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Because Ryujin has the most rotten luck in all of Cell 4–no scratch that, the entire Aberrant Corps–Sayeon gets hit with a de-aging gift just in time for the holidays and Ryujin is the (un)lucky sap relegated to babysitting duty. Iseul is going home for Christmas and Min is going somewhere (??) which leaves her all alone to fend against the woes of child-handling.
Which is great, just great. Leave Ryujin who knows fuck-all about children—let alone how to co-exist in the same 10-foot square dorm with them—alone with the toddler for Christmas week. Why not ask her to solve world peace and wipe out every criminal in the city while she’s at it?
Glasses starts going for her cap again and she yanks it up out of her reach before she can touch it. Ryujin sets it squarely on her head and settles for stifling her growl into a mildly unpleasant frown.
Great. Now she’s going to have to start sleeping with the damn thing, just to keep it out of her grubby hands. Glasses’ mouth has settled into a small “O”, one chubby finger pointing up at her head. Ryujin resists the urge to bat it away.
“Do you not have any siblings?” Dahee asks her. Glasses–baby Glasses? Monocle ?--has a death-grip on her hairbrush and so Dahee’s decided to relinquish it to her for the week. Tsubaki watches them both uneasily from the doorway.
For a split-second, long, black hair and soft eyes flick across Ryujin’s vision. She swallows hard past the memory and digs her nails into the meat of her palm.
“No,” she replies curtly and Dahee shrugs, hoisting her little satchel off the bed.
“Merry Christmas, Sayeon!” she says, ruffling her hair and Glasses giggles in response, immediately abandoning her quest for Ryujin’s hat. The sound is sharp and grating in the cramped room.
Write that down. Having a trick like that in her back pocket will surely help both of them make it to the end of the week unscathed. Scratch that, unscathed is a pipe dream–Instructor Sang should settle for “in one piece”. And even that’s pushing it.
Ryujin sucks in a breath, holds it for five counts and lets it slowly billow out–the monotone voice from Juni’s videos droning in her head the whole time. Fuck her and her “meditation” courses that she uses as an excuse to scroll Twitter while blasting some random 2-hour long Youtube video.
It’s fine. It’ll be fine. It’s like having a dog… right? Little kids, pets, they’re practically the same thing. There were a couple of runts that visited the back of the Nest a few times and Ryujin had only gotten bitten twice trying to feed them.
Right, mini Glasses is just like a particularly excitable dog that was also probably actively plotting the takeover of one of the nation’s largest organizations two days ago and whose plot has probably only been slightly derailed by her de-aging.
Amazing.
“Merry Christmas to you too, Ryujin!” Dahee calls, far too chipper for the occasion. It’s probably because she’s not the one stuck on babysitting duty indefinitely.
Because Ryujin isn’t some fucking sap, she does not say it back.
Glasses unfortunately does, one chubby hand raised in a goodbye.
This is a terrible idea. Actually, scratch that–between fighting a fucking invisible bogeyman and storming an abandoned warehouse being used as a pit stop for drug smuggling, this probably doesn’t even break Top 10 Stupidest Things Ryujin Kang Has Done.
All of these horrible ideas, however, have a root cause–a root cause which is currently dressed in one of Ryujin’s old jumpers that looks like an overgrown dress on her stubby frame. It’s dragging against the sidewalk and between that and the saliva Glasses has wiped off her mouth with the sleeves, it’s as good as gone.
Wonderful, it was only her second-favorite.
Glasses sneezes, Ryujin tucks the lone scarf that she’s hoarding tighter around her neck and nearly lets out a prayer to a god she doesn’t believe in at the sight of the supermarket’s glass doors.
They slide open for her and she wrestles out a metal shopping cart from the row perched in front. It takes two tries and a particularly forceful jiggle to get it free but the sticky wheels finally pop free and Ryujin rolls the whole abomination into the store’s fluorescent lighting, wheels screeching all the way.
Thank goodness (??) that Juni is their cell mentor which means that getting permission to leave is as good as sliding the form onto her desk. She probably slaps her stamp of approval on it without even reading, if only to get the work off her plate.
There’s some dumb Christms carol blasting in full volume at the store. Ryujin swerves around a cookie display, just barely clipping the table.
