Page 31 of Perfect Happiness

“Well, it would depend on the exact drug and how much you took. Even if you take one or two more pills of the drug we gave you yesterday, you would probably still be able to sense an external light or something. Of course, your senses as a whole would be somewhat dull. Everything would be hazy and dreamlike.”

“And if I took the same test on a different day, without sleeping aids, could the test results be completely different?”

The doctor shook his head without hesitation.

“They would be more or less the same.”

Eun-ho returned home. He took out his cellphone, which he had stashed away in his bag. He had ten missed phone calls and eight unread messages. They were all from Wife. She had sent them throughout the night and into the morning. Eun-ho read her last message.

—Why aren’t you picking up? It’s so frustrating. Where are you? Are you still at the hospital?

Eun-ho was getting a strong sense of déjà vu.

These messages were exactly like the ones Eun-ho sent when Wife disappeared.

Eun-ho now knew the emotional superiority that Wife must feel all the time.

He felt like she was a keyboard that he could play on to his heart’s content, a dog on a leash that he could screw with.

He didn’t send a reply; if he did, she would call him immediately and demand explanations for everything.

Eun-ho wasn’t in the mood for such a phone call.

He needed time to himself with no distractions.

He needed to think about what the results of his sleep study meant, why his wife sent him that untruthful text message, and how he was going to interpret that lie about his sleeping habits.

Eun-ho switched his phone to silent and went into the study. He sat at the desk and laid out the test results in front of him. He caught all the thoughts that were scattered about his mind like fallen leaves and wrote them down on a notepad.

Sleep study—Zolpidem, 10 mg

Only turn right while sleeping—Wife’s contradictory text message.

Noah slept on the left.

Lucid while asleep—Confuse reality for dream. Bright light. White hand.

Wife’s right hand—Bandages on her hand. Stitches on her fingers and palm.

Quince tea—Red, blue, and yellow cups.

Mom—

That night— fell asleep with the lights on.

Wife’s miscarriage and Noah’s picture—

Tuesday the 16th—Wife leaves home, ex-husband disappears.

Jinu—Tells me I can call him if I have “something I want to ask him.” What does that mean?

Eun-ho called his mom. She answered the phone in a voice that was stronger and brighter than he was expecting. She asked him questions until she was out of breath. How are you feeling? Have you eaten? What did the school say? When she ran out of questions, Eun-ho was finally able to ask his own.

“Mom, the night it happened, did you come into Noah’s room to turn off the lights?”

“You mean the night Noah . . . ?”

“Yes.”

“No. I was so tired that I fell asleep right after washing up. Why do you ask?”

So, she hadn’t turned off the lights. And Eun-ho doubted Noah did it. And definitely not Jiyoo.

“Then you slept straight through the night?”

“Yes. Completely unaware what was becoming of my baby—”

The strength drained from her voice. Eun-ho knew if he didn’t stop her, she would start weeping again. He asked another question to quiet her.

“Mom, do you always sleep through the night like that?”

“You still don’t know your own mother’s sleeping habits?

Your father used to always grumble about how you were just like me, always waking up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom.

But strangely enough, I slept like a corpse that night.

I haven’t felt that way since that time they took out my appendix and gave me anesthesia.

” Noticing something odd about this line of questioning, she paused before asking, “Why?”

“I was just curious.”

Eun-ho hung up and looked down at the notepad again.

Mom—Slept like she was on anesthesia.

Eun-ho tore off the paper and hid it with the test results under his rubber floor mat.

He put his cellphone in his pocket and left the study.

He went into the master bedroom and started opening the drawers to the vanity.

After that, he rummaged through the jewelry box and the bags in the walk-in closet.

He was thorough in his search, even turning out coat pockets, like he were a forensic scientist.

At first, he didn’t know what he was looking for. Only when he stopped his search of the master bedroom and came out into the living room did he realize what it was: sleeping pills.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked down at the thousand won bill he had in his hands.

This was all he had found after snooping around for an hour.

All at once, he was overwhelmed with relief that he hadn’t found anything, guilt over suspecting his wife, and embarrassment for tearing apart their master bedroom in search of evidence.

