“If Mr. Wolf happens to be a bad person, shake the acorn.”
“Nooo!”
Shake, shake.
“Mr. Guild Mashter buys me candy, and he comes when I’m scared.”
The conductor smiled broadly.
“Then he’s doing a fine job as a dad. What else is a dad, really? If he loves you enough to buy you tasty things, hold your hand, and take you to nice places, that’s a dad.”
He turned his eyes to Jurim and said glibly,
“I have five kids, and I’ve never done anything special beyond that. But a dad is still a dad.”
“Because you’re connected by blood?”
At Geuru’s question, the conductor turned his gaze back to her.
“No. We elephant beastfolk raise children together within the herd. Not one of my five children is related to me by blood. But I’m still their dad. Do you know why?”
“Umm…… Because you adopted them!”
“Because we’re a family with a bond more special than blood.”
Geuru’s mouth fell open.
“There’s that too?”
“Of course! That’s something that builds up while you’re doing all those ordinary dad things. Like a baby squirrel and Mr. Wolf.”
Bwoooooo—
A whistle sounded from the train.
The conductor straightened his back and gave a nod to the assistant conductor gesturing outside the window.
“Well then, it’s time for departure.”
The conductor took off his hat and bowed.
“Have a pleasant journey.”
*
Clack, clack.
The train heading for the Gate began to move.
The injured had been shoved into the sleeping car, and Gidan and Nayeon had joined Cheon Gyu-ri to help the Brom Guild.
Inevitably, only Jurim and Geuru ended up taking seats in the ordinary passenger car.
‘A special bond……’
After seating the child, Jurim rested his chin by the window and realized why he had become so fixated on something so trivial.
In society, people used different forms of address to express the relationships between one another.
From simple names to titles, honorifics, terms of endearment, nicknames……
A form of address defined a relationship, showed its depth, and proved that the relationship existed.
It was human instinct to constantly want to shape bonds into something visible and audible, to establish them.
The same was true for Jurim.
He had not simply brought the child in like a potted plant and given her quality soil and clean water.
There had been all kinds of emotional exchanges between them, and that was why he had wanted to prove, through a form of address, that a special relationship had been created as a result.
“Guild Mashter.”
“Yeah?”
Geuru, who had been furtively watching his mood the whole time, raised her brows high and clenched her fists.
“Geuru, um, the reason I came here is…… I mean, something tewwible happened to Geuru……”
At the word “terrible,” Jurim finally burst out laughing.
“Is that so? What were you doing when you got scammed?”
With unmistakable derision, Jurim poked at Geuru’s painful memory.
‘Hmph……!’
Geuru’s shoulders trembled.
“I made a request at Yangpa to find my mom and dad, but he was a bad scammer.”
“……”
“I’m sowwy I didn’t tell you.”
For a moment, Jurim’s face darkened. He murmured softly,
“This is my fault, then.”
“……?”
Why was it his fault?
Jurim set his elbows on his knees and steepled his hands together.
He met Geuru’s eyes steadily as she sat across from him.
“Let’s look for them together. Your mom and dad.”
Thud.
Geuru went deathly pale and quickly shook her head.
“I-It’s okay now.”
“Why? You think I’ll get scammed too?”
Geuru’s mouth fell open.
“I don’t think you would, but I think you’d do the scamming.”
“What?”
When Jurim answered as if dumbfounded, Geuru quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway, not that!”
“Then why?”
“Just because……”
Geuru hesitated, and when Jurim quietly waited for an answer, she slowly opened her mouth.
“I want Guild Mashter to keep reading books to me. Even if I get sulky and say other things, it’s okay.”
If she could keep living like this, she didn’t need to find her mom and dad.
Jurim smiled faintly.
“I’ll keep reading to you.”
“Keep?”
“Even if you find your parents, even when you grow up tall and become an adult, and even when you become a grandmother, I’ll read to you. What else?”
“What else?”
With her face flushed, Geuru’s ears flapped.
“And…… hug me even when you’re mad, and come when I’m scared even if I don’t have the watch……”
“If you ask me to hug you, I’ll hug you no matter how angry I am, and even without the watch, I’ll protect you. Like today.”
Jurim unwrapped a candy and placed it in her small mouth.
“When we go home, we’ll buy those strawberry candies with the long name.”
A sweet strawberry flavor spread through her mouth.
“All you have to do is call me Dad once in a while, whenever you feel like it.”
At that moment, Geuru’s mouth, which had been rolling the candy around, fell open.
“I may not be able to become your biological dad, connected to you by blood, but in every moment, I will be your dad, and you will be my daughter.”
Her answer came a beat late.
“D…… Dad?”
Geuru blinked slowly.
Both input and output were slow, as if something in one corner of her head had broken.
