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Kim Dokja was on the verge of breaking.
The start and end of each day circled around paint and failed canvases that smelled of self-deprecation. With not a single brushstroke on paper, the silence filled his room until he could hardly breathe.
He couldn't paint. He couldn’t even remember what he loved enough to paint.
Misery constricted him within those walls, so one evening, he slipped outside, hoping a walk might quieten his mind. His feet carried him to an old amusement park, weary and tired like him.
And that was when he saw it.
A dumpling.
It was a cute mascot: a huge, round white body with stubby arms and legs, their face marked only by two stitched black eyes and no mouth at all. The head curved into a neat fold at the top, like the pinched tip of a freshly steamed dumpling.
Awkward and clumsy, they waddled around handing out balloons, children clinging to their padded legs as if to a giant toy.
“Please cheer me up! I’m sad because I got a bad grade and was bullied at school.”
Whether that was part of their job or not, Dokja watched the dumpling sit down on a worn bench and listen to children’s complaints one by one. The dumpling tilted their head, gave a thumbs-up, or patted the kids on the head. It was as if every gesture were wordless echoes of ‘gwenchana~ it’s okay.'
It was absurd, but somehow he couldn’t look away.
Soon as the children left, Dokja sat down beside the dumpling on the bench. His turn now!
The dumpling looked at him wordlessly. Dokja spilled his frustrations in a long rush. He muttered bitter words about his failures as an artist, the loss of his muse, the loneliness clawing at his ribs. Still, the dumpling didn’t leave or shoo away a pathetic adult like him. They just listened. That silence was strangely more comforting than any human voice had ever been.
“—My dealer says I’m late again. He doesn’t get it. I can’t just paint anything. And these days nothing flows onto the canvas.”
The dumpling gave him a gwenchana thumbs-up.
Dokja snorted. “What’s wrong with you? A thumbs-up for my failure?”
The dumpling nodded.
The absurdity cracked through Dokja’s composure. “You’re very cute. Can I call you Mandu-ya?”
The dumpling seemed a little conflicted inside but they finally nodded, before settling back into silence.
Dokja found himself returning to that bench the next evening, then the next. Soon it became routine: paint, fail, curse himself, then stagger to the park bench and talk to the awkwardly cute dumpling he called "Mandu-ya" who seemed to always listen.
Spring. Cherry blossoms drifted down in pale showers, catching on the fountain’s water.
Dokja leaned back on the bench, hair mussed from the wind. He let out a weary breath. Mandu sat perfectly still beside him, petals sticking to their head.
“My mother called again. She asked if I’d finally given up this ‘useless painting thing.’ Honestly I think she just wants me to die already. Some days I almost wish I would.”
At that, Mandu let out a muffled growl from inside the costume. Their round head jerked in protest, arms flying to their stubby hips like they were ready to scold him.
Dokja blinked at the reaction. His lips curved into a happy smirk.
“Oh? You hate it when I say that? You’re cute when you’re mad, my little tsundere Mandu.”
Mandu huffed louder, then swung their padded fist in a clumsy thump against Dokja’s shoulder. It was so adorably sulky that Dokja burst out laughing. More furious grumbling muffled as Mandu turned their head away in silence.
Summer. The air was heavy, cicadas buzzing.
Dokja slumped onto the bench, pressing a hand over his growling stomach.
“I didn’t eat today. Wait, it’s been two days. Too busy trying to paint, but there’s nothing. Guess I’ll just starve.”
Mandu whipped their head sharply toward him, then planted both hands on their wide hips. The stiff pose was hilariously dramatic on the dumpling mascot.
“What? You’re going to yell at me for that? Sorry, Mandu-ya.”
The dumpling shook their head violently, stomped one padded foot. It looked endearing that Dokja couldn’t help grinning.
“Alright, alright! Don’t get wrinkles on that face you don’t even have. I’ll eat tomorrow, I promise.”
The next day, he found Mandu fidgeting with a cloth bag. Dokja stared at it, stunned when a neat lunchbox let out of it.
“…You made this? For me?”
Mandu thrust the box into his lap with a nod. Inside it was rice, egg rolls, stir fried vegetables, and slices of tomato.
“God, you’re so adorable.” Dokja groaned. “But tomatoes? Sorry, Mandu-ya, I hate them. Too watery. Too sweet. They can’t decide what they want to be.”
Mandu crossed their arms.
Dokja sighed, stabbing one slice of tomato. He ate it with exaggerated pain. “But fine, since it’s from you, Mandu-ya.”
Mandu gave him a solemn thumbs-up.
Something unraveled inside Dokja’s chest. He chuckled.
“You know, everyone thinks I’m an idealist. But the truth is I can only paint what I love. Nothing else ever works. That’s why my canvases stay empty these days.”
Mandu patted his shoulder with one clumsy padded hand. Awkward. Yet it made Dokja smile, his laughter shaking free like sunlight.
Every time Dokja sat with Mandu in the park, he found a piece of his strength back. Mandu’s cooking was delicious too, and Dokja had begun to forget his meals on purpose just to see Mandu stomp their feet in an angrily cute way, only to feed him again later.
Autumn. Leaves spiraled down in reds and golds crunching underfoot.
That evening, Dokja sat hunched, voice rough.
“I dreamt I was in middle school again. Getting shoved into lockers. Everyone laughing at my drawings. Funny how even dreams leave bruises behind.”
