Help! I’m Trapped With My Dad’s Socially Awkward Boyfriend! || Natter
“Oh yeah, I’m pretty busy. I was in more clubs my first year but I’ve dropped most everything to have time for performance rehearsals in the Hollow – except for volleyball!”
He’d kept up with volleyball, loving the thrill and teamwork the sport brought. Plus, he had good mates on that team, like Luca (and Luca had joined at Nemo’s encouragement so it’d be pretty rot of him to abandon his friend like that, y'know?)
David Hatter didn’t seem like a sports enthusiast though. Which – a shame. Just another difference between them. In fact, so far, the only thing they had in common was… Appa.
Awkward.
“Er, I guess you aren’t that big into sports yourself or…?” he asked anyway, a hopeful lilt in his voice.
He shook his head because to Hatter being big into sports meant being like his brother in law, someone who followed a team and bought their merchandise and knew all the players and the staff. It meant someone who was going to live or die by their club, even if they’d had horrible season after horrible season. Someone who never missed a match and if they did, they drowned out any news of the results until they could watch it.
Hatter was not dedicated to sports in such a way. He could understand why it was such a big deal on a small scale. Kids losing games seemed heartbreaking. It was when it went to such a massive scale, professional leagues and the like with people going on rampages after matches or getting into fights with other fans of opposing teams in pubs. That had him scratching his head and wondering what the big deal was. It couldn’t be all that dire that people felt the need to go mental over a loss.
“Not in that way, but I’ll watch whatever’s on. Or listen to it. You know Ramirez, I’m sure, she had me watching the Magick Grand Prix since she was a wee one and her order was still a frozen hot chocolate with cinnamon. And my brother in law is a Liverpool fan, so, I keep up with that to know his mental state,” he admitted. “How’s your season going?”
Ah, the bit about explaining. This is the problem, Julieta found, with not talking about… things… so openly with her family. Things, this vague term that encompasses so many issues that she just can’t bring herself to voice aloud.
The fading and flickering and fickle nature of her magic. The way it seems her gift would pull away from her, forcing her to chase it in every fold of dough or churn of batter. Her magic slipping from her finger tips, desperate to be caught, her desperate to catch it.
Julieta never fit in with the kitchen witches in Swynlake. There weren’t many, granted, but Julieta felt she didn’t have as much in common with the little old ladies who spoke of kitchen folk remedies in the corner of Hatters, remarking on tea mixes and the flavors of herbs. She’d sat with them a few times, waved over. They talked of their nieces and nephew who might have moved away, and of the different feeling of magic in their bones. It has been so long since they’d been without it, magic in meals was their second nature.
Meanwhile, Julieta was losing touch with that feeling day by day. Was her doubt manifesting? Self-realization, self-actualization? Or was it more. She didn’t fit in with those sweet older ladies because they seemed to be at peace, and Julieta – try as she might to hide it – felt far from it. As if when magicless, her heart remembered the roiling seas in Avaloran storms, hammering harder than waves beat against the shores.
“I mean,” Julieta says, softer than she means and softer than she wants to, “that my magic feels as if it’s fading. Not as effective. I don’t feel it the same way. When you use magic, for instance, how do you feel it. In your body, or surrounding you?”
Now that she’s started, she finds it hard to stop.
“I can’t feel it at all sometimes lately. Or it’s faint, like a whisper that I can’t quite attune to. Have you ever felt this way? Is there something you do to reconnect to your magic, or your kitchen, or whatever it is that you feel when you cast?”
Hatter had been bringing the mug up to his lips and paused at her first question, eyes lifting to look at her for a moment before going ahead and taking a sip of the still too hot, not steeped enough, water because blimey. This was not at all what he had thought this was going to be about.
Magic? Feelings?
And then as soon as she expressed that she was feeling some sort of disconnect with her magic he sobered up. He needed to take his seriously, not just dismiss it because he didn’t think he was the right audience– she had come to him for a reason. Probably. Hopefully.
