Work Text:
One of the thousand things about Yongbok that her parents love so much is her talking. She might have a little deeper voice compared to the other 4 year old kid, but she is still a kid after all. Her pronunciation is not perfect, her vocabularies are limited, and she has the tendency to replace a word with onomatopoeia because it makes sense better that way in her head.
So, recently, instead of Seungmin and Minho telling her a bedtime story, they ask her to tell them a story instead.
"Okay, what story are you going to tell tonight?" Minho asks, when she and her husband sit next to Yongbok's bed. The fun part is that they don't let her tell a story from a book. They just ask her to come up with a story. It helps her creativity development too.
"Today's story is about the aminals" Yongbok answers, trying to make it full of suspense. It is already a struggle for the married couple to hold their fond smiles and laughs.
"You mean animals?" Seungmin tries to fix the pronunciation, but the little girl just nods eagerly.
"Yeah, the aminals" she repeats innocently. Minho has to look away for a second to hold herself together, and she pretends to cough so Yongbok doesn't get suspicious. In the meantime, Seungmin continues to encourage her.
"Okay, is it about sea animals or land animals?"
Yongbok thinks for a bit, then she answers excitedly.
"Sea aminals!"
Minho smacks Seungmin's shoulder as a mechanism to cope with the cuteness aggression while Seungmin just chuckles fondly. Yongbok doesn't question her mother's action because Minho always gets her hand on Seungmin randomly. So, smacking shoulders are absolutely natural.
"Okay, princess, go on" Seungmin encourages her again, and she is back to getting excited about the story she just comes up with.
"This story... is about sea aminals... there are three best friends under the sea. We have... ocpotus. Like baby, tiny, teeeeeeny wiwiwi ocpotus. And we have... her best friend Boy. Boy is a baby seahorse. And we have an evil aminal, the baby seahorse" she introduces her characters first and that is enough for Seungmin to giggle while Minho actively gets involved this time.
"So, there are two baby seahorses?" She asks eagerly but Yongbok frowns.
"No. Just Boy." she repeats as if Minho doesn't hear it for the first time.
"How about the evil one?"
"The evil one is... uhm... baby seahorse" the little girl answers innocently, causing her father to laugh again while Minho keeps on asking.
"So Boy is baby seahorse, and the bad one is baby seahorse too" she repeats it clearly. Yongbok rolls her eyes with attitude in a joking manner.
"Mama. Boy is like...the owange baby seahorse. And the evil one is like... Like... stip..." She hesitates at the end because she doesn't know if she says it correctly. It catches her parents attention right away.
"Sorry, princess, what were you saying?" Seungmin asks, leaning a bit closer for no reason.
"...stip. Like the evil one is stip" Yongbok explains. Unfortunately, Seungmin and Minho still don't get it.
"You mean step? Like the evil one is Boy's step-brother or something?" Minho tries to guess but the little girl shakes her head.
"No! It's like... like... in here" she points out at her pyjamas and continues.
"In here, it's like same, different, same, different. And like... line, line, line, line, line... And sometimes it is like blue, white, blue, white, blue, white"
"Oh, you mean 'stripe'?" Seungmin guesses finally after the long explanation. Yongbok nods eagerly right away.
"Yes!"
"Oh my god" Minho almost dies from cuteness aggression again, almost jumps off her seat while Seungmin just laughs at her reaction. Yongbok watches her mother in confusion but she doesn't question anything.
"Okay, sweetheart, can you say... 'Arranged marriage is a traditional non-currency type of bribery that has been normalized for generations' real quick?" Minho puts on a test out of nowhere. Yongbok has to blink first as she doesn't understand what the sentence has to do with her story but then she just obeys.
"Arranged marriage is a traditional non-currency type of bribery that has been normalized for generations" she repeats innocently, pronunciation just as clear as a teenager. Seungmin already covers his face in embarrassment while Minho continues the test.
"Now, can you say 'Octopus is a lemonade-lover sea animal with orange and turquoise stripe'"
"Ocpotus is a lemomade-lover sea aminal with owange and kokois stip"
"Oh my god, babe, what have we done?" Seungmin groans to his palms and Minho laughs so hard her tummy hurts.
"Kim Seungmin, we are the worst parents ever" Minho leans on her husband's shoulder, sounding like she is losing her mind and Seungmin starts to laugh as well.
"We really set our priorities wrong. She understands bribery before knowing how to explain a stripe" the husband rants between his giggles and it just makes his wife laugh harder.
Yongbok just watches her parents giggle together, wondering when she will ever get to finish her bedtime story. She has no idea where the funny part comes from, so she just looks at her parents, judging quietly too.
- The End -
Bonus :
It was raining heavily after Minho took Yongbok back from school that day, and the little girl spends her time, watching the raindrops dripping down the car window. She even chose two big raindrops next to each other to race and gets excited when both of them slide down the glass almost simultaneously.
"Ahh!" Suddenly she shouts in surprise, Minho instantly looks at the back rearview mirror to check on her.
"What is it, sweetheart? Are you okay?" She asks softly. Yongbok knows she can look at her mother's face through the mirror as well so she looks at it with a surprise face.
"There was a big pichumm just now" she reports. Minho keeps her eyes on the road already but she raises her eyebrows when she hears it.
"A big what?"
"Pichumm"
"What is pichumm, sweetheart?" She asks softly, cannot contain the smile on her face because she can already guess it, she just needs to make sure if she guesses it right.
"Like... in the sky, there is this crack flash and then it goes pichumm!" The little girl makes a growling sound when she says the onomatopoeia this time to imitate the sound she heard. Minho chuckles fondly.
"You mean the thunder?" She fixes it. Yongbok freezes for a moment, trying to remember where she heard that word before. Probably she has been taught about it but pichumm makes much more sense.
"Thun..." she still tries to repeat.
"Thun, der" her mother says one syllable by one.
"Thun, der" she repeats successfully.
"Good job, sweetheart. So you saw thunder just now and it scares you?" She brings them back to the conversation, sparing a glance at the mirror to see her daughter's reaction. Yongbok nods eagerly as an answer.
"The runder go pichumm!" She imitates the sound again, and Minho bursts out laughter. She just flashes her adorable cheeky grin at the mirror as her attempt to make her mother laugh is successful.
The End <3