Page 99 of Perfect Happiness
“At first, I didn’t want to tell her.It’s not an easy thing to talk about.But then she told me about her father.She said she had to know the truth.When I asked her if this could all just be a coincidence, she told me that Yuna’s boyfriend in Russia also died in a car accident.Apparently, he fell asleep at the wheel, too.”
Eun-ho’s eyes drifted down to his cellphone.Was the Caucasian man in the Polaroid the same boyfriend from Russia?Eun-ho’s intuition was telling him yes.
“I’m still a bit lost for words.I’m not sure if such a conspiracy is even possible.What if she’s innocent?And I’m worried my memory isn’t reliable.”
Eun-ho turned his head back toward Jinu.
“Tell me what happened,” Eun-ho said.
It was as Eun-ho anticipated.The man in the second Polaroid was named Jiwoon, the same man Jinu mentioned at Lake Baikal several years ago.Jinu told Eun-ho a story eerily similar to the one Min-young told him.
Everyone at school knew Yuna, everyone but Jinu, who had just come back to school after finishing his two years of mandatory military service.The first time he met Yuna happened to be the day of the accident.
At the time, Jiwoon and Yuna were living in an apartment together off campus.They had plans to go to Russia together to study abroad after graduation.But the night before the accident, Jiwoon suddenly showed up at Jinu’s front door.They went to a bar near Jinu’s house to talk, and there Jiwoon told him that he had just broken up with Yuna.According to Jiwoon, it had been a week since he ran out of their apartment without taking his things.It wasn’t just a verbal fight or a fight of passion between two lovers.Jiwoon was genuinely scared of Yuna.
Yuna was intense; the kind of woman whose emotions were always dialed up to ten.Because of this, she was always vacillating between extremes.One moment she was beckoning her man to come closer, and the next she was pushing him away.Depending on her mood, she was either an angel or a tyrant.She nitpicked about the smallest things, and if Jiwoon tried to get her to stop nitpicking, she would get angry, claiming he was trying to push her away.And when she got angry, she always took it to the extreme.Jiwoon and Yuna almost broke up several times before.And when this happened, Yuna would always ask, “How can you do this to me?”
Jiwoon said he was afraid of confronting Yuna alone.He had come to Jinu to ask if he would go to the apartment with him to get his things.Two days later, the two of them went to the apartment together.
“Because of what Jiwoon told me, I was expecting a flamboyant and violent woman with long nails.”
But he was completely caught off guard by the woman who greeted them at the door.
“You know better than I.It’s probably why you fell in love with her.Her smile looked like the great opening of the heavens after a heavy rain.Not an ounce of malice anywhere.She looked pure and innocent and was unusually mature for her age at the time.I started to doubt what Jiwoon had told me.I thought he was making up stories about a perfectly normal woman just to give himself an excuse to break up with her.”
Yuna just stood in front of the kitchen and watched them as they packed Jiwoon’s things.When they finished, she offered them some coffee before leaving.Jiwoon wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but Jinu thought it would be rude.The coffee, which had been filled to the brim from the coffee machine, looked so pitiful; he couldn’t just reject her offer and leave it there.Eventually Jiwoon sat down at the table with Jinu.It was then that Yuna pulled out her Polaroid camera.
“She said she wanted a picture, as a souvenir.Jiwoon was reluctant to give her permission.”
She took three pictures, one for each of them.After the photoshoot, no one said a word.Yuna just said one thing as they left the apartment.
“Goodbye, Jiwoon.”
Her voice was so quiet and calm that Jinu couldn’t help but turn around and look at her.When he and Yuna made eye contact, she said again, “Goodbye, Jinu.”
Jinu emptied the can of beer in his hand and looked down at the floor.
“How could I have known?Actually, what Min-young told you wasn’t completely accurate.I guess she believed one of the many rumors that were going around at the time.I wasn’t in Jiwoon’s car at the time of the accident.He was on his way to his parents in Bundang.I had done my job and didn’t need to go all the way with him.Plus, I had plans later that night.But then ...”
When he got home, he became exhausted.Up to that point, he hadn’t felt that anything was amiss.He just figured he was tired from helping a friend move and from the tense air in the room.He lay down in his bed, telling himself he was going to take a five-minute nap.He woke up two days later.As soon as he awoke, he heard the news of Jiwoon’s accident.They said he fell asleep at the wheel and drove his car into Han River from Olympic Highway.
“Do you know what I thought the moment I heard the news?”
The coffee.They both drank that coffee; one of them was passed out for two days, and the other fell asleep at the wheel and died.Could that be a coincidence?Yuna didn’t come to the funeral.You couldn’t find her at school either.All Jinu heard was that she went to Russia right after the accident.Jinu said that ever since then, he lived with a terrifying question mark in his heart.But then he met her again at Lake Baikal in Russia.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
Eun-ho asked this question even though he already knew the answer.Jinucouldn’ttell him, and if he did, Eun-ho would have thought Jinu as the world’s worst saboteur.At the time, Eun-ho was already resentful for Jinu’s mention that he was divorced.Finally, Eun-ho understood the meaning of Jinu’s words those two weeks ago at the bar.
If you’re not careful, you might go in your sleep.
But the person who died in their sleep wasn’t him but Noah.Why Noah?It was he who angered Wife.The only person who could answer this question was Wife.
“That’s what I thought as soon as Noah died.Even if you hated me for it, I should have stopped you from marrying her.I regretted saying hello to Yuna at Lake Baikal.If only I hadn’t suggested we go out for drinks together, she would have been someone who just passed through your life.
“But why did you suggest we go out for drinks together?”
“I was curious.I wanted to know if she had really done it.It’s funny now that I think about it.”