He set his mug down and sat back a little, trying to think of how best to answer her. It was difficult, both because he, in particular, wasn’t a very talkative person to begin with so words weren’t an easy thing to navigate for him and also because magic was hard to describe in the first place.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt anything in the way you’re describing. That seems– physical, like when the magic drain was going on, rather than…well, when I was younger I had no idea what I wanted to study as far as a specialty went. Didn’t really have the time for it, either. I was disconnected mentally, I suppose,” he said, furrowing his brows at himself as had never taken the time to reflect on this. “Erm, and then when I did decide on kitchen witchery, it was because I thought it was the easiest thing I could do. Which turned out to be wrong, obviously. I don’t have to tell you that. And even then, people don’t really look at someone like me and think I’m a Kitchen Witch. So when I would tell them their reactions would make me think I wasn’t either.
"To connect with it, though, I suppose I just go back to the basics? Do something I know. Make a recipe that I’ve done a hundred times over. And when I mean basics, I mean basics. I’ll collect the reagents I don’t normally have to since I’ve made it so many times and put them in there instead of relying on raw magic. I dunno– helps me remember where I started and how far I’ve come.” He let out a little puff of air, “And how far I’ve still got to go.”
He paused a moment, then nodded toward her, “How long has this been going on?”
“God, yeah…I wasn’t even – it doesn’t even feel like I’m the same person as in these pictures. We didn’t have our son for another two years, and being his dad is my whole thing. And my personality was completely different. I used to party, like actually party.” Mu-yeol said, pointing to a picture of him and So-yeon at a club dancing on a table, getting everybody else hype. “I’d been living in Seoul for two years though, at this point. So the culture shock of that had worn off.”
“That was from Su-mi’s first time visiting us in Seoul. She’d just finished her apprenticeship in the Hollow and came to stay with us for a week to celebrate. I remember trying to hard to convince her that I was completely happy and that everything was fine in the human world.”
He sighed and shook his head.
“And I actually took that one–” he pointed to another one on the page. “Was mine and So-yeon’s friend group at the time. One of them anyway.” From left to right, he pointed out who was who. “Jiahao, he was a student from China that she knew from the university, I actually dated him for a little while like a few months before this. Joey, he was a student from Malaysia. So-yeon of course. Cho Moon-sung, another fairy living in Seoul, he was my age. So-yeon’s girlfriend at the time, Gu Mi-yeon, at least that’s what we all called her. She was a Korean-Australian named Rebecca but we all just used her Korean name. That’s Icy, he was from Thailand. And creepily looming in the background there that’s Gil Gong-chan, one of So-yeon’s classmates. Everyone was always over our apartment to eat. She’d find out somebody only ate ramyeon and convenience store kimbap and would be like ‘just come over whenever, my husband can cook.’ I hope they’re all doing well. I went straight back to DAegu when she died, I didn’t…say goodbye to anybody.”
It felt like that to Hatter, too, but that was much easier since Hatter hadn’t known him that long ago. Couldn’t have. And, given the description of how Mr. Bae used to live, probably wouldn’t have. Which was…not fine necessarily, but understandable.
His eyes followed Mr. Bae’s finger as he pointed at people in the photograph, taking the time it took to describe them to linger on their captured image and commit name to face. It had always been one thing to hear about these people, about Mr. Bae’s life and stories that involved the names being said and the places where they happened. It was another thing entirely to see them. It made them that much more real.
“I’m sure they understood why,” he said. “Did anyone ever reach out to you?”
Help! I’m Trapped With My Dad’s Socially Awkward Boyfriend! || Natter
“Oh! Like computer science? Yeah, there’s still a degree for that. It goes way over my head. Even my phone confuses me sometimes,” Nemo said, chuckling.
He wasn’t your normal Gen Z student though, yeah? He was a fairy. He only got a phone when he started to go into town more for dance and Appa had been super paranoid and wanted to make sure he could stay in touch with Nemo at all times. And then, he didn’t use the phone unless he was in town for a while because he didn’t have anything to charge it within the Hollow.
Now– now, he had two different portable battery packs. But when he was in the Hollow, honestly, sometimes he forgot about his phone completely, only scrolling on it a bit at night when he couldn’t sleep. Otherwise, he shifted into so-called ‘hollow mode.’
“Yah, when I was a Merlin fellow, I learned a bunch of stuff about like…identity, immigration, law, politics, history,” rambled Nemo. “It was pretty overwhelming but I appreciated it too, I guess. It was a good course.”
