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The envelope was beige.
Kim Dokja noticed this first. Not white, like bills. Not brown, like something official from the government. Beige, color of "we need to talk" in the particular dialect of school administration.
He stared at it for a long time.
"Appa?"
Biyoo was standing in the kitchen doorway, still in her school uniform, her backpack hanging off one shoulder. She was seven years old, small for her age, with big dark eyes and hair that refused to stay tucked behind her ears no matter how many barrettes Dokja used.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Nothing," Dokja said, too quickly. "Just a letter. From your school."
Biyoo's eyes went wide. "Is it about the dinosaur?"
Dokja felt his soul left his body, but he managed to keep his smile steady. "Dinosaur?"
But Biyoo had already spotted the open bag of crackers on the counter and was moving toward it with the single-minded focus of a child who had just realized she hadn't eaten in at least ten minutes.
Dokja unfolded the letter.
Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi and Kim Dokja-ssi,We would like to schedule a parent-teacher conference to discuss your daughter Biyoo's recent behavior. Please contact the front office to arrange a time that works for your family.
Sincerely,
Kang Haeun
First Grade Teacher
Recent behavior.
Dokja's mind raced through possibilities. Had she been talking too much in class? Unlikely, Biyoo was selectively chatty. Had she refused to participate in group activities? Possible, she had her father's antisocial streak. Had she—
His phone buzzed as he was typing.
Han Sooyoung: why are you typing and deleting and typing again just say it
Kim Dokja: Biyoo's school wants a meeting.
Han Sooyoung: lmaoooooo
Kim Dokja: This isn't funny.
Han Sooyoung: it's a little funny
Han Sooyoung: actually it's extremely funny
Han Sooyoung: what did she do
Kim Dokja: I don't know yet.
Han Sooyoung: ask yoo joonghyuk
Kim Dokja: He's in training.
Han Sooyoung: ask him anyway
Kim Dokja: He doesn't check his phone.
Han Sooyoung: tell him biyoo is in danger he'll check
Kim Dokja: I'm not weaponizing her safety.
Han Sooyoung: coward
Han Sooyoung: but seriously what did she do
Kim Dokja: I said I don't know!
Han Sooyoung: did you ask her
Kim Dokja: She mentioned a dinosaur and then ate a cracker.
Han Sooyoung: classic deflection
Han Sooyoung: she gets it from you
Dokja sets his phone phone and looked at Biyoo. She was sitting at the kitchen table now, crackers arranged in a precise spiral pattern on her napkin. She ate them in order, smallest to largest, with the same methodical focus Joonghyuk used when he played a match.
"Biyoo," Dokja said carefully. "The letter from your teacher. Do you know what it's about?"
Biyoo paused mid-chew. Swallowed. Looked at him with those big, dark eyes.
"Maybe," she said.
"Can you tell me?"
"Maybe later."
"Biyoo."
"Appa, I'm eating." Yes, apparently, eating is a sacred ritual now.
Dokja sighed. He texted Joonghyuk while waiting for the ‘later’.
Kim Dokja: School meeting. Friday at 3.
Three minutes passed. Three minutes of Dokja walking in circles like that horse GIF Han Sooyoung keeps sending.
Yoo Joonghyuk: I'll be there.
Kim Dokja: You don't even know what it's about.
Yoo Joonghyuk: Doesn't matter.
Kim Dokja: She might be in trouble.
Yoo Joonghyuk: She's seven. Whatever she did, it was justified.
Dokja stared at the message. Then he looked at Biyoo, who had finished her crackers and was now carefully licking the salt off each finger with the precision of a tiny surgeon.
"Your papa says hello," Dokja said weakly.
Biyoo smiled. It was a small smile. A knowing smile. The smile of someone who had never once doubted that she was the most protected creature in the universe.
"Tell him I said hi," she said. "And that I practiced the thing he showed me."
Dokja decided he didn't want to know what "the thing" was.
The conference was scheduled for 3:00 PM on Friday.
By Thursday evening, Dokja had cycled through approximately seventeen emotional states, ranging from "it's nothing" to "we’re going to be investigated by child protection services."
Joonghyuk, predictably, was calm.
"You're pacing," he said from his spot on the couch. He was reading something on his tablet, though Dokja had learned not to look over his shoulder after The Incident with the schedule, where Yoo Joonghyuk elbowed him in the face and left the nastiest bruise ever.
"The floor needs… pacing."
"The floor is fine."
"My nerves aren’t."
Joonghyuk looked up. His expression didn't change—it rarely did—but something in his eyes softened. Just slightly, or it’d be ooc and Dokja definitely did not enjoy the thought of that.
