Page 19 of Perfect Happiness

There were flames flickering in Yuna’s eyes—flames that threatened to burst into an inferno. To put out this fire before it spread and consumed everything, Mom gave Yuna the answer she wanted.

“I like you better.”

But this wasn’t enough for Yuna. She always had to take it one step further.

“Mom, you hated sending me to Grandma’s, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have sent me if it weren’t for Jane, right?”

After a while, Mom stopped resisting and merely glanced at Jane with an expression that asked for forgiveness. She hoped that Jane would understand she was doing it to maintain the peace.

Yuna’s game of quizzes became a daily occurrence, and Mom stopped looking to Jane for forgiveness. There was no hesitation in her answers. “Of course,” she would say. “You’re my favorite, Yuna.”

Every time Jane heard answers like this, she felt conflicting emotions.

She was disappointed in her mom for not taking issue with the flawed questions, angry at Yuna for treating Jane like a thief who stole everything from her, and felt guilty that it was because of her that Yuna had to stay in Woohyeri for two years with Grandma.

Among these, it was always guilt that won.

And it was precisely because of the guilt that she endured the humiliation and never fought back.

Yuna fought over control of Dad as well.

She used their guilt over abandoning her for two years to put both parents under her thumb.

Mom’s humoring Yuna was the easiest and most direct way of reducing her guilt.

And Yuna knew this all too well. Because she had complete control of Mom, she used Mom to manipulate Dad.

One time, Father took Jane to the movie theater. They were showing Mrs. Doubtfire . Father couldn’t take Yuna because she wasn’t old enough. He probably chose this movie on purpose because he wanted to make things up to Jane without the threat of Yuna trying to take it away from her.

That day, Jane laughed for the first time in ages. Jane wanted to cherish the happiness she felt that day forever. But then she made the stupid mistake of coming home with a half-eaten bag of popcorn.

Jane could see Yuna’s eyes rolling to the back of her skull. Everything that happened next happened exactly as Jane expected, in exactly the same order and manner. Yuna’s final magic trick was banging her head against the wall as she cried about how she wanted to die.

That was the first time Dad ever used physical discipline on Yuna.

“If you want to cry like that, I’ll give you something to really cry about.”

Mom tried to stop him, and the struggle that ensued led to her falling and needing to be taken to the ER.

After that, Dad never laid a finger on Yuna again.

Which was just what Yuna wanted. There was no one to check her power anymore.

She took everything that belonged to Jane.

With no one to protect her, Jane used whatever excuse she could find to stay out of the house.

At first it was her friends’ houses and the playground, but once she got older, it was study rooms or cram school.

Jane had no intention of standing up to Yuna.

Confronting Yuna meant confronting her mom.

Her only choice was to bide her time. She dreamed of the day she would graduate from high school and could leave for college in Seoul.

Her dad swore he would pay for an apartment for her near campus so she could live by herself.

All she had to do was endure Yuna a bit longer.

Two years after Jane graduated, Yuna also succeeded in getting into a college in the capital.

It would have been economical to make them room together, but Dad shelled out the money to get Yuna a small apartment of her own near campus.

He said it was because their schools were too far apart.

But Jane knew it was because he was afraid of what Yuna might do to her when no one was around.

Thankfully, his business was doing well, so he had the wherewithal to make this work.

Thanks to this, Jane and Yuna stayed out of each other’s hair.

And because Yuna didn’t attend family gatherings in Woohyeri, they almost never crossed paths.

Jane only heard news about Yuna through Mom.

She was a bit shocked to hear Yuna had abruptly ended her studies in Russia, but her concern stopped there.

After Dad passed away, Mom’s depression relapsed even worse than before.

She had depended on their dad her entire life, so she needed to lean on Jane for support.

She tormented Jane with nightly phone calls that lasted forever and were invariably filled with sobbing.

She blamed Dad for leaving her, complained about how the house was haunted, and lamented the fact that no one would know if she suddenly had a heart attack and died.

And she did all this while crying her eyes out.

And then one day, she made a sudden apology to Jane.

“I’m sorry, Jane.”

Jane figured she must have run out of things to cry about.

“For what?”

“I’m sorry for being so cold to you when you were young. I just felt so guilty about Yuna. There was nothing else I could do. I cry sometimes when I think about what I did to you.”

But to Jane, this was a confession she could neither understand nor accept. She was still making excuses, and the apology didn’t seem particularly sincere. Jane felt like there had to be an ulterior motive behind this sudden confession.

“Can’t you come home to live with me?” Mom finally asked after crying her eyes out. “We can go shopping together, eat together, watch movies together.”

“Really, Mom?”

Jane’s mom spent her entire life solving problems by crying and feeling sorry for herself. Jane didn’t need any time to think about her mom’s request.

“No.”

A month later, Jane moved in with her mom. She hadn’t been convinced by her overtures of shopping and eating together. But she just couldn’t stand to lose any more sleep by her mom’s nightly pity pleas.

Jane didn’t involve herself in what happened between her mom and Yuna. On the days that Yuna came over, Mom gave Jane a heads-up. This was the agreement they made when Jane agreed to move in with her. Because of this, Jane knew almost nothing about Yuna’s private life.

