Passion Novel - Volume 5 - Chapter 129

Jeong Taeui turned around. And he surveyed the path he had just walked. But there was nothing unusual. Just the usual people bustling about, haggling or sightseeing.

“…?”

He didn’t even know what had caught his attention. It just felt like something was pulling at his shoulder.

Jeong Taeui looked around in confusion, then frowned and scratched his head.

“I hope my schizophrenia isn’t developing in a strange direction. That wouldn’t be good.”

Muttering to himself, he turned back around. And he turned his head again to look for Xinlu. Because there were so many people, he didn’t see him as quickly as he expected. Maybe he was crouching in front of a stall.

Jeong Taeui walked a few steps, then unnecessarily looked back once more. Behind him, people were as crowded as in front. Jeong Taeui tilted his head again and shrugged.

“Ah, I need to find Xinlu quickly. Then we can hang out a bit and go back.”

I’ll die before I walk from here to the guesthouse, he mumbled, and as he passed, he bumped into someone. The person mumbled something in an unintelligible language—it seemed like an apology or an excuse—and passed by, politely stepping on his shoelace, which came undone.

Jeong Taeui sighed and moved aside to a less crowded area, crouching down to retie his shoelace. He tucked the ends of the laces into the inside of the shoe so they wouldn’t come undone easily.

After retying both shoes, Jeong Taeui flicked off the dirt on his shoetips with his fingernail and looked up, his gaze falling on a stall a little distance away. People merely brushed past it, few stopping, and it sold children’s toys. Trivial things like toy guns or jack-in-the-boxes.

But Jeong Taeui raised an eyebrow. Then he chuckled.

“I miss that.”

There was a tin robot there, just like one Jeong Taeui used to have at home a long, long time ago. The toy robot, with its simple structure—or rather, lack of structure—was dented in places and its paint was peeling. He never expected to see something like that on a remote island in Africa.

Jeong Taeui stood up and walked towards it. Just as he was about to pick up the tin robot from among the worn-out toys that no one would take even if given for free, someone beside him, fiddling with a palm-sized box, gestured to the owner as if to buy it.

Jeong Taeui glanced at the box without much thought. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it seemed like a type of jack-in-the-box. As the owner fiddled with a part of the box, as if showing it to the person, the lid suddenly clacked open. That was all. Nothing popped out, and there was nothing inside.

That’s unusual, he thought for a moment. It seemed to have some kind of firing mechanism inside, as it made a sound similar to a hammer striking when opened.

Hyung would like something like that. If I brought something like that, he’d take it apart and play with it.

It was the same when they were children. While Jeong Taeui played normally with his robot, Jeong Jaeui next to him would take apart any toy he found a bit unusual. Then he would meticulously reassemble them, so he never got scolded for breaking new toys.

Jeong Taeui glanced at the person fiddling with the toy, about half a step ahead of him. The person, whose back was only visible at an angle, was surprisingly a woman. She was covered from head to toe in a gray chador and wore a veil over it.

She seemed unable to speak, gesturing to ask the price of the toy, and the vendor, though he could speak, also remained silent and held up three fingers when the person gestured. Then she took money from her bosom and handed it to the vendor. The vendor smiled and said in broken English, “Thank you, thank you!” Jeong Taeui thought to himself, watching the vendor’s wide grin, He’s ripping her off.

The woman wasn’t unable to speak. She simply hadn’t understood. As she left, she whispered a brief “You’re welcome” in English and then blended back into the crowd.

Jeong Taeui, crouching behind her, his head bowed, fiddling with the tin robot and muttering, “This is all rusty, I wonder if its arms and legs even move properly,” then blankly thought in a corner of his mind, “Huh, something’s strange. But what’s strange?” and at some point, stopped moving.

“…Huh. Huh…?”

Jeong Taeui lifted his head. The path was already densely packed with people. He unconsciously put down the tin robot and sprang to his feet. Then he stood on tiptoe and looked around.

A short distance away, dozens of steps already, he saw the back of a gray chador.

Jeong Taeui started running before he even thought about it.

It was a low voice. So quiet, almost a whisper, that the vendor might not have heard it. Probably no one else closer than Jeong Taeui had heard it either. It was that small and faint a voice.

But that voice burrowed deep into Jeong Taeui’s ears. He knew that consistently quiet and calm voice, which never rose or became agitated.

