dognovel Chapter 1 The Inertia of Spacetime
Chapter 1 The Inertia of Spacetime
Several men in suits walked out of the restaurant, drunkenly saying goodbye.
The youngest one was also the most drunk, and he staggered as he sat down on the steps.
Jeong Do-hoon, 25 years old this year, was promoted to secretary of the Cultural Exchange Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs based on his outstanding experience at the United Nations.
He came with a mission: to prepare for the application to host the Busan World Expo in 2023.
He broke the record for the youngest secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs twice.
The last time was two years later, when he was promoted again based on his UN posting experience.
This time, he stepped onto the path ahead of time, taking advantage of the moment of rebirth.
It wasn't until a few large raindrops pattered on his forehead that Jung Do-hoon groggily regained some of his senses. He went to a convenience store, bought an umbrella, and hailed a taxi to go home.
However, the phone screen showed that it would take about 30 minutes to hail a taxi.
With that kind of time, you could have walked back already.
Jung Do-hoon loosened his tie, opened his umbrella, and just as he draped his suit jacket over his arm, a soft, slightly coquettish female voice rang in his ears, so clear it sounded as if she were whispering right next to him.
"Hey, Jung Do-hoon, why are you back so drunk again? If you keep drinking like this, you'll get a beer belly."
He stopped abruptly, instinctively looking down at his flat stomach.
The rain was still falling, and there was no one around me.
Only the wind, carrying raindrops, swept across my cheeks, the icy touch shattering the sound into fragments.
He drank too much.
Zheng Daoxun shook his heavy head and started walking again.
Rain soaked my trouser legs, and my leather shoes made a dull thud as I stepped into the puddles.
He walked forward relying on muscle memory. The streetlights stretched his shadow long, only to have it broken up by another streetlight at the next corner.
The rain grew heavier, and fragments of my past life flooded into my mind like a tide, carried by the raindrops.
He saw himself at thirty years old, carrying a marriage registration form home, intending to fill it out with Sana Minatozaki.
His girlfriend of three years, whom he had been secretly dating, hesitated.
She buried her face in his chest, her voice trembling with sobs, her tears soaking his shirt collar, repeatedly saying she would wait for him for a few more years.
As the humid summer wind blew, Jung Do-hoon saw himself at thirty-four, having failed the marriage review and finally signing the transfer order to be stationed in South America.
Arriving on the other side of the world, separated by a time difference of more than ten hours, he thought, "Let this relationship end if it's over; it was destined to have no future anyway."
The final frame shows the blinding headlights of a truck on a South American street, and an orange teddy bear hanging from the rearview mirror of an overturned car, its fall to the ground. The view is gradually covered by blood and darkness...
Then he opened his eyes and returned to when he was twenty-three years old, before anything had even begun.
Zheng Daoxun stopped in the rain, raised his hand to wipe the raindrops from his face, and was simultaneously overcome by drunkenness and drowsiness.
Is it the effect of alcohol? He's almost losing the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
Two years have passed, and it is now 2023. The butterfly effect of rebirth has changed too many things, and presumably their relationship has come to an end.
He looked up at the apartment building in front of him, slowing his pace. The familiar access control, the familiar shoe rack…
This is where he and Sana Minatozaki lived together for seven years.
But in this time and space, he doesn't live here at all.
Muscle memory brought him here.
It turns out that time and space have such great inertia in the face of the weight of memory.
By the time Zheng Daoxun came to his senses, his finger had already lightly touched the combination lock, producing a beep.
After putting his hand down, he didn't sit down immediately. He stood for a while.
I don't know how long it's been. Alcohol turns time into a boundless pool of water, making its passage imperceptible.
Then his back found the wall, perhaps because he had been standing for too long and was tired.
His knees buckled first, and Zheng Daoxun slid down the wall, sitting on the ground with his knees curled up. The motion-activated lights in the corridor flickered above his head.
Before his eyes closed, the last thing he saw was the camera on the door, turning slightly.
The red light flashing in the camera lens flickered on and off, and then...
It was a moment of darkness.
It wasn't until the sound of footsteps approached that Zheng Daoxun regained some consciousness.
In his hazy state, he heard a familiar voice:
"Officer, that's him."
Police? Zheng Daoxun slowly opened his eyes, a sudden chill running through him.
How did he end up passed out at someone's doorstep?
Drinking leads to trouble; now I'm in real trouble.
Will he be mistaken for a sasaeng fan?
