Chapter 64 : The Snow Duck War

On Christmas, the emotional white trash that falls from the sky.

Snow.

A cause of increasing traffic accidents everywhere, and an ice rink that makes you fall flat on your back and crack your head open while walking on the streets.

Despite being a nuisance, snow is popular with children, so as the snow covers the world in white, Siyeon’s whining also grows louder.

Thanks to that, we were dragged out to the playground in the middle of the night.

I thought the army would be the last time I’d be dragged out because of snow.

‘It doesn’t matter since it’s the vacation, though…?’

“Jaehyun, can we not put snow on the car?”

On a late holiday night, a sudden white Christmas.

I looked around as I heard voices from nearby.

Out of nowhere, thick white snow was falling.

I wasn’t the only one dragged out to the playground because of the complaints.

Flower beds, railings, the ground—white snow was piled up everywhere.

I watched Siyeon, who was using her beret gloves to pack the snow, while I also tried to make a snowball.

In the middle of the night, in the playground and parking lot, children’s voices could be heard from everywhere.

“Siyeon, look at this?!”

A girl who was relatively close to Siyeon among the children gathered in the playground spoke to her.

I think her name was Hayani?

Anyway, she brought a strange-looking plastic clip and started bragging to Siyeon.

When I squinted my eyes and looked closely in the dark, I could see that the clip had a duck-shaped mold at the end, which could be filled with snow.

If you filled the mold with snow and took the clip off…

“Wow!”

A smooth, white duck-shaped snowball was made, and even Siyeon was impressed.

This snow duck clip had been a trend among kids recently, even covered in the news.

It was a clever idea to use the clip to clear snow and even make money from it.

It seems that business requires a good head.

“Siyeon, do you want to try?”

Hayani seemed to want to share the fun, as she handed the plastic clip to Siyeon without hesitation.

If it had been boys, they might have claimed it by saying, ‘You don’t have this, right?’

But the soft world of girls makes me feel at ease.

“Okay!”

Siyeon, with no reason to refuse, immediately took the clip and started looking for a good place to fill it with snow.

The place Siyeon headed to was the snow that had gathered neatly on the hood of a parked car.

I quickly stopped Siyeon in a panic.

“No, not the snow on the car!”

“Why?”

Siyeon asked back, wondering why it was not allowed.

How should I explain this to a child who doesn’t yet understand the value of a car?

If you scratch the car’s hood even once, you could buy dozens of those snow duck clips.

But instead of trying to make them understand the concept of money, scaring them works better in this case.

“If you scratch the car while gathering snow with the clip, the car owner will come out and say, ‘What’s this?'”

“Ah!”

Siyeon, startled by my words, pulled the tongs away from the snow that had piled up on the car.

This strategy might work when we were kids, but I wonder how many more years it will be useful.

That night, both children and adults were mixing together, moving here and there, and snow ducks started appearing in various places in the apartment complex.

At first, I thought, “Why are they doing this?” But as the numbers grew,

“An army of ducks…?”

On railings, stairs, and on top of cars, any flat surface was piled with snow, and once it was done, it looked quite majestic in its own way.

In the dark playground, where the dim lights were already sparse,

as the blank white snow eyes of the ducks began to stare from everywhere, it almost felt like a scene from a horror game.

The sudden snow duck party organized by the kids began to die down by dawn.

Hayan, who had lent me the tongs for making the snow ducks, started heading home, and one by one, the kids, who had been running around happily at first, were dragged off to bed by their parents with yawns.

As I held Siyeon’s hand and headed home, Siyeon briefly mentioned tomorrow’s schedule.

“Let’s go out and see the ducks again tomorrow!”

“Okay.”

I said in agreement and, glancing back slightly, I looked at the snow ducks stacked on the playground and the flower bed stairs.

“Did those ducks always look this way?”

At night, they had an eerie stare, but maybe they would look different in the daylight.

However, the planned duck viewing the next day didn’t happen.

