out,” Minhee spat under her breath, arms crossed tight over her chest as she scowled down at her shoes.  “I’ll eat bugs if I have to, but I’m never coming out!  He’s the worst daddy ever!”

A fat boy in a striped shirt crawled over her, his knee coming down on her thigh.  “Oww!” she yelled at him, but he ignored her in his hurry.  A smaller boy who may have been his brother came quickly after, and she shot him a look that dared him to mess with her.  He carefully stepped over her and went on his way.

“That’ll show him, stupid mean daddy…” she continued her rant, eyes watering.  If he never saw her again, he’d be sorry then.  Or would he?  He was at work all the time now, sometimes not getting in until after she had fallen asleep.  She never saw Minji either, now that she was back in school.  Maybe this was what they wanted, for her to run away forever and not bother either of them anymore.  The thought made her revenge feel hollow, and she kicked the plastic side of the tunnel in frustration.  She noticed a dirty grey foot print on her white tights, and wished it had been the chubby boy she’d kicked instead.

The thumping of another passerby grew near, from the opposite direction this time, and Minhee prepared to face-off against them.  This was her tube now, she decided, and no one was getting past her.

But the approaching stranger wasn’t either of the boys this time.  A girl about Minhee’s age turned the corner and crawled towards her, making a beeping sound like a moving truck.  Her hair was short, and the sleeves of her blue sweater were pulled up past the elbow.  She only stopped when her head bumped into Minhee, and she sat up with a smile.  “Hello!”

Minhee eyed her suspiciously.  “Hello…”

“Are you going down the slide?”

“No…” the fierceness she had felt while alone drained out of her in the face of another child.  She sheepishly averted her eyes.

“Do you want to go on the monkey bars with me?” the other girl asked enthusiastically.

“No.”  I hate monkeys.

To Minhee’s dismay, the girl crossed her legs and sat down across from her, their knees touching in the constraints of the tube.  “Well what are you doing here?”

“Nothing…” Minhee kept her eyes low and wished the girl would just leave, but she continued to question her.

“You can’t just stay here, you have to go somewhere!”

“No I don’t, who says?”

“That’s what tunnels are for!” the girl seemed confident in the succinctness of her answer.

“I don’t care,” Minhee said, and gathered her courage to look at her foe.  But it was hard to be angry with her smiling like that.  “I live here now.”

That only made her grin wider.  “Really?  You live in the park?”

Minhee nodded.

“That’s cool!”  It wasn’t the answer Minhee was hoping for, and she looked away again.

“You’re stupid, aren’t you…”

“What?”

“Kids can’t live in a park, that’s stupid.  You’re stupid.”  To be so cruel felt worse than being slighted by her father, and she hid her face in shame.

But the short-haired girl was undeterred.  “We could pretend you do!  We’ll play… that this is your castle!  And I’m the king of the castle.”

“If it’s my castle, shouldn’t I be the king?” Minhee asked, unwittingly drawn into the game.

“You can be the princess!  And Gaho can be my noble steed.”

“Who’s Gaho?”

“My dog!”  The smile faded from the girl’s face as she realized he hadn’t followed.  “Oops…”

But Minhee’s shell was already cracking.  “You have a dog?”

“Yeah!  I’ll show him to you, come on!”  The girl fell to her hands and knees, but stopped to turn back.  “By the way, I’m Eunjung.”

“I’m Minhee.”

Eunjung grinned wide at her.  “Okay, let’s—“

“Minhee?” a deep voice came booming down the tunnel from the end near the monkey bars.  “Minhee!”

Eunjung sat up again.  “Who’s that?”

“That’s my dad,” her companion answered.  “But I’m not—“

“Jungie, are you in here?!” another man’s voice called from the opposite direction.  “Come out here, baby!”

“Is that your dad?” Minhee asked, and Eunjung nodded.

Before either could reply to their fathers, the men each turned a corner at the same time.  Seunghyun’s face was red from the effort it had taken to squeeze himself through the narrow tunnels, and he tugged at his turtleneck in discomfort.  Jiyong had had an easier time of it, but his shirt snagged as he came around the bend, and he muttered a curse as he pulled it loose.

He lifted his face to the two girls in front of him, and the man coming up behind them with the soft brown hair.  It was embarrassing enough that people had probably seen him scurrying into the tube from the outside, but he hated that someone had to see him from this angle as well.

The other father caught sight of him, and fell on his shoulder with a breathless laugh.  “I sincerely hope you aren’t coming this way!”

Jiyong laughed too.  “No, I think it’s easier to get out this way.”  He nodded in the direction he had come.

“That’s good, because I don’t think I’d be able to back out of this thing…”  Seunghyun touched Minhee’s arm.  “Are you ready to go sweetie?”

“No!” she cried, and pulled away.  “We’re going to go see her dog!”

“Yeah Daddy!” Eunjung yelled as she scampered on hands and feet towards Jiyong.  “I’m gonna show her Gaho!”

“Alright, alright, but let’s get out of here first okay?”  He pushed her through his arms and legs towards the exit, and clumsily twisted himself around, making note to thank Chaerin for signing them up for those yoga classes back in the fall.

Minhee turned back to her own father, smiling for the first time since the swing-set.  “Hurry up!” she encouraged, and he followed after her as quickly as his long limbs could squeeze through the tunnel.  Seunghyun exhaled with relief when he saw the light of day around the final bend in the maze.

“Hallelujah…” he sighed.