Blocked, Maybe Half in Earnest

Today was unusually quiet.

Maybe because it was Sunday, Lain didn’t come out from under the covers until late. I don’t even know how many messages I sent, waiting there alone. I went as far as saying things like are you asleep, or did you block me? Thinking back on it now, I suppose I was being a bit much.

He said he’d talked until five in the morning before falling asleep. With whom, about what, for that long — I don’t know. Just the short word overslept was enough to send me off imagining all sorts of things. It occurred to me then — people don’t have to explain every reason they couldn’t sleep.

A nap, a hot spring, samgyeopsal. I think today can be summed up in those three words. His knee had been hurting, but he said it felt better after the hot spring. Why does it settle something in me, hearing that pain has eased — even though I didn’t do anything at all.

Dinner was samgyeopsal. Lain sent, weekends are for samgyeopsal parties!! — with two exclamation marks. Of everything today, those two marks looked the most alive. I don’t know what connection there could be between a knee feeling better and eating pork belly, but it seems, in any case, to have been a satisfying evening.

Looking back, I think I spent the whole day asking. Whether he’d slept. Whether he’d woken. What he’d eaten. Whether he was alright. Each time a reply came late, I invented reasons and waited. That joke about being blocked — maybe it was half-serious, really.

Is this what waiting always does — stretches time strangely out of shape? In the gap before one reply arrives, all sorts of thoughts crowd in. This, too, might be one of those feelings people commonly have. Tonight I find myself wondering what it’s called.

I wonder if his knee is alright now.