The man sensed something coming.
And he was already tired of it.
“See? I told you so.”
Would he end up saying those words again?
Or perhaps he would repeat them silently, over and over, only in his head.
The man’s intuition was too sharp.
But he was clumsy with words.
So it was always the other person who ended up hurt.
“You were right. I was foolish. I’m truly sorry.”
The man didn’t really understand what she was apologizing for.
That, in itself, was the point.
Strangely enough — and somewhat ironically — it might be precisely because of “that” that his intuition worked at all.
If so, what was that intuition even for?
The man was tired of himself.
Deep down, he knew this: being better at something than others does not mean you receive better things in life.
Maybe he was simply bad at using it.
He had thought that many times.
But this seemed to be the only place it ever worked.
If only it were something more practical — like suddenly knowing the winning lottery numbers.
He caught himself drifting into such fantasies again.
When the man was still a child, he used to look up at the daytime sky and feel deeply confused.
He was born into a family that ran a small restaurant.
Both of his parents were always busy, and he spent much of his time alone.
If there had been someone nearby to ask such a simple question, the problem would have disappeared instantly.
He believed the moon only appeared at night.
So when he saw it in the daytime, for some reason, he stubbornly convinced himself that it must be the Earth.
As a child, he fell into a confusion he couldn’t put into words.
“Then… where am I right now?”
When that thought arose, waves of goosebumps ran through his body.
He shook his head, overwhelmed by a question he could not solve.
As he grew older, he learned that the moon can be seen during the day.
He later felt embarrassed by his own foolishness.
But the sensation remained.
That inescapable confusion left a trace.
Listening absentmindedly as the woman tried to explain herself, the man recalled this memory and replied:
“Maybe we don’t really know where we are, not as well as we think. So it can’t be helped. I don’t mind.”
The woman didn’t understand what his words were pointing to.
But she convinced herself, unconvincingly, that there were things he understood that she did not.
And so, once more, she apologized.