Page 49 of Perfect Happiness
E un-ho waited for Wife inside his study.
It had already been thirty minutes. When he came down the stairs, Wife was sitting on the sofa in the living room.
He had no idea what she was doing. Not only was she sitting with her back to the stairs, but she had turned off all the lights, making everything pitch black.
The only thing he could make out was the back of her head, which was dimly lit by the light shining in from the balcony window.
Even though she should have sensed Eun-ho coming down the stairs, she didn’t turn around.
He didn’t call out to her or speak to her.
He figured she would find her way to him eventually.
But she did not. Nor did she march off to bed.
Wife’s personality was such that she had to resolve this before going to bed.
But Eun-ho was nervous for a different reason. Tonight, he had something to tell her.
It was almost ten by the time Eun-ho left Jinu’s apartment.
He decided to leave his car at Jinu’s and walk home.
He did this for two reasons. Not only did he need to sober up after drinking for much of the day, but he also needed to organize his mind, which was scattered from shock and disbelief.
Wife’s voice was repeating itself inside his head the whole walk home.
Happiness is subtraction. It’s getting rid of the possibility of unhappiness until life becomes perfect.
The possibility of unhappiness . . . He walked up from the riverside path onto the main road. As he stood waiting at the crosswalk, Wife’s voice whispered to him again.
I’ve lived my whole life striving for that perfect happiness.
The light changed several times, but Eun-ho just stood there blinking.
Wife’s college boyfriend, Wife’s Russian boyfriend, Wife’s father, Wife’s ex-husband—and then there was Noah.
Wife believed that a flawless family was a happy family.
There was a sudden rattling sound in Eun-ho’s head.
As though two broken gears had suddenly interlocked.
Synthesizing what Min-young and Jinu had told him, Eun-ho realized that the four men had all made Yuna unhappy for one reason or another.
Breaking up with her, divorcing her, firing her.
Noah was flawed in that he came from another womb.
She must have believed that Noah was a threat to her happiness.
Or perhaps she just couldn’t accept his mere existence.
Bracing against fierce winds, Eun-ho started to shake.
It wasn’t the physical cold that made him shake, but the chilling nature of this realization.
He could see something that he had been blind to.
Those men were the focus of Wife’s “efforts.” And so were Jiyoo’s adoption and Wife’s insistence on having a child together.
Everything was connected, like branches from the same tree.
From the beginning, the families that he and she imagined were incompatible. A flawless family to Wife would be her, Eun-ho, Jiyoo as Eun-ho’s adopted daughter, and a child of their own. There was no room for Noah. These were the conditions of the perfect happiness that Wife dreamed of.
Even after arriving home, Eun-ho couldn’t go inside.
He just stood outside and stared up at the house in reluctance.
The upstairs and downstairs windows were illuminated, but their light didn’t reach him.
What he was looking at didn’t feel like a house but an abyss.
Eun-ho was afraid to go inside. He was so afraid that he was trembling.
Eun-ho had to decide whether to go in. Turning around and leaving would be no different from running away.
And such a decision would be consistent with the way he had lived his life until now, always ignoring the unbearable truth.
Going in meant offering himself up as bait—something he’d never done before.
And going inside would ultimately lead to the same outcome. He would either die of old age in prison for murdering his wife, or he would be murdered in his sleep. Either way, walking through that door was suicide.
Eun-ho started toward the front door. With each step, Eun-ho could hear blood rushing through his ears. His body was pulsating, the back of his neck was prickly, and he was hearing bells inside his head. He wondered how he was going to confront Wife in such a pitiful state.
As soon as he opened the front door, he was met with the sound of Jiyoo crying. A few seconds later, he heard Wife’s screams.
This had never happened before. He had never heard Jiyoo cry or seen Wife throw a tantrum because of Jiyoo. Eun-ho walked through the living room toward his study. He didn’t want to get involved in their mother-daughter problems.
Eun-ho opened the door to his study but was unable to push himself inside. Jiyoo’s cries had turned to screams. She was screaming like a child who was terrified. Eun-ho finally threw his bag down and ran upstairs.