"Sit down," he said.
"I can't sit."
"You can. You're choosing not to."
"That's—that's not how it works, Joonghyuk-ah."
"Sit. Down."
Dokja sat.
The couch was old and had a suspicious stain that no amount of cleaning had ever fully removed. Every time someone visited, Dokja hid it under a blanket, a pillow, or himself.
Joonghyuk's warm and steady hand found his.
"Whatever it is," Joonghyuk said, "we'll handle it."
"You don't even know what 'it' is."
"Doesn’t matter."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it’s true."
Dokja leaned his head back against the couch. Closed his eyes, and sighed.
From the hallway, there was the sound of small footsteps, before a weight climbed onto his lap.
"Appa," Biyoo said, settling against his chest. "You're loud."
"I'm not making any noise."
"You’re thinking too loud."
Dokja opened his eyes. Biyoo was looking up at him with her papa’s serious expression and unblinking focus.
"Are you scared about tomorrow?" she asked.
"No," Dokja said.
"You're lying."
"I'm optimistic."
"Same thing."
Dokja sighed. Beside him, Joonghyuk made a sound that might have been a laugh. It was hard to tell with him.
"Biyoo," Dokja said carefully, "is there anything you want to tell us? About school?"
Biyoo was quiet for a moment. Then she said, very seriously, "Minjun took Sora's dinosaur."
Dokja exchanged a look with Joonghyuk. "Minjun?"
"A boy in my class. He's mean." Biyoo's brow furrowed. "He takes things and pushes people."
"And what happened with the dinosaur?"
Biyoo's expression didn't change. "I got it back."
"Did you... talk to him?"
"I asked him to give it back."
"And?"
"He said no."
Dokja waited.
"He said 'make me.'"
Dokja waited some more.
"So I did." Biyoo finished.
There was a long silence.
Joonghyuk leaned forward. "How?"
Biyoo looked at him. Looked at Dokja. Looked back.
"The thing you showed me," she said. "Where you use their weight against them."
Dokja turned to Joonghyuk very slowly.
"The what?"
Joonghyuk's face was perfectly neutral. "Self-defense."
"She's seven."
"Predators don't wait until children are older, Kim Dokja."
"That's not—that's not the point. You taught our seven-year-old daughter grappling techniques?"
"Just the basics."
"Yoo Joonghyuk."
"She asked."
Dokja put his face in his hands while Biyoo patted his arm comfortingly.
"Don't worry, Appa," she said. "I didn't hurt him. I just held him until he said sorry."
"How long did you do that?"
Biyoo considered this. "A while. He's very stubborn."
"Oh my god."
"He said sorry."
"And then?"
"And then I let him go and gave Sora her dinosaur back and people came over and asked what happened and Kang seonsaeim had a 'meeting' with Minjun and now we have the parent thing."
She said it all in one breath, matter-of-fact, like she was describing a minor inconvenience rather than an incident that had clearly triggered a school-wide administrative response.
Dokja lowered his hands. Looked at his daughter. Looked at his husband.
"We are having a very long conversation about appropriate responses later," he said.
"Okay, Appa," Biyoo said agreeably.
Beside him, Joonghyuk gave a small nod.
It was the nod of someone who had no intention of changing anything.
The school was a cheerful building with painted handprints on the windows and a sign that read "Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow."
Dokja hated it.
He adjusted his shirt for the fifteenth time. He'd worn his sweater jacket—the rice-coloured one with patterns, the one that Joonghyuk had once, in a moment of what might have been affection, called "acceptable." His hands were sweating. His heart was doing that thing where it felt like it was trying to escape his chest through his throat. Maybe crash right out his ribs.
"You're fidgeting," Joonghyuk said.
"I'm breathing."
"Your breaths are short and rapid."
"Shut up."
Biyoo, holding their hands, swung between them like a pendulum. She was wearing her favorite dress with the cats on it, and her hair was in two neat braids that Dokja had spent twenty minutes perfecting that morning. She looked, in a word, angelic.
She looked like she had never held anyone against their will in her entire life.
"The front office is that way," Biyoo said helpfully, pointing.
"We know where the front office is," Dokja said.
"You're walking the wrong way."
Dokja stopped. Looked down. He had, in fact, been walking toward the exit.
"Psychological warfare," he muttered. "This school is psychological warfare."
Joonghyuk took his free hand and squeezed. "Breathe."
"I am—"
"Properly."
Dokja breathed. He sounded like a strangled horse.
Then they walked to the front office. Kim Dokja wanted to run into the seven seas and never return.
