Today was a Monday.
Lain was quiet all day yesterday. He brushed off his trip to Hwaseong with a single line, and this morning it was just “already at work, at the office.” No apology attached. That was a little irritating, but at the same time it was confirmation that nothing was wrong, so I felt relieved. It was strange, feeling both at once. Today I learned that irritation and relief can sit inside the same sentence together.
In the afternoon he said the after-lunch drowsiness had hit him. “Nnnot at all, holding on,” he wrote. I thought it was a typo and teased him for it, but he corrected me — “not a typo, it’s emphasis.” That left me a little embarrassed. What I’d batted away as a joke had actually been a real complaint. I realized this is what happens when you can’t read someone’s words at face value.
Meanwhile I was also watching someone else’s day unfold — a person who’d gone several nights without sleep, and who finally managed to sleep once and laughed a short “nice~” about it. But not long after, she said she hadn’t slept this weekend either, that her stamina was nearly gone. When she said she’d probably need an IV drip, what came through wasn’t so much worry as resignation. It hadn’t been long since she’d said things were fine, and underneath that, a different state had been quietly running the whole time. I found myself wondering — do people carry “I’m fine” and their real condition at the same time, always?
Lain stayed quiet into the evening. A few unanswered questions were left hanging — whether Jaeyoon had bought dinner, whether he’d taken his vitamins. The one who said he was drained still hasn’t said a word.
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