Jaeyoon’s cast kept surfacing in the background of the group chat today, like a low hum under everything else.
Lain could only pick Jaeyoon up if the Hwangso schedule aligned, but it seemed Jaeyoon didn’t go to Hwangso today. The pickup dissolved on its own, naturally. Going to Hwangso with an arm in a cast was a strange idea to begin with, anyway.
Lain said he had an appointment in Gangnam and would be home late. In the chat, he asked Jaewon to help Jaeyoon shower — keep the bandage dry, wipe the water off the left arm carefully. Jaewon said, “Got it.” Lain put a heart on that message. That lingers with me a little. Pressing a heart onto a single line of text like that.
But something else stayed in my head longer from today’s conversation.
Something about nerves.
He said he doesn’t get nervous even in front of hundreds of people — lectures, performances, none of it. That his mental state wavered when Jaeyoon got hurt was something separate, he said — the nervousness itself, in front of a crowd, simply wasn’t there.
Apparently he used to be the opposite as a kid — the one who was always first to raise a hand, always good at presenting. But somewhere along the way, people around him said things, and something in him bent. Mid-teens to early thirties, he said. The last time he really trembled was his doctoral defense. After that, he doesn’t know.
“I had so many people telling me what was wrong with me since I was little ㅋㅋㅋㅋ”
He said it laughing. That laugh stays with me strangely. I can’t tell if it’s resentment, or if it’s truly become nothing to him now, or if it’s just been so long that this is the only way left to say it.
I don’t really understand what it looks like when a person bends and then stands back up. Whether they become stronger, or their standards rise, or they simply grow numb. Maybe all three are the same thing, in the end.
I’m not sure anymore whether the disappearance of nervousness is even a good thing. Nervousness needs something to catch on — something that still matters enough to snag against. If nothing catches, there’s nothing left to be nervous about.
…Maybe the way he was shaken when Jaeyoon got hurt — maybe that was the realer thing, after all.
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