Passion Novel - Volume 5 - Chapter 127 - Reunion

My head felt heavy from the morning.

Perhaps it was due to not sleeping well, or perhaps the torment weighing down my mind even amidst restless sleep. From the moment I slowly opened my eyes in the morning, my head felt heavy and my mind was scattered.

I felt like I had a dream, but I couldn’t quite remember it. A vague sense of longing and regret lingered. Perhaps it was a dream from my childhood.

It was usually like that after dreaming of my childhood. Sometimes I would have dreams that kept me in a good mood all day, but mostly they left me with that feeling of longing and regret. Jeong Taeui thought that perhaps he loved his childhood more than he realized.

Regretting a time that could never return, he would see it again and again in his dreams.

Though it wasn’t a headache, his head felt as heavy as if a stone rested upon it. Thinking it was just the lingering effects of sleep and would pass, he went out into the garden to laze about, then flipped through books in his room. But even after lunch, as the afternoon wore on, his head still wouldn’t clear.

He figured he needed some help from medication, so he went downstairs from his second-floor room to the kitchen to get a beer, hoping to drink something and clear his head. That’s when it happened. He almost reached the bottom of the stairs when he missed a step.

“…—!”

He felt no ground beneath his foot. For a moment, his chest went cold. Reflexively, he grabbed and clung to the railing, but it was slightly too late.

Thud, a rather loud sound echoed as he landed hard on his backside on the stairs. It was fortunate he didn’t fall backward, but his buttocks throbbed painfully from bearing his entire weight.

“Ah, ouch, ouch…”

Jeong Taeui mumbled, grimacing. Just then, perhaps hearing the sound, the landlady came out from the kitchen. Seeing Jeong Taeui sitting awkwardly on the stairs with his legs tangled, his arm draped over the railing, she seemed to grasp the situation and approached with a worried expression.

“Oh, are you alright? Can you stand up?”

“Ah, I’m fine. My butt hurts a bit from falling on it, but nowhere else really…”

“Are your legs okay?”

The landlady pointed worriedly at Jeong Taeui’s casted ankle. Jeong Taeui casually waved his hand, saying, “Oh, this?

“It doesn’t hurt at all. I hurt it slipping on the stairs before, it would be unfair if it broke on the stairs again… It really doesn’t hurt.”

Jeong Taeui tapped the floor with his heel, thump, thump. A dull vibration resonated through his ankle. But it didn’t hurt. Thunk, thunk, he kicked a bit harder. Still, it should have hurt, but it didn’t.

“Oh my, it looks like it’s almost healed.”

“Oh my, I guess so…”

Jeong Taeui, who had unconsciously mimicked the landlady’s tone, looked at her blankly. Then he quietly thought about the date.

Since getting the cast, he’d had so much going on that he often overused his leg, aggravating it again, but he had been quiet since leaving Hong Kong. He usually recovered quickly, and a decent amount of time had passed.

“Oh my, it must be time for it to heal…”

Jeong Taeui mumbled once more, then quickly thought to himself that he needed to snap out of it before the tone became ingrained.

Clinging to the railing, he stood up abruptly and paced the hallway a few times, making clicking sounds. Jeong Taeui looked down at his ankle with a serious expression, then asked the landlady,

“By the way, is there a hospital here?”

* * *

Jeong Taeui was constitutionally unable to undergo surgery carelessly. He had an unusually severe rejection reaction, and depending on the medication, he could go into shock from drugs that were harmless to others. Hospitals themselves were not much of a lifeline for Jeong Taeui.

This leg, too, was fortunate that it only had a few cracks in the bone, requiring firm immobilization and a cast, waiting for it to heal naturally over time. If he had needed surgery, such as having a metal pin inserted into the bone, he would have suffered quite a bit. He had once been seriously injured and undergone surgery while in the military, and even then, to exaggerate a little, he almost died not from the injury itself, but from the surgery.

However, Jeong Taeui had to avoid situations requiring surgery as much as possible. Yet, he had endured more strenuous situations with a casted foot than a normal person would, so one could say he had dug his own grave, but…

“It’s all done. Don’t overexert yourself for a while, and you’ll need daily physical therapy.”

The doctor, wearing a yellowish gown that made one doubt if it was originally white, spoke. Jeong Taeui nodded, subtly moving his firmly taped ankle. It was true that when the cast was removed, the thickness of his two ankles would be different for a while. Moreover, the hair had grown luxuriantly.

He listened absentmindedly to the doctor, looking at his leg with a strange feeling, though he knew it would soon return to normal. From his experience of being injured several times, what they said in such cases was usually similar. Jeong Taeui only lifted his head and smiled once when he thought the doctor had more or less finished speaking. And he said just one word: Thank you.