She slips into an aisle and starts picking up items left and right, not even bothering to check the price tags. She throws in a frozen pizza box–pepperoni–and two giant cartons of ice cream.
Too bad she doesn’t have a fucking fake anymore. Nothing like drinking her problems away although, ah, maybe doing it in front of a five-year-old is not the best move. But hey, Ryujin grew up rolling joints and licking booze off wayward caps and look how she turned out! Just peachy.
She stumbles upon an aisle that looks semi-suitable for little children–or full-grown adults that have been inconveniently downsized into little children–and grabs the first thing she finds.
“How’s this?”
Glasses stares back at her flatly.
“That’s baby food,” she says blankly and Ryujin jams the container back into its place on the shelf. That’s a no then.
“And what do you think you are?”
“I’m not a baby,” Glasses says in the middle of the snack aisle, which would probably look more intimidating if she wasn’t two-foot-nothing.
“Have you looked in a mirror recently?” Ryujin grouses but turns back to the shelves regardless.
Crap, crap, more crap– ah. There’s one of those little Chex mix bags at the back of the aisle. She sticks her arm and then cranes her neck trying to reach it.
Don’t kids go crazy for this shit? The little square pretzels and the salty ah… cracker-things.
“Hey, Glasses, this look good?” she asks, finally wrenching her head free, plastic crinkling in one hand.
Silence greets her in the empty aisle.
Oh my god.
Ohmygodohmygod. The kid is fucking gone. Ryujin tries to swallow her panic and chokes on it instead.
First, Juni is going to skin her alive for losing Sayeon and then Iseul is going to have a mental breakdown and then they’ll probaly sic fucking CPS on her and then–
Something tugs on her pant leg and Ryujin nearly screams then faint from relief in turn.
“Don’t,” she says, shaking her finger menacingly and Glasses stares blankly at it. Glasses, who has decided to reappear in the aisle, quick and quiet as a mouse and carting a new snack. “Don’t fucking do that again.”
Instead of responding to the near-death threat, Glasses taps the box of PopTarts meaningfully with one hand.
It’s the fucking original flavor which tastes like slightly-salted cardboard. Great to know that Glasses’ tastes have barely developed over the years.
“I want these,” she says, hoisting it up to her which brings the whole thing to around Ryujin’s waist.
“What the hell,” Ryujin says, throwing the box into the cart. “Why the fuck not.”
“I’m cold,” Glasses says unhelpfully on the walk back home. She’s valiantly lugging along the plastic bag of PopTarts because Ryujin got used to fending for herself at age three and she’ll be damned if the tradition dies with her.
“Mhm,” Ryujin grumbles, non-committal, but pauses to spare her a glance.
Glasses’ ears are red, like frighteningly, terrifyingly cherry-red. Ryujin really does not want to deal with the liability of Glasses’ ears freezing and snapping right off like popsicles and that is the only reason she eventually sighs, sputtering curses, and wrenches her cap off her head.
She jams it onto Glasses’ head more than places it. It’s too big, of course it is, but she makes sure to yank it down far enough so that the skin of her ears is no longer exposed.
“Do not touch it, do not breathe on it, do not get snow on it, do not even look at it,” she lectures and of course Glasses is too busy making a starstruck expression to pay her any mind. Ryujin jams her free hand into the pocket of her jackets and breathes in the brittle air. “Someone… important gave it to me a long time ago, so don’t fuck it up.”
The admission leaves her reeling at her own audacity. She feels sucker-punched in the gut by her own shamelessness as Glasses finally turns to face her.
Glasses smiles up at her like a child on Christmas morning and Ryujin does not find it endearing at all.
“I’m really good at baking,” Glasses announces without preamble while Ryujin is adamantly trying to pretend that she doesn’t exist. She’s got a paperback jammed over her face and she’s managed to read the same page five times. Ryujin’s doing great at this.
“ Eonni , let’s bake cookies,” Glasses says and Ryujin jolts first at the endearment and second at the proposition.
“Do not call me that,” she snaps.
Sayeon stares at her in mute protest.
“And we are not baking cookies,” she adds. Ryujin tears a page flipping it, the whole spine creaking, and finds that she lost track of the plot two chapters ago. “End of discussion.”