It wasn’t because the temperature suddenly rose and the snow melted or anything like that.

Some twisted individual had come and destroyed all the snow ducks that the kids had made with pure hearts overnight.

Honestly, when I saw the destroyed ducks, I felt terrible.

“The ducks…”

What was supposed to be a joyful day started with Siyeon’s tearful face.

With a contorted expression, Siyeon sobbed, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Don’t… don’t cry… we can make them again.”

I hurriedly tried to comfort Siyeon while wondering who could have destroyed all the ducks without leaving a single one.

But since it wasn’t easy to pinpoint a few specific apartments, I couldn’t just grab someone by the collar based on a hunch.

The only good thing was that the snow that had fallen after that night had piled up quite a bit.

While I managed to calm Siyeon down, we headed toward the convenience store.

Feeling heartbroken seeing her sniffling, I bought various types of tongs—heart-shaped, snowman-shaped, and snow duck-shaped tongs.

With just around 10,000 won, I bought them and returned to the apartment.

“Look at this! A heart shape!”

“It’s pretty.”

Siyeon proudly showed off the heart-shaped snowball she made with the tongs she bought herself, laughing brightly.

Since they were her own tongs and not borrowed ones, she was more confident than yesterday.

This time, to make sure no one would destroy them, I decided to take the snowballs inside the house and store them in the freezer.

“Let’s put it in the freezer after it’s well done.”

“Okay!”

Siyeon carefully placed the finished snowballs near the flowerbed, as if they were treasures.

As long as they were in the freezer, they’d be safe inside the house.

This obvious fact made Siyeon smile, and she started making snowballs one by one with a tongs.

The broken snow ducks and the newly piled snow.

Kids had come out to play, taking advantage of the winter break, filling the playground quickly.

“Siyeon! What’s that?”

“It’s a heart shape!”

Yesterday, Hayani had borrowed the snow duck tongs from Siyeon.

Today, the roles had reversed, and Hayani had borrowed the heart shape and star shape tongs from Siyeon to play with.

At lunchtime, after returning the tongs, Siyeon carried the snowballs inside the house, one by one.

When she opened the top of the fridge, only emptiness greeted her.

The freezer, with nothing but ice trays, was completely bare of frozen foods.

After carefully placing the snowballs shaped like ducks, hearts, stars, and snowmen inside, Siyeon smiled brightly.

No matter what season comes, she could show off these cute snowballs now.

“Now then…”

She skillfully moved her fingers on her smartphone, placing a lunch order before starting to think deeply about what to do with the jerk who made Siyeon cry.

After all, he had deliberately smashed all the snow ducks the kids had worked hard to make.

He must be a seriously twisted person.

In that case, seeing the giant snowman she had carefully made would definitely make him hesitate.

The plan began deep into the night when Siyeon was asleep.

“Hmm, solid.”

Usually, stone bollards are placed so cars can’t enter, and some are fixed while others are movable.

Luckily, the ones in their apartment complex were movable.

“Sun.”

After transforming into a magical girl at home, Siyeon hid her frilly outfit under a padded jacket and tucked her long hair into the back while pulling her hat low over her forehead.

She stacked two heavy stone bollards and started gathering snow around them.

By scraping all the snowballs from the bonnet, the first layer was completed.

Once the second layer’s head was covered with snow around the bollard, a snowman figure was made, ready to break the jerk’s legs.

“Perfect.”

Even though it was meant to be a snowman that a grown man would have struggled to build alone, the satisfaction of completing it made Siyeon feel proud.

Now, with everything set, all that was left was to go back inside without anyone noticing.

Yawn.

After transforming back and letting out a short yawn, she lay down on her bed.

Unable to fall asleep, she decided to play a mobile game for a while before going to sleep.

Just as she began to feel like maybe this was a pointless task, the realization hit her.

Suddenly, a scream, muffled by the window, made her realize that the time spent making the snowman had not been wasted.

That night, she fell asleep with the happiest smile she’d ever had.