Daniel's Madness [WonKyun - Eng. version]

I. Falling

Boseong. A small county in the southern area of ​​Jeolla province. It didn't have much of special, its greater attraction for the tourists was the green tea that was cultivated in its extensive and rich lands.

Population? Approximately six thousand inhabitants, and among them were Im ChangKyun, eighteen years old, and his father Im DongHun.

Most shops in the area were street markets, many of them specialized in teas and aromatic herbs. However, there was a small establishment on the corner of a quiet street that was different.

In 'The palace of jade', named for the intense green color of the roof tiles, you could find anything you wanted: from deteriorated books, yellowed and full of dust, old crockery with eccentric decorations Rococo own, to jewelry that perhaps some day belonged to a member of royalty. Surely most of them were fakes, but that was not something that bothered the owners of the business.

It was certain that no client could distinguish between imitation jewelry and real jewelry, as they have never received any complaint or demand for selling them as authentic.

These were some of the thoughts that occupied the mind of ChangKyun who, after returning from school in the afternoons, was responsible for serving the customers of his father's antique store. It would even be fun if someone came complaining to them for selling a fake, because at least he wouldn't get so bored.

The owner's son could only be described as strange. It was a mystery even to his father who, even after so many years, still couldn't fully understand him. His coal-black hair fell over his feline and indecipherable eyes, his straight nose and somewhat prominent for the Korean prototype was, according to DongHun, similar to his deceased mother's, who responded to the canons of beauty of America, her homeland.

However, his mouth and thin lips were those of his father. His skin was not pale, but rather golden, and his thin, small body was not suitable for any work that required too much physical effort.

Sometimes, when he was locked in his world and isolated from everything around him, he was quiet and expressionless. Of a curious nature and full of determination, he didn't consider himself as an asocial person, although he loved to take refuge in the comfort of silence and preferred to avoid meeting new people. And other times, he could become hilarious and eloquent, making unexpected comments in the middle of conversations that caused the rest to erupt in loud laughter.

ChangKyun was, in short, a strange person, unique in the eyes of the world.

The store wasn't very popular. In the whole afternoon maybe five people would enter, all of them elderly people who came to browse, and that could already be said that it had been a very busy day. This is why ChangKyun, when he didn't entertain himself imagining that a fiftyish, rich lady shouted at him for having scammed her, he sometimes resorted to read the books on the shelves in the back area while fingering the ear piercings that his father had allowed him to have at the beginning of the year, and other times he simply took a little nap on the counter.

And that was one of those occasions. The dark haired boy didn't resist and rested his head in the palm of his hand, closing his eyes and falling into the land of dreams.

It was a pleasant dream... he was running through the broad green tea growing fields of his paternal grandparents. In his childhood, he used to spend summers in the elderly's small country house. And even if ChangKyun didn't have friends there, he couldn't care less, since he was a lonely child. His imagination was always his best companion.

That dream was becoming recurrent, and it was strangely beautiful to remember. The summer of his tenth birthday was when he fell in love for the first time; he was a boy older than himself, and he didn't even remember his name. He was content to admire him from a distance, watching how that teenager worked on the farm next to his grandparents'. It was a platonic love: the infatuation of an innocent and naive child of little age, of no experience, and who never came to ask until years later if what he had felt for another boy was wrong.