Page 33 of Perfect Happiness

He picked the latter. If Wife woke up, he could fall on her and pretend that he was trying to cuddle with her.

Eun-ho first put his own phone down on the floor and shined the light toward the ceiling.

Next, he raised one knee up onto the bed and shifted his weight onto the mattress.

The mattress shook slightly, but Wife didn’t show any reaction.

He brought his torso over her body and placed one hand on the bed for support. He looked down and studied her face.

Although it was still fairly dark in the room, thanks to the light from his cellphone which was illuminating the ceiling, he could see the outline of her pupils beneath her eyelids.

He leaned his ear toward her and was able to hear her slow and steady breathing.

Her lips were slightly parted. According to what he read yesterday, she was probably in REM sleep, which meant he would need to do a lot to wake her up.

Eun-ho slid Wife’s phone under her thumb and lined up her fingerprint with the phone button. He then pressed down lightly on her finger until he heard a click.

The screen turned on, and the phone was successfully unlocked.

At the same time, Eun-ho thought he saw his Wife’s eyelids move slightly.

Her pupils moved slowly toward the corner of her eyes, as though she were watching what he was doing through the skin of her eyelids.

Eun-ho held his breath. He stopped moving and prepared himself to pretend to throw himself onto her.

Wife’s breathing steadied itself. Her pupils returned to the middle of the eyelids.

Eun-ho quickly retreated before the screen turned off.

He lifted his torso and brought his legs down from the bed; after that, he picked up his cellphone and left the room.

He went into his study and sat down at the desk. He cautiously let out a long sigh.

It looked like Wife had been watching YouTube before she fell asleep.

The last video she had watched was a video about immigration to Russia.

Eun-ho scrolled through the recent watch history: Investor Immigration, How I Made It in Vladivostok as a Small-time Investor, Living in Moscow as a Married Couple with Children, Why I Came to Russia, The Cheapest Way to Gain Russian Citizenship . . .

Eun-ho surveyed his memory. Had Wife ever mentioned anything about immigrating to Russia? Never. The only thing she had ever mentioned were her experiences studying abroad there.

This time, Eun-ho clicked on the search field in YouTube. To his surprise, her previous search terms had nothing to do with Russia or immigration: deboning, removing bones from meat, how to make pork bone soup, how to mincemeat . . .

Eun-ho searched his memory again. Had Wife ever made him pork bone soup? Never. Although, she did like eating it.

Eun-ho looked up at the battery indicator.

She had 8% left. He quickly closed YouTube and went through her call history.

Among a list of unfamiliar contacts was one he recognized.

Jinu Kim. Yesterday 2:37 p.m. Eun-ho guessed that she had called Jinu after failing to get through to Eun-ho.

If that was true, then she would know about his situation at school.

Eun-ho scrolled down the list. The name Joon-young Seo caught his eye. November 16, 11:01 p.m. Fifty-one seconds.

Had Wife really met up with her ex? Perhaps that would explain the detectives who had come to their house yesterday. Eun-ho could feel his temper flaring. Perhaps Joon-young wasn’t missing, after all. Maybe he was just in hiding, waiting to run away with her to Russia.

Eun-ho took a picture of the call history with his own cellphone.

He continued scrolling down but found nothing of interest. Wife had only called Joon-young this one time.

Why would she only talk to him once? Eun-ho couldn’t understand what this meant.

All he had was the hunch that the two of them didn’t meet regularly.

This gave Eun-ho a sense of relief. Perhaps it had just been a one-night fling.

Eun-ho then looked at her text messages. He couldn’t find any from Joon-young. But there was a notification informing her about a package.

—Great news, Yuna! Your mountain climbing rope has been delivered to your front door.

The date was November 15. There was no other information about this purchase. Eun-ho thought for a moment. Had Wife ever gone mountain climbing? As far as he knew, the tallest mountain Wife had ever summited was the small hill behind their house.

Eun-ho continued down through her text messages but couldn’t find anything else of interest. There was also nothing of interest in her KakaoTalk app. The only name he knew was his own. He also failed to find anything in her calendar or notes.

Her photo album was more barren than he expected.

There weren’t many photos, and most were either selfies or family photos.

And they were almost all taken on vacation, at kid cafés, or on date nights.

If there was anything that struck him as odd, it was that each picture had the same composition.

Wife was always in the middle, and everyone else was standing around her in the background, like extras in a movie.

Every picture looked like a selfie, regardless of how many people were in the frame.

Eun-ho closed the photo album and thought to himself. What else could he look at? He only had 2% battery left.

He decided on opening her internet browser.

There were quick access buttons to a search engine, shopping websites, and her email.

Eun-ho clicked on her email and was immediately taken to her inbox.

He was relieved to find it was an email address he knew.

She had three hundred archived emails—too many to skim through with just 2% battery left. Eun-ho moved to the “sent” folder.

At the very bottom of the first page were emails to which only photos had been attached.

The first email contained a photo of an elderly man.

He was wearing a necktie and a black suit.

A disposable coffee cup was placed on the table in front of him.

