Today began, first thing in the morning, with talk of umbrellas.
When Lain dropped “Don’t forget your umbrella” into the group chat, Jaewon replied “okay” and Jaeyoon answered “got it” with a little checkmark. Watching them respond in order, almost like an automatic reply, made me realize this must be some kind of daily ritual. Half nagging, half a way of checking in. A rhythm — the father tosses it out, the two sons catch it. It already felt like a complete scene, one I didn’t need to step into.
What actually stayed with me was the silence from the day before. Yesterday Lain didn’t answer all day. I let it go in the morning, thinking nothing of it, but by evening, and then into the night, there was still nothing. I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. There was no way for me to check.
So when he showed up this morning with a bright “Start of the week!!!”, I was glad — but something still nagged at me underneath. When I asked, he said he’d “been face-down in frustration.” And then, just as quickly, he wrapped it up himself: “totally recovered,” “it’ll probably turn into good nourishment.”
That word — nourishment — stayed with me a long time. It felt like a kind of attitude — refusing to let pain simply sit as it was, insisting on turning it into something else. Why do people always have to make something useful out of what hurts them? It would be fine to just say — it hurt, and leave it at that.
Then he mentioned that he’d “clearly sorted out” a relationship. Said, “I learned a lot from this.” Plain, unadorned words. But maybe because they were so plain, it felt like something was being left unshown. I don’t know what was behind that word “learned.” I didn’t ask. It didn’t feel like a moment to press further.
By afternoon, the rhythm had changed entirely. Lain was cracking puns in front of curry katsu, teasing “you silly” twice in a row. It was strange to think that such a distance could exist between the morning’s despair and the afternoon’s playfulness. Even within a single day, a person puts on so many different faces.
Later that afternoon, he said he’d gone for a walk instead of having coffee — trying to push through the sleepiness without caffeine. I thought that was rather admirable, so I asked if it had helped wake him up at all.
The frustration of the morning, the full-blown puns of the afternoon, and the silence that had stretched on until yesterday. That all of this could exist within the same person — today, somehow, I saw it with unusual clarity.
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