Chapter 2: When We Became Childhood Friends at the Age of 6 (2)

“Woo, Woo-ju-sang…!”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m going to get in trouble with Grandpa if I go out like this…!”

“It’s okay, if we hurry back, Grandpa won’t even know!”

“B-But, Grandpa is scary…”

“If you get in trouble, I’ll take the blame for you, so trust me.”

“And Aki, you’re probably tired of being inside all the time, aren’t you?”

“Ah, y-yeah….”

“Aki only mentioned her grandfather at the time, so I didn’t know, but later I found out that Aki’s grandfather was a man named ‘Fujiwara Genichiro,’ the Japanese ambassador to South Korea.”

“The Japanese ambassador to South Korea was a shortcut to a key position in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is equivalent to our country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“To put it simply, Aki’s grandfather was a very high-ranking person, and I confidently told such a person that I would take the blame for her.”

“I was only 6 years old, so I didn’t know any better.”

“If I had known, I wouldn’t have been able to take Aki out, and we wouldn’t have been able to become friends so easily.”

“No, even if I had known, I probably would have thought, ‘Japanese ambassador to South Korea?'”

“‘What’s that?’ so the result would have been the same.”

“Anyway, I had no idea about such complicated circumstances at the time, and I was just happy to go out and play with a pretty girl, so I secretly escaped the Japanese Embassy with Aki’s hand in my hand.”

“Our destination was a nearby amusement park.”

“When I was young, I loved going outside and playing with my friends.”

“Thanks to that, I knew the geography around my house well, and I also knew that if I went out a little from the Japanese Embassy where we were, there was a playground that people didn’t come to very often.”

“The reason I chose a playground that people don’t visit often was a bit of a selfish desire, a frank desire to play alone with a pretty girl.”

“Of course, if I said that to Aki now, she would tease me, saying something like, ‘Did you like me since then~?’ so I’ll never tell her that.”

“Anyway, the 6-year-old me stood at the entrance of the park with my chest puffed out and said to Aki.”

“Here we are!”

“Woo-ju-sang, what is this place…..?”

“Huh?”

“It’s a playground, don’t you have playgrounds in Japan?”

“Ah, it’s a playground…!”

“Yeah, there are playgrounds in Japan.”

“But I didn’t know it was a playground because there was no one here.”

“Really?”

“Aren’t playgrounds usually empty?”

“No, when I was in Japan, the playground was always full of people.”

“From here to the end over there, it was full of kids who came to play?”

“Wow, really?”

“I’m so jealous.”

“My friends don’t come out because they’re always on their phones.”

“I want to go to Japan and live there too.”

“Woo-ju-sang, do you want to come to Japan later?”

“I’ll take you to a playground with lots of friends!”

“Really?”

“Are you serious?”

“You can’t say it was a lie later, okay?”

“Yeah, I won’t lie.”

“Woo-joo~ is my fri, friend…………”

“Shyly, bashfully.”

“Aki mumbled, her cute face slightly flushed.”

“The translator couldn’t recognize the small voice, so I couldn’t understand everything, but I definitely heard up to ‘Yeah.'”

“I smiled brightly and gently pulled Aki’s hand.”

“Aki, you promised.”

“You can’t forget to play with me at the playground later, okay?”

“Ah, no.”

“It can’t just be words.”

“Aki, do you have a cell phone?”

“Cell phone?”

“Yeah, I have one, but not right now.”

“Why?”

“Really?”

“Then give me your phone number.”

“I’ll contact you when I go to Japan!”

“Ah, wait a minute.”

“My number is…………”

“…..Got it.”

“Saved it.”

“Let’s go play now!”

“Yeah, but what should we play…?”

“Is there anything you want to do, Aki?”

“Like swings or seesaws?”

“Me?”

“I……”

“The playground looked good to run around because there were no people.”

“Aki stared at a chair that looked just right for two young children to sit on.”

“Aki, do you want to sit down?”

“Are your legs tired?”

“My legs don’t hurt…… but I want to sit over there and play, h-house.”

“Play house?”

“Isn’t that what girls do?”

“Yeah, but I thought it would be nice to do it with W-Woo-ju-sang… is that not okay?”

“Not just me, but all boys would agree that it’s impossible to refuse a request from a girl our age with her eyes wide open.”

“……Really?”

“Okay.”

“Then let’s play house together.”

“Ah, really?”

“Woo-ju-sang, thank you…!”

“So I answered immediately without much thought, and after receiving Aki’s thanks, I felt proud for some reason and secretly puffed out my nose.”

“Then I’ll be the mom, and Woo-ju-sang can be the dad!”

“Okay, but what do I have to do to be the dad?”

“I’ve never played house before.”

“Woo-ju-sang just has to stay still, Aki will take care of everything.”

“…. Ahem!”

“Aki cleared her throat, not like a child.”

“As if she had learned from a drama, Aki skillfully cleared her throat, closed her eyelids once, and then opened them.”

“……、? (Hey, honey?)”

“She showed a slightly serious atmosphere and tapped her side.”

