Chapter Text
Christmas.
The smell of pine cones and freshly baked gingerbread cookies. Snow littering the ground in a blanket of white, the laughter of children ringing in the air as they break into a snowball fight. Even if it is cold outside, the flame crackling in the fireplace warms hearts aplenty, the ambience filled with soft, festive tunes. Presents stacked neatly beneath the Christmas tree, ornaments hanging from the branches as a single star or angel looks from above.
Christmas. The season of giving. The season of love and joy. The season of–
“There is absolutely no way I am wearing that,”
Chae Songhwa is adamant, her forefinger pointed directly at her best friend. “No way.” She repeats in a firm tone.
Minha simply rolls her eyes; there is a brief silence in the air except for the soft Christmas tune playing in the quaint bookstore as the bookstore owner contemplates on what she should do next. After all, Songhwa’s presence today on a Sunday morning in her bookstore had been a last minute favor the younger female had asked from her.
“Please?” Minha pleads, eyes wide with false innocence, “Do it for the children?”
“It’s November, ” Songhwa hisses in return, “I’m not wearing an ugly Christmas sweater in November!”
“What are you talking about? It’s never too early for Christmas,” Minha retorts, already thrusting the red knitted sweater into Songhwa’s arms. “and my halmeoni made this! Don’t be mean!”
Songhwa’s cheeks start to color; the only reason why she hasn’t thrown the sweater back into the arms of her best friend is because she loves and respects Grandma Chu very much. The last thing she would want to do is to hurt her, even if Grandma Chu isn’t around in the bookstore that morning to hear her offhand remark.
“I came here,” Songhwa starts, even though she is putting her arms through the sweater in a speed filled with reluctance, “as a favor for a best friend, but all I am getting in return is utter misery .”
“Stop being such a grinch,” Minha says in a sing-song voice, clearly unbothered by her best friend’s mood swing. “This is the season to be celebrating!”
“About?”
“Everything!’
Songhwa groans. “The only thing we should be celebrating is you having the bestest friend in the world AKA, me.”
“Touche,” Minha sticks a tongue out, “I am eternally grateful for your help today, Ms. Chae.”
“I don’t understand why you need me specifically to cover for your no-show guest of honor,” Songhwa continues in a low whisper, pointing towards the interior of the bookstore from where she now stands with Minha in a cramped staff corner hidden behind two drapes of curtains. “I don’t even write children’s books!”
“But you write,” Minha says without missing a beat, “and you have the flair of a storyteller, clearly. Reading books to the twenty children out there would be a breeze for you.”
“You’re asking me to read—“ Songhwa picks up the nearest children’s book from the pile beside her and grimaces, “— Sneezy the Snowman ,”
Minha giggles.
“Honestly, the only acceptable children’s book about Christmas I should be reading is How the Grinch Stole Christm —ow!”
Minha’d slapped her arm once, her face stern. “I do not want to make twenty children cry by the end of this storytelling session, thank you very much.”
“If you had really read the book you would know tha—“
“Hush, hush,” Minha holds a finger up against her lips. “The show is starting in a bit. No time to regret it now. Hang on, something is missing.”
Songhwa grumbles irritably, “What?”
Within a few seconds and before she could even stop her, Minha had plopped a santa hat on Songhwa’s head, adjusting it with the brightest grin on her face. Songhwa resists the immediate urge to push her best friend away, simply because all this holiday cheer isn’t doing anything to her. She never is one to be that fond of Christmas, anyway.
“There!” Minha claps her hands in glee. “All good to go! Remember, you just need to entertain them for an hour. Just one hour!”
“Fine, fine.” Songhwa waves her hand and takes a deep breath, “I got this.”
Minha grins.
Despite her personal feelings towards the season, the second Songhwa sits on the stool in the middle of twenty eager children, her heart begins to melt. Completely in her element of storytelling and her natural love for literature, Songhwa is able to make even the most mundane story captivating to the eyes of kids with short attention spans.
