Page 13 of Perfect Happiness
What came was an answer with no emotion:Right.
Jiyoo took her hand from the puppet and placed him near her toes.She rested her chin on her knees as she stared out the window.A full moon was descending on the wetlands.As the marsh received the light from the moon, it sparkled like a gigantic lake.But there was something moving inside the dark-blue field of swaying reeds: a single orange light.
Was it a firefly?But it wasn’t summer.Jiyoo craned her neck and squinted her eyes to get a better look.The light was slowly moving along the side path.It was moving away from the cabin, toward the Half Moon Marsh.
Chapter 2
Eun-ho spent the night with his eyes wide open.But this wasn’t the first sleepless night he’d had recently.His insomnia had started the day his Wife left for her mother’s house.Today was the fifth day of her absence.
When morning came, Eun-ho could feel his brain starting to short circuit.Nanoscopic errors littered his memory.Why did I come to the kitchen again?Only when he reached the study did he remember he wanted to brew a cup of coffee.But now he had a new problem.Why did I come to the study?
Eun-ho’s absentmindedness continued to the bathroom.By accident, he ended up washing his hair with shaving cream and brushing his teeth with face wash.When the toothbrush, which ejected from his shocked mouth, fell into the toilet bowl, Eun-ho’s subconsciousness did something very uncharacteristic: it swore.Goddamnit!
No sooner did he swear inside his head than he thought he could hear Wife’s voice:
Why are you always so irritable?It’s your fault, after all.
Irritability was, as Wife put it, Eun-ho’s “congenital disease.”And yet, despite ostensibly having it since birth, Eun-ho only became aware of his conditionaftermarrying Wife.According to her, irritability was just one of three defects of his that threatened their marriage.She pointed out his irritability so often that now he questioned everything he did.Am I just being irritable?Am I expressing my emotions like an adult?
Butnot this morning.Today, Eun-ho didn’t care if he was being irritable.Or rather, he felt his irritability was well justified.
Indeed, all it would take was a neighbor’s staring too long at his flower garden for Eun-ho to run out of his house and pick a fight with them.
After fishing his toothbrush out of the toilet bowel, Eun-ho went to his study to put his laptop and books in his bag.It was the weekend, but he would rather be at the office right now than at home.He could busy himself with writing the final exam for his students and hopefully quiet his thoughts, which were squawking like a murder of crows.
Eun-ho paused for a moment as he put on his shoes to leave the house.Shoot, he said as he went back to the study.He had forgotten that he’d hid the phone in his desk drawer last night.Eun-ho returned the phone to the living room and plugged it into the wall.Then he checked one more time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.He did this slowly so that he wouldn’t have to come back to the study for a fourth time.
I think that’s it.
Until yesterday, despite it being early winter, the weather had been warm and sunny, as though it were still early fall.But it had taken a sudden turn.Outside a cast-iron sky was hanging low.Cold, damp, vicious wind was battering the trees in the front yard, pushing dead leaves into the street.The weather was as foul as Eun-ho’s mood.
Eun-ho considered going back inside for a coat.As he stood at the front door and weighed his options, two vehicles passed by the house.The first was a delivery truck.The second was a tailgating slate-blue jeep.By the time the two vehicles disappeared, so had Eun-ho’s desire for a coat.It wasn’t worth going back to his study for a fifth time.Besides, it wasn’t like he was going to freeze to death on his way from the school parking lot to his office.
Eun-ho buttoned up his jacket before walking down the stairs toward the driveway.Just as he was opening the car door, the jeep appeared again.Its hazard lights were blinking as it backed up.It slid backwards in one smooth motion before stopping in front of Eun-ho’s driveway.Had this street been a shopping mart parking lot, Eun-ho would have marveled at their handling.But if this jeep thought it could park illegally on the street in front ofhishouse, it had another thing coming.
A woman hopped down from the driver’s side of the jeep.A bob cut just below the earlobes, no makeup, an oversized hoodie, black leggings, and sneakers: she looked like she had just been chased out of the gym.She looked lean, too, like a cheetah.
The woman crossed the street.Without hesitating or looking around, she came straight toward Eun-ho.Some women drove their husbands crazy spending half an hour deciding what to wear: this woman wasn’t one of them.
Eun-ho couldn’t tell if she was really walking toward him.But by the time he realized she was, she was already speaking to him.
“Do you live at #111 by any chance?”
She had a deep, earthy voice.Had Eun-ho had his eyes closed, he might not have known it belonged to a woman.
“Can I help you?”Eun-ho knew his tone wasn’t friendly, but he didn’t feel like being friendly today, especially not to someone illegally parking in front of his house.
“Is your name Eun-ho Cha by any chance?”she asked.
Eun-ho didn’t answer immediately.Before that, he needed to figure out who this woman was, how she knew his name, and how she knew where he lived.She didn’t seem like an angry parent wanting to complain about their child’s grade, but he couldn’t tell if this was good news or bad news.
“Are you?”the woman pressed him.
Eun-ho’s eyes floated upward to the woman’s windblown hair which looked like a chestnut burr.She definitely wasn’t a parent.She looked too young to be the mother of a high school student.
“I am, but who are—”
“I’m Jane Shin.”
