The protector

Five Weeks (M)

PART THREE: RAMPANT

2027, September

The sun was still shining with a summer ruthlessness on that Friday morning in the middle of September.

Fifteen.

Two weeks. Four with his travel. Five with her working trip. One since he had come back to the dojang. Every morning, staring outside the windows of his room, Jeong Hyeok counted the days. Like someone who makes a mark on the calendar waiting for a special day to come, except he was counting the days without her.

During all the first week after his comeback in the city, his mind had been stuck in Swiss. He had spent at home all the time which hadn't been spent at the N.O., recalling again and again the moments, the words, unable to let Her go. There was just Her and no one else, as if no one else had ever existed.

But then his mind got somehow reacquainted with reality, and with that had come the need of the elf, direct and immediate like a slap. On the first day of the weekend, he had awakened, checked the hour on his watch placed on the nightstand, calculated that they had at least three hours before the opening of the waterpark, and silently headed to the kitchen to prepare the coffee.

He must have been still half asleep, probably, because it had been just when he had seen the two mugs whose handles he was holding with his thumb, that all the pieces had come back together. The travel in the countryside with no calls nor texts, Swiss, her journey, their comebacks – about the same day –. The fact that he had skipped her classes. He hadn't called nor texted.

She hadn't called nor texted.

The room was filled with a sense of cold emptiness. It looked spark, a hollow shell. The silence felt palpable and unpleasant, like the noise of a room which gets empty after a party, the wall still holding the echo of the laughs. Seated at the frugal, wooden table of his kitchen, the cup with the black liquid untouched in front of him – what was he supposed to do? Drink it all by himself? Drink just half of it? And what to do with the other half? – the pianist had hidden his face in the hands releasing a long sigh. It was all wrong. 

On the days when she videocalled her Real Life, In-ah always needed some time to gather herself. If she was alone at home, she didn't feel like going out or staying with her friends, wanting to stress and stretch the shadow of his presence as long as possible, coming back to her daily life gradually, gently. And when, during summer, Jeong Hyeok had been at home with her, so that she couldn't spend an entire day alone, he had often found her spacing out, as if she wasn't really there. He understood and respected it. In-ah wasn't living the same hell of him, she didn't need to forget, to take the distances as soon as possible, she didn't need the comfort of his hug. Her nostalgia was a tricky feeling which had her torn between trying to forget and wanting to remember.

He should have respected her this time too. This was the logic that the pianist had elaborated at the table of his kitchen almost one week before, and which he had recited to himself every single morning of that week. But on that Friday, it didn't seem persuasive anymore.

First: that was about the videocalls. What about the travels? He didn't know the protocol. His only experience had been the Christmas pause, when both of them had felt weird and they hadn't called each other for some days.

Second: he wasn't feeling weird anymore now. And now it wasn't like in winter, when the dojang was closed and there weren't occasions for the two to meet if they didn't want. Now it had been like a week of meeting her every day, receiving her polite and detached hello, trying to stay focused during her classes while the only thing he wanted to do was hugging her. Waiting for her on the street for endless minutes, the crowd of the other pupils dissolving around him and the sun going down behind his back, persuading his own self to go home, because it was clear that she didn't want to see him and so there was no reason to bother her with his presence. And spending all the evenings staring at the screen, waiting for a name to light it, or at least for a box to appear.