By the time she finishes reading the fifth instalment of Sneezy the Snowman , her hour is already up. The children immediately whine for her to continue, their pleas filling the air, wanting to hear more of her dramaticized narrations on Sneezy the Snowman and his frosty adventures.
The children do not even realise that she isn’t the author of the series she’d just read out to them.
“Seonsaengnim ,” One of her tiny audience pipes up confidently with one hand up in the air, “can I ask you a question?”
“Eo,” Songhwa closes the book and rests it on her lap. “Of course you can.”
“If Sneezy cannot stand the cold, why does he still go on all sorts of adventures during winter?” The boy asks, his eyes as wide as saucers.
“Well,” Songhwa scratches her chin in the pretense of deep thoughts, “Because…adventures make him happy!”
“Even if he can’t stop sneezing?” The same boy continues.
Songhwa nods, “Sneezy doesn’t even care if he is sneezing as long as he gets to go on his winter adventures.”
“If he’s cold why can’t he just wear a jacket?” Another girl asks innocently.
“Because the snow is wet and the jacket will be wet too,” Songhwa answers with a smile. “your eomma wouldn’t like it if you are wearing a wet jacket, right?”
“Oohh,” The girl nods, seemingly understanding her impromptu rationale. At that pause, Minha quickly steps in with a red pouch in her hands.
“Kids, look what I have here!” She exclaims brightly, jiggling the pouch repeatedly before reaching in to produce— “candy canes!”
All attention from Songhwa diverts immediately to the sweet, and she sneaks around the children to quickly get away from the spotlight. But barely taking a few steps away, Songhwa feels the slight tug of the hem of her sweater. She glances behind her back with a raise of an eyebrow, and sees the same boy who’d asked her a question earlier.
“Seonsaengnim,” He starts again, puppy eyes directed to Songhwa that she couldn’t help but to crowd down to his eye level, “if Sneezy is cold but made of snow, does that mean he cannot warm himself up by the fireplace? How does Sneezy stay warm if he can’t do that, and he cannot wear a jacket?”
Songhwa’s jaw drops slightly, knowing the implication of the boy’s question; gosh, he couldn’t be more than six years old. How does he even know that snow melts near fire?
“He watches reruns of Frozen all the time,”
As if reading her thoughts, a voice greets her then. Before Songhwa could whip her head towards the direction of the voice, a man is already crouching beside the boy and pulling him into his embrace. The man is grinning widely, obviously having realised Songhwa’s surprise at his son’s question. “Uju-ya, you should stop asking difficult questions to pretty ladies in a bookstore.”
Songhwa blushes for two reasons; one, out of frustration that this man didn’t think she had it in her to answer his son’s innocent question, and two, he had called her pretty.
“Sneezy wraps himself up in blankets when he is home,” Songhwa decides to answer anyway, much to the man’s amusement. “That’s how he stays warm.”
“But that’s at home,” The boy continues, unsatisfied with her answer. “What about outdoors?”
Songhwa thinks for two seconds before continuing, “Well, you see, Sneezy has a lot of friends, right? They keep him warm by making him happy.”
The boy named Uju furrows his eyebrows together, as if unable to reconcile with that explanation. His father watches the exchange quietly, just as Songhwa continues to elaborate. “Uju-sshi, you have close friends, right?”
“Eung,” The boy nods enthusiastically, “my best friends are Mone and Mane. They’re twins. Mone is my girlfriend.”
Songhwa chuckles in immediate response, her eyes crinkling into adoration at how cute this boy is. “Omo , you already have a girlfriend? That’s amazing. If I may ask though, how does Mone make you feel?”
The boy doesn’t even think as he exclaims, “Great! I feel great when I am with her.”
“And when you are great…” Songhwa continues, “you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, right?”
Uju’s mouth turns into a small ‘o’ shape, as if letting her words sink in.
“That’s how Sneezy keeps himself warm,” Songhwa winks, reaching a hand out to ruffle his hair before turning to his quiet father by the side. “I’m sure your appa can vouch for that. Right?”