Glasses lasts another valiant five minutes stewing in silence before her fingers appear over the edge of the page, blotting out the words. Ryujin has half a mind to slam the whole thing on her hand but considering it’s made of literal paper, she thinks it would be nothing but overdramatic.
“You wanna bake cookies,” Glasses half-whispers, half-chants, going for some sort of spooky brainwashing-ish allure. (When the real Glasses does it, it comes off as vaguely creepy and sets a cold feeling crawling up her spine. When the mini Glasses does it, well, Ryujin jams the rising guilt down with a hammer like she’s playing whack-a-mole.)
Glasses is also doing some horribly pitiful thing with her eyes and Ryujin’s heart lurches traitorously in her chest.
“Stop,” she says for lack of better words. That somehow seems to only incentivize Glasses further and she tips her head to get the full effect of the puppy-dog look. “Stop whatever it is you’re doing!”
When it becomes abundantly clear after 30 seconds that mini Glasses is unfortunately just as bull-headed as the real Glasses is, Ryujin throws her book onto her nightstand violently.
“Fine! If you agree to stop bothering me afterwards, I’ll do it. But it’s gotta be quick. I gotta get back to my… er, book.”
Glasses grins toothily at her and she takes her tiny little hand in hers, half-dragging her along the halls.
Between Min’s near-daily baking affairs and the members of Cell 3, their kitchen’s probably well-stocked (enough). That and Ryujin does not think she has another cold-as-balls trip to the supermarket in her.
At the entrance, Ryujin deposits Glasses unceremoniously onto the counter and flings open the cabinets.
As she suspected, there’s an assortment of half-opened sugar, flour and other baking-ish ingredients that Ryujin vaguely recognizes Min pulling from. There’s a plastic teal set of measuring cups and spoons next to it, the print faded from overuse.
There is also an array of expensive-as- fuck looking porcelain containers next to it, all of them wth GYEON neatly stamped onto the sides of them.
So Taeho bakes. How… unexpected. Maybe it’s to deal with that horrendous temper of his and holy shit, is that real gold on the lining?
This is exactly why Ryujin fucking hates pompous rich brats. She slams the whole cabinet shut and moves over to Min’s Ziploc Stash For the Peasants instead.
She grabs everything that looks vaguely powder-y and bake-ishy and sets them in a row on the counter. Ryujin has never baked cookies in her fucking life but surely, how hard it can be? It’s just mixing all the shit together and throwing it in the oven, right?
“What’s the first thing you normally do?” Ryujin asks, turning to Glasses who’s still perched like a bird on the counter. Her socks bang against the cabinets as she kicks her feet.
“I don’t know,” she supplies helpfully. “But I’m really good at cracking eggs.”
With a herculean effort, Ryujin resists the urge to groan outwardly.
Great, Glasses is literally five years old and Ryujin is still getting roped into another one of her stellar, half-baked plans. (Literally.) Whatever. Ryujin decides that, like many things in life, she will raw-dog it and hope for the best.
After half-an-hour, the two of them manage to make a goopy cookie batter that resembles more of a swampy concoction than dough.
Half of it ends up in Glasses’ hair and the other half ends up in Ryujin’s hair but they manage to shape what does remain into little circles that Ryujin deposits unceremoniously onto one of Taeho’s engraved baking pans. (Yes, engraved. )
Ryujin pops the whole thing into the oven–and lets Glasses push a corner because you learn safety lessons better once you’ve been burned–and sets the little egg timer with cartoon eyes painted over it.
It leaves them with an obscene amount of time to kill and Ryujin flings open the cabinets, struck with a sense of unprecedented clarity.
They end up setting off the fire alarm when she gets too preoccupied with switching the sugar and salt in Taeho’s containers to realize that the cookies are burning. Juni chases them out of the communal kitchen with an indefinite ban and a fire extinguisher.
Later that night, Ryujin teaches Glasses the much more useful art of lockpicking when they raid Juni’s cookie stash instead.
“You should get out some more, Ryujin,” Juni says without preamble the next day, stretching her legs onto Dahee’s bed. She’s messing up the carefully pressed covers but as long as it’s not on Ryujin’s bed, she genuinely does not give two fucks.
In lieu of a response, Ryujin stares back at her blankly. Juni’s wearing the same pair of striped stockings from two days ago and yet she’s the one getting the lecture on touching grass.