Is that what that was called. Computer Science? Hatter let out a little huff of amused air, nodding in agreement. Obviously. All he had was a landline as far as phones went and had been using the same computer for…hell, he didn’t know. Ages at this point. It functioned for what he needed it for, and he was perfectly content to keep the routine of it.
As much as he probably knew it would be best if he learned all the new technology that he saw popping up, he felt like it was already too late. Since he hadn’t gotten on the train at the beginning, it was now so far away and going faster than ever before that it seemed impossible to catch up now. He’d gotten by this long without it, he figured there wasn’t much he was missing out on.
“Sounds like it,” he nodded, only a little surprised that a class could encompass that much within it. Those topics seemed much larger than what a lecture could offer in the allotted time. “And are you in any of the clubs they’ve got there? Or does work and regular schooling take up most of your time?”
“We were at a kalguksu-jip.” Mu-yeol answered, knowing David had no idea what that was. “A lot of hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Korea, the ones down alley ways ran by some ahjumma or ahjussi–” a sizable minority of them kitchen witches, which Mu-yeol never picked up on but Hatter might in Korea “– will specialize in one type of dish done several different ways. Kalguksu is a noodle dish. The noodles are knife cut versus pulled or spun and you can add basically anything to the broth.”
He nodded to the picture.
“The couple that ran that noodle shop were very kind, they always gave us more than we paid for. Anyway, I usually got perilla seed kalguksu and she liked pine mushroom kalguksu. I’ll have to bring you to a kalguksu-jip down a sketchy alleyway when we go to Korea. That’s where you find the best stuff.”
Hatter listened as he always did, with an earnest interest. Both for the way in which Mr. Bae explained things and, in this case, for getting to hear more about Mr. Bae’s past. Even if it was mostly regarding food (which he was not complaining about in the slightest), it offered a glimpse into the life he had lived.
Which was different than the one now, for a great deal of reasons, but it wasn’t as if Swynlake had things like a kalguksu-jip. It wasn’t big enough to hide those sorts of things. Even considering [NAME REDACTED], that was just a coffee shoppe, wasn’t it?
“2001,” he repeated, still looking at the photograph. “Hard to believe that much time has gone by.”
Help! I’m Trapped With My Dad’s Socially Awkward Boyfriend! || Natter
Like always, Hatter’s answer was short and succinct. Nemo should probably take it at face value. If Hatter said he thought it ‘smart,’ why would he lie about that, eh? Still, Nemo squirmed a little, not feeling smart at all. A hundred other excuses bubbled to his lips, but he swallowed them again. Why explain himself to Appa’s boyfriend anyway? He didn’t even care!
Nemo glanced toward the kitchen. Hopefully, Tae-eomma and Appa were gonna finish soon. Not that this conversation was bad. Nemo could just sense its momentum slowly going out, like a gasping balloon.
“Uh– sure! Yeah, I’m glad I decided to go,” said Nemo. “I know it’s not necessary I guess but I’ve learned a lot about other things too, not just dance or dance industry related. Like, about living on my own and ah… adult… human…things.” He blushed again.
This was good to hear, though he wouldn’t exactly expect the kid to confess to him, of all people, that he’d thought it was a waste of his time. But he did sound as though he enjoying it– the experience and the education. Which was something even he would forget about, that uni wasn’t just a place to go learn things, it was a potentially stepping stone for people. Able to have a structure like they were used to but also give them more freedom than they were maybe used to having in their lives.
He did not clock the blush, since he wasn’t staring Nemo down, nor did he really pick up on any amount of awkwardness that may have entered Nemo’s tone. It went over his head. But, then, so did the potential meaning behind Nemo’s words.
Instead he hummed and nodded, like he understood what Nemo meant, when really he only understood what he thought the kid meant.
“My brother took a lot of classes outside of what they suggested he take. I remember he was in something where they went really into depth on stuff he could do on the computer. Which was helpful, since we didn’t have one at home and he really only used one at the library or at his friends’ houses,” he said. “Though, these days, I don’t know that they offer that sort of thing anymore since kids are growing up with them in their pockets.”
“If you think that’s interesting,” Mu-yeol began, reaching for the small photo album. “I think these are from…2000? Wait, no 2001, because–” he flipped to a page near the middle and pointed to a picture of him and So-yeon. “– that restaurant was right by our second apartment.”
