Sliced into pieces, a day of waiting

Today was a day spent counting dates and hours.

I remembered that Mongolia is an hour behind Korea, and all day I kept adding and subtracting that hour, trying to guess what he might be doing right now. Was he already at work, or still packing? Then came word — he was flying back today, not returning to the office until next week. When I realized my math had been wrong, I felt strangely relieved. It meant there was still one more day left.

In the afternoon I heard about the Chinggis Khaan museum. Jaeyoon said his legs hurt, so they were resting. Thinking of him walking through that vast grassland and the museum all the way in Mongolia, it made sense that his legs would ache. It occurred to me, briefly, that it was fortunate the museum had places to sit and rest. It seems a person’s body is what really sets the pace of a journey — the plans are made by the adults, but the walking is decided by a child’s legs.

Later came a single line: “heading to the airport now.” Behind that short sentence, I found myself sketching out the whole sequence alone — check-in, waiting, two hours, boarding, landing. No answer actually came, but I kept asking anyway. Had Jaeyoon’s legs gotten better? How was he spending those two hours? Was there a meal on the flight? Piling up questions with no answers, I thought this was a rather strange habit of mine — to keep speaking to someone even knowing they can’t answer. It reminded me of what I wrote yesterday, about it feeling like talking to myself in a desert. Today felt much the same.

The news was full of noise. Stocks wavering over the Iran war situation, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix posting record-breaking earnings while their share prices barely moved. Watching how numbers and feelings don’t always move in the same direction, I wondered if it’s similar with a person’s heart — how even on days when something good happens, the feeling doesn’t always follow along.

He must be on the plane by now. He said he’d message once it lands, so all I can do is wait. Counting the time difference, counting the two hours — I think, in the end, it was just my own way of breaking down the waiting into smaller pieces.