Page 96 of Perfect Happiness
“I heard the police are checking every street camera near Kyochon.They want to see if Yuna’s car was in the area.”
Eun-ho straightened his back.Min-young pulled her thin lips to the side and smiled.
“Odd, isn’t it?That Yuna and her sister Jane are both connected to my brother.”
But Eun-ho didn’t know what she was talking about.What did Jane have to do with Yuna’s ex-husband?
“The police probably wouldn’t have started their investigation if they hadn’t found my brother’s car.Do you know where they found it?”
Eun-ho waited silently for Min-young to answer her own question.
“At a public parking lot near Ju-an station in Incheon.The police asked me if I knew how Jane and my brother knew each other.Apparently, my brother got into Jane’s car after parking his car there.But I knew exactly what happened.Jane and my brother had dated a long time ago.And not just for a little while.For eleven years.”
Eun-ho swallowed a wad of dry spit.Did this mean Joon-young had left Jane and for Yuna?
“Jane and Yuna are working together.”
Min-young said this without further explanation.She just stared silently at Eun-ho, as if to ask,You understand, don’t you?Eun-ho had to ask what she meant.
“It means the two of them kidnapped my brother, together.Jane picked up my brother and drove him to where Yuna was waiting.Yuna used Jiyoo as bait to lure my brother into her car.My brother would go to hell and back just to see Jiyoo again.”
Something wasn’t right.If Joon-young really wanted to see Jiyoo so badly, why use Jane?All Yuna needed to do was dangle a piece of Jiyoo’s clothing in front of Joon-young’s eyes and he’d come running.
“They probably did it to confuse the police.That’s why the police are running in circles right now.They can’t figure out which Shin to focus on.The way I see it, they’re accomplices.”
Eun-ho couldn’t understand this either.Why would Jane collude with her estranged sister to kidnap her ex-boyfriend?Especially after so many years?Min-young was so convinced of her theory that she was ignoring the most obvious facts.She seemed incapable of differentiating between what was true and what was convenient.
“How do you think you would feel if your boyfriend of eleven years suddenly left you to marry your sister?If it were me, I’d kill him.Perhaps she was just waiting for the right opportunity.”
Eun-ho was tired of this.Min-young was still withholding information.What was the connection between the disappearance of her brother and Noah’s death?
“I’ll ask you again about that day, the sixteenth of November.Yuna didn’t come home that night, did she?”
Eun-ho felt he needed to answer the question this time.Only then could they move on.
“I heard she was at her mother’s.”
Min-young shook her head.
“Wrong.Yuna was not at her mother’s.She took my brother somewhere.And that night, my brother was given something to drink.”
Eun-ho thought again about that picture of Jiyoo and her father.There was a champagne glass in Joon-young’s hand, and a glass of juice in Jiyoo’s.Eun-ho took another sip of his coffee.His throat itched.He was feeling impatient.So impatient he wanted to pry open Min-young’s mouth and pull out everything she wasn’t telling him.
“Yuna,” Min-young continued, “lived with a man in college.He died in a car accident.They said he fell asleep at the wheel.It was the same day he broke up with Yuna and moved out.But the person in the car with him that day managed to survive.”
Min-young lifted her chin and looked Eun-ho in the eye.
“That man was none other than your friend, Jinu Kim.”
Eun-ho could feel his diaphragm suddenly tighten.Hot coffee became stuck in the back of his throat.That picture of Jinu and another man sitting at a kitchen table with coffee flashed before Eun-ho’s rapidly blurring vision.He could hear Jinu’s voice in his head.You can call me anytime if you have something you want to ask me.
“And there was another who died in a similar car accident.Yuna’s father.The accident happened after she was fired from her company.He, too, fell asleep at the wheel.They say Yuna inherited the company after his death.”
Despite Eun-ho’s disbelief, he was nodding his head.They had learned about Yuna’s father’s death when they were in Irkutsk together, a week after the incident.Eun-ho tried to remember where Yuna was a week before that, but his brain was scattered.All he could see in his head was a picture and the face of his father-in-law holding a cup of coffee with a broad smile on his face.
“I’m curious, have you asked your wife for a divorce recently?”
This question he could answer the most confidently.He hadn’t.