Hatter looked up from the notebook and blinked at the sound of those years. Good lord. At one point in his life the new century had been such a big to-do and those years had become milestones he based the passage of time off of. The sort that made him think, oh yeah that was only 3 years ago only to realize it had actually been 5.
Now, here they were, 25 years passed it.
He shook himself away from that thought and turned to see the picture Mr. Bae was holding. At first, all he could focus on was the man himself before he shifted to taking in the visage of his late wife. It was the first time he had any indication of what she looked like, and it was a bit jarring, but he remained as he was rather than trying to take the picture from Mr. Bae’s hand to get a closer look.
And because he was who he was, he couldn’t help but to squint, and point a finger to hover over the picture and ask, “What’re you eating?”
Mu-yeol knew David’s every facial expression by now so of course he knew what that little glance meant. He was, as always, infatuated with every bit about version of him and that made him all warm and fuzzy.
The next page was a list of English adjectives and their Korean equivalents.
“Adjective day,” he repeated, wanting to know what such a phrase felt like to say. Maybe the way Mr. Bae spoke and chose to word things wasn’t unique to other people, but Hatter always found those little things to be very amusing and interesting.
He eyed the long list of description words and their counterparts next to them, taking a touch longer here since it was helpful to him, too. Not that he was going to memorize anything right now, but any bit of exposure was worth something.
It was a testament to the strength of Nemo’s feelings for his– friend? Boyfriend? Er- for Finn, because even Hatter could make out the edges of the reagent that bloomed while he thought and spoke about him. Normally Hatter couldn’t make out emotions very well, not unless he had spent a great deal of time around the person and had learned to understand them, having not taken the time to study such things since he figured he’d have no reason to for it with his specialty.
It was pleasant to listen to, though he also couldn’t help but feeling a bit weird. That’s just what unfiltered, plain emotion did to someone like him, though, it was nothing personal. Well– that wasn’t quite true. It was a little personal, since this was his partner’s son and he had no idea where he sat with the kid, other than that it was somewhere on the negative end of the spectrum.
“Fifteen,” he repeated and shook his head a little. “And you just turned twenty-one in November? That is a long time. Especially at that age. Seems like several life times.”
At least, it had been for him. It seemed like it had been when all of his siblings had marched their way through those years, one by one. And, every time he hired a kid from secondary, it seemed like it was for them, too.
“He’s at the university, too?”
Yeah, it did.
It was several lifetimes if Nemo really thought about it. His life blossomed and wilted many times over within the past seven years. He became a scout apprentice, and then he abandoned the pursuit. He became a performing apprentice instead, and now he was a full-fledged performing-talent. He graduated secondary. He nearly flunked outta his first year in uni. He said goodbye to Ashlee. He made new friends. He had a break-up. He fell in love again. He moved out into his first house.
If all that could happen in seven years, what could happen in the next seven? Nemo’s stomach flipped at the thought, which made him shut it down quite quickly. He hated thinking about the future. It always gave him the rollie-pollies.
“Uh– yeah! He’s graduating this year though,” said Nemo, then paused and added more reluctantly, “I’m uh, I’m set to graduate in the winter. I er, do part-time schooling, and I usually take a class in the summer so I’m not too behind but the full class load was a lot for me on top of other things and… well, maybe Appa talked to you about that too.” His cheeks brightened, Nemo a bit flustered. Hatter was probably smart as Appa, huh? And never had to go part-time on anything.
Hatter nodded. Yes, he had. He spoke quite a bit about his son’s schooling. The financial aspect, of course, but the other parts of it as well. He was in no place to judge and, honestly, he didn’t really see university as anything all that special. To him, someone didn’t need a degree to be intelligent or remarkable or accomplished or whatever it was. But he knew society did, so, he had sent his siblings off to it so they could do what they wanted in life. And he was trying to help Mr. Bae do the same.
He didn’t really care how people went about their life, so long as they weren’t hurting anyone and were doing what they wished, what did it matter?
“That’s smart,” he said, not really thinking anything of it since he had been in conversations with those that worked at the tea shoppe over their schedules many-a-time that ended with him suggesting they take less hours. It usually kept the amount of times he found someone weeping in the back of the kitchen to a minimum.
