Chapter 219 – Picnic (3)
27. Picnic (3)
“And! Wow!”
“Don’t get too close to the fire. Dangerous.”
“Yes!”
She decorated the mini flower garden decorated by Cordia with stars pointing at the children, and her other daughter assembles the toys she wanted, and they played with them, watched them, laughed and rolled around, and ate lunch. She ate a full lunch and enjoyed the cool breeze as she watched the children fall asleep with cute breathing sounds from hunger. I also enjoyed a sweet nap surrounded by your wives, smelling their scent and cutting someone’s thigh.
And now that the sun was setting and the moon was eagerly climbing toward the summit, we were having dinner and a campfire.
“Sizzle~”
“Is it sizzling?”
“Huh! Sizzle~”
After all, isn’t direct-fired grilling the best?
Direct-fired grilling that you have never tasted while on Earth. I had eaten with my wives a few times before I came here after defeating the dungeon and had daughters, but it was the first time since I had daughters. In other words, this was the first grilling for the daughters, and all of the daughters who liked meat couldn’t get out of the meat, gulping down their saliva and dripping juices.
“Ah. It seems to be ripe enough now, shall we eat it soon?”
“Yes!”
Wearing thick gloves, he lowered the meat stick. When I sliced it lightly with a knife, I saw the delicious-looking flesh, and the hot steam came out and the glossy gravy flowed.
It was cooked just right.
“It’s ripe just right. I want to cut it now. Would you like a knife?”
“Here it is.”
“Thank you.”
I started slicing the meat with the cleaver Kaya gave me. The sound of swallowing saliva could be heard here and there with each knife cut. When I raised my eyes, all of my daughters’ eyes were focused on my knife and meat.
‘Such cuties.’
It was not for nothing that parents said that their children were full just by seeing them eat happily. Even though I never ate full when I was a child, how fortunate I am to be able to experience those words directly as a parent.
Seeing four pairs of cheek puckers that made me want to poke them with my fingers just by looking at them, I wanted to play a joke.
“Coming to think of it, it might be a bit immature, but… I need to learn a little more.”
“Ah…”
“Eww…”
The daughters sighed at the whispered words. Even in the midst of that, they were so admirable and cute that they waited patiently without being bothered.
‘Just kidding once.’
It was already cut in half anyway, so I couldn’t hang it over the fire again. I pretended to be re-roasting, then started cutting the meat again. The daughters were now ready to gobble up the meat whole.
“Ruler! Let’s eat!”
“I will eat well!”
“Eat a lot.”
“Yes!”
The daughters grabbed baby chopsticks and forks and rushed at the meat militantly. The hands holding the chopsticks and fork were so cute.
“No, Mysser!”
“Drink!”
The way he opened his eyes when he picked up the meat and said it was delicious was also cute.
“Dad.”
“Huh?”
“Ah~”
“Oh my god. Are you giving it to me, Dad?”
“Yes!”
“Kuk.”
“Oh, Dad?”
“I did it because it was so delicious.”
“Lol.”
When Cordia brought me a piece of her meat to her mouth, she clutched at her heart and nearly collapsed. Then, she gave me meat as if Ludikia and Pieta and Vinia were competing, so it was embarrassing, but it was a really happy embarrassing.
“I’m hungry, I’m full.”
“Did you eat a lot?”
“Yes! My stomach is full!”
“Paangpaang~”
“Um~chung, drink it.”
“Isn’t it different from eating at home?”
“Yes!”
The grillers are happy and the eaters are happy. Meat time is over, and the sun has completely set and it is a dark night. The daughters were proud of the full belly of a child, and each was hugged by their mother, staring blankly at the bonfire or looking up at the night sky.
‘There’s a constellation concept here too, but I don’t know any of it.’
I’ve never seen the night sky in the corner of my room except for occasional late-night snacks or when I went to a convenience store to buy a can of beer, but the stars were certainly incomparable to those in Korea. It was quite pretty, but I didn’t really have any interest in it, so I didn’t know any constellations. When I was going around the dungeon, I didn’t have time to pay attention to things like constellations, and when I got out of Salem…
‘Well, these are all excuses.’
Whether on Earth or here, not knowing the constellations was not a hindrance to living. There was not even a star pointing in a certain direction like Polaris, and it was all the more so as different constellations were drawn in the same sky depending on the region within the same country. Still, on such a good day and atmospheric night, a picture in which a father tells his daughters about a constellation or two… What a pleasing picture.
“Our cute princesses.”
“Yes?”
The four daughters looked at me with a smile.
“Are there too many stars?”
“Yes!”
“Shall we draw a picture in the sky?”
“In the sky, a painting?”
“Okay. From now on, you will think that the sky is a very, very big picture paper.”
Are the constellations different?
Isn’t it defined by tying a group of stars together into a plausible image?
Even if we lay down in our family-excavated and decorated camping ground and defined our own zodiac sign, no one would point out that something was wrong or give a damn.
“Is there a very bright star over there? One unusually large and bright star.”
“Odie?”
“Hey, follow the direction Dad’s finger points and look carefully.”
“Ah! Jogo?”
“Yes, yes. That. Since Etty was the first to discover that, should we call that star Etty?”
“Wow! Yes!”
“I also found…”
“Me too…”
“Ugh.”
The third Pieta was the first to find the star I mentioned, and she gave it the nickname Pieta, and the rest of her daughters puffed out her cheeks and showed her enthusiasm.
