Geuru stood on her tiptoes, grunting and straining as she pushed the door open, then trotted over to curl herself into a ball in the corner of the sofa.
“……?”
Jurim checked the time.
Eleven at night. It was hardly the hour for a kindergartener who usually crashed asleep by nine to be awake.
“Why aren’t you asleep? Did you wake up?”
Jurim found a blanket and wrapped the little bean bug up snugly as he asked.
The bean bug popped her head out from inside the blanket with a deliberately serious air.
“Geuru has been living in society, so Geuru has big worries.”
Jurim burst out laughing. She must have picked up the phrase from some strange program again. Tomorrow, he really needed to get rid of the TV.
He rubbed the corners of Geuru’s half-lidded, sleepy eyes.
“Let’s go to bed. Shall I read you a book?”
Shake-shake.
“Then I’ll pat you until you fall asleep?”
Shake-shake.
Geuru simply shook her head before flopping down on her side.
“Geuru doesn’t need you to worry about Geuru.”
“……?”
She wasn’t a child who refused being held and put to sleep. Geuru had always been eager for little acts of physical affection and used to beg for them.
At first, Jurim had been awkward, but now he was accustomed to patting her and stroking her hair. Before he got this busy, he had tucked her in every single day.
But now, she was suddenly saying he didn’t need to worry? He couldn’t figure out what was going on inside that tiny head.
Puzzled but assuming she would simply fall asleep like that, Jurim was just lifting his stack of documents again when—
“Guild Leader! Geuru has decided!”
“On what?”
Jurim asked back, his expression scrunching up. He knew by now that she always said something bizarre at times like this.
Maybe she had watched another union documentary and was going to condemn him for this and that. Why did union documentaries have to be three-part series that tormented guardians on the employer’s side?
“No condemning union-bashing. It’s forbidden. Right now, the workers are the ones oppressing the employer.”
The employer representative was truly enduring grueling labor at the moment.
“That’s not it.”
“Then what?”
“Geuru doesn’t want to go to kindergarten anymore! Geuru wants to be a Hunter!”
Slip—the stack of papers tumbled from his hands.
Indeed, Han Geuru was the sole thing in his life that he could neither predict nor guess.
*
Wrapped in her blanket like a caterpillar, Geuru dropped onto the bed with a thud. Having been carried straight from the study to her room, she peeked her face out from under the covers.
Jurim sat on the edge of the bed and swept his hand across Geuru’s round forehead, which poked out.
“You don’t want to go to kindergarten? You liked it until recently.”
Especially after obtaining her Hunter license. Pride and showing off seemed to be human instincts; this little human had attended diligently every day without a word of complaint, eager for the fun of bragging about her license.
That was precisely why her declaration to quit was even more shocking.
Geuru clutched and unclutched the edge of the quilt, then spoke.
“Kindergarten is good, though……”
She didn’t hate it. Playing with friends was fun, and she liked the teachers.
“So what’s wrong?”
After hesitating, Geuru opened her small mouth.
“Um, Geuru’s kindergarten friend……”
“Yeah.”
“Hates Geuru.”
At the rather serious story, Jurim’s expression hardened.
“When we play princess, they won’t let Geuru be the princess……”
“What do they make you do? The maid?”
Shake-shake.
Perhaps remembering it made her sad, because Geuru pouted her lips.
“They make Geuru the stablehand……”
“…….”
Jurim bit his lip tightly and started patting the child again.
“Well, Geuru can just say she wants to be the princess too.”
At that, Geuru turned dead serious.
“That’s not how you do it.”
“I see…….”
Maybe it was because the Guild Leader had never graduated from kindergarten, but there was an awful lot he didn’t know.
“Is that all?”
“Not just that……. Geuru made a super awesome Saurus battleship during craft time, and they broke that too…….”
Jurim narrowed his eyes.
“That’s a bad thing to do.”
Nod-nod.
“Did you tell the teacher?”