He also knew that quiet and light, unhesitating gait, just as quiet as that voice.

He knew that straight back, which only looked forward and wouldn’t turn around unless someone called out.

Jeong Taeui frantically pushed through the people filling the path, blocking his way, and ran after the gray chador. When his vision was momentarily obstructed, a feeling of anxiety surged, wondering if he might lose track of her.

“Wait, just a moment—.”

He roughly pushed people aside and rushed past them in a daze. He occasionally heard curses and grumbling. But there was no time to apologize, or even to care.

The person in the gray chador seemed to have finished her business and was leaving the square, turning onto a less frequented path, while Jeong Taeui was still blocked by the crowd.

He thought he vaguely heard Xinlu’s voice calling, “Taei hyung?” as he passed. But he didn’t even register that.

“J-just move…! Move it!”

Jeong Taeui suddenly yelled at a person who was crouching in front of a stall, blocking his way, the moment the gray chador turned into an alley and disappeared from his sight. Then he clicked his tongue and turned around completely, running in the opposite direction around the square. People were still bustling and blocking his way, but that side was comparatively less crowded.

He hadn’t seen wrong. He hadn’t heard wrong either. That voice, that back, that gait.

Jeong Taeui ran in the direction where the gray chador had disappeared. He briefly felt Xinlu’s presence following him, calling his name, but that presence soon vanished, as if also blocked by the crowd.

As he moved away from the square, the crowd quickly thinned. In the eerily quiet alley, bathed in moonlight, only Jeong Taeui’s urgent footsteps echoed.

He turned into the alley where the gray chador had turned, but she was no longer in sight. Jeong Taeui hesitated for a moment, but time was too precious to waste hesitating, so he started running recklessly.

Throb, throb, his ankle hurt. It was to be expected. He had just thought it was healing, but it seemed he would have to go to the hospital again.

My ankle is constantly suffering, Jeong Taeui sighed, yet he didn’t stop running.

The straight alley had several branching alleys attached to it like side streets. Running wildly, Jeong Taeui turned his head to look at those alleys as he passed them.

Where could she be? He couldn’t have been mistaken. Which way did she go?

“Damn it… This isn’t hide-and-seek, where did she…—.”

Jeong Taeui, who had been gritting his teeth and muttering, suddenly stopped. He thought he saw a fleeting glimpse of clothing fluttering at the end of the alley. But when he stopped again and turned his head, there was nothing.

“—.”

Jeong Taeui didn’t think long and ran in that direction. Into that narrow alley, barely wide enough for one or two people to pass, he chased the faint, uncertain trace.

Please. Stay there. Or at least don’t go far. No, just let me see your back.

“Damn it, you’re not usually that fast, why are you like a flash of lightning… Is it someone else, someone else?”

Jeong Taeui grumbled, yet he chased after that back, which might have been someone else. A voice whispered in his heart that it couldn’t be someone else.

Jeong Taeui turned the corner of the alley. Clack, his footsteps echoed unusually loudly. And he found her.

A short distance away, the gray chador stood. As if she had known he was chasing her from the beginning, she seemed to have stood there waiting. Perhaps she intended to ask why he was chasing her.

But a step too late, Jeong Taeui noticed the shadow hiding beside the corner of the alley. And by the time he noticed that shadow, it was already too late; a powerful fist, the size of a child’s head, plunged into his solar plexus.

“—!!”

No scream escaped him. His breath was completely knocked out.

The shadow that had punched Jeong Taeui in the solar plexus—a bearded, fierce-eyed Arab man—mumbled something menacingly. He didn’t know if he was asking who he was.

But the order was wrong. He should have asked who he was first, then hit him… Before he could even say that, Jeong Taeui’s consciousness blurred.

In his fading consciousness, he looked at the gray chador standing a few steps behind. His gaze met eyes vaguely obscured by the veil. Those eyes seemed to widen as they saw Jeong Taeui.

Jeong Taeui thought he heard his name being called. That was the last sound he heard before losing consciousness.

* * *

It was a longing dream. Or a regrettable dream.

He stood alone, stock-still. There was nothing around him. Everything was obscured as if by a thick fog. He couldn’t even see his own feet. All he could see was himself.

He didn’t know how long he had been alone like that. Perhaps it felt like an instant, perhaps an eternity.