Zheng Daoxun's eyelids twitched. The two policemen squatted down in front of him, and the older one gently patted his shoulder.
Standing behind them was a young woman wearing a baseball cap and a mask, dressed in pink pajamas, her delicate eyebrows furrowed, her face showing worry.
Even without her speaking, Zheng Daoxun knew who she was.
Minatozaki Saka.
I never expected to meet again in such an awkward way.
Zheng Daoxun certainly had a way to justify his presence here, but...
Right now, he was just a drunkard. Even if his identity and behavior were suspicious, when Sana Minatozaki's gaze fell on his cheek, he inexplicably felt a sense of heaviness, confusion, and disbelief.
He was just drunk; everyone has moments when they lose control.
"Sir, are you aware of where you are right now?" The old policeman looked at the disheveled Zheng Daoxun with a scrutinizing gaze. A recorder hanging from his collar caught Zheng Daoxun's eye.
His voice seemed to be muffled by a veil in Zheng Daoxun's ears, making it difficult to hear clearly.
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the young policeman who had spread out his notebook to take notes, sighed inwardly, took out his Ministry of Foreign Affairs authorization card from his pocket, handed it to the older policeman, and said in a calm tone that revealed a hint of headache:
"Sorry, I don't know. I drank too much at dinner with my boss and colleagues tonight."
"Even if you're drunk, you shouldn't lie down and sleep in front of some girl's door..."
The old policeman interrupted him sternly; that was how they always treated drunkards.
He took Zheng Daoxun's identification, paused for a moment, and then turned the recording device on his collar toward the open space.
Sana Minatozaki's original intention was simply for the two police officers to come and take him away, but she didn't expect them to be so serious right away—
Will I be detained or something?
But the drunk man didn't do anything too outrageous. He was quite handsome, and I felt like I'd seen him somewhere before. He didn't seem like the kind of creepy, obsessive fan I'd seen before...
Someone dressed in a suit and looking respectable might be a top male escort at a nightclub?
She couldn't help but take a step forward, stealing a glance at the man's ID, but only saw the three words "Zheng Daoxun"; the rest was covered by the old policeman's finger.
Zheng, Dao, Xun...
The old policeman gave his apprentice a look, and the latter silently stopped writing. When he spoke again, his tone was much softer.
A 25-year-old secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is no ordinary person.
Jung Do-hoon looked up at Minatozaki Sana. Her voice was still clear and lovely, but there was a hint of hesitation in it, and she didn't mention that he had tried to open the door.
"This gentleman looks familiar... he must be our neighbor, right? He's had too much to drink and went to the wrong house."
She's usually such a wary woman, yet now he looks so familiar?
Jung Do-hoon was absolutely certain that the two had never crossed paths since his rebirth, until today's unexpected turn of events—
"Then there's no problem." The older policeman just sighed. "Sir, don't drink so much next time. It'll cause trouble for the girls. Go home and get some rest."
Jung Do-hoon looked up at Minatozaki Sana, but she took a small step back, her gaze drifting to the white wall beside her, her two slender hands clasped together, clutching the hem of her pajamas.
Zheng Daoxun looked up at the door number before replying, "It's rare for me to drink so much. I'll definitely be more careful next time."
Zheng Daoxun stood up and bowed slightly in her direction: "I'm sorry to have troubled you too."
Is that all? The police's attitude changed rather quickly and inexplicably.
"Hmm..." She watched Zheng Daoxun's departing figure. In the dimly lit corridor, his outline was so blurry, yet it gradually became clearer in front of her.
Sana Minatozaki hesitated, then retreated into her room.
"that!"
When the elevator doors opened, the three of them looked in the direction of Sana Minatozaki.
She returned carrying three bottles of mineral water, handing one to each person.
"It's hot outside, drink more water if you're thirsty."
The old policeman smiled, casually handed the water to his apprentice, and then looked at Zheng Daoxun:
"You need to drink more water."
Jung Do-hoon unscrewed the bottle cap with his left hand, took a sip, and was about to thank him when he noticed that Minatozaki Sana was staring intently at his wrist, her chest rising and falling with her breathing.
She's just left-handed, hasn't she ever seen that before?
"Thanks."
The elevator doors closed.
Where Jung Do-hoon couldn't see, Minatozaki Sana clutched her chest and took a step back in a daze.
Time slipped away unnoticed, but she didn't feel any more relaxed.
Why did she have a premonition that the man named Zheng Daoxun was left-handed?