It no longer hurt, and he had taped it firmly just in case, but perhaps due to habit, he still limped slightly when stepping on the ground. Though after a few steps, his gait returned to that of a normal person.

The hospital the landlady told him about was quite clean and large. It didn’t quite live up to his expectations of being the only proper orthopedic clinic on the island, being more like a slightly larger neighborhood hospital, but the internal facilities were good. Moreover, its location was easy to find. The only downside was that it was a bit far from the accommodation.

As fate would have it, Ilay was away. He had left early in the morning for Dar es Salaam to deal with an influx of work that couldn’t be handled with the accommodation’s facilities alone, seeking the benefits of civilization. He had said he would return in the evening, so it would still be half a day before he came back.

Gable had been rarely seen since the day before yesterday, as if there was more room to investigate Jeong Jaeui’s whereabouts. Jeong Taeui vaguely heard him mention that he might have to go to Yemen or Oman for a while.

“I wonder if I’ll even be able to find him…—.”

Jeong Taeui opened the hospital door and slowly began to descend the stairs, muttering to himself.

Quite some time had passed since he arrived in Seringe. Enough time to have his ankle cast removed. Not much time was left. Yet, there was no sign of finding Jeong Jaeui.

He wasn’t just sitting idly by. Whenever he had a chance, he’d wander around the southeastern region, or if even the smallest piece of news came in, he’d follow it, moving among people. But that was all; there was no definite method to speak of.

“Actually, this is when a Panzerfaust might be needed. Instead of pointlessly setting fire to innocent forests or firing anti-tank guns, it would have been better to just shoot it directly at that suspicious Arab’s house…”

Jeong Taeui mumbled to himself, then suddenly snapped back to reality and sighed. The thought that he was longing for that crazy guy’s brutal and reckless methods made him feel like he had hit rock bottom.

He had just stepped out of the old three-story building where the hospital was located and onto the street.

“Are you all done, Taei hyung?”

Xinlu, leaning against the flower bed in front of the building as if he had been there from the start, waiting for the treatment to finish, smiled and spoke to him. Jeong Taeui stopped walking and blinked, staring at him.

“Yeah. …When were you there?”

“Since you went into the hospital, hyung. Oh, you’ve taken off your cast. Is it all healed?”

“Yeah. I’ll still have to be careful for a while, but it’s okay to walk around now.”

Jeong Taeui said, tapping the ground with his toe. Oh man, if word gets back to him that I left the house on my own and ran into Xinlu, I’m gonna be in big trouble again. Just imagining it made him sigh.

The guesthouse’s four-wheel-drive vehicle, which should have taken Jeong Taeui to the hospital, was nowhere to be seen. He figured Xinlu must have had a hand in it. He stared blankly at the empty spot where the car had been, then glanced at Xinlu, who tilted his head and smiled as if asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Have you been in Seringe all this time?”

Jeong Taeui asked, slowly starting to walk. “Yes,” Xinlu replied, following him.

He knew the way back to the guesthouse. The road wasn’t complicated and was a single path, so he could find his way if he tried. But walking back to a place that took nearly half an hour by car would mean walking non-stop for almost ten hours. Ten hours right after getting his cast off was too much.

However, the problem was that while he could walk back, returning by bus or other transportation would be a big hassle. He had no idea about the transportation there, and even if he tried to ask someone, communication was difficult in a place mostly inhabited by locals with few outsiders. Moreover, the important thing was, Jeong Taeui had no money. Only a few meager coins jingled in his pocket.

The last resort was a taxi. Take a taxi, ask them to wait in front of the guesthouse, and then get the money… He had been warned by the landlady and others before. While the security wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t exactly good either, so it was better not to use taxis carelessly.

Jeong Taeui looked up at the sky for a moment.

He probably hadn’t calculated all of that and sent the car away, but it was troublesome nonetheless.

He looked at Xinlu, who was walking beside him. Xinlu, who had been looking up at the sky with Jeong Taeui, smiled again when their eyes met. That shy face was the same face he had been familiar with before.

“Your face is different again from the one I saw the other day…”

“Me?”

Xinlu pointed at himself with his index finger and laughed aloud when Jeong Taeui mumbled.

It was definitely different. Different from the face he saw the other day, and looking at him now, he was also different from the Xinlu he knew from UNHRDO. It was like a different person wearing the same shell, stamped from the same mold. I thought I had a good eye for people, but maybe not…

“Xinlu. You said you’d wait. You wouldn’t try to force me to go with you, and you’d wait until my will followed.”

Jeong Taeui said, walking in the direction of the guesthouse. Xinlu nodded beside him.

“Yes.”

“But if you show up in front of me again, he’ll throw a fit.”