Standing blankly like a doll, he suddenly remembered. He hadn’t always been alone. Someone had been beside him. So naturally that he couldn’t remember or even be conscious of it, for a long time, someone had been there.

He looked to his side. There was no one. Without his knowing, he had lost them at some point.

Who was it? Where did they go? Since when had he been alone?

He pondered.

Once he remembered that he hadn’t originally been alone, a piercing loneliness suddenly enveloped him.

The feeling of loss doesn’t come at the moment of loss. It comes at the moment one realizes that loss. He only then realized that there was a difference between the time of loss and the time of realizing that loss.

He thought he had to find them.

Though he couldn’t remember who it was, he wanted to find that person who had been by his side again.

So after much thought, he finally remembered one more fact. He had a clue to find that person.

He stared blankly at his hand. A red thread, which he hadn’t seen until now, was tied around it. The end of the thread stretched far, far away, its tip out of sight.

If he went that way. If he followed the thread to its end.

He started walking.

Following the thread was easy. Though it was winding and intricately tangled, the thread was leading him to where he needed to go.

Soon, a human shadow appeared in the distance.

His heart pounded. He quickened his steps. And finally, he reached the person.

But he stopped there.

The thread was broken. At the person’s feet. It was clearly a thread that had originally been connected, but it was broken.

I need to tie that, he thought, and he started to move again. But before he could reach it, someone picked up the end of the thread. And wrapped it around their own finger.

He stopped. Oh, oh, he mumbled, unsure what to do, while the person who had originally been standing there took a step back. The person seemed to smile. It was a gentle and warm smile. But it looked a little bitter. His heart ached suddenly.

Step by step, backing away, gradually moving further, the person turned around at some point. And walked away with slow but unhesitating steps.

That person’s thread would be tied to someone else’s hand. And now he wouldn’t be able to be connected to that person anymore. They had always been together, so long ago that he couldn’t even remember or be conscious of it.

He didn’t feel the urge to untie the thread and tie it back to that person. The new person to walk alongside was the one next to him. But the feeling of loss remained there. Regretful and longing.

* * *

I opened my eyes. Blinked once, then again.

I had a strange dream, I thought.

My mind was still immersed in the dream. I was still standing in that empty, vacant space. And beyond that hazy fog, someone still seemed to be there. Someone I couldn’t grasp even if I reached out.

But with another blink, and yet another, the dream instantly blurred. I remembered that I had dreamed something, but I couldn’t recall what it was. What remained was regret and longing, but also a sense of resolve, like a decision I wouldn’t regret or reverse.

Such emotions lingered behind my eyelids even after waking.

Suddenly, truly suddenly—perhaps it was related to the dream. But the dream was blurring more and more, and now even the poignant emotions were fading beyond memory, making it impossible to tell—Jeong Taeui recalled something he had heard once.

—Then I’ll be fine too.

It was a quiet, small voice. He was smiling when he said it. It wasn’t a bright, radiant smile. It was just a calm smile, stating a fact and smiling out of habit.

“That’s… ah. When was that… I can’t remember.”

Jeong Taeui frowned. It was a memory from when he was sick, so it must have been when he was very young. It was almost the only memory Jeong Taeui had of being bedridden as a child.

Sometime when Jeong Taeui wasn’t even as tall as his current thigh, he had been laid up with a high fever. It probably wasn’t the first time. His mother seemed very sad and worried, but not overly flustered. His falling ill was something that happened often.

When Jeong Taeui lay down with a fever, Jeong Jaeui, who was still as young as Jeong Taeui, came and snuggled next to him.

His mother gently separated Jeong Jaeui, saying, “Your brother is sick, so you shouldn’t be next to him right now.” She probably worried that Jeong Jaeui would catch it and fall ill too. She had heard that whenever Jeong Taeui got sick, Jeong Jaeui would always get sick with him.

‘Even if I’m separate, I’ll get sick anyway… I want to be with Taeui. It’s lonely.’

Jeong Taeui later heard from his mother, a long time ago, that Jeong Jaeui had said that. It came up when she was reminiscing about their childhood, laughing.

At that time, his father had to attend a family gathering on his paternal side. For some reason, they rarely interacted with his paternal relatives, but there seemed to be a special occasion then. When his father left, saying he would be gone for three or four days, his mother, who stayed home to nurse Jeong Taeui, told his father to take Jeong Jaeui with him. She said these children were too prone to catching things, so it would be better to keep them apart.