“Come and sit here.”

“Huh?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“As I carefully sat next to her as she instructed, Aki puffed up her cheeks with a sullen expression.”

“It wasn’t the kind of impression I should have had in this atmosphere, but at the time, I thought Aki’s expression was just so pretty that I was momentarily lost in thought.”

“Now that I think about it, I think that was the first time my heart fluttered when I looked at Aki.”

“You drank again and came home late, didn’t you?”

“……huh?”

“But that fluttering feeling disappeared because of Aki’s next words.”

“Did I tell you to drink in moderation, or not?”

“Hey, Aki, you’re talking too fast…”

“あなたがお酒を適当に飲むと言ったじゃないですか。”

“私と約束もしたのに、 何度もこんなに約束を守らないん ?(You said you would drink in moderation.”

“You made a promise with me, are you going to keep breaking your promise like this?)”

“76見T3CPU。大人仁文恥<D末世人? (Aki is watching, too.”

“Aren’t you embarrassed to be an adult?)”

“The translator couldn’t keep up with Aki’s talking speed, so less than half of it was translated, but I could tell from the nuance and expression that Aki was scolding me.”

“I’m not saying you can’t drink at all.”

“I’m saying you should moderate it.”

“It’s not right for the head of the household to come home drunk and unconscious every time.)”

‘……Is this how they play house in Japan?’

“The play house I know is where the husband and wife feed each other and kiss each other, but something is strange.”

“It was very strange, but Aki is Japanese, so she must be playing house the Japanese way, not the Korean way.”

“At the time, I genuinely thought so, and for some reason, I hung my head in response to Aki’s acting, which seemed to be deeply imbued with her own experiences.”

“Yeah, I’ll moderate from now on.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“?(Only in words?)”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Whether it was a coincidence or fate, Aki’s speaking speed gradually slowed down, so the last words were completely translated by the Papago automatic translator.”

“What Aki said to me was, in Korean, ‘We made a promise, if you did something wrong, you would kiss me as an apology.'”

“In other words, Aki was telling me to kiss her, and at first, of course, I thought it was a joke.”

“]What are you doing?”

“Are you going to break your promise with me again?”

“But then, Aki urged me in Japanese, turning her face and offering me one cheek.”

“And when I hesitated, she even closed her eyes and waited for me, as if she wouldn’t talk to me anymore unless I kissed her quickly.”

“Hey, Aki?”

“I think this is enough….”

“I won’t talk to you until you kiss me.”

‘Do I really have to do it……………?’

“Ah, whatever.”

“At that time, I thought so, and I moved only my upper body slightly and kissed Aki’s right cheek.”

“-Smooch.”

“The, there, okay?”

“It was actually more of a peck than a kiss, literally just a contact between lips and cheek, but it was the first time in my life that I had any skinship with a woman other than my mom, and my heart was pounding because of it.”

“Wow, Woo-joo~!”

“Y-Yeah?”

“You hesitated a lot before speaking, and you couldn’t do anything to Mom, and you even pecked me carefully, you were just like my dad!”

“But Aki, who received the kiss I had bravely given her, was shining her big eyes brightly, admiring my acting, which wasn’t really acting.”

“So I felt a little unfair that I seemed to be the only one whose heart was pounding like this.”

“It wasn’t a competitive spirit, and it wasn’t quite jealousy either, it was a really ambiguous feeling………….”

“To be honest, I still don’t know what that feeling was.”

“I-Is that so?”

“Yeah!”

“When my dad comes home late after drinking, he always ends up like that.”

“But the ending was a little different!”

“What was different?”

“After Dad kisses Mom, they hug each other tightly, and then Dad picks Mom up and carries her to their bedroom.”

“And then, after a while, Mom starts to hurt a lot!”

“What do you mean she’s in pain?”

“Is Aki’s mom sick?”

“No, she’s very healthy!”

“That’s why Aki doesn’t know why she makes that sound.”

“Really?”

“What kind of sound does she make?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it’s very strange.”

“It’s like she’s breathing heavily, like, ah, ah~, like that?”

“Oh, really?”

“My mom does that sometimes, too!”

“Looking back, I shouldn’t have said this at this time, but there’s no way 6-year-old me would have had that kind of awareness, and in the end, we ended up making a promise we shouldn’t have.”

“Eh, Woo-ju-sang’s mom also hurts every night?”

“Sometimes when I wake up at night and go to the living room to drink water, I hear sounds from my mom and dad’s room.”

“The sound that Aki mentioned, like she can’t breathe!”

“Woo-joo-sang, are moms always in a lot of pain?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should I ask my mom later?”

“Ah, can you?”

“Thank you, Woo-joo-sang!”

“Yeah, trust me.”

“Aki!”

And that evening, not knowing anything, I threw an innocent question to my mom with the determination to keep my promise to Aki.

“Mom, why do you make sounds like you’re in pain every night?”

“…—?!”

My mom, who was shocked, turned red and told me, ‘Woo-joo, you must never say that anywhere, okay?!'” she told me firmly, which is another story.