Arcadia Chapter 3.2

Van, replying dazedly to the uncharacteristically talkative boy, hung his head low, feeling like he was about to cry. While he ran his hands roughly through his messy hair, Dia continued to reel off his impressions of his rapid growth. His excited voice pounded against Van’s eardrums, but he was in no state of mind to play along.

He had wanted Dia to grow up quickly, but he didn’t mean for him to grow up this fast. He felt a sense of loss, disappointment, sadness, and an insane amount of frustration.

Dia, who had shown an extraordinary growth spurt overnight, made Van nervous.

The boy Dia had become hadn’t just grown in physique. His clear, sweet voice, which would have been perfectly suited for a youth choir, had deepened calmly, and his chubby cheeks and jawline, once full of baby fat, had become slender. That wasn’t all. As if his mind had grown along with his body, Dia completely erased his occasional mumbling and slurring, and often struck up conversations with Van. His habit of constantly asking “Why, why, why” also decreased noticeably.

Van was undeniably disappointed, but Dia hadn’t completely shed his childishness. Whether it should be called a relief or not, for several days after the morning he woke up a boy, Van had watched him relentlessly, but Dia hadn’t grown any further.

Of course, a normal person’s day was probably like an hour to Dia, but he hadn’t grown noticeably of late. Dia was still dependent, and Van was pleased by that. It was a feeling even he himself was unaware of.

“Eat everything on that plate. You can’t get up before then.”

“Van.”

“Let’s eat up, pretty boy.”

“Vaaan.”

“Yeah, yeah. What.”

Dia stared blankly at Van, who was texting on his phone and replying without much care, then lowered his gaze.

The plate, on which various different foods were piled together, looked plentiful at first glance. Roughly cooked bacon, a roughly fried egg, a roughly thawed slice of frozen pizza, roughly sliced apples, and a roughly poured glass of milk. By Van’s standards, who usually made do with convenient meals, it was a very nutritious meal. However, Dia’s complaint wasn’t because of the menu Van had presented.

Dia, propping himself up with his long arms on the table, straightened his upper body. A hand reached across the table and snatched the phone that Van had been holding the entire time. Van, who had his phone stolen just before he could send a sixth reply, lifted his head and met the boy’s eyes, who had moved closer. Dia, with a sullen face, made a bold demand.

“Pay some attention to me.”

Without returning the phone, Dia leaned back in his chair and took a sip of milk. Van sat facing the boy with a reluctant expression, but inwardly, he quite liked Dia’s craving for attention.

“I can give you attention. Eat, hurry up.”

Van put on a nonchalant air and rested his chin on his hand. The reason he was texting at the dinner table was that he had unintentionally been ignoring messages while child-rearing, so he was trying to reply now. Besides, he was just sending one emoji per text to those looking for him, so there was no need to continue the conversations anyway.

“Ah.”

A piece of pizza offered by Dia touched his lips. Van naturally took a bite and narrowed his eyes as he chewed the pizza.

“It’s so obvious you’re giving it to me because you don’t want to eat it.”

“How could I do that when you’re the one who gave it to me, Van.”

“The damn kid has only gotten better at getting out of things.”

“Am I a damn kid?”

Dia, who had developed a smooth way with words, bit into the pizza, which had a clear bite mark, with his even teeth. Van looked at Dia, who was obviously asking a question he already knew the answer to, with a disapproving eye and picked up a slice of apple from the boy’s plate. He replied while crunching on the sour, not-sweet apple.

“It would make me too sad if you were damned. After all the hell I went through to raise you.”

Ever since being advised by Wayne to feed him human food, the boy had been having balanced meals. The problem was that his appetite was quite poor for his size. He had quickly learned how to use utensils to pick up food, but he would always eat a tiny bit and then stop, which frustrated Van every time he saw it.

Then again, it was unlikely that a kid who threw a fit saying he didn’t want to drink formula would suddenly develop proper eating habits just because he got a little bigger. Look at that. Putting down his fork again.

“I’m done eating.”

“You think my words are nothing just because you’ve grown a bit?”

“If you feed me.”

Dia glanced at the plate that even Van hadn’t finished and turned the fork around to offer it to him, handle first.

“Then I’ll eat.”

Van scoffed at the boy’s trick. His vocabulary had grown so much in a few days that now he was even trying to negotiate.