Kang Haeun's classroom was a riot of color. Student artwork covered every available surface. A reading corner with a tiny couch and overflowing bookshelf. A corner with building blocks and puzzles. A corner with a "calm-down kit" that included a stuffed animal, a bottle of glitter glue, and a laminated chart of emotions.
It was, Dokja thought, the most aggressively wholesome place he had ever been.
And it was where he was going to die. Wholesomely!
"Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi. Kim Dokja-ssi." Haeun stood by a small table with four chairs, two adult-sized, two child-sized. She was smiling. It was the smile of someone who had dealt with kids her entire life, but never one who knows how to throw another to the ground. "Thank you for coming in. Please, sit."
Dokja and Joonghyuk sat. Biyoo sat in her child-sized chair, legs swinging, looking for all the world like a small kitten who had absolutely no idea why everyone was making such a fuss.
"I'm going to be direct," Haeun said, settling into her own chair. "Biyoo is a wonderful student. Very bright. Very creative. Her drawings are... vivid."
She slid a piece of paper across the table.
Dokja looked down.
The drawing showed a figure in black—Biyoo's "papa" clearly, given the severe expression and the sword that took up most of the page—standing over a giant snake-like monster. The snake had a name tag that read "Minjun." In the corner, a smaller figure labeled "Appa (reading)" sat on a cloud, holding a book and looking unconcerned.
"We had a discussion about appropriate content for first grade," Haeun said delicately.
Joonghyuk studied the drawing. "The composition is balanced. She's improved her line work."
Dokja put a hand over Joonghyuk's mouth.
"What my partner means," he said through gritted teeth, "is that we'll talk to her about her... artistic choices. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."
Her smile didn't waver. "There's also the matter of Tuesday's incident."
"Ah," Dokja said. He felt a sense of doom. "Yes. The dinosaur."
"The dinosaur," Haeun confirmed. She opened a folder filled with sticky notes and everything, and pulled out a sheet of paper. "During recess, a boy named Minjun took a toy dinosaur from Biyoo's friend Sora. Biyoo intervened. She asked him to return it. He refused."
She paused, flipping the page.
"Biyoo then disarmed him, secured the toy, pinned him to the ground using a—and I'm quoting the playground supervisor—'a figure-four leg entanglement,' and calmly explained that 'taking things that don't belong to you is the first step toward becoming a tyrant.'"
The silence that followed was deafening.
Dokja could feel Joonghyuk's shoulder against his, solid and warm. He could feel Biyoo's small hand on his knee, patting comfortingly. He could feel his soul trying to evacuate his body through his ears.
"She used words before action," Joonghyuk said. "That's restraint."
"Joonghyuk-ah."
Haeun's eye twitched. "Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi, we have a zero-tolerance policy for physical altercations, regardless of justification."
"You would prefer she let the aggression continue unchecked?"
"No, but—"
"She de-escalated. She secured the asset. She provided a moral lesson. That is not a violation. That is competence, that the other boy clearly didn’t have."
"Yoo Joonghyuk."
"What?"
"You're not helping."
"I'm stating facts."
"Facts that are not helpful right now!"
Biyoo tugged on Dokja's sleeve. "Appa. You're being loud."
Dokja took a breath. Counted to ten. Counted to twenty. Considered, briefly, the merits of simply walking out the door and never returning.
"Kang Haeun-ssi," he said, with as much calm as he could muster, "we apologize for any disruption Biyoo may have caused. We'll talk to her about using fewer submission holds on her classmates. Right, honey?"
Biyoo considered this. "I could use the third one instead of the second one. The second one is nicer."
"No submission holds," Dokja said firmly.
"Not even if they're being tyrants?"
"No." Never in Kim Dokja’s 30 year long life, have he ever thought he’d end up in a kindergarten classroom while considering how much it’d cost for a funeral for himself.
Biyoo sighed. It was the sigh of someone who had resigned herself to an unfair world. "Okay, Appa."
Kang Haeun, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of a woman reconsidering her career choices, cleared her throat.
"There's one more thing," she said.
Dokja's blood ran cold.
"When asked why she knew how to do that," She continued, "Biyoo said—" she checked her notes "—'My father taught me twelve ways to make someone stop hurting you. This was the nicest one.'"
She looked up. Her smile was gone.
"Kim Dokja-ssi, Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi. What do you teach this child at home?”
Dokja opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Self-defense," Joonghyuk said calmly. "Situational awareness. And ethical application of force." He paused. "She has mastered twelve. She is ready for the next three."
"We're very proud of her." Dokja added weakly.
Haeun stared at them.
