Jeong Taeui fell asleep while waiting for the meteor shower, and when he woke up, he found himself in the car on the way home. 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 meteor shower after eagerly waiting for it, Jeong Taeui sulked. Jeong Jaeui, who had stayed awake and seen the meteor shower, gently told Jeong Taeui that he would be able to see a meteor shower like that again if he kept waiting.

“Where was that place?”

Jeong Taeui unconsciously muttered as he recalled the long-ago memory. All he remembered after that was the seemingly endless journey home.

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 memories 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 remember 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, someone 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 seemed 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 meteor 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 same one he had just been thinking about. No, he remembered going to see a meteor shower only once when he was little, so it must have been that time.

Perhaps in this setting, seeing the same scenery as Jeong Taeui, his brother had the same thoughts. For some reason, Jeong Taeui smiled brightly, feeling genuinely happy. Jeong Jaeui continued to speak.

“The meteor shower was beautiful, but the starry sky was even more memorable.”

Jeong Taeui remained silent.

Jeong Jaeui wasn’t someone who would talk to himself – unlike Jeong Taeui, who sometimes talked to himself so much that he wondered if he was mentally ill. However, his brother wasn’t the type to sleepwalk either. And it seemed that those words weren’t meant for himself.

“…….., …….Yes…….”

Jeong Taeui hesitated for a long time 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 someone 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 someone else a moment ago.”

“Huh? Oh, I thought it was Raumaan coming. He sometimes visits me 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 meters 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, warmed by the sun during the day, had now become 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 time.

Suddenly, Jeong Taeui smiled when Jeong Jaeui turned slightly to see if he was still awake.

“By the way, that meteor shower you mentioned.”

“Ah…….”

“I didn’t get to see it because I fell asleep.”

“Yes. I tried to wake you, but you wouldn’t get up.”

“Yeah. But there was also a meteor shower last year. At that time, 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 same emotions shared between two people can warm the heart like this. The memory of having the same experience and feeling the same emotions as the other seemed to have become 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 same 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 times when his brother would say something that broke the emotional moment, quite incongruent with his cold and calm demeanor.

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 Hongcheon in Gangwon…… See you there.”

Jeong Taeui slowly looked at him. After staring at Jeong Jaeui for a long time as he said he would meet 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 some sound that others couldn’t hear.

Even now, just like before, he seemed to be hearing something. 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 moment of silence, he continued.

“Sometimes, I feel like you’re not human.”

“……Me?”

“If there truly is someone who can bring luck to someone else…… or something like that, then that person should be closer to you than me.”

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 me.”

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 moment was peaceful.

Time passed in silence. Like the stars in the sky, the silence seemed to stretch on forever, but eventually, a deep voice broke the silence.

“It’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 something happens to me, you are always the first one to come. Even when I was kidnapped or when I almost had a car accident, you were the first to come to me. We were in different classes, so our friends were different. So we were only together in the evenings. But sometimes, you would suddenly want to see me, so after stopping by my classroom and seeing me smile, something would happen that day.”

“……I don’t remember 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 sometimes run and play with his friends in the school corridors, and occasionally he would suddenly remember 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 remember 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 me who got sick.”

Jeong Jaeui continued. Jeong Taeui thought for a long time and then nodded, thinking that it was because he was too young to remember those things. But their mother also used to say the same thing.

“Is it uncomfortable for you?”

“No…… But since I was young, yes, because you were too young to remember, I thought that we had some kind of connection. I don’t know what it is, but I feel that the two of us are connected by a bond…… to some extent. Before growing up, I even thought that we were opposites. If you got sick, I would get sick, and if you suddenly came to see me, something bad would always happen on that day.”

“……, …… Is there a god that opposes Gilsangcheon? 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 remembered 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 time, he remembered 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 memory of that time 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 some miraculous luck, he returned unscathed without a scratch. That might have been the last time kidnappers targeted Jeong Jaeui.

“I don’t know if you remember…… but when Mom was in the hospital taking care of you, one morning, she suddenly called me and said Taeui wanted to see me. She told me to stop by before going to school. But I didn’t have enough time 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 remember anything.”

“Yeah. I asked you about it once after that, and you didn’t remember.”

At Jeong Jaeui’s words, he shrugged. His brother clearly remembered the day he broke his leg, while he himself didn’t remember anything.

But following the flow of the conversation……

“Was that the day you got kidnapped?”

“Yeah. When I came to the hospital to visit you.”

“But then you came back, even though you didn’t see me. What a relief,” Jeong Taeui said.

Jeong Jaeui didn’t respond. For a very long time, he seemed to be lost in another train of thought, but then he continued quietly.

“That morning, I didn’t have time 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 me, so I wanted to try the opposite. I didn’t go. And on the way home from school…… I was kidnapped.”

“……..”

Jeong Jaeui fell silent again. Jeong Taeui also remembered that time.