He would have stopped there had there not been a wriggling doubt at the bottom of his subconscious.

If it were me, I wouldn’t hide it in the master bedroom either.

Eun-ho’s watch was pointing to five. He went up the stairs. Wife would be leaving work soon. Even if she left right now, she wouldn’t arrive until seven. That meant he had about two hours to play with.

Eun-ho went into Jiyoo’s room and turned on the light.

This was the only place in the house he never ventured.

The room was oozing with Wife’s taste in interior design.

A pink bed canopy, white sheets and white pillows, lace curtains with butterflies on them, a cabin-shaped wardrobe, and an old-fashioned roll top desk.

In the desk drawer were new stationary items that hadn’t even been taken out of their packaging yet.

Pencils, colored pencils, felt pens, markers, sketch books and notebooks.

There wasn’t anything unusual in the wardrobe either. Just two sleeveless summer dresses. But there was something between the wardrobe and the wall. It was obscured by the curtains, but Eun-ho could tell that it was large and thick. He stuck his hand behind the wardrobe and fished the object out.

It was a thin brown cardboard box, about the dimensions of a laptop. Inside, there were yellow files sealed with strings. Eun-ho checked his watch. 6:15. He had a bit of time before Wife returned.

Eun-ho untied the string and flipped over the cover.

There were clear plastic document folders in a binder.

They were organized and labeled by year and month, from newest to oldest. The first file was from last month, and the last was from eight years ago.

Eun-ho opened the stack to the middle where he found a document from two years ago in January.

Inside the plastic folder was a divorce petition. It had been filed not by Wife but by her ex-husband, on January 11. Eun-ho searched his memory. He didn’t need to search long, though. He had met Wife at Lake Baikal on January 18.

I’m divorced. As of last week.

Eun-ho could almost hear her voice, as well as her enchanting laughter.

The next file contained a copy of the countersuit filed by Wife.

It was dated January 25. Eun-ho, Jinu, and Wife returned to Irkutsk on the 21st in the afternoon.

That was where they said goodbye. That night, he and Jinu had to get back on the train.

And two days later, Wife needed to return to Korea in the morning.

Eun-ho bought another SIM card and put it in Wife’s cellphone.

He was determined to continue texting her after he got on the train.

The first thing she got when she had service again was the news of her father’s death.

The message had been sent a week prior, the same day she lost her SIM card at Vladivostok International Airport.

Eun-ho remembered how heavy his footsteps were as he walked to the train station and how swollen her eyes were.

If he could have his way, he would have stayed with her in Irkutsk.

He wanted to stay with her until her flight to Korea.

The reason he couldn’t was because of a voice in his head.

Don’t ruin Jinu’s vacation just because of some woman you met four days ago!

Two days later at a random train station, he received a message from Yuna. She said she was getting on the plane. If he remembered the days correctly, that would mean that four days later, she would have filed the countersuit.

Eun-ho’s mind was foggy with confusion. He couldn’t quite grasp what these dates meant, except for the fact that she had been married, not divorced, when they first met.

Why had she lied? Surely, she didn’t think that “I’m divorced” and “My husband asked for a divorce” could really be equivalent expressions?

He also couldn’t understand how someone could file a divorce countersuit just four days after hearing the news of their father’s death.

She had looked so despondent when she got the news.

She even buried her face in the table and cried.

Could someone get over their grief that quickly?

Suddenly, Eun-ho was overcome with a sense of fear. What other lies were waiting for him in this box? Should he start making a list to keep track of everything? Were there lies he’d rather not know? Lies too great to bear?

Perhaps it would be better just to close the box.

Eun-ho looked down at the papers with a distraught look on his face.

Two emotions were waging war inside his head.

One was the desire to unmask every secret.

The other was dread that these secrets might destroy the bits of normalcy that remained in his life—that was assuming there were any remaining at all.

He flipped over to the next page, and the next page, and the next page... All of them implied a long divorce trial and an intense struggle over parental rights. It was a year later when the divorce was finalized. It appeared that for that year, he had been Yuna’s mistress.