Episode 3. The Babies’ Star (4)
It was the day for the cultural center class.
Today, Min Seung-yeon’s steps heading towards the hypermarket were particularly heavy.
As if knowing or not knowing her mother’s feelings, Kang Yera bit and sucked on the long-necked dinosaur doll that Min Seung-yeon had given her to play with, showing a lively spirit from the morning.
Watching Kang Yera’s active movements, Min Seung-yeon wondered if her daughter was acting this way because she was looking forward to the cultural center class.
Perhaps that was why.
Her heart grew even heavier.
“Yera. Do you like taking cultural center classes?”
Kang Yera lifted her head at Min Seung-yeon’s call.
Kang Yera, who had been staring intently at her mother, soon nodded her head repeatedly and made a short sound, ‘Woong!’
Min Seung-yeon honestly couldn’t tell if Kang Yera truly understood her words and was reacting this way or not.
Because it was nearly impossible for a baby still in the babbling stage to fully understand what her mother was saying.
Nevertheless, Min Seung-yeon constantly felt as if her daughter was capable of communication.
Because of this, she couldn’t easily blurt out that her daughter might not be able to go to the cultural center anymore.
How sad her daughter would be if she understood her words.
Just imagining her daughter’s disappointed face made Min Seung-yeon’s heart ache.
Even so, she didn’t want Kang Dae-oh to take on a designated driver job at night.
Her husband was already struggling hard to earn money in his own way. She didn’t want to force him to overexert himself further.
“Haaah……”
A deep sigh escaped Min Seung-yeon’s lips.
What should she do?
A myriad of thoughts crossed her mind.
Meanwhile, Min Seung-yeon and Kang Yera had already arrived at the entrance of the hypermarket.
The mother and daughter, who went up to the second floor using the escalator, moved towards the end of the corridor where the cultural center was located.
As soon as they arrived in front of the cultural center, many mothers who were waiting for the morning class with their babies particularly welcomed Min Seung-yeon and her daughter, especially Kang Yera.
“Oh my! Yera is here!”
“Yera, hello?”
“You have to play a lot with our daughter today, okay?”
“Oh my! My son has been whining and asking to play with Yera since three days ago.”
“Only three days? Our daughters have been waiting since the evening of last week’s class, practicing the ‘butt-pat-pat’ game that Yera taught them.”
Kang Yera’s popularity reached its peak among both babies and parents.
Because of the mothers who welcomed her and Kang Yera so enthusiastically, Min Seung-yeon couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘Actually, I’m thinking of only attending the cultural center until this month.’
The moment she uttered such words.
She couldn’t even imagine what kind of repercussions would follow.
Thanks to Kang Yera, the number of participants in the morning class reached 20 teams.
If Kang Yera were to drop out, the morning class might be pushed to the brink of cancellation again.
All sorts of thoughts began to intertwine complicatedly like a tangled skein of yarn in Min Seung-yeon’s mind.
What should she do?
As her worries grew, Min Seung-yeon belatedly realized that Kang Yera had disappeared.
“Ye-Yera? Kang Yera—!”
She had placed Kang Yera in a small play area prepared for babies to play in before the class started. But she had vanished in an instant.
The moment Min Seung-yeon frantically tried to look for Kang Yera.
“Au-woo!”
Her daughter’s voice was heard from somewhere.
Kang Yera, who was very close by, just a few steps away, was holding something and waving her short arms.
“Yera. What are you holding? ……Oh my!”
It was an event flyer being distributed at the cultural center.
The top of the flyer had this phrase inscribed:
[The 23rd ‘I’m a baby model!’ Photo Event]
Kang Dae-oh, who had started organizing the store at 9 PM, slung his backpack straps over his shoulder and hurried home.
Before getting into his car and starting the engine, he quickly scrolled through the photos of his daughter that Min Seung-yeon had sent him today.
Store work had been so busy that he hadn’t even had time to leisurely appreciate the photos Min Seung-yeon sent, so now he could finally take in Kang Yera’s cute appearances.
‘Looks like she played with beans today.’
Various types of beans were spread on the floor.
The sight of babies sitting on the beans and taking a play class together was fully captured in the photo.
As always, Kang Yera took on the role of the play leader for the babies this time too.
Seeing his young daughter always at the center of attention wherever she went, Kang Dae-oh quickly erased the day’s accumulated fatigue from his mind.
She likes playing at the cultural center this much.
‘Indeed. Saying she can’t go makes no sense.’
Kang Dae-oh intended to persuade his wife once more when he got home today.
Just as baby clothes quickly become unwearable as time passes, play classes appropriate for that age would also become memories that one could never experience again if time passed them by.
Kang Dae-oh didn’t want to leave such regrets for his daughter, even if it meant forgoing things for himself.
Kang Dae-oh, having firmed his resolve, soon started the engine and gripped the steering wheel.
Not long after.
He parked his car near the house and opened the front door.
Then Min Seung-yeon frantically gestured as if she had been waiting for Kang Dae-oh.
“Honey. Come here.”
“Huh? Why?”
“There’s something I need to talk about.”
It was good timing.
Kang Dae-oh had something he wanted to say to his wife anyway.
Thinking the timing wasn’t bad, he sat down opposite his wife at the dining table.