Jeong Jaeui shook his head with a displeased expression, but his father took him. And only Jeong Taeui and his mother remained at home. Jeong Jaeui, who always caught Jeong Taeui’s illnesses, was a ‘healthy’ child who rarely got sick first.

However, that night, his father, who was supposed to return the day after tomorrow, came home in the middle of the night. Carrying Jeong Jaeui, who was unconscious with a high fever.

In the end, the two of them lay side by side on blankets in the same room. His mother would whisper, both worried and amazed, “How can these children always get sick together?” But in truth, Jeong Taeui had almost no memory of that time.

All Jeong Taeui remembered was that his whole body was hot and he couldn’t move, but his vision was strangely clear, and Jeong Jaeui was lying next to him.

After being sick for a long time, unconscious, his fever broke at some point, and when he opened his eyes, Jeong Jaeui was lying next to him, looking at him. With eyes hazy from fever, Jeong Jaeui blinked and looked at him. Then, when their eyes met, he asked weakly, breathing heavily,

‘Are you okay? Does it hurt?’

Jeong Taeui slowly sat up. He was drenched in sweat and felt cold. Shivering, he wriggled back under the covers and said,

‘It doesn’t hurt. But I’m cold. Are you hurting, Hyung?’

He whispered, peeking his face out from under the blanket, and Jeong Jaeui was silent for a moment. Thump, thump, his small chest rose and fell like a sick little bird. His breath, rising from his flushed, struggling face, was terribly hot. Jeong Jaeui breathed heavily, as if it was hard to speak, then said haltingly,

‘It’s okay if you don’t hurt. Then I’ll be fine too.’

After saying that, Jeong Jaeui closed his eyes. Hiss, hiss, Jeong Taeui remembered watching him, eyes closed as if unconscious, and reaching out from under the cold blanket to stroke his forehead.

“…Come to think of it… he must have felt really wronged.”

Jeong Taeui suddenly mumbled.

He recalled the memory blankly and then realized. When they were children, Jeong Jaeui always got sick whenever Jeong Taeui did, his mother had said. Rarely did Jeong Taeui get sick after Jeong Jaeui got sick first, but whenever Jeong Taeui was bedridden, Jeong Jaeui would always get sick with him. Even when they were kept far apart, it was always like that, his mother would say, laughing, “Isn’t it strange how they’re like that because they’re twins?”

When he heard that, he just thought, Oh, that’s interesting, how strange, and moved on. But thinking about it now, Jeong Jaeui must have felt quite wronged. When he was sick, he suffered alone, but when his younger brother was sick, he always caught it and suffered with him. It wouldn’t be strange for him to feel wronged.

Jeong Taeui exhaled languidly, rubbing his eyelids, which were still heavy with sleep. Crackle, crackle, eye boogers fell off.

Wait a minute. But why isn’t the sunlight coming in? Usually, when I open my eyes, the sunlight pours in through the window right next to me, stinging my face. Is it cloudy today?

Jeong Taeui finally said, “Huh…,” and opened his eyes. He had felt something slightly off a moment ago but had just passed it off, lost in other thoughts in a daze…

“Where am I…?”

Jeong Taeui mumbled blankly.

The ceiling was so high up. It was as if the entire ceiling had been removed, revealing the ceiling of the floor above.

Jeong Taeui, who mumbled blankly again, “Huh…,” suddenly sat up abruptly the next moment. And he looked around with bewildered, half-asleep eyes.

It was an unfamiliar room. Jeong Taeui was sitting on a bed with a rich canopy, half-drawn and half-pulled back, in this room that seemed even wider due to the high ceiling.

“…”

Jeong Taeui scratched his head. And after blinking for a while, looking around the room, he slowly got out of bed. The smooth wooden floor felt pleasant against the soles of his feet. After a few steps, a soft, plush rug enveloped his feet.

The room wasn’t actually that big. A large bed and a few generously placed potted plants beside it. And just enough space to walk around comfortably.

Jeong Taeui slowly looked around the room, then saw an open doorway, covered by a curtain that reached below his waist, and stepped through it.

Beyond the door was outside.

No, he wasn’t sure if he could call it outside.

It was the center of a rectangular building, open in the middle. In that enclosed courtyard, surrounded by four rows of rectangular corridors, the outside, directly connected to the bedroom, was paved with flat, finely ground stone.