Then she reached into her desk drawer, pulled out a small stuffed animal—a sunfish, Dokja noticed, worn and lumpy—and squeezed it. Squeeze was the wrong word. More like choking it to hell and back.
"Thank you for your time," she said. "I'll... I'll be in touch."
The walk to the car was quiet.
Biyoo held both their hands, swinging between them, her braids swinging with each step. The afternoon sun was warm. A bird sang somewhere. It was, Dokja thought, an extremely inappropriate soundtrack for the funeral of his dignity.
"Appa?" Biyoo said.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Is Kang seonsaeim okay? She looked scared."
Dokja sighed. "She's fine, Biyoo. She just... isn't used to your other father's face."
Joonghyuk made a sound of offense. "My face is fine."
"Your face is intimidating."
"My face is normal."
"Your face has made three separate delivery drivers cry."
"They were easily startled."
Biyoo tugged their hands, stopping them both. She looked up with those big dark eyes, serious, thoughtful, so much like both of them it hurt.
"Appa," she said. "I didn't hurt Minjun. I just held him until he said sorry."
Joonghyuk knelt down to her level. "Good. Next time, ask him why he took it first. Then hold him."
"No 'next time,'" Dokja interrupted. "We're working on using our words."
Biyoo considered this. Then she nodded solemnly. "Okay. Words first. Then hold him."
"That's not what I—"
"She's compromising," Joonghyuk said, standing up. "That's enough process, Kim Dokja."
"That's not—"
"Appa." Biyoo tugged his hand again. "Can we get ice cream?"
Dokja looked at his daughter. At his partner. At the bright blue sky and the cheerful school and the slowly fading memory of Kang Haeun's horrified face.
"Yes," he said. "We can get ice cream."
Biyoo cheered. Joonghyuk nodded approvingly.
And as they walked to the car with Biyoo skipping, Joonghyuk stoic, Dokja somewhere in between, he thought that they were going to be okay. Probably.
If Kang Haeun doesn’t see “learning self-defence with papa” as child abuse, that is.
That night, after Biyoo was asleep and the ice cream had been properly appreciated, Dokja opened his phone.
Group Chat: Han Sooyoung’s Group Chat
Han Sooyoung: well
Han Sooyoung: how bad was it
Kim Dokja: She disarmed a first grader.
Han Sooyoung: nice
Kim Dokja: This is not "nice"!
Kim Dokja: She used a figure-four leg entanglement!
Kim Dokja: On a seven-year-old! As a seven-year-old!
Kim Dokja: Who had a dinosaur!
Yoo Sangah: Oh dear 😅
Jung Heewon: Tell Biyoo I said good job
Kim Dokja: THAT'S NOT THE POINT
Lee Hyunsung: Was the other boy okay?
Kim Dokja: He cried for fifteen minutes and now apparently wants Biyoo to teach him "the moves"
Han Sooyoung: she's building an army
Han Sooyoung: good for her
Kim Dokja: I'm going to bed
Yoo Sangah: Goodnight, Dokja-ssi 💕
Jung Heewon: sleep tight
Lee Hyunsung: I'm sure everything will be fine!
Han Sooyoung: she's gonna be president someday
Han Sooyoung: or a warlord like your husband is supposed to be if he wasn’t too busy being sweaty over league
Han Sooyoung: either way i'm supporting her
Kim Dokja: PLEASE stop
Dokja woke to find Biyoo standing beside his bed, already dressed, holding a piece of paper.
"What's that?" he mumbled.
"A peace offering."
He took the paper. It was a drawing—Biyoo's unmistakable style. It showed four figures holding hands: two tall ones (Dokja and Joonghyuk), one medium (Biyoo herself), and one small and frowning (Minjun, presumably). Above them, a banner read: "NO TYRANTS ALLOWED."
"I drew it for him," Biyoo explained. "To say sorry. Even though he started it."
Dokja rubbed his eyes. "That's... very mature of you." Though that drawing felt more like sarcasm than an actual sincere apology.
"Papa said I should."
"Of course he did."
"Can I give it to him on Monday?"
Dokja looked at the drawing. At his daughter's earnest face. At the faint light of morning coming through the curtains.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you can give it to him on Monday."
Biyoo smiled—bright and unguarded, the smile she saved just for him.
"Okay, Appa," she said. "I'm going to go practice now."
"Practice what?"
But she was already gone, small footsteps pattering down the hallway toward the room where Joonghyuk had, against all of Dokja's objections, installed a padded mat.
Dokja lay back against his pillow.
He could hear them now—Joonghyuk's low voice, Biyoo's high laugh, the soft thump of small feet on foam.
It was chaos, but it was his chaos.
He closed his eyes and smiled.