Before Kang Dae-oh could open his mouth.
“Look at this.”
Min Seung-yeon first held something out in front of her husband.
“What is this…?”
“You’ll know when you see it.”
“……”
Kang Dae-oh’s gaze quickly began to scan the flyer.
It was a photo event independently organized by the cultural center, stating that if photos of babies attending classes were submitted, the best photo among them would be selected and awarded a prize.
The amount was a whopping.
“Five million… won? The prize money is quite substantial, isn’t it?”
“Right?”
“But why this? No way. Are you suggesting we participate in this?”
If they participated in the event and won, the cultural center fee issue would be quickly resolved.
No, five million won would be more than enough to cover the cultural center fees.
With that much spare money, they could buy all the clothes, toys, and fairy tales that they hadn’t been able to buy for Kang Yera and had only longed for.
But if they didn’t win, it was meaningless.
Because there was no prize money for second place.
The reward was entirely concentrated on only one first-place winner.
Perhaps this would be better.
If only they could win.
“Wait. This, the deadline is this Wednesday, isn’t it?”
Excluding today, only two days remained.
Kang Dae-oh, having checked the date, pointed to Min Seung-yeon’s smartphone.
“Honey. You took a lot of pictures of Yera when she was taking classes, right? Let’s choose the good ones from those and send them. Since it’s email submission, if you send me the files, I’ll forward them directly to the cultural center.”
“But… will it really be okay?”
“Huh? What?”
“This, it seems like there are quite a lot of participants. I honestly don’t know what our chances of winning will be even if we submit photos…”
Perhaps thinking it might be a meaningless effort, Min Seung-yeon showed a skeptical attitude towards participating in the photo event.
Her words had a point.
The prize money is as much as five million won. There’s no way other people wouldn’t participate.
The competition rate would be high accordingly.
As the competition rate is high, the Kang Dae-oh family’s chances of winning naturally decrease.
Nevertheless, Kang Dae-oh insisted they should at least try.
“At least the chances are higher than winning the lottery, aren’t they?”
“That’s true, but…”
It seemed a definitive way to persuade the anxious Min Seung-yeon was needed.
“Honey. You didn’t bring this flyer, did you?”
“No. Yera brought it.”
Somehow.
He had thought that Min Seung-yeon, who had a negative view on participating in the photo event, wouldn’t bother bringing the flyer and showing it to Kang Dae-oh.
So he had wondered if Kang Yera, not Min Seung-yeon, had brought it.
Kang Dae-oh’s prediction was precisely correct.
Kang Yera wouldn’t have brought the flyer without any thought.
If Kang Yera truly was a special being, as Kang Dae-oh had speculated.
‘She must have had some intention when she brought the flyer.’
Perhaps Kang Yera might have seen it.
The trump card that would guarantee victory in this photo event.
Kang Dae-oh’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he examined the flyer’s contents more closely.
“Honey.”
“Why?”
Kang Dae-oh pointed to the phrase containing the trump card he had found, and which he expected Kang Yera had also seen.
“If it’s exactly as written here, we can definitely win.”
Min Seung-yeon once again took Kang Yera to the supermarket to attend what might be their last cultural center class.
The mothers who had arrived earlier were in full swing, chatting about the photo event.
Min Seung-yeon briefly put Kang Yera down where the other babies were and moved towards where the mothers were.
“Ah, hello.”
Min Seung-yeon awkwardly greeted them.
As soon as they saw her, the mothers smiled brightly.
“Oh my! Yera’s mom is here?”
“We were just talking about the photo event.”
“Ah… really?”
When the topic of the photo event came up, Min Seung-yeon’s expression became even more awkward.
Although her husband was convinced they would definitely win, Min Seung-yeon still lacked confidence.
However, this anxiety, as Kang Dae-oh had predicted – no, as Kang Yera had intended – gradually began to disappear.
The trigger originated from conversations with the mothers.
“I saw the website.”
“Yera also participated in the photo event this time, didn’t she?”
“Ah. You, you saw it?”
The photos submitted by participants are uploaded to the cultural center’s website.
There was a reason for uploading photos to the website.
The method for selecting the winning entry was online voting.
“I voted for Yera.”
“Me too!”
“Because Yera usually takes good care of our baby too.”
“That too, but the photo also came out really nicely, didn’t it?”
The mothers repeatedly mentioned how much help they had received from Kang Yera in the past.
They subtly hinted to Min Seung-yeon that they decided to give their votes to Kang Yera to repay her kindness.
“I also asked my acquaintances to vote for Yera, so she’ll probably win the event without a hitch.”
“That’s right, that’s right.”
“Congratulations in advance, Yera’s mom.”
Min Seung-yeon couldn’t help but be bewildered by the flood of premature congratulations.
Kang Dae-oh had pointed to the voting method written on the flyer and guaranteed that votes would inevitably flock to Kang Yera.
Those words had become reality.
Kang Yera, who had been quietly watching her bewildered mother from nearby, gave a meaningful smile.
A collaboration created by a daughter who caught the photo event at the perfect timing and a father who accurately read his daughter’s intentions.
Min Seung-yeon, unintentionally left out on her own, maintained an awkward smile for a while.
