Chapter 116: Chapter 116: The truth Unveiled -The Red Thread
Jeong Taeui fell asleep while waiting for the teor shower, and when he woke up, he found himself in the car on the way ho. When he asked why they hadn’t woken him up, the whole family insisted - "We did try to wake you, but you didn’t get up." Disappointed that he didn’t get to see the teor shower after eagerly waiting for it, Jeong Taeui sulked. Jeong Jaeui, who had stayed awake and seen the teor shower, gently told Jeong Taeui that he would be able to see a teor shower like that again if he kept waiting.
"Where was that place?"
Jeong Taeui unconsciously muttered as he recalled the long-ago mory. All he rembered after that was the seemingly endless journey ho.
20 years had passed, or perhaps even longer. Maybe that place had developed and the forest had been cut down, so now there might be no trace of it left. But the sudden return of these mories made him want to visit that place once more.
"Hyung might know."
He planned to ask his brother when he woke up in the morning, though he wasn’t sure if he’d rember by then. Jeong Taeui muttered to himself and stepped outside into the courtyard.
However, as he walked out into the hallway, he stopped. In the dim moonlight illuminating the courtyard, everything stood still. Not even the solitary leaves floating on the pond’s surface stirred.
By the pond, soone was sitting.
He was quietly sitting by the edge of the pond, staring up at the sky as if lost in thought. It was Jeong Jaeui. Jeong Taeui paused, standing in the dark hallway and looking at his brother’s back. It seed he hadn’t slept at all.
Jeong Taeui walked over, the sound of his footsteps on the stone floor making small echoes in the stillness. Perhaps Jeong Jaeui heard him, but he didn’t turn around. Jeong Taeui stopped a few steps behind him.
"When I was young, I went to see a teor shower..."
As soon as he sat down, Jeong Jaeui quietly spoke. Jeong Taeui stopped and turned to look at him. It felt strange.
He wondered if the story his brother was about to tell was the sa one he had just been thinking about. No, he rembered going to see a teor shower only once when he was little, so it must have been that ti.
Perhaps in this setting, seeing the sa scenery as Jeong Taeui, his brother had the sa thoughts. For so reason, Jeong Taeui smiled brightly, feeling genuinely happy. Jeong Jaeui continued to speak.
"The teor shower was beautiful, but the starry sky was even more morable."
Jeong Taeui remained silent.
Jeong Jaeui wasn’t soone who would talk to himself - unlike Jeong Taeui, who sotis talked to himself so much that he wondered if he was ntally ill. However, his brother wasn’t the type to sleepwalk either. And it seed that those words weren’t ant for himself.
".....Yes..."
Jeong Taeui hesitated for a long ti before vaguely replying. Jeong Jaeui shrugged slightly and then turned around, a look of surprise on his face.
"Taeui, is that you?"
"Yes..."
"What happened? Why are you up at this hour?"
"I just woke up in the middle of the night. Were you with soone else?"
"Hm? No."
Jeong Jaeui looked at Jeong Taeui with a puzzled expression. Jeong Taeui, equally confused, tilted his head.
"No, I just thought you were talking to soone else a mont ago."
"Huh? Oh, I thought it was Abdul Rahman coming. He sotis visits
at night. They say this is the tallest building in the estate, and this courtyard is the closest place to the sky to stargaze. Maybe that’s why it feels like you can almost touch the night sky here."
"They say those stars are tens of thousands of light-years away, hyung. Even if you stand a few ters higher than other places, you’re not any closer to them."
Jeong Taeui grumbled. Jeong Jaeui just smiled quietly.
Jeong Taeui lay back down as before. The stone floor, ward by the sun during the day, had now beco strangely cold. As he lay down, Jeong Jaeui also lay down beside him, forming a right angle, with only their heads touching. They both looked up at the sky without speaking for a long ti.
Suddenly, Jeong Taeui smiled when Jeong Jaeui turned slightly to see if he was still awake.
"By the way, that teor shower you ntioned."
"Ah..."
"I didn’t get to see it because I fell asleep."
"Yes. I tried to wake you, but I wouldn’t get up.’ you"
"Yeah. But there was also a teor shower last year. At that ti, I was in the military and didn’t fall asleep, so I could watch it with my squad. It was really beautiful.... But I also
thought back then. I thought the starry sky I saw when I was young was much more
beautiful."
Jeong Taeui chuckled softly as he mumbled.
The sa emotions shared between two people can warm the heart like this. The mory of having the sa experience and feeling the sa emotions as the other seed to have beco a source of strength in his life. Perhaps that is why a long-standing bond with a brother is so precious.
Jeong Taeui knew that his brother felt the sa way. He felt much better and spoke with a gentle smile.
"...In this light, the sky here looks quite similar to the one I saw back then."
"No way... our country is in the Northern Hemisphere, Taeui."
"...."
He had forgotten. There were tis when his brother would say sothing that broke the emotional mont, quite incongruent with his cold and calm deanor.
Jeong Taeui pouted, feeling annoyed as the rising emotions were abruptly cut off. Jeong Jaeui looked up at the sky and whispered with a gentle smile.
"Gangwon."
"Huh?"
"That place was Hong Cheon in Gangwon... See you there."
Jeong Taeui slowly looked at him. After staring at Jeong Jaeui for a long ti as he said he would et him there later, Jeong Taeui smiled and replied, "Okay," then looked back at the sky.