When Eun-ho got to the door of Jiyoo’s bedroom, he heard a loud thud. He opened the door to find Jiyoo on the ground with a heavy nosebleed. Wife grabbed Jiyoo as she started shouting.
“Open your eyes. Wake up. Before I kill you.”
Someone had pushed Wife’s self-destruct button.
Eun-ho was less surprised than he was disturbed. This wasn’t the first time Eun-ho had seen wife lose it. But what did surprise Eun-ho was the way he responded. He pulled Wife off Jiyoo and picked the child up.
“Don’t touch my daughter, you sick son of a bitch.”
The blood started draining from Eun-ho’s head as he heard these words.
There was a sinister implication in what she said.
She brought her fists down on him as she repeated this over and over again.
The more appropriate thing to say would be something like “This doesn’t concern you.
” At least, that’s what most people would say.
The only reason to say it this way was if he had touched Jiyoo inappropriately.
A chilling thought flashed through Eun-ho’s mind. Was this how Wife cornered her ex-husband in the divorce suit? Was this how she stripped him of his parental rights?
Eun-ho’s queries turned toward himself. What would happen if he asked for a divorce? As he searched for an answer, he pushed his imagination to the worst place.
He had no parental rights to be stripped of. And if Jiyoo was made to testify, she would agree with everything her mother said. Eun-ho wouldn’t be just a child murderer; he would also become a child molester.
Telling Eun-ho not to touch her daughter wasn’t just a slip of the tongue. She was both threatening to ruin his life while simultaneously laying the groundwork to make it a reality. This was just how she fabricated the story about his sleep disorder with those fake text messages.
“Eun-ho.”
He looked up from his desk. Wife was calling to him from outside the door to his study.
“Would you open the door for me? My hands are tied.”
Eun-ho got up from his chair. When he opened the door, he was met with glossed-over hazel eyes. He could smell alcohol in her breath. He had told her to come to him after drinking some water, but it seemed she had drunk alcohol while sitting alone in the dark living room.
Could he really tell her when she was like this? Eun-ho nervously stepped aside to let her into the room. Wife took one step inside. In one hand she had two glasses of ice, and in the other, an opened bottle of vodka.
“Have a drink with me,” Wife said as she lifted the bottle. She must have drunk a lot because she was slurring her speech. Eun-ho received the bottle and went back to his desk. He took out a folding chair, placed it next to the desk, then sat down in his office chair.
Wife didn’t sit down in the chair he brought out for her. Instead, she perched half her butt on the edge of the desk and looked straight at him. She pushed the two glasses toward him. Eun-ho poured each of them a glass.
“First, a toast.”
Wife held up her glass. Not knowing what else to do, Eun-ho held up his glass, too. Before he could ask what they were making a toast to, Wife clinked her glass against his.
“Today was the first time you’ve acted like Jiyoo’s father.”
Wife took a sip of her vodka before looking down at him. She stared at him with a stern look on her face, as if to ask, Why aren’t you drinking? Eun-ho brought the glass to his lips but didn’t drink. He had just sobered up, and the smell of vodka made him nauseous.
“I was really moved by what you did up there,” Wife said.
Eun-ho didn’t answer. Was that what Wife did when she was moved? Roll her eyes into the back of her skull and attack someone?
“Before, you never paid any attention to what I did to Jiyoo. But now you’re willing to fight me to protect her.” Wife rattled the ice in her glass. “What changed?”
Eun-ho focused his gaze on the ice cubes in her glass. He waited in silence because he wasn’t sure what it was that Wife wanted to hear from him.
“I’ll be honest with you. I was so mad today. Because of Jane and Jiyoo.”
Wife let out a long sigh. She looked down at her feet and shook her head for a while. Just when Eun-ho was starting to think that she had forgotten what she was about to say, she continued.
“I didn’t want to tell you this because it had to do with my family and because I was embarrassed, but Jane used to have feelings for my ex-husband. Although he never felt the same. She chased him all through college and even after they graduated.”
Eun-ho looked down at the glass in his hand. He was biding his time, waiting for the moment his words would deliver the biggest emotional blow to her.