“I’m good, thanks,” she finally says, crossing her arms over her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Glasses mimicking her stance.
Juni’s eyes (eye??) slide lazily closed as she studies the two of them.
“Let me rephrase that,” she finally says. She leaps up from the mattress and leans in close enough that Ryujin can count the scratches on her eyepatch. “The higher-ups need the building. Get out and don’t come back until after 8 PM.”
Well. This is unexpected. This is probably also mild karma for the whole cookie-stealing thing from yesterday ago. Yeah, Ryujin’s definitely not making Santa’s Nice List this year. Or any year in the remote future.
Ryujin turns back to Glasses, staring down at her.
“You want to go to the mall,” she says resolutely.
The Iseul in her head chastises her on her tone and she beats the shit out of him mentally in response. The result is cathartic.
“You want to go to the mall,” she says in a slightly less forceful tone. Truly, she should be applauded for her effort.
Glasses’ half shrug is all Ryujin needs before she picks her up and half-drags, half-carries her out the door.
The mall is a glitzy place, decked out in gold, bells and everything shiny for the highest tax bracket. Ryujin feels stiffly out of place in her pants that are balled up at the ankles, her mismatching socks sticking out through the gap.
Well, whatever. At least she’s in civvies since she’s off-duty. Technically. Ryujin frowns down sourly at Glasses’ small frame.
“ Eonni ,” Glasses says, giving her arm a frantic tug. God , she has a surprising amount of strength for a kid and Ryujin jerks herself upright to prevent her arm from being wrenched out of its socket. “I want that one.”
Ryujin follows the line of her chubby finger to a giant rabbit in a display case. What is appalling is the number of glittery ribbons it has tied around its neck in some horrific rendition of a bow. What is even more appalling is the number of zeroes on its price tag.
“Um,” Ryujin says eloquently, pressing her hand against Juni’s stolen–ah, borrowed peace card. (And really, how kind of their amazing and totally responsible cell mentor to graciously–and maybe unknowingly–lend them her peace card for their impromptu shopping spree. A show of generosity just in time for the holidays!)
“How about those ones?” Ryujin suggests gallantly instead, steering her in the direction of the clearance section. She picks up a cat? dog? creature with a sewn-on Santa hat and one of its eyes falls off.
Glasses’ blank stare as they watch the button roll across the floor is enough of an answer.
Ryujin sighs and canvases the place quickly–one lazy mall guard chewing on a donut, none of those plastic tags on the bunny and more importantly, no salesmen at the front of the store. Check, check and check.
Ryujin digs her hands into her pockets and gives in with a sigh.
(And truly, if she’s being honest with herself–she’s been fucked since Day One in the warehouse so what the hell’s another round?)
“Watch closely, Glasses,” she says, shoving the cap further down on her head. “Not all of us can afford to wait for Santa to get off his lazy ass. Some of us have to take matters into our own hands.”
Glasses giggles in reply.
They get chased out of the mall afterwards but they get chased out while Ryujin has the bunny safely stowed under one elbow so all in all, she counts it as a win.
And they don’t have a Christmas tree in their rinky-dinky dorm–there’d be no room anyways between 4 cramped twin mattresses–but the way Glasses lights up at the sight is as good as one. She’s got a death grip on the bunny the whole night, fingers digging indents in the fabric.
She falls asleep holding it tight to her chest and Ryujin crawls onto the bed opposite her, fighting valiantly against the smile that tries to push its way onto her face.
(She fails. Miserably.)
“ Eonni, ” Glasses whispers in the middle of the fucking night, tugging at her sleeve. Ryujin doesn’t even flinch at the endearment, which is a good indicator that she is well and truly fucked.
“I had a nightmare,” she says, her eyes wet and wide in the moonlight. Ryujin rolls over on her back to stare at the alarm clock which blearily reads 3:41 AM. Amazing. She stifles a groan with the heel of her palm. “Can I sleep here with you?”
“No,” Ryujin snaps. Glasses scrambles into the bed anyways in true Glasses fashion. Her tiny, spindly elbows dig into Ryujin’s stomach and she lets out a yelp in the dark.
Glasses settles noisily and messily against her skin, her bony ankles poking Ryujin’s rib cage. Great, she probably won’t be able to fall asleep for another two hours, at least.