Jurim said quietly, but firmly,
“Your mom and dad must be good people. And regardless of your birth parents, we will always have a special relationship.”
“Always?”
“Yeah, always.”
Always……? Without thinking, Geuru recalled the past.
Always.
“From now on, we’re Geuru’s mom and dad. Always!”
Always.
“Geuru is kind and pretty, so you’ll be able to meet parents better than us.”
The mother she once had, who had spoken of always.
The orphanage she had returned to.
The director’s hand, tense with strength.
The door she had lingered before for a long time, wondering if it might open again.
In an instant, her mind went completely white.
“Always can…… change too. Before……”
Geuru abruptly clapped a hand over her mouth.
She couldn’t say it. He might think she was a child who was easy to return.
‘Then I might have to go back again.’
It felt as though a black hole had opened beneath her feet.
Fear seized her as if she would soon fall endlessly, and her heart dropped.
That’s right. That was why.
A sudden realization flashed through her.
The reason she had tried to find her mom and dad was because of the anxiety that had never disappeared, but had been hiding deep inside her all along.
Because she needed a place that would not change. And for that, she needed blood ties that would not be severed no matter the reason.
When she realized that, in the end, she had not become the impressive Hunter that Hyeonak needed, and that the only place she had ever had to lean on was Jurim, she became uncontrollably afraid.
A chill washed over her, as if she were coming down with a fever.
‘Why did I forget?’
After swallowing bitter medicine, blech, blech, you ate sweet, sweet strawberry candy to get rid of the bitter taste.
If you rolled the red candy around in your mouth, before you knew it, you forgot that you had swallowed bitter medicine at all.
And so she had forgotten. Because it was sweet and fun.
Always, Dad, tender affection.
The anxiety that had been hiding tightly beneath a thin film burst far too easily, and poured out beyond her chest in torrents.
“……Geuru.”
“……?”
Geuru looked up at him blankly, like a broken doll.
Jurim bit his lip and held his breath for a moment.
For a while, rendered speechless by the terrified face of the child, he simply met her eyes.
“You don’t have to say it. It’s okay.”
Only then did the child, who had not even been breathing, give a tiny nod.
Jurim grasped Geuru’s two hands and clasped them together over his knees.
“I heard about it from the director. So it’s all right if you don’t say it.”
“……!”
The child froze completely.
Perhaps because of the shock, Geuru’s eyes went round and her mouth fell open.
But it was something he absolutely had to say.
“It wasn’t your fault. I know that too.”
With a face gone white as a sheet, Geuru shook her head.
“But…… you might think I’m a kid who can be s-sent back.”
Right now, more than ever, she did not want to go back.
“I…… I d-don’t want that.”
Watching his expression, Geuru murmured in a tiny voice.
She wanted to stay together with Unni, Oppa, and the Guild Master.
Now, even imagining parting with everyone made her heart harden and feel as though it were breaking into pieces.
At that, Jurim spoke more firmly than ever.
“I won’t tell you to go back. Never.”
Geuru’s ears pricked up, but before long, they drooped again.
A small bit of hope, and the pessimism that came to kill that hope.
At the root of that pessimism was blood.
To Geuru, blood symbolized both the failure of her previous family and the establishment of a relationship that would last forever.
“Like Mr. Elephant said, we’re a family even more special than a real one.”
“……Then you won’t tell me to go back?”
“Yeah. I’ll promise you every day.”
“……Really?”
“As many times as it takes, until you believe it.”
Her tightly pressed lips trembled. Geuru lowered her head. Her small shoulders shook.
Her tiny hands kept fidgeting without rest, revealing her tension and the fear that had not disappeared.
“It c-can’t be a lie. Really, really.”
If it was, Geuru might become so, so sad that her heart would crumble like sand.
Jurim rested his forehead on the top of her bowed head.
He forced himself to hold back his trembling breath.
After exhaling deeply and gathering his emotions, Jurim spoke gently.
“It isn’t ‘always’ that changes. I’ll teach you. You just have to learn it now.”
It isn’t always that changes.
Geuru quietly turned those words over in her mind.
The tears that had filled her eyes dropped onto their clasped hands.
Geuru gave a small nod.
Nod.
Geuru drew in a deep breath.
Jurim kissed Geuru’s small head and whispered,
“Now lift your head and hug Dad.”
Nod.
Geuru wrapped both arms fully around Jurim’s neck, then rubbed her face against his throat.
As her tears fell drop by drop, Jurim wiped them away and patted her back with his large hand.
“I’ll hug you every day. This is the promise that means our ‘always.’”
Now, an embrace was proof of the unchanging relationship shared only by the two of them.
Nod.
Carnivorous dinosaurs and herbivorous dinosaurs, wolves and squirrels, could become family.
Then they were already a special family who did ordinary things together.
A family more special than blood would teach Geuru an always that would never change.