But even so, there was one thing she knew with certainty.

When Dad died in that car accident, Yuna was not in the country.

Jane heard from Mom that Yuna had gotten on a plane for Vladivostok that day.

That’s also why she couldn’t attend his funeral.

Nor could they get ahold of her. Yuna claimed she was in a remote area where she didn’t have service or Wi-Fi.

Yuna had a solid alibi. But even without that, Jane refused to accept Min-young’s theory. It had to be just a coincidence. It would be unwise for Jane to consider any other possibility.

But there was a nagging voice of doubt whispering into Jane’s ear. She tried to change the channel in her brain. But the voice eventually broke through.

What time was Yuna’s plane on the day of the accident?

Yuna knew Dad’s schedule. She knew he would be leaving work early that day, and that he was headed for Grandma’s house in Woohyeri.

And it was only about an hour to the airport.

Even if she met Dad in the late afternoon, she could probably still catch a flight in the evening.

But did an evening flight to Vladivostok even exist?

Jane hesitated for a moment before looking up plane tickets.

There were more direct flights than she expected.

And Aeroflot even had flights that left as late as 10 p.m. Most of these had layovers; Yuna would have had to arrive late the next afternoon if she bought one of these.

Catching an evening flight would be inconvenient, but not impossible.

Once Jane realized it was possible for Yuna to meet Dad and catch a flight the same day, she remembered something.

Mr. Choi. She had saved his number to her phone at her dad’s funeral.

Mr. Choi had known her dad for nearly half his life, and he was the last person to see him alive.

He also stayed at the funeral home for all four days of the service until Dad’s ashes were enshrined, something only closest family members were required to do.

Jane hadn’t seen or contacted him since.

All she knew was that he had submitted his letter of resignation after Yuna inherited the company.

Before pressing call, Jane thought once more about what exactly she wanted to know. And what would she do if she heard something she didn’t want to hear? No answers came to her mind. She was just afraid.

Once you know something, you can never return to ignorance. And sometimes, to know something is to cope with it. Jane’s instincts as a thirteen-year journalist were telling her she would have to cope with what Mr. Choi told her.

Jane looked at the clock. 10:40 p.m. It was too late to call him.

But she pressed call anyway. She knew that if she didn’t do it now, she would never do it.

By tomorrow, she would convince herself that this was all “a mere coincidence” and never think about it again. After a few rings, Mr. Choi picked up.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Choi, this is Jane.”

Mr. Choi was both surprised and pleased to hear from Jane.

He asked how her mom was doing, how Jane was doing, and if there was something she needed help with.

Before Jane told him why she was calling him, she thought one last time about what she was about to do.

She would ask him several questions, and he would give her several answers.

And depending on his answers, she might become swept up in Yuna’s problems again. But she needed to know.

“I’m calling about my dad. Before he died, did he fire Yuna?”

Mr. Choi didn’t answer. That meant yes.

“When did he fire her?”

“About a week before he passed away.”

Jane felt all the veins in her neck wriggle to the surface.

“Was it because of money?”

He sighed. “Yes. I discovered she’d been stealing money from the company and told your dad.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

“Your father wanted to sweep it under the rug.”

Jane still had her most important question. She focused all her energy on calming her heavy breathing.

“On the day of the accident, did Yuna come to the office?”

“Yes. I think she came around four in the afternoon. It was just before your dad left for Woohyeri.”

“Did she bring anything with her?”

He said she brought coffee. They talked in my dad’s office for half an hour, and when they came back out, it looked like they had made up. Yuna was beaming as she said goodbye to him. Dad patted Yuna on the shoulder and wished her safe travels.

“ I was so relieved. No one wants to fire their own daughter. I was afraid money had ruined another family. I thought your dad should have just taken her word that she wouldn’t do it again and let her stay at the company.

She wasn’t just another employee. She was his daughter, after all.

There were other options besides firing her.

Anyway, it looked like they had made amends, so I felt relieved. ”

“She left the office around 4:30?”

He said yes and that she left before my dad did. Two hours later, he died in a car accident. Despite knowing it was a shot in the dark, Jane asked one more question.

“The coffee Yuna brought . . . by any chance was it iced coffee?”

“Hmm . . . That I’m not sure about.”

It didn’t matter. Dad liked his coffee black and on ice. He would always chug the coffee before the ice even had a chance to melt. Yuna, who worked as a bookkeeper and secretary for him for several years, had to know how he liked his coffee.

“But Mr. Choi, why did you quit? I thought you would have wanted to help Yuna run the business.”

Silence followed. Jane felt sorry and embarrassed for not knowing the reason. After all, Mr. Choi was the person who got Yuna fired. And Yuna valued loyalty above all else.

Jane hung up the phone. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

She was thinking of something, but even she wasn’t quite sure what that was.

She was confused to the point of being nauseous—and scared.

She felt like she had just stepped into a swamp of unknown depth.

Her ego was being split into two voices.

One voice was stubbornly trying to persuade her this was all just a coincidence, telling her not to overanalyze things.

And the other voice was asking her a question.

What did Yuna do to Dad?