“Merry Christmas, eonni ,” Glasses mutters sleepily and then she’s out like a light because of course the world is simple and small when you’re five years old. She counts her quiet little snores in the darkness.
Ryujin is not a sap and she swears she’s not going fucking senile in her old age and this isn’t the ending of some trashy Hallmark movie but she swallows enough of her pride to give Glasses one resolute pat on the head.
“Merry Christmas, Sayeon.”
“What the fuck,” someone mutters, the curse low and guttural. Surprisingly, it is not Ryujin’s voice.
Nevertheless, she sympathizes with the sentiment. It is (always) too fucking early in the morning to get out of bed so Ryujin slings one arm across her eyes and rolls over.
Wow, her pillow is alarmingly warm. And was it always this soft? It’s kinda nice though.
Ryujin spends another two precious seconds in blissful ignorance before danger shoots off like a pistol in her mind. She jolts awake with the same snappish clarity as falling and comes face-to-face with Glasses in her bed.
Glasses–full grown, definitely not five-years-old, semi-conscious Glasses. In her fucking bed. She blinks blearily at Ryujin without her glasses, sleep heavy on her lashes.
It doesn’t take long for recognition to dawn on her though. She’s always been quick on the uptake–even in the wake of spending a week in the body and mind of a literal child.
Glasses jumps up from the bed, her legs tangled up in the covers. Thank god she’s still wearing Ryujin’s jumper. Wait, what the fuck?
“What are you doing here?” Glasses snaps like Ryujin’s the intruder. Something fierce jumps between her eyes and Ryujin’s mouth flaps open and closed wordlessly, too shocked to be indignant.
“W-What am I doing here?” she sputters finally. “This is my bed! You’re in my fucking bed!”
Glasses mouth curls into a protest but she catalogs their surroundings silently. They are, in fact, in Ryujin’s bed, the sheets still untucked on Glasses’ own across the room.
“Did you… do something?” she ventures suspiciously and Ryujin’s wide awake now, blood boiling in her veins. And she’d been doing such a good job regulating her blood pressure.
“D-Did I do something?! Yes, I fucking did something–I fed you your stupid poptarts and we baked cookies and then I bought you that dumb fucking stuffed animal you wanted!”
Glasses stares at her like she’s grown a second head. Her eyebrow slides up exactly one on her forehead.
“We baked cookies together?” she echoes, incredulous. Ryujin hates this, hates fucking all of this, hates how she makes her feel so stupid and small at the same time.
“Yes, or well we tried to before we nearly burnt down the kitchen but point is–I took care of your tiny child self for a fucking week straight and you didn’t even say so much as a thank-you!”
Silence balloons uncomfortably in the room between them at the admission. Ryujin’s left panting and heaving in the aftermath, flushed red to the roots of her hair. Glasses stares at her stoically, long enough for Ryujin’s skin to itch and burn on the surface.
“I need to think,” she says finally instead of a thank-you because she’s fucking Glasses and there’s more logic than emotion crammed up there. She leaves the room without so much as a goodbye.
The silence is deafening as Ryujin stares at the empty door frame. One minute, then two tick by and it becomes abundantly clear that she doesn’t plan on returning anytime soon. Ryujin sighs and throws herself back into the bed. What a glorious start to Christmas.
Whatever. The least she can do is salvage what’s left and gift herself a couple more hours of sleep.
Something crinkles beneath her palm and she shifts to pull her pillow aside. Tucked underneath it is a little handmade card, the cover of it emblazoned with a crude drawing of a Christmas tree. The green and yellow crayon marks are streaky against the paper.
Cautiously, carefully, Ryujin opens up the card, sparing one quick glance at the door to double check that it’s empty.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, EONNI , the inside reads, next to two stick figures that Ryujin assumes is supposed to be the two of them. She figures that the one holding the little red blob with bunny ears is little Glasses.
The two figures are engulfed in a big red heart. Ryujin’s own heart does a pitiful flip-flop in her chest.
Amazing. Stellar.
She has half-a-mind to throw it in the nearest wastebasket and forget this whole hellish endeavor.
She doesn’t though. Instead, Ryujin holds the crumpled paper tight to her chest, knees tucked into her chest and head bowed. In the window, her reflection is tinged pink.
“I’m fucked, aren’t I?”