Page 55 of Perfect Happiness

Jane extended her legs. With her back against the wall, she gazed down at Yuna’s pale fingers as they tied the rope around her ankles.

This didn’t look like her first time binding someone.

The knots were so well tied that Jane probably wasn’t going to be able to escape without cutting off her own feet.

When she was done, Yuna took her cleaver and brought it down on the leftover rope, cutting it.

Jane couldn’t help flinching when this happened. The knife blade stuck into the wood floor, just centimeters from Jane’s ankle bone.

“Did I startle you? You’re more of a scaredy cat than I thought.”

Yuna tossed the leftover pieces of rope to the side as she let out a laugh.

“Earlier when you came at me with that knife, what was it that you said with that ugly mouth of yours? ‘Think carefully before you say that again?’”

She shot Yuna a glare. But because Yuna pulled the knife out of the ground and was now holding it, she stifled what she had wanted to say.

“Did you think carefully about this? Did you not think I might show up at my own property?”

Yuna brought the blade between Jane’s eyes. She looked like she could barely contain her excitement.

Jane thought of the professional tools she had seen in the kitchen. The grinder, mixer, and pots. The things she thought couldn’t be true were seeming more and more likely.

“Where is Joon-young?” Jane asked.

Yuna stopped smiling and stared at her. A serious question was lurking behind her eyes. What’s it to you?

“Why did you go to Chungju?” Yuna asked.

Jane decided she should push Yuna’s buttons. Yuna was the type of person to start spilling everything like rapid fire when you got her worked up. And Jane had nothing to lose. She was already tied up. She might as well make the most of her situation.

“I went to see the house,” Jane answered.

A puzzled look flashed across Yuna’s eyes. Soon that puzzlement came out as a question:

“What house?”

“Jun always said he wanted to live in a place that overlooked Lake Hoamji. He would be able to write, go on picnics with Jiyoo, and—”

“Ha! Picnics.” Yuna said, cutting Jane off. “Who said I would let him spend time with Jiyoo?”

Jane wasn’t finished with her lie.

“And he said it was a great house for newlyweds. That’s why I went.”

“A house for newlyweds? He was planning on getting married? To whom?”

Yuna was throwing out questions one after another.

And with each additional question, her voice got two pitches higher.

Blood vessels were starting to pop out of the