A Hero I Look Up To

Family...

Winter Break has finally arrived. Tobio's parents are always busy, which meant that Tobio had to live an entire break without his parents. Tobio looked outside his window to see if Chris was able to come, but it turns out, the snow was a bit too risky to drive in that weather. Men were shoveling the snow on the road to that cars would come by, which is why there was traffic near Tobio's house. Surprisingly, Chris' car was spotted. Turns out he was stuck in traffic. As Tobio saw the car, he smiled as he knew Chris would come over again. Tobio's parents left the house really early and Tobio can't make food for himself yet, so he stopped looking at the windows, laid down on his partially neat bed, and looked up at the ceiling.

Tobio felt relieved. He thought Chris wouldn't be able to come because of the snow, but thanks to the adults who were kind enough to shovel the snow, Chris was able to make it just in time. Tobio heard a knock on the door, as he knew Chris was there. He rushed to the front door in a heartbeat and opened the door slightly. Chris saw the door opening and looked down, surprised to see that only Tobio was in the house.

"Your... parents aren't home?" Chris asked. "You must be hungry, aren't you?"

"How did you... know?" Tobio asked with a tired voice. "I know I ate all my leftovers, so there isn't really anything else to eat..."

"Have you ever tried Dim Sum?"

"What's that?"

"I found a Chinese Dim Sum place in a different city, thought I'd buy some for you."

Dim Sum are a large range of Chinese dishes that are mostly enjoyed during brunch. Most types of dim sum would include char siu bao, shumai, shrimp dumplings, soup dumplings, and even more! Sometimes—on certain occasions, Chris would buy dim sum. This time, he introduced it to Tobio for the first time. As Tobio saw the bag, there were a lot of stuff, which made him wonder, how much did it cost? Chris noticed the look on Tobio's face and replied...

"You know my part time job makes a lot of money each hour, right? That's how I was... able to afford this much."

Red Lotus Cafe pays the workers a great amount of money. All the workers get paid twenty-five dollars per hour. Babysitting Tobio is also a job, and yes, Chris does get paid from babysitting Tobio.

Chris took out each dish one by one and sets it on the table. He walks to a nearby cabinet to get paper plates. Chris takes a bag of paper plates out of the cabinet's top shelf and places the bag on the table. He takes two plates from the top of the stack from the bag and places it in the table. Because Tobio didn't know how to use chopsticks yet, Chris grabbed tongs from the right drawers near the cabinet and placed it near the dishes. Tobio grabbed the tongs and saw what he wanted to grab first. Char Siu Bao. Tobio took the bao out of the box with the tongs and placed it on his plate. The texture felt soft, as it was a bit squishy. As Tobio bit into the bao, it had a savory taste with steam coming out from inside the bao. The pork tasted salty and sweet each bite, with the bun slightly taking away the flavor.

"It's warm..." Tobio said looking down on his plate. "Is it... supposed to be like that?"

"It is." Chris said. "I know it's your first time trying Dim Sum, so don't rush through all you-"

Chris saw Tobio's plate with only the Char Siu Bao on top. The bao was palm sized, not enough for Tobio to be able to eat everything. Chris was a little concerned on why he only took one thing, so he grabbed the tongs to take out another item from one of the dishes, a soup dumpling, also known as Xiaolongbao, steamed just like the pork buns, except the texture is a bit oily with the feeling of holding liquid inside.

"I'm... ok." Tobio said.

"You know that's palm sized, right?" Chris tried to tell Tobio that a palm sized pork bun wasn't enough. "There's a lot more dishes you can try, Tobio."