“How insolent, Dia.”

As Van muttered while picking up another cube of apple, the boy’s hand froze. Dia turned the fork back around and sluggishly poked at the bacon, jabbing at its burnt surface. His green eyes darted around, checking Van’s reaction.

“It’s still hard for me to pick this up… so could you? If not, then just….”

The boy, who had been eating with flawless gestures just a moment ago, suddenly began to fumble. The bacon, barely caught on the dull tines of the fork, plopped down, and he dropped a piece of apple while trying to lift it clumsily. Dia glanced at Van again and pretended to be hurt.

“I thought you did things like this for people you love.”

It looked quite genuine. No. Perhaps he was genuinely hurt. Van stared at the boy, who always brought up that damn love whenever he tried to discipline him properly, and then let out a sigh. In truth, Dia’s brazen attitude wasn’t all that detestable.

“Say ah, ah. You think I can’t even do this for you? Tsk, just grow up quickly already. So you’ll stop doing this stuff.”

Van quickly snatched the fork from Dia’s hand, rested his elbow on the table, and jabbed at the plate. He speared an apple and a piece of bacon at once and personally put it in Dia’s mouth.

The child chewed the sweet and oily food and smiled coyly. The sight of the boy trying to get confirmation of his love in all sorts of ways brought a faint smile to Van’s lips.

‘What did you do?’

That was the accusation Wayne had spat out when he stopped by the house on the morning the child had become a boy.

How was Van supposed to know? He had just woken up and the kid was bigger. Van was dumbfounded by Wayne’s tone, which condemned him as if the child’s abnormal growth was his own great fault, and thanks to that, they had a heated argument at the doorway.

Wayne, who had been pressing a hand to his forehead with a troubled expression, carefully observed Dia, who was peeking his head out from behind Van’s back, and then got a look of understanding on his face. Wayne headed to the house next door without a word of goodbye and returned shortly after. With him were books that looked stuffy just by looking at them.

‘Have him read them. He’ll be bored anyway.’

‘He can just watch YouTube. A Critique of Pure… what? Why would he read this?’

‘I see why you’re the way you are.’

‘That was an insult, wasn’t it? You wanna die?’

Wayne shoved the books at Van, who was frowning intensely, clicked his tongue, and returned home. Van, hoisting up the armful of books, glared at the man’s back before slamming the door so hard it could have broken.

Now that they were above ground with internet access, Van had been teaching Dia about the world through YouTube—or more accurately, he had been turning on videos and doing his own thing—so he passed the pile of books to Dia. He was certain Dia wouldn’t show any interest, but after examining each cover, Dia soon picked one and began to read its dense pages. Van, with a look that said he was witnessing something truly bizarre, glanced at Dia from time to time before scanning the covers of the books strewn on the floor.

<Utopia>, <Pride and Prejudice>, <The Divine Comedy>, <The Man’s Tentacles>, <On Liberty>, <Developmental Psychology>, <Bioscience>, <Hansel and Gretel>, etc., etc….

It was a random assortment. There were books whose titles he had heard somewhere, but there were also books that seemed more useful as kindling. Van picked up a book as thick as a brick and flipped open the first page, but the world instantly swam before his eyes and he closed the cover. He had an allergy to the printed word.

Van pushed the pile of books toward Dia, then lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. Well, showing interest in books was a good sign. Didn’t that mean he would have more time to rest?

After finishing their war-like breakfast, Dia, following his new routine of the past few days, once again became engrossed in a book. His reading speed seemed to have increased considerably, as he was reading a different book from yesterday. Van, alternating his gaze between the rapidly turning pages, the boy’s handsome profile, and his phone, gradually grew bored. He glared at the dense text out of the corner of his eye and then casually struck up a conversation.

“Is it fun?”

The boy, tearing his eyes away from the print, looked at Van blankly and then closed the book without any lingering attachment.

“Why? You’re not reading.”

“Talking with you is more fun, Van.”

“You’re stating the obvious.”

Van grinned mischievously and lay down, resting his head on Dia’s thigh. He liked the feeling of fingers gently brushing the stray hairs from his forehead. It was warm and peaceful. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had such a leisurely moment.

