Geuru wiped her sweaty palms by rubbing them against her clothes. Her big, round eyes rolled about before finding Jurim.
When the child saw Jurim, she seemed to relax slightly and soon read the last sentence with halting speech.
“So I wanna be a cool Hunter like the Guildmastew too!”
When Geuru finished her presentation, thunderous applause poured down.
Geuru took a deep breath—perhaps from nerves—and looked back at Jurim.
*You did great,* Jurim mouthed silently while clapping, and Geuru broke into a grin.
Suddenly, his chest swelled with emotion.
Perhaps he had climbed the Tower and survived precisely for today.
The choices he had made back then—climbing the Tower prepared to die, sealing the Master of the 99th Floor with his life on the line, and sending his brother alone to the 100th Floor—had made today possible.
He didn’t know about anything else, but protecting the world you would live in had been meaningful.
*
After the presentation ended, a joint activity for parents and children followed.
While the teachers moved desks and busied themselves with preparations, the woman lowered her head like a sinner.
“Hello, Guild Master On. I’m the mother of Geuru’s friend, No Haeri. My name is Bak Mirim.”
Jurim found it odd that Haeri’s mother was so self-deprecating, and he ducked his head slightly in a nod.
“I’m On Jurim.”
“Y-yes……. I should have greeted you first; I’m sorry for being so late. And, about the children’s issue before, I am truly ashamed.”
“It’s just children’s affairs, and it’s all resolved now. You need not concern yourself.”
His tone truly conveyed that he didn’t mind. It was so crisp and void of resentment that Bak Mirim thought with a smile:
‘He’s…… blander than I expected.’
In truth, the Jurim seen in the media had been provocative and destructive from head to toe.
Dazzlingly handsome looks, an attitude that seemed indifferent and annoyed, sharply honed words and actions.
He had an almost demonic image, as though crossing him would send you straight to the afterlife by word or by body, yet facing him in person, far from that, he seemed rather detached and relaxed.
“I felt so sorry that I prepared a gift.”
“It’s fine.”
His perfunctory reply made his annoyance plain to see.
But when Bak Mirim continued speaking, Jurim closed his mouth.
“This is a popular picture book these days. Since it has dinosaurs in it, kids really love it.”
Dinosaurs? Geuru, standing beside him, eyes sparkled.
“There are dinosaurs in it?”
“Yes. Auntie bought it because I thought you’d like it. Haeri says you like reading books.”
“Uh-huh.”
How cute. Mirim smiled at Geuru, then glanced at Jurim.
Jurim rolled his eyes toward Geuru, then took the shopping bag.
“Thank you.”
The look of annoyance had vanished at some point.
Jurim patted Geuru’s back firmly.
“Say your thanks.”
“Fank you, Haeri’s auntie!”
“No need, Geuru. Please keep getting along with our Haeri.”
“Okey!”
Looking toward Jurim, he dipped his head slightly once more to express his thanks.
It wasn’t as if he lacked money to buy a few books like these……. Yet as soon as the child showed interest, he had accepted them.
Even in such trivial details, she could sense his affection for the child, so Mirim hid her surprise.
“We’ll gather by groups and make them now.”
Then, Teacher Jeong Yuni had the children and parents sit together around circular desks.
Perhaps the groups were organized around close friends, so Geuru’s family and Haeri’s family ended up sitting around one desk.
Several sheets of paper and colored clay were placed in the center of the desk.
“This class is craft time. Let’s try making creative works together, Chick Class friends, with your mom and dad. You can make anything!”
Following the teacher’s instructions, the children first drew designs on the paper in front of them.
Geuru also diligently drew something with twelve colored pencils.
“Guildmastew, we’re gonna make this!”
“What is it?”
“Thwiple Spinosauruses hatchin’ fwom eggs.”
“……?”
This? Jurim narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in puzzlement.
It looked like an illustration from Dante’s *Divine Comedy*.
As if asking what he thought, Geuru snorted through her nose, and Jurim gave his assessment.
“Avant-garde.”
“Avant-wut?”
“It means it’s so innovative that it’s ahead of its time.”
Geuru giggled, and Mirim smiled.
As expected, that could only be affection for the child.
Then Haeri, who was still drawing, lifted her head.
“But hey. Why does Geuru call you Guildmastew?”
Geuru and Jurim abruptly raised their heads to look at Haeri. Both wore expressions that said this was a completely unexpected question.
“Huh?”
“Geuru’s adopted.”
“Uh-huh. That’s wight.”
“Then why don’t you call him Dad? Isn’t he your dad?”
“Huh?”
Mirim squeezed her eyes shut.
‘No, Haeri. My daughter Haeri~~~!!’
Her daughter, whom she loved so dearly it wouldn’t hurt to place her in her eye, unfortunately lacked tact. She needed something stuffed in her mouth.
At Haeri’s pointed question, a sudden silence fell over the surroundings.
The argument at the mom café involving Jurim had clearly been because of this adoptive relationship.
A guardian who was neither mother nor father.
Jurim had defined himself that way.
At the time, he had thought it was the result of some strange pseudo-parenting theory or a desire to keep distance from the child…….
‘But that doesn’t seem to be it.’
Despite having only met him briefly, affection for the child seemed palpable from Jurim.
“Uuuum…….”
Geuru dragged out her words.
Bak Mirim felt her throat burn.
After pondering for a moment, Geuru kneaded red clay.
*It’s true that the Guild Master adopted me.*
*But……. I don’t think we’re bound by words like “family.” Jurim has never once said to call him Dad or spoken of us being family now.*
Geuru was a daughter in name only, born of necessity and circumstances.
*That’s for the best.*
I know from experience that relationships formed through adoption can easily crumble. Because I hate that…….
“Uh-huh. Guildmastew isn’t my dad.”
‘Gasp.’
Could that be a house rule? Bak Mirim unconsciously turned to look at Jurim.
Jurim blinked blankly. The clay sculpture he had been shaping was crushed, grotesquely squeezing out between his fingers.
‘That doesn’t seem to be it?’
“Haeri, shall we color this yellow here?”
Bak Mirim offered her daughter the colored pencil, sweating cold sweat.
Despite her blood-draining efforts, a strangely subdued atmosphere continued to emanate from Jurim for some time.
*
There was a floor in the Tower where one had to confront the Master of the Abyss.
The feeling of floating in that abyss was exactly like this.
Unpleasant, suffocating, irritating, devoid of reality…….
The evening of that day, after successfully finishing the presentation and returning home.
Jurim recalled how he had floundered pathetically back then and scrunched up his face.
Leaning against the headboard with the child in his arms, Jurim took the picture book Geuru handed him.
It was the one Haeri’s mother had bought.
The one with dinosaurs.
‘Those damn dinosaurs.’
Now even the dinosaurs in the picture book annoyed him.
He’d thought the shopping bag seemed oddly thick, and upon opening it, the first volume of a fifteen-book series began with a herbivorous dinosaur hatching from an egg.
Perhaps reminded of the refrigerator egg she carried around, Geuru’s eyes sparkled with concentration.
The baby herbivorous dinosaur wandering alone meets a carnivorous dinosaur.
“That one looks delicious.”
When the carnivorous dinosaur spoke, the baby herbivorous dinosaur clung to him.
“Dad!”
Jurim felt somehow displeased at this part and spoke gruffly.
“Isn’t it too convenient and contrived for a herbivorous dinosaur to call a carnivorous dinosaur ‘Dad’? Dinosaurs should have biological instincts too; recognizing a predator as a parent is…….”
When Geuru’s puzzled gaze met his, he chose words the child could understand.
“It’s pure nonsense.”