“Yes!” The man immediately says, puffing his chest. “I can guarantee that this pretty lady is right!’
Songhwa laughs with a shake of her head.
Uju turns to his father, his lips forming a pout. “ Appa, can I please take Sneezy the Snowman home?”
“Of course!” The man nods, “ Appa will buy you all the books in this bookstore if you want!”
“Appa,” The boy states in an unamused tone, “we don’t have the space at home to do that.”
Songhwa couldn’t help it; the exchange between the father and son is entertaining and it makes her laugh again. They turn to her, and she clamps a hand over her mouth as a feeble attempt to apologise. She stands, bowing her head slightly and prepares to excuse herself when the man speaks again,
“Thank you for your engaging storytelling earlier,” He smiles, “my son clearly enjoyed it more than I would have expected.”
“Ah, I’m really glad,” Songhwa smiles too, “I was roped into doing this last minute because the author came down with stomach flu.”
“You’re good, though.” The man says. “I would have believed you if you told me you were the author. You seem to have a flair for children’s books.”
Songhwa responds jokingly, “If I write for children, I’d probably be making a lot of them cry.”
“Aha,” He snaps his fingers together, “so I was right to think that you are a writer of some sort.”
“I guess,” Songhwa shrugs sheepishly. “I do have a few books published.”
“But your earlier statement,” The man continues, his eyes twinkling,“I take it your choice of written words are meant to cause heartbreaks?”
“Yup,” She nods with a laugh, “that’s my specialty.”
Before the man could reply, his son is already tugging his hand a few times. “Appa, do you think Santa harabeoji would know if you’ve gotten me books? Can you ask Santa harabeoji not to get me books again for Christmas this year?”
“But you like books, Uju-ya!” The father says with a dramatic gasp, “Remember the books Santa harabeoji got you last Christmas? You used to ask me to read that to you every night for three months straight!”
“I want something else this year,” Uju pouts. “Seungwoo told me he got a train set last year for Christmas. He thinks Santa harabeoji is going to buy him a car this year. Can’t you ask Santa harabeoji to get Uju a car too, appa?”
“Hmm,” The man pretends to think, then turns to Songhwa, “what do you think, Ms. Chae? Should I ask Santa harabeoji to get Uju a car this year?”
Songhwa’s eyes widen in surprise, unsure of why her input even matters. “Err,” She raises an eyebrow, “that…would depend…if Uju was a good boy this year?”
The man nods immediately, approving her statement.
It is the crestfallen face of the little boy that makes Songhwa panic slightly. Not wanting to make a child cry in the middle of her best friend’s bookstore, she retracts her statement in haste, “But of course, your appa could just get it for you if you really wish for it!”
It is the man’s turn to widen his eyes. Before he could say anything, his son chimes in, “But I’m not asking appa to get a car for me. Appa wouldn’t. I’m asking Santa harabeoji,”
“Ah,” Songhwa shrugs without thinking, “your appa and Santa harabeoji are the same person, Uju-sshi.”
The second the sentence slips out of her tongue, Songhwa freezes.
Uju’s jaw drops as the words start to register. His father attempts to distract him from the blunder caused by Songhwa, only to have the boy push him away. “The same person? What do you mean?”
“U-uh,” She stammers, horror filling her entire being at the thought of unintentionally ruining the childlike innocence of a five year old. Songhwa’s mind unfortunately decides to blank out right in that moment, and she could see from her peripheral vision that the man is also panicking.
“Uju-ya!” He says loudly, pulling him towards the shelves, “Which books do you want to get? Appa will buy you everything—“
As he ushers the boy away from her, Songhwa slaps a hand over her forehead in complete embarrassment. Before she could turn away however, she catches the gaze of the man once again as he looks behind his shoulder.
Songhwa quickly tips her head as an apology, and scrambles away to the staff corner, hidden from public eyes. Her heart is still racing at the thought of how she’d quite literally ruined a five year old’s perception towards Christmas and Santa Claus.
