Page 43 of Perfect Happiness

Later that afternoon, Eun-ho went to Jinu’s apartment.

He parked his car in the underground parking garage and went up to the sixth floor.

Jinu was dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts.

Eun-ho glanced at Jinu’s arms, which were as wide as Eun-ho’s thighs.

His broad chest was glistening with perspiration.

“I thought you were meeting someone earlier. You looked like you just got back from the gym.”

Jinu flexed his chest muscles as he laughed.

“I don’t go to the gym these days. Don’t you remember? I set up a home gym.”

Jinu said he spent a fortune installing a squat rack. He bragged that his bench press, deadlift, and squat now combined to a total of 500 kilograms. It seemed he traded in his Nintendo Switch for dumbbells and plates.

“The people downstairs haven’t complained?” Eun-ho asked in genuine concern.

“I renovated the apartment and soundproofed the floor. Wanna see?”

Eun-ho shook his head. He didn’t want to listen to Jinu for the next two hours giving a lecture about sound insulation and home exercise equipment.

“Are you hungry?”

Jinu pointed to the kitchen table with his thumb.

“What are you in the mood for? I’ve got it all.”

Laid out on the kitchen table was chicken breast prepared in every form known to man, from sausages to steaks.

“Got any beer?” Eun-ho finally asked.

“Beer? It’s not even five.”

Jinu stepped out onto the balcony and came back in with a sixpack of beer. For something to nibble on, Jinu prepared his own choice of tandoori chicken. The wind rattled the balcony window. The sky was a gloomy grey. It seemed like snow or sleet would start falling from the sky soon.

“Have you gotten the autopsy results back yet?” Jinu asked as he sat down next to Eun-ho.

“Not yet.”

Eun-ho immediately emptied the entire can into his mouth.

As the alcohol entered his gut, his body began to relax.

Eun-ho hadn’t realized how tense he had become on the ride over here.

He also realized that this was the first time he’d touched a drink since two weeks ago, which was coincidentally the last time he saw Jinu.

Eun-ho couldn’t believe he had managed without the mind-numbing effects of alcohol.

“I thought of something I wanted to ask you.”

Eun-ho took his phone from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.

“Have a listen, and then I’ll explain.”

Eun-ho emptied a second can of beer into his mouth as Jinu listened to the recording.

Jinu didn’t budge and only stared down at his feet.

He didn’t even react when his name was mentioned.

Only when Eun-ho stopped the recording did Jinu look up.

He let out a strange sound, something in between a grunt and “Hmmm.”

“And I have something you need to see,” Eun-ho said.

He opened his photo album and scrolled to the pictures stolen from Yuna’s phone. He clicked on the picture of the Caucasian man and handed the phone to Jinu.

“Flip through the pictures.”

Jinu did what he was told without saying a word. With each picture, he showed more emotion. The first picture brought about subtle surprise, the second confusion, and finally an emotion that Eun-ho could only describe as shock. Jinu had found the same pattern Eun-ho had.

“You know what I’ve come here to ask you, don’t you? You must think I’m stupid for taking this long to figure things out.”

Eun-ho opened his third can of beer. After guzzling half of it, he continued:

“You should have just told me.”

Jinu’s response came many seconds later.

“There were a lot of rumors . . . but even I wasn’t convinced. Until earlier today, I still wasn’t sure what I would do if you came asking questions. I didn’t know if telling you what happened would be the right thing to do. And what would be the point of telling you?”

The words “until earlier today” rang inside Eun-ho’s ears.

“What happened earlier today that changed your mind?”

“I met with someone for lunch who asked the same questions as you are right now.”

Eun-ho paused in surprise as he brought the beer to his lips.

“Who?”

“Yuna’s sister. Jane Shin.”

Eun-ho was speechless. He had expected Jinu to say the police or perhaps Min-young. But Jane? How did Jane and Jinu know each other?

“Jane learned about Yuna’s mysterious past through Min-young, just like you. It seems like Min-young went to Jane before she went to you. But I’m a bit surprised by the recording you just showed me. Jane and Yuna? Working together? And I can’t believe Yuna married her sister’s ex-boyfriend.”

“So, what did you tell Jane?”

Jinu stared quietly out the window. A mountain pigeon was hooting in the distance.

“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.