Snow and Ice || 태국

True love and lies

After the two of them headed outside, the awkwardness between them eased a little. His hands behind his back, Taehyung sauntered to the public square. This was where they held the flag-raising ceremony every Monday.

A row of poplar trees was planted next to the public square. As memory struck Jungkook, he walked over and started counting the trees. When he was at the twelfth tree, Taehyung realized what he was doing and the two of them began examining the tree together.

As a long time passed, the poplar tree had grown much taller and thicker than before. After searching for a long while, they finally found two distorted images.

A pear and a piece of sugar candy.

This was something that Taehyung had carved with a tiny knife. When carving, he had no other thoughts than how fun it was. Jungkook was there as well but he had refused to participate. Taehyung took an effort to explain, "I heard that trees won't die from merely having their bark carved."

He originally wanted to carve their names. However, there were too many strokes and he gave up carving after a few lines. He then substituted a pear (Jeon) to represent Jungkook and a piece of sugar candy (Kim) to represent himself.

A child's drawing and carving skills were nothing to speak of in the first place. Factoring in the poplar tree's natural growth, the two images were already barely recognizable. They would most likely be completely unrecognizable after another period.

As the two of them regarded the pear and the sugar candy, Taehyung suddenly lamented, "Jungkook, say, if Lake City High School had not given you 100,000 won then, how do you think things would have turned out now?" After saying this, he turned and gazed at him.

Jungkook was jolted by his focus on him. "100,000 won?"

"You don't have to hide. Your mom told my dad. To lure better students, Lake City High School gave you 100,000 won." After explaining, Taehyung comforted him, "I can understand that. 100,000 won is not a small sum. If it was me, I would have made the same choice."

So... was this how things played out?

Jungkook thought of Principal Kim's hostile stare that day. He finally understood the reason for it.

He thought that Taehyung would have understood his stance from how he left without saying goodbye. Who knew that Taehyung had been deceived by a lie all this while.

It had been so many years.

Time is a gentle being. It could soothe hatred and soften resentment. However, there is a cruel side to it as well. It could magnify the ramifications of a misunderstanding and culminate it to a point of no return.

Jungkook was suddenly afraid, to tell the truth.

Taehyung was a little disappointed at how Jungkook was unwilling to reply to him. He did not continue the conversation, turned, and said, "Let's head to the field."

Jungkook walked beside him silently.

As they walked along, Taehyung suddenly heard a dog barking. Immediately after this, a large yellow dog dashed out from the school building in the distance. The large dog did not stop barking and appeared extremely fierce.

Taehyung recognized this dog. It was raised by the gate security grandpa and was usually leashed by a chain. Perhaps since no one was around during the school holiday, it had been let off its leash. It was a 'Korean Field Dog' and its name was 'Huang Shi'. When he was young, Taehyung was often called 'Teacher Huang'. Once, his father was even beaten up because of this. From then on, he forbade Taehyung to call it 'Teacher Huang'.