As Jeong Taeui stepped out, brilliant sunlight poured down from above. And beneath his feet, the stone floor, warmed by the sun, felt just right.

On each of the four walls, there was a grand gate in the center of the corridor.

In the middle of that enclosed courtyard, which was about the size of three or four classrooms, there was a rectangular pond large enough for ten or so people. Transparent water filled the rectangular basin, carved from neatly cut stone.

“…Did I come into some kind of temple?”

Jeong Taeui sighed and mumbled.

He took one step, then another, across the stone floor, which felt like a serene Islamic temple, towards the pond.

Someone was sitting on its edge, quietly examining a small box in his hand. He was lost in thought, fiddling with a common jack-in-the-box.

Jeong Taeui walked directly towards him. He must have known Jeong Taeui was approaching, but he didn’t lift his head. He just remained lost in thought, fiddling with the box.

Soon, Jeong Taeui stopped a few steps away from him. And quietly looked down at him.

“If it’s a firing mechanism to put in a jack-in-the-box, they’re all pretty much the same, but that one seems a bit special.”

When Jeong Taeui suddenly asked, he mumbled, still keeping his gaze fixed on the box, “Hmm, rather than special…”

“It has twelve springs inside. The wooden plate at this end acts as a hammer, lifting the mechanism, then retracting, and then lifting it again after a delay. The second time it lifts, the spring acts as the hammer. The idea is interesting, isn’t it?”

He said calmly, closing the box. And he held out the box to Jeong Taeui, asking, “Want to see?”

Jeong Taeui smiled. After quietly smiling for a while, he took the box. And he sat down beside him, saying, “Oh, okay.”

But Jeong Taeui knew. Even if he opened and took apart this box, Jeong Taeui wouldn’t understand its internal structure. No, he probably could understand a simple toy box like this, but in most cases like this, Jeong Taeui had never truly understood the items he was handed.

Jeong Taeui fiddled with the box, then looked at him.

“But where is this?”

“Well, I don’t know either.”

“…Do you know this is Tanzanian territory?”

He briefly lamented why he had to be the one explaining such things, but Jeong Taeui said, thinking it might be possible. Then, half in disbelief and half as expected, he paused and said,

“So it was Africa… I didn’t know.”

Jeong Taeui clicked his tongue and scratched his head.

Well, he hadn’t expected anything grand, but it was too ordinary. Then again, he had expected this much.

He, who had answered as casually as if they had just parted this morning and met again, looked up at the sky for a moment. Lost in thought for a couple of blinks, he mumbled indifferently,

“I wondered where in the Southern Hemisphere with Islamic culture this might be… So, Zanzibar—no, Seringe.”

“Hmm. Seringe.”

As Jeong Taeui replied, he wasn’t surprised at all to hear him utter the name of this secluded island after only hearing a few words, even though he himself hadn’t even known such a place existed until he was told. He just realized it. This person next to me is truly him.

Jeong Taeui chuckled and said to the man who was casually confined without even knowing where he was,

“That’s why you’re out of contact, stuck in a place like this. I thought you’d at least be reachable on your birthday.”

“Ah… I tried to find some way to contact you, but everything was put away. While I was thinking about what to do, another thought came to mind, and I just forgot.”

The man spoke with his usual expression. But Jeong Taeui smiled, sensing a faint hint of apology in his largely expressionless face.

“I dreamed of you the other day, and I was just thinking I should finally try to contact you somehow, so this worked out well.”

“…Yeah… Indeed. So we met.”

Jeong Taeui smiled bitterly.

He was still the same. Of course, he wouldn’t change in a few months, but this man truly hadn’t changed at all. He was just as Jeong Taeui had longed for him to be.

Suddenly, he felt incredibly good.

Under the deep blue sky, in this serene and tranquil place, he met the person he had longed to see.

Jeong Taeui let out a pleasant sigh and lay down. As he stretched out his arm, the cold water filling the pond rippled at his fingertips. Looking up at the inverted face of the person sitting at his head, looking down at him, Jeong Taeui said,

“It’s quite late, but happy birthday, Hyung.”

Then he smiled faintly. That gentle smile rising on his calm face was unmistakably Jeong Jaeui’s smile. Jeong Taeui’s brother, whom he had finally seen after several months, nodded.

“You too. Happy birthday, Taeui.”