As always, Mandu just listened. Stray leaves floated around them, landing square on Mandu’s head. The painter reached out to brush them off.
“You look silly,” Dokja said fondly. His touch lingered.
Mandu leaned into the warmth of his hand just a little, head tilting faintly like a silent pout at being touched so gently.
Winter. Snow powdered the park. The fountain had frozen over under the lamps.
Dokja huddled into his scarf, breath white.
“If I vanished tomorrow, nobody would care. Not the gallery. Not my mother. Nobody.”
Mandu sat still. Slowly they leaned just enough for the padded shoulder to press against Dokja’s arm. He froze, then let out a broken, strained laugh.
“You really don’t know how to comfort people, do you?”
It was never grand gestures. It was petals brushed away, tomatoes eaten with a grimace, a touch of shoulders in the cold. But those small, silent moments became his world.
Until one night, when the bench was cold and empty.
The next evening, it was still empty.
By the fourth night, his chest clenched with every step.
Dokja realized far too late that his muse had been there all along sitting quietly on that bench, hidden beneath a dumpling suit.
He sat anyway, speaking into the air as if Mandu were still there.
“I had another dream. You're here, sitting, listening to my pathetic ramblings. That’s what I need the most.”
The fountain answered with water. The carousel turned. But Mandu never came back.
When Dokja asked the vendor, the answer was this: “The dumpling? That part-timer quit. Haven’t seen him since.”
Dokja sank onto the bench. His chest hollowed with a grief absurd yet painfully real. For months he had poured his heart out to a dumpling with no face and no mouth, and it had been enough.
All gone now.
“Even you left me, Mandu-ya,” Dokja whispered into the frost. “Am I really destined to be alone?”
The empty night gave the lone painter no answer.
***
Weeks later, Kim Dokja finally painted something.
For the first time in a year, his brush moved with certainty. The canvas bloomed with the only image that mattered: a park bench beneath the fountain’s glow, and on it, a round dumpling mascot, faceless and silent.
If Dokja couldn’t see his Mandu anymore, then he would just burn every line, hue, and memory of them with the paint onto his canvas.
At the end of it all, Dokja titled it simply ‘My Mandu’.
Some critics scoffed during the exhibition. “A dumpling? What’s this? Satire? A child’s whimsy?”
Dokja ignored them. To him, it was the most honest thing he had ever created. He was about to step away when Yoo Sangah approached him, holding a neatly wrapped meal box.
“Dokja-ssi, someone left this for you. A congratulatory gift, apparently.”
Flowers, wine, envelopes were common gifts for an artist. But a home-cooked meal? Inside lay dumplings, steaming and perfect, neatly folded by hand. On top, a slip of paper rested.
‘No tomatoes. Eat well.’
His breath caught in his throat. No one else in the world knew Dokja hated tomatoes, except for one person.
“Who gave you this?”
Yoo Sangah looked around, then pointed. “That man, over there.”
Curious, Dokja followed her gesturing hand. Time seemed to slow down.
A young man stood before the ‘My Mandu’ painting, his back framed by the glow of the spotlight.
The man turned slightly, and Dokja saw his face. An unfairly handsome face that looked more sculpture than real. High cheekbones caught the light like carved marble, while dark wavy hair fell carelessly across his brow, framing eyes like jewels the world would covet. Yet inside those depths lingered the quiet burden of a life that had carried too much. Beautiful, yes, in the way a shattered diamond would be.
Dokja’s pulse roared in his ears. It was his Mandu.
It was a face so beautiful that Dokja thought with a trembling laugh, if a painter ever needed a muse, this face alone could ruin him forever.
But before Dokja could move, the man turned away. And just like that, he was swallowed by the crowd.
That night in his studio, the blank canvas waited. The untouched dumplings sat on the table. Dokja’s eyes lingered on them for a long time before he reached for his brush. His hand trembled at first, then steadied, colors blooming under his brush.
Hours slipped by, the city outside dissolving into a hush of the dawn. As the first light broke through the window, Dokja leaned back, a faint smile curving his lips. He reached for one of the untouched dumplings. For a moment he pressed the soft skin of the dumpling against his lips, eyes never leaving the painting.
***
A month later, Kim Dokja’s second exhibition opened with a new centerpiece.
It was a canvas titled ‘My Mandu 2.0.’
The gallery hushed around it. At first glance the painting looked like the usual portrait, but the longer one looked, the stranger it became. Each brushstroke carried an intimacy that felt too private to be on display. Critics murmured about the clarity, the eyes like jewels containing sorrow, the lips slightly parted that seemed caught between silence and speech.
Slowly it dawned on them. This was not some abstract muse, nor was it a figment of one’s dreams. This was the face of a man so impossibly pretty, with every detail meticulously rendered it could only belong to someone real and alive. So alive it seemed just one breath away from stepping out of the frame.
Whispers rippled through the hall.
Who’s the man in the painting?
Why call him Mandu?
As the crowd drifted on, Yoo Joonghyuk stood frozen before the painting.
Numerous eyes latched onto him now.
Because the face staring back from the painting was Yoo Joonghyuk’s own.
Footsteps approached behind him.
“…Mandu-ya.”
The voice was low and laced with nervous laughter.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath caught, eyes widening.
The painter stood right beside him, smiling, gaze steady on his masterpiece.
“Whether you’re in a costume or standing here like this… I told you before, I can only paint what I love.” Kim Dokja’s voice broke, achingly tender. “And it’s always been you.”
-end