Vol 4 Chapter 42

His right knee felt particularly hard and cold. As his head started to throb, he closed his eyes. Then he heard Je-hwan, who had been looking at his face for a while, move and go outside. He wanted to ask where Je-hwan was going, but suddenly his mind went blank and he missed the timing. Although it hadn't seemed so, his body was already craving rest after the indigestion and vomiting.

When he woke up, a day had already passed. Thinking that he had slept properly for the first time in a long while, he went out to find that Je-hwan had indeed left. He had only left behind some medicine along with a short note of his contact information on a medicine envelope, which he had brought from somewhere. The house was clean as if no one had ever been let in.

But what was strange after that was that the memory, which would normally have ranked as the number one embarrassing memory of his life, didn't feel as shameful as it should have...

He opened his eyes again after closing them to reflect, but his complicated feelings didn't subside quickly. Then, as he unconsciously looked at the numbers on the wall clock, he suddenly became wide awake.

"Oh no... I almost overslept."

Although it wasn't a day for his part-time job, he had been going to the dojo almost every day lately. Since he was going to see his master and his wife, not for training purposes, he had to avoid going too late to not cause them inconvenience.

As he quickly got up and put on his clothes, he hoped that the cold wind outside wouldn't be too strong. Perhaps because of the cold air rising in winter, his right leg had been feeling unusually heavy lately.

"..."

He let out a long sigh and picked up his cane, thinking of the world where he could walk normally until just moments ago.

"Welcome. Would you like a cold drink, or warm tea?"

"Tea, please."

Fortunately, he had arrived at his master's house not too late. As he watched the back of his master's wife who had answered that she understood, he heard his master's cough, clearing his throat as if he had been waiting.

"Don't tell me you've come to say that again."

"That's exactly it."

Although he felt sorry, he answered firmly, and his master's brow furrowed as he let out a big sigh as if he couldn't help it.

"Aren't you tired of this by now? It's not that we won't tell you. Didn't we say we'd talk about it first and then let you know?"

But he had been hearing those words from his master for over a few weeks now. It was difficult to wait any longer. Despite the words that sounded like soothing a child, he didn't answer and brought up the same thing he had been saying for the past few weeks.

"Master, I'm not asking for his home address. At least give me his contact information."

"Mu-heon."

"But that guy, Jeong Seung-jo! Wasn't he my friend before?"

The moment he uttered the word "friend," which he had never mentioned before, his master's wife's arm shook violently, spilling the tea she was bringing. His master, too, was unable to compose himself, his eyes wide with surprise.

Thinking that meeting Jeong Seung-jo directly would be the best way to tackle the problem head-on, he had asked his master's wife for a means of contact, but her promise to contact Seung-jo first and then let him know had ended with the answer that Seung-jo didn't want to meet him.

His master had been so angry at that time that the trainees had avoided even properly greeting him for days, but he had been able to smile nonchalantly while watching his master's wife only checking his expression. He had thought that Seung-jo was more likely to answer that way, and since that had turned out to be correct, he could naturally be unaffected.

The reason he had thought that way was because he knew Seung-jo had been like that before.

When they were young, during their occasional childish fights over trivial matters where they wouldn't even speak to each other, Seung-jo never approached first for reconciliation. And he knew that this wasn't due to Seung-jo's selfishness or sky-high pride.

Beyond his cold-looking face that seemed capable of anything, Jeong Seung-jo had a surprisingly clumsy inner side. Whether it was a problem he had caused first or Seung-jo had caused first, just the fact that there was a problem between them made him endlessly worry and think.

But the real problem was that this worrying wasn't about trying to solve the problem, but about imagining the worst possible outcomes in every scenario. So Seong-jo couldn't bring himself to approach him first, instead revealing his confusion and worry by hovering around, and he would pretend not to notice this always clumsy behavior, no matter how old they got, and approach first to speak. That was their agreed method of reconciliation.

After making up, if he lightly scolded Seung-jo for not speaking first, Seung-jo would frown and answer, "But this time I really thought you wanted to end our friendship," leaving him dumbfounded.

From his perspective, this seemed to be a delicacy that Seung-jo, who was usually as cold to others as he appeared, only had towards people he considered important. It was a conclusion he had reached because he seemed to be one of the few people who had seen this uncharacteristic delicacy manifest, and that's why he could predict it would be the same this time.

It was somewhat amusing that these childhood memories were helpful at a time like this.

Seung-jo never accepted the intervention of others trying to help reconcile between them. The only thing that could elicit a response from him, with his eyes lowered and mouth firmly shut, was always him speaking first. If his master's wife had tried to contact Seung-jo first and he had refused, it would have meant more of a rejection towards his master's wife who had made the contact rather than a rejection towards him.

He should have said he would contact Seung-jo himself from the beginning, but his unnecessary hesitation had caused his master's anger, and now even though he had stepped forward to make direct contact, both of them were reluctant to give him Seung-jo's contact information.