Thank god, at the very least, Songhwa thinks to herself with a huff, it is unlikely she will be seeing the father and son duo again.
Or so she thought.
Songhwa’s jaw hangs open the second she steps into her publishing house the next morning, and is greeted by the familiar grin of her new Editor in Chief.
“Well, well, well,” He greets her with sparkles in his eyes, “if it isn’t the Chae Songhwa, Master of the genre of Angst and Tragedy,”
She flushes, her cheeks turning a crimson red at the memory of their last, rather unfortunate, encounter at Minha’s bookstore yesterday. She says nothing, unable to reply, until her Editor whips out his name card and hands it over to her politely.
Songhwa accepts it with a tip of her head, eyes immediately glossing over the card in her hands.
Lee Ik Jun
Editor in Chief
So that’s his name, a brief thought flits into her mind because she could even stop herself.
“What a coincidence to be meeting you here today, Ms. Chae. I was told by Jeongwon that you are our star author, and when he told me your name, I thought it seemed rather…familiar.”
“I’m sorry,” Songhwa blurts out without warning, just as Ikjun raises his eyebrow in slight surprise. “for…accidentally revealing to your son that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. I really didn’t mean to–”
Ikjun blinks, and then bursts into laughter.
Songhwa stares at him in shock, wondering if his exaggerated reaction was even warranted.
“Don’t worry about that,” Ikjun simply waves his hand in the air after he recomposes himself. “I told Uju that sometimes, I do step in as Santa’s helper. Because there are so many children in the world and so many houses, he can’t be the only one delivering presents to every kid in the world!”
Songhwa doesn’t know if she should be impressed over his quick save, or attempt to swallow down the scoff that nearly escapes her throat. She feigns a cough instead and tells her new colleague, “That’s great. Thank goodness you’re a quick thinker.”
“When you have a five year old boy, you tend to be.” Ikjun winks, “But you honestly don’t look impressed.”
“Nothing against you, honestly,” Songhwa explains with a shake of her head, “I just never was one to believe in planting such ideas in the heads of children. To make them believe in something that isn’t real.”
It is Ikjun’s turn to raise a sceptic eyebrow. “Why not? It leaves good memories for them as they grow.”
“Memories made of lies,” Songhwa puts in gently. “How would they react years down the road when they find out Santa Claus isn’t real?”
“Well, they’d move on with their lives and leave that as part of their childhood growing up.” Ikjun remarks with a cross of his arms. “Ms. Chae, did you not believe Santa Claus existed when you were a child?”
The red returns to Songhwa’s cheeks. She clears her throat and diverts the topic. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, this entire season is a scam.”
Ikjun almost couldn’t believe his ears. “A what now?”
“A scam.” Songhwa repeats, “It is an idea rooted in capitalism and false positivity.”
“Whoa,” Ikjun raises his hands at once, his face completely alarmed at what he is hearing. “ What ?”
“You heard me,” Songhwa shrugs nonchalantly before reaching into her bag for her manuscript. “Anyway, I came by this morning to drop the draft of my next novel here. Jeongwon told me you would be reading them?”
Ikjun accepts the manuscript without flinching, somehow unbothered by the papers in his hands. “Let me get this straight, Ms. Chae, you do not like Christmas?”
“Are we still on that topic?” Songhwa asks in amusement. “Why does it matter if I like Christmas or not?”
“It matters. Of course it matters!” Ikjun exclaims, his expression horrified. He flails his arms in the air before clutching his heart in utter dismay. “Imagine not liking Christmas!”
Songhwa rolls her eyes, wondering why her new Editor is someone as dramatic as him. She raises her hands in surrender and takes a step back. “Hey, I’m only here to drop off my manuscript. It’s nice meeting you, Lee Ikjun-sshi.”
Ikjun doesn’t have the chance to respond, because Songhwa is already out of his office in a flash.