“If you go a little to the right from Etty Star, there is a star that is not as bright as Etty Star, but is very bright.”
“… Yes!”
“Oh. Where are you? Would you like to move your finger?”
“… That’s it.”
“Ding dong deng! The second star should be a beanie star.”
“…”
Her second daughter, unexpectedly, was the youngest, Vinia. She didn’t express Vinia quite as openly as her Pieta, but it was clear that she liked it very much, as her ears continued to perk up. In case someone wasn’t Illumina’s daughter, it was easy to recognize because I copied my mother’s body language. Her short, plump tail waggled as she stroked her cute youngest daughter’s hair and her ears at the same time.
I could see Cordia and Ludicia, who missed the second time, clenching their fists. Hey, look at those dainty fists. I want to bite you tight
“Let’s continue Etty Byul and Beanie Byul. Was everyone?”
“Yes!”
“If you look closely, can you see two bright stars in the middle?”
“In the middle?”
“Okay. A little below.”
“Ah, I found it! Over there, over there?”
“I found it too.”
“That’s right. Those stars are now Cody Stars and Rudy Stars.”
Only then did Cordia and Ludicia look at the star with their names on it and look satisfied.
“Dad tried connecting those four shining stars, well. Just one nice boat! Does anything show up?”
“Ship… Yo. This?”
“Shall we draw with Dad?”
I held my daughters’ hands and crossed the sky with my fingers. From the sky, the hand gestures of a being that is no more than a speck of dust drew a ship sailing through life using the huge sky as a drawing paper. The eyes of the daughters who shared the constellation I imagined became bright. My daughters were also staring at my imaginary belly.
“A group of stars like that is called a constellation, but since it resembles a ship, should we call it a constellation?”
My imagination was limited to drawing a very simple four-star constellation. Naming a name has always been difficult for me. Even the names of the daughters were all given by their wives, and considering that I picked the name that I liked the most in terms of tone and meaning among the candidates, and it suited me…
“Where can our cute princesses make a constellation?”
“Yes!!”
Soon, the constellations of the stars of the four daughters were born on the spot. They boasted, laughed and admired each other while looking at the relatively complex and large-scale constellations, from simple constellations such as Sagittarius and Capricorn to Crescent Moon, Urius, and Flower constellation. On the way, even the wives joined in to compare the things they made, and because the stars or areas included in the constellations overlapped, they argued which star should be included in which constellation.
In this way, 23 constellations were born, and all were recorded.
The daughters were leaning against me and their mother’s arms as if they were tired of creating constellations.
I gazed at the night sky, which once again seemed new and defined by a multitude of constellations. I got a little emotional.
“There are many stars in the sky. There are so many that I can’t count them with the numbers Dad and Mom taught me.”
“More than ten thousand?”
“Then. Even if you count ten thousand ten thousand times, it’s not enough.”
“Ten thousand ten thousand times…”
I wasn’t trying to teach my daughters about the astronomical scale. For a three or four-year-old child, ten thousand was the biggest number in the world. What I meant to say was not the infinity of the universe.
“The countless stars all shine. But don’t they all shine the same? Some will shine very brightly, some will shine weakly, and some will be hidden from our eyes at all by the bright stars.”
“Yes.”
“Just as there are tall people and short people, strong people and short people, smart people and less smart people from birth, so are the stars. Big stars and small stars, hot stars and less hot stars, bright stars and less bright stars. I mean like this.”
I held Cordia tightly in my arms. The first born among my precious stars, the twinkling star.
When Cordia looked up at me, she stroked my cute hair. Then, she shook her head slightly and laughed. Cute guy.
“All of our daughters, including Cody, are very bright, beautiful and shining stars from birth. But Dad… When I was born, I was such a cold, dwarf, and lonely star, very dark, small, and unable to shine.”
“Are you Dad?”
“Why?”
I never told my daughters about my past. Even though the kids were young, I didn’t feel the need to tell them. I didn’t mean to say everything even now.
“My dad didn’t have a strong father and he didn’t have a kind mother. I had no brothers or sisters, no friends. I never ate anything tasty, I never had fun toys, and I wasn’t super smart or gifted either.”
“This is nonsense.”
“Dad lies!”
“They said lying is bad.”
“It’s not a lie. Dad really… He was a man of little interest. Until I met your mothers.”
It was an undeniable fact. When I fell into the game, I thought my bad luck reached its peak, but I still think that choosing Kaya when I recruited my first teammate was a judgment I had used all the luck in my life. Although there were many hardships, I met Shay and other wives who were strong, beautiful, kind, and thoughtful after that… I was alive as a person who did my part because of them, and as a leader leading them, I was able to fulfill the life task of defeating the dungeon.
And now that I am the father of the most lovely daughters in the world, from Cordia, Ludicia, Pieta, and Vinia, whom I am holding in my arms… If not as much as the daughters, wouldn’t it be a moderately shining star?
“In the future, there will always be happy and fun things. Of course, in my father’s heart, I want it to be full of such things, but… Just as a small, insignificant and lonely star like my father can shine depending on how he overcomes it, our daughters will be able to shine brighter because they are much nicer, more talented, and smarter than their father.”
“Dad…”
“Besides, my dad and mom are by my side. Should I talk to you at any time if there is something difficult?”
“Yes!”
“Right.”
“Lol.”
It’s embarrassing, so let’s stop talking about being drunk with emotions and hug the warm, soft and cute Cordiana.
Is there anything wrong with life
This is life