Van let the hand that was touching the tip of his nose and caressing his lips be, before suddenly sitting up. He grabbed Dia’s hand, which was left hanging in the air, and stood up from the sofa. Facing the boy who had stood up with a bewildered look, he smiled a smile that anyone would nod along to.

“Should we run away?”

“…A lover’s escape?”

“Well, something like that.”

A bright smile was returned to him when he reluctantly agreed to Dia’s inevitable question, which was still stained by romance movies.

Van hurriedly ran upstairs to the second floor, put on a coat, and came back down with a coat for the boy to wear. He helped Dia, who put on the baggy coat as told, put on shoes for the first time in his life. Although it was a bit humiliating that his own sneakers fit perfectly without any room to spare, thanks to Dia’s feet being as big as his hands.

Van, lacing his fingers with Dia’s, poked his head out the front door to check on the situation next door. The red brick house was visible. It had been empty for a long time before Wayne arrived. Wayne visited here twice a day, in the morning and evening, after his ridiculous jogs, so now was the perfect time to slip out for a bit.

He glared at the house, which still showed no signs of being lived in, before cautiously taking a step. Van, who had made it out to the garden, looked back at the hesitating Dia.

“Come on out.”

Dia, who had never once set foot outside the house since he was born, faced the unfamiliar wind and stared into the air. The boy, whose green eyes took in the perpetually hazy sky, as if covered by a blue filter, and the untended garden, finally looked at Van. The handsome man, his black hair scattering in the blowing wind, raised the corners of his mouth.

“What’s this? Are you going to betray me?”

Dia mulled over the word “betrayal.” To forsake trust or loyalty. He knew the definition but not its precise meaning. He only knew that it was not a good act. The boy shook his head, took the hand of the lovely human, and stepped out into the world.

Running away, a lover’s escape—the words were grand, but in reality, it was just a walk. The town, abandoned by its residents who had left for countless reasons—unable to bear the gloomy weather, sick of the boredom, jobless, or simply wanting to leave—was as desolate as a deserted ruin. Thanks to that, Van was able to head to the forest smoothly without having to explain Dia’s existence to any nosy neighbors.

“What kind of place do you want to live in, Van?”

Dia asked, having paid attention to each and every thing—the crumbled walls, the dead roadside trees, the flat tire, the wildflowers on the verge of withering—while listening to Van’s stories. Van blinked and then recited his desired living environment without hesitation.

“A city, of course. Where there are fireworks every day, and as soon as you step out of the house, it’s all expensive cars and flashy things. And a really nice house there. It’d be great if it had a swimming pool, too. The tiles would all be gold-plated. If I wanted to buy something, I could just pry off a tile and trade it.”

His head, steeped in mammonism, painted the most ideal home. Van had already thoroughly planned what he would do after receiving the million dollars. An amazing house. An amazing car. An amazing watch. These were the values Van held highest. After smoothly spouting his shallow ideals, Van suddenly shut his mouth and fell into deep thought.

Was it… wrong to instill these kinds of ideas in Dia? After struggling with the thought, Van instantly changed his tune.

“No, forget it. Cancel everything I just said. Me, you know. I want to live a leisurely life in a very quiet place, maybe somewhere like an island? In an old castle in a quiet place. I like fairy tales, too, so something with that kind of feel.”

He didn’t even like fairy tales, and he wouldn’t give a second glance to an island with terrible transportation, but he mixed in a lie. This was romantic enough, wasn’t it? Dia, who had been listening intently, burst into clear laughter.

“I like it too.”

“Huh?”

“Fairy tale-like and quiet. I’d want to share a room.”

Dia was instantly lost in a reverie of himself and Van living happily together in a castle from a fairy tale. Van was at a loss for words. Reality crashed in, and the short dream was shattered.

It was currently nearing four months since the job had begun, and the time he had left with Dia was roughly eight months. After eight months, Dia would be heading to the laboratory, Van would receive a million dollars, and the mission would be over. A castle was out of the question; Dia wouldn’t even be able to leave this town with Van.

Van lowered his gaze to the trash-strewn ground. The promised day, which had felt so far away, seemed to have suddenly drawn near. He had been so preoccupied, and Dia had been so lovely, that he had momentarily forgotten his duty. Van rubbed the area around his cold chest and smiled nonchalantly.

“We have to have separate rooms. Where do you get off acting like a baby?”