“Yeah……. Haeri said sorry to Geuru.”
But it still hurt.
More than the Super Awesome Saurus battleship breaking, it was the hostility from a friend she had liked that pained her.
“Why do you think your friend is doing that?”
“Dunno. Just, suddenly…….”
They had been close friends. Not knowing the reason why Haeri suddenly hated her made Geuru feel frustrated and heartbroken.
“Hmm……. Can’t you play with other friends?”
“Geuru wants to be close with Haeri though…….”
“Why?”
“Haeri is pretty and like a princess, so all the friends like her…….”
Jurim fell into distress for a moment. It was no exaggeration to say that Geuru was the prettiest child he had ever seen. Shouldn’t Haeri be the one trying to get close to Geuru?
“She wears pretty one-piece dresses, and her daddy picks her up every day.”
“One-piece dresses? We have plenty of one-piece dresses at home.”
Choosing clothes for a child had been utterly awkward, so he had left his card with the secretaries. As a result, the secretaries had bought so many luxury kids’ collections that the dressing room was bursting at the seams, to the point where the nanny would jokingly complain that picking out Geuru’s clothes was the hardest part of her job.
“And she’s pretty, too.”
“Hmm…….”
Jurim fell into thought as if faced with a difficult problem.
Geuru wriggled over and burrowed snugly against Jurim’s thigh as he brooded.
Having unburdened herself, her heart felt lighter, but now her head was full of a different worry.
‘What if the Guild Leader finds Geuru annoying?’
Adults liked children who weren’t a bother.
Especially when they were busy.
For days on end, Jurim had been up all night working. So even without knowing the details, she could guess that he was very busy.
‘Earlier, too, he was frowning deeply while looking at a thick stack of papers…….’
For Jurim, who was expending magical power, getting sleep should have been his top priority, so he was probably pushing himself too hard.
‘An ultimate Hunter shouldn’t act like a baby.’
Geuru hugged Jurim tightly, then rolled away to the end of the bed.
“Geuru’s fine. Geuru’s going to sleep now.”
And she pulled the covers all the way over her head.
He called her name several times, but Geuru didn’t budge, clamping her mouth shut like a clam and squeezing her eyes shut.
Soon, Jurim quietly left the room.
*
The next morning.
“Haa-aam…….”
Rubbing her eyes, Geuru got up and opened Jurim’s door out of habit. Waking up and brushing their teeth together had become a daily routine.
Surely that was how it was supposed to be…….
‘He’s not here!’
Jurim was gone.
Since Jurim, who always struggled to get up in the morning, wasn’t in his bed, Geuru looked around the spacious room before dashing out to the living room, her footsteps pounding.
But Jurim wasn’t in the living room either.
‘No way.’
Was it because Geuru had bothered him yesterday?
Did he leave Geuru behind and go out?
Thump-thump, thump-thump. Her heart began to race.
‘I’m scared.’
Near tears, Geuru knocked on the bathroom door and opened the study door.
“Guild Leader…….”
Rustle.
The moment she opened the door, she stepped on papers scattered across the floor.
“……?”
The study was filled with spilled papers and empty coffee cups. Jurim was sitting in his chair, fast asleep with his head on the desk.
‘F-found him…….’
Geuru let out a small sigh of relief.
‘What a relief. The Guild Leader just fell asleep in the study while working.’
Trudge-trudge. As she tried to walk over to him, countless papers tangled around her feet.
‘Oh no!’
Geuru picked up the papers strewn across the floor one by one.
[Handling Children’s Peer Relationships]
[Kindergarten Bullying]
[The Role of Kindergarten Parents]
Columns, articles, online communities, academic papers…….
Boosting self-esteem. Cheering them on.
Thick highlighter marks were drawn across various passages.
Crouching down and reading through them one by one, Geuru could roughly make out what they were about even if she didn’t know the difficult words.
It seemed the Guild Leader had stayed up all night looking these up and dozed off.
‘Because of Geuru…….’