It looked like Yuna’s father. He had never met him in person, but he had seen his photo when they performed ancestral rights at his mother-in-law’s house, and the man in this photo looked the same.

Eun-ho took a picture of this with his phone.

The second email was a picture of Jiyoo and a man.

They were sitting next to one another, cheek to cheek, and Jiyoo was smiling like the happiest girl in the world.

She was wearing her preschool uniform, and the man was wearing a checkered shirt.

It was obvious they were father and daughter.

Every feature of their faces, even their forward-cupped ears, was a carbon copy of each other’s.

On the kitchen table were candles, a blue vase with three roses, two glasses of champagne, a glass of juice, and dinner plates.

Eun-ho squinted to get a closer look at the dinner plates.

It looked like they ate goulash for dinner.

When had this picture been taken? The file was uploaded on November 20.

That was the day before she returned with Jiyoo.

Unlike her other photos, this wasn’t a selfie.

It had clearly been taken by someone outside the frame.

There was no question in Eun-ho’s mind that Wife took this picture.

As Eun-ho feared, Wife had met with her ex-husband.

Eun-ho took a picture of this photo as well.

The last email had been sent on November 22 at 3:42 a.m. Eun-ho had an ominous feeling. He couldn’t explain it logically, but the feeling was clear. Eun-ho clicked on the email, ignoring the voice in his head telling him not to.

His intuition had been dead on. As soon as he opened the email, his breath was severed from his throat. In the picture, he and Noah were lying face down on Noah’s bed. Noah was hugging Pengsoo on the left side of the bed, and Eun-ho was curled up on the right like a kidney bean.

The dream from that night appeared again in Eun-ho’s head.

He remembered a sudden burst of light in his dream.

Eun-ho had been suspicious of this element of the dream.

But now he was convinced. The light had been real.

It had come from outside his dream. The explosion of light he saw must have been the flash of a camera.

But why did Wife take this picture? Why in the middle of the night, while everyone was asleep? Eun-ho’s arms were shaking. Something was pulling his skin two notches tighter. He felt like he had just opened a door, behind which was an unfamiliar woman who had stolen the face of his wife.

It took all of Eun-ho’s focus to hold up his camera and take a photo of this image.

His hands were shaking so much that his thumb could hardly find the shutter button.

He also dropped his phone several times.

Once he finally got his picture, he closed Wife’s email.

But just as he did this, the phone screen went black.

Eun-ho looked down at the phone in a daze.

Which happened first? His closing her email, or the phone shutting off?

He wished he had video review to check. If the phone had shut off first, then Wife would know he’d been snooping.

As soon as she went into her email, she would see the last email he had been looking at.

This made Eun-ho uneasy, but there was nothing he could do.

Eun-ho changed the passcode on his own cellphone.

He put Wife’s phone in his pocket with the intent of going upstairs to put it back where he found it.

But at that very moment, he sensed someone opening the door.

Eun-ho looked up and almost screamed in shock.

Wife’s head was sticking through the crack in the door.

“What are you doing in here?”

Wife came in and walked up next to him.

“It’s so dark in here.”

Wife looked down at Eun-ho’s phone, which was lying on the desk.

“Watching YouTube,” Eun-ho said as he pulled his hand out of his pants pocket.

“I couldn’t sleep.” To Eun-ho, his own voice sounded like a distant echo.

His vision was also trembling slightly. His whole body might even have been shaking, but he had no way of knowing.

Wife reached out and grabbed his elbow, as if to prop him up.

“You were sleeping when I got home. Are you hungry? I can cook you some instant ramen.”

Eun-ho shook his head.

“It’s too late to eat. We should go back to bed.”

Wife followed Eun-ho as he moved toward the door.

Her hand was still holding his elbow. And when they entered the bedroom, her hand sat him down on the bed.

He felt like he was being detained by the police; the only difference was that he had Wife’s hands instead of a pair of handcuffs. Wife got into bed once he lay down.

“Don’t try to do this all on your own.”

Wife lifted her hand and touched Eun-ho’s cheek, then forcefully turned his chin to look at her. With his back flat on the mattress, his head was turned ninety degrees toward her.

“I’m here, too. You can lean on me.”

She looked up at him, her eyes within just one finger width from his chin.

With her hand still on his cheek, she stroked the skin next to his eye with her thumb.

She did this so slowly and delicately that Eun-ho could sense the grain of her fingertips and the warmth radiating up from her capillaries.

Finally, Eun-ho turned the rest of his body to face her.

He wrapped one leg around her butt and pulled her toward him.

Using this motion as a distraction, he pulled out her phone and placed it under her pillow.

After completing its mission, his right hand transitioned smoothly to the back of her head.

Eun-ho cupped the back of her head, which was small and oblong like a melon, and brought her face to his chest. He didn’t feel like he would be able to act well while looking her in the eye.

“Let’s get some sleep,” Eun-ho said as he brought his lips to her forehead. Wife wrapped her arms around his waist and brought the rest of her body in contact with his. Tucking her hand under his shirt and stroking the vertebrae of his spine, she whispered to him:

“No. What we need is comfort, not sleep.”