A starry sky. Seeing the Milky Way flowing before his eyes, Jeong Taeui suddenly recalled Jeong Jaeui from a day long past. It was a clear dawn; he sat quietly in the cool air, silently listening to so sound that others couldn’t hear.
Even now, just like before, he seed to be hearing sothing. The sound of the bright white stones that others couldn’t hear. But it would whisper endlessly if one got lost in the distant sky.
"My brother is..."
Jeong Taeui began to speak but then stopped. After a mont of silence, he continued.
"Sotis, I feel like you’re not human."
"...?"
"If there truly is soone who can bring luck to soone else... or sothing like that, then that person should be closer to you than ."
The two fell silent.
But in truth, he didn’t know if that was correct. Thinking back, hadn’t Jeong Taeui gone through a lot of hardships since Jeong Jaeui disappeared? He had encountered a cruel madman, been chased everywhere, captured, and now was stuck here. He even doubted whether he was going insane.
"I think you’re the one who brings luck to ."
Jeong Taeui said softly, with a hint of gratitude. Jeong Taeui had received many things to be grateful for from Jeong Jaeui. Just being by his side at this mont was peaceful.
Ti passed in silence. Like the stars in the sky, the silence seed to stretch on forever, but eventually, a deep voice broke the silence.
"I’s you, Taeui."
On the cold stone ground, under the twinkling starry sky, Jeong Taeui, feeling sleepy, moved closer, quietly listening to his brother’s low voice.
"If it weren’t for you, I would die."
"..Why do you keep saying such strange things? This isn’t pleasant at all."
And he heard Jeong Jaeui quietly laugh.
"Whenever sothing happens to , you are always the first one to co. Even when I was kidnapped or when I almost had a car accident, you were the first to co to . We were in different classes, so our friends were different. So we were only together in the evenings. But sotis, you would suddenly want to See , so after stopping by my classroom and seeing
smile, sothing would happen that day."
"...I don’t rember any of that."
As he said, after entering middle and high school, they were in different classes and only sat together in the evenings, pretending to study seriously and talking about various things. When they were young, their personalities were very different, and Jeong Jaeui couldn’t be considered a child anymore, so they often played separately. He would sit next to him in the evening to read or occasionally joke around.
Jeong Taeui would sotis run and play with his friends in the school corridors, and
occasionally he would suddenly rember his brother, so he would run to his classroom just to see him. If he wasn’t in the classroom, he would go to the restroom, the school office, or other classes to find him. And only when he saw his brother’s face would he feel relieved.So he would smile and then leave.
But he couldn’t rember what had happened to his brother on those days.
"When you got sick, I would get sick too. But when I got sick, it was only
who got sick."
Jeong Jaeui continued. Jeong Taeui thought for a long ti and then nodded, thinking that it was because he was too young to rember those things. But their mother also used to say the sa thing.
"Is it uncomfortable for you?"
"No... But since I was young, yes, because you were too young to rember, I thought that we had so kind of connection. I don’t know what it is, but I feel that the two of us are connected by a bond... to so extent. Before growing up, I even thought that we were opposites. If you got sick, I would get sick, and if you suddenly ca to see , sothing bad would always happen on that day."
"... Is there a god that opposes Gil Sang Cheon? This shift is too sudden."
Jeong Taeui licked his lips bitterly and scratched his head. He couldn’t believe that he could bring good luck to his brother, but he didn’t want to believe that he brought bad luck to him.
"Then, when you were 12 years old, while picking persimmons on the tree behind the school, you fell and broke your leg and had to be hospitalized for a while."
Jeong Taeui whispered - "Ah." He rembered that. Jeong Taeui had never caught a cold or any other illness, but he had been injured while playing with friends, constantly covered in bruises.
If it was that ti, he rembered it very clearly. Before that, he had been severely injured and had to undergo surgery. He had a rejection reaction, so he wondered what he would do if he died like that. Fortunately, the broken bone wasn’t too serious and could be healed with persistence.
The reason the mory of that ti remained particularly vivid was not because he was injured, but because while Jeong Taeui was in the hospital, Jeong Jaeui had been kidnapped. Even after that, by so miraculous luck, he returned unscathed without a scratch. That might have been the last ti kidnappers targeted Jeong Jaeui.
"I don’t know if you rember... but when Mom was in the hospital taking care of you, one morning, she suddenly called
and said Taeui wanted to see . She told
to stop by before going to school. But I didn’t have enough ti to visit the hospital because I was the class representative. Besides, your broken leg wasn’t too serious, so I thought it would be okay to visit in the afternoon."
"...I don’t rember anything."
"Yeah. I asked you about it once after that, and you didn’t rember."
At Jeong Jaeui’s words, he shrugged. His brother clearly rembered the day he broke his leg, while he himself didn’t rember anything.
But following the flow of the conversation...
"Was that the day you got kidnapped?"
"Yeah. When I ca to the hospital to visit you."
"But then you ca back, even though you didn’t see . What a relief," Jeong Taeui said.
Jeong Jaeui didn’t respond. For a very long ti, he seed to be lost in another train of
thought, but then he continued quietly.
"That morning, I didn’t have ti because I was the class representative, but when I got the call from Mom, I was really worried. You suddenly said you wanted to see , so I wanted to try the opposite. I didn’t go. And on the way ho from school... I was kidnapped."
"...."
Jeong Jaeui fell silent again. Jeong Taeui also rembered that ti.
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