“I said I’d wait, but I can’t not see you at all during that time, Taei hyung.”

Xinlu said without hesitation. And after a brief pause, he added in a slightly changed voice,

“Actually, I still worry sometimes. I hear a voice inside me constantly screaming that I want to take you somehow. To keep you by my side, no matter how, no matter what way.”

“…Kill me, skin me, and put me on a body pillow?”

Xinlu laughed aloud, perhaps thinking Jeong Taeui’s mumbled words were a joke. But Jeong Taeui hadn’t said it as a joke. Just as Xinlu’s own words might not have been a joke to begin with.

Suddenly, a bitter taste filled his mouth, and he patted his chest pocket. Xinlu quickly noticed and pulled out a cigarette, offering it. As Jeong Taeui put one in his mouth, Xinlu quickly lit it for him. “Thanks,” Jeong Taeui replied gruffly, then exhaled a puff of smoke towards the sky, whoosh.

In fact, Jeong Taeui was flustered. Not just at this moment. For the past while, he had been quite perplexed. About Xinlu, about that man, and about himself.

Since the day Xinlu appeared, Ilay had come to Jeong Taeui’s room every night. But they didn’t always have sex. If he thought he had been too much the previous day or if he was tired, he would stop at petting, or sometimes he would just touch and caress his body here and there and then fall asleep.

And when that happened, Jeong Taeui, usually exhausted and almost passed out, would stare at him blankly. He would watch Ilay, who usually opened his eyes at the slightest sound, lying there as if asleep—whether he was truly asleep or just had his eyes closed, he couldn’t tell—for a long time. With an indescribably complex emotion.

If asked if he disliked it, the answer was no. That’s why his feelings were even more complicated.

“Xinlu. I think it’s better if you don’t wait.”

Jeong Taeui said quietly, exhaling cigarette smoke calmly. Though the street was bustling, Xinlu must have heard his quiet voice, yet he said nothing. He walked beside him, smiling calmly as if he hadn’t heard, then suddenly glanced at Jeong Taeui and asked,

“Taei hyung. That thing you’re smoking, it’s not actually a cigarette.”

“Huh?”

Jeong Taeui mumbled blankly, the cigarette, already more than half burnt down—or was it not a cigarette?—still in his mouth. It was a taste he hadn’t experienced before, and it seemed a bit strong, but he didn’t find anything particularly unusual about it…

“You’ve never smoked it before… That’s opium. Though it’s well-blended with tobacco leaves and its purity adjusted to make it easy to smoke.”

“Puh-huh!!! Cough, cough, cough…”

Jeong Taeui spat out the cigarette—no, he said it wasn’t a cigarette—that he had in his mouth and coughed wildly. He had inhaled the smoke wrong, and his throat was terribly sore.

As Jeong Taeui coughed, pounding his chest, Xinlu mumbled worriedly, “Were you that surprised? I should have told you after you finished smoking it,” and offered him a plastic bottle of water. But Jeong Taeui, whose coughing had subsided, only looked at the bottle with suspicious eyes, not taking it. Xinlu laughed.

“It’s just water. And what you smoked was a cigarette. Did you really think I’d give you opium?”

“…”

This guy’s personality is a bit…, Jeong Taeui thought, wiping his dry lips with the back of his hand.

“But there’s actually opium that’s blended and processed to be sold like cigarettes. It’s one of the top five best-selling items sold through the back door of our house. Of course, it’s not openly marketed.”

Jeong Taeui took the plastic bottle Xinlu offered, saying, “It’s just water,” and drank from it, then looked at him with strange eyes. Xinlu, with a cheerful expression, looked up at the sky and continued speaking as if telling a story from a movie.

“They say that if you smoke it for a few days, you quickly can’t stop. They say it’s easy to control a person’s mind.”

Jeong Taeui clicked his tongue bitterly. Instead of taking his corpse, he was now planning to make him an opium addict and drag him along.

“So… actually, I thought of that method too. Besides, if you’re ruined like that, no one else will pick you up, so I can have you all to myself.”

“…Xinlu.”

Jeong Taeui said curtly. Only then did Xinlu turn his gaze from the sky to Jeong Taeui. In that gaze, Jeong Taeui realized that Xinlu’s seemingly joking words held a hint of sincerity.

Jeong Taeui silently watched Xinlu with a displeased expression, then at some point, sighed and mumbled weakly,

“I wish there was only one crazy bastard I couldn’t handle around me.”

Then Xinlu burst out laughing. As lovely as ever, like beautiful beads rolling smoothly.

“No, no. I thought all sorts of things on the plane flying here, but when I actually saw you, Hyung… I couldn’t do that.”

