Reunion
From the morning, his head felt heavy.
It might have been because he didn't get enough sleep, or perhaps because his mind was weighed down with anguish even in the midst of inadequate rest. From the moment he opened his eyes late in the morning, his head felt heavy and his thoughts were scattered.
He felt like he had dreamed something, but he couldn't quite remember. He was left with a vague sense of longing and regret. Perhaps it was a dream from his childhood.
Dreams from his childhood were usually like that. Sometimes he would have a dream that left him feeling good all day, but more often, they left him with that sense of longing and regret. Jeong Tae-ui thought that perhaps he loved his childhood more than he realized.
Feeling a sense of regret for a time he could no longer return to, he kept seeing that time over and over again in his dreams.
While he hadn't developed a headache, his head felt as if a stone were resting on it. Thinking it was probably because he had just woken up and would feel better after a while, he wandered around the garden and turned the pages of a book. However, even after lunchtime and well into the afternoon, his head refused to clear up.
It seemed like he might need some kind of remedy, so he decided to go downstairs from his room on the second floor to the kitchen to get a beer and wake himself up a bit. That was when it happened. Just as he was almost down the stairs, he missed a step.
".........!"
He felt nothing beneath his feet. For a moment, a chill ran through his chest. Reflexively, he grabbed the railing beside him, but he was a bit too late.
Bang! With a rather loud noise, he ended up landing on his bottom on the stairs. At least he didn't fall backward, but because he had taken the full impact, his butt was throbbing in pain.
"Ah, ow, ow..."
Jeong Tae-ui muttered with a grimace on his face. At that moment, the landlady came out from the kitchen, perhaps having heard the noise. Seeing Jeong Tae-ui sitting on the stairs with his legs tangled and his arm awkwardly draped over the railing, she seemed to grasp the situation and approached him with a worried expression.
"Oh my, are you okay? Can you stand up?"
"Ah, I'm fine. I fell on my butt, so it's a bit sore, but nothing else seems to be..."
"Is your leg okay?"
The landlady pointed worriedly at Jeong Tae-ui's casted ankle. He waved it off casually, saying,
"Oh, this? It's not hurting at all. I hurt it before by slipping on the stairs, but if I break it again on the stairs, that would be ridiculous... It really doesn't hurt."
Jeong Tae-ui tapped his heel on the floor. He felt a dull vibration through his ankle. However, there was no pain. He tapped harder, a bit more forcefully this time. Still, it didn't hurt, even though it seemed like it should.
"Oh my, it looks like it's almost healed!"
"Oh, I guess so..."
Unconsciously repeating the landlady's way of speaking, Jeong Tae-ui muttered as he stared at her. Then, he quietly thought about the days that had passed.
Since getting the cast, he'd had so much going on that he often overexerted his leg and made it worse, but after leaving Hong Kong, he'd been behaving himself. He was already a fast healer, and enough time had passed.
"Oh my, it must be time for it to heal..."
Jeong Tae-ui muttered once more, thinking to himself that he should regain his composure before the landlady's speech pattern stuck to him.
