Houseboat

3

"Mommy, what is fuck?"

Chae Yoon choked.

The word just came out of her seven-year-old daughter's mouth just like that over dinner. Over a bowl of kimchi fried rice she cooked fifteen minutes ago.

She couldn't believe what she just heard.

"Are you okay, mommy?" Hyun Ju worriedly asked, bringing her little glass of water and running to her side. She had been thinking about that new word the whole day and was very much confused at her mom's reaction.

Chae Yoon took her glass from her hands and slowly drank from it. When she recovered, she wiped the water from the bottom of her lip and looked at her.

"Hyun Ju, where did you hear that?"

Her eyes innocently blinked.

"Daddy."

Of course. It came from him.

With that exquisitely beautiful mouth of his, whose skills aren't only limited to kissing her and making her come alive, she knew this one was bound to happen someday.

It was innate—when he bumps himself against one of the cabinets because he's too tall: Fuck. When his bare foot accidentally steps on her little blocky toys on the floor: Fuck. When he works on his laptop and it gets lag for too long: Fuck. When he accidentally cuts himself while shaving his beard off: Fuck.

When the joke is too funny, "Fuck, that's so funny!" When she's too pretty in her dress: "Fuck, Chae Yoon, you look so beautiful..."

Chae Yoon decided to put a pause on their dinner to ask Hyun Ju a few questions; the scenario itself looking like an interrogation, with her as the mom interrogator and her second grader daughter as the sole witness.

"Daddy said it when he tripped himself at the living room." Min Hyun Ju firmly testified.

Her mother hummed and nodded. "Why did he trip?"

Hyun Ju shook her head. "Don't know." She reached for an egg roll and tried to hold it with her chopsticks but failed as it slipped back to the plate. She poked on it instead.

"He was on his phone."

They've already established it long ago—never swear inside the house especially in front of their child.

But old habits die hard and certainly his habits at this point reached immortality.

She heard enough for today. She's going to need a word from him.

"Is that a bad word, mommy?" Hyun Ju chews her words along with the rice in her mouth. "Yes," Chae Yoon says, "It is a bad word and you shouldn't say it to anyone."

"But daddy said it."

"And I am going to talk about that to him."

-

"What? I did not!" Min Tae Gu spat out, his words muffled by the toothpaste foam all over his mouth as he brushes his teeth in their bathroom. Chae Yoon was leaning against the door, arms crossed with a stern look on her face.

"Yes, you did," she countered.

He rinsed his mouth and brush, then turned to her. "I don't recall saying that today."

"Are you saying Hyun Ju is lying?"

"I can't really remember, baby." He looked up to ponder and his eyes slightly squinted. After a while, when his mind couldn't find anything for him, he went back to her. "Yeah... I really can't."