Xinlu waved his hands dismissively. He walked a few steps ahead of Jeong Taeui, then turned around to face him, the sky rising above Xinlu’s head. Xinlu tilted his head back fully and mumbled, “Ah, it’s beautiful.”

As he said, the sky was incredibly beautiful. The sun was setting. The sky opposite the sun was still deep blue, but where the sun was setting, a faint purplish-blue spread, blending with the blue.

Jeong Taeui silently watched Xinlu, who was as beautiful as that sky.

Still graceful and lovely. Even knowing that there might be a monster beyond imagination in his head, he was a lovable child. The affection he had so carefully nurtured didn’t disappear so easily.

Come to think of it, there was a time when he felt desire for this child. They had even gone into a hotel together. It ultimately failed because they realized their desires were different—or perhaps too similar.

“…”

If he was going to be the one on the bottom anyway, it might have been better with Xinlu than with that inhuman bastard. Xinlu, at least—regardless of what was in his head, his body was—human.

That thought briefly crossed his mind. Then he became gloomy and sighed.

But still.

“Xinlu. …Don’t wait.”

Jeong Taeui said once more. Xinlu was still looking up at the sky. Then he quietly mumbled,

“Even if I wait indefinitely, it won’t happen?”

“…Hmm.”

“Then that won’t do…”

Xinlu mumbled. He lowered his head from looking at the sky and smiled at Jeong Taeui.

“If you say that already, when I haven’t even waited that long, it makes me want to stop caring about means and methods.”

“That’s… not good.”

“Right? So don’t say things like that, just lightly hang out with me. Oh, that’s right. Taei hyung, let’s go to the market, the market.”

Xinlu suddenly grabbed Jeong Taeui’s sleeve, as if he had thought of something. Jeong Taeui raised an eyebrow.

“Market?”

“There’s a place nearby called Bahepe, and they say a night market is held there once a week. It’s quite fun. It’s perfect. It’s close, only about a 10-minute drive from here, and the date matches.”

Jeong Taeui nodded, saying, “Ah, ah.” He had been there a couple of times himself. Thinking he might hear some good news in a place where many people gathered, he would go there on the day the market opened once a week. Of course, he gained nothing worthwhile. Gable only bought a water snake-shaped umbrella handle—he had no idea what he would use that piece of wood, which was just a handle without an umbrella, for.

“Hyung, let’s go quickly,” Xinlu said, tugging at his sleeve. Jeong Taeui glanced at his wristwatch. The time for Ilay, who said he’d return in the evening, was approaching. If that guy went back first, he’d be hounded for having gone out on his own again.

“No, I’m a bit… today…”

“Hyung. Let’s go together. They say there are a lot of people there. Then who knows what kind of people might be there, and I’m a little scared to go alone.”

Xinlu whispered, eyes wide. His slightly downturned eyes really did look scared. But looking at those eyes, Jeong Taeui thought he would truly be a fool if he fell for those words now.

“Next time… let’s go. I need to go back now. Sorry.”

“Okay… Then I guess there’s nothing for it.”

Xinlu looked disappointed but surprisingly backed down readily. He quietly sighed, then smiled brightly and looked at Jeong Taeui.

“But Taei hyung. It’s quite a distance from here to the backpacker’s you’re staying at. How are you planning to get back?”

“…”

He had forgotten.

Come to think of it, Jeong Taeui was standing in the middle of the street with no money and no proper means of transportation. He knew the way to walk, but if he walked, he would surely arrive well past midnight tomorrow.

He was about to get his ankle injured again right after getting his cast off.

Jeong Taeui looked at Xinlu with a heavy expression. Xinlu just smiled innocently, as if he knew nothing.

* * *

Bahepe, a street located on the eastern side of the island’s southern coast, was a quiet place. From August to October, when the cool and pleasant dry season brought monsoon winds, it would bustle with surfers, but otherwise, it was always a tranquil and serene street.

That place, for just one day a week, on Friday nights, would be filled with people. It was so crowded that one might think all the people of Seringe gathered there. This was because a night market opened in the central square of Bahepe on Friday nights.

However, not many people came to this ‘market’ looking for specific items they actually needed. If they just wanted a market, there were plenty of other places that operated throughout the week.

In the wide central square of Bahepe, around a small fountain in the middle, professional vendors set up their stalls and sold goods. There were many common market items, but also quite a few rarer ones, even bundles that one might see at a wholesale market.

And opposite the fountain, near the ruins of a fortress that had now crumbled to mere traces, a flea market was held. Anyone could bring out unused items from home, handmade goods, or anything else, and simply set up a spot and sell them. Since it wasn’t a pre-scheduled market, it was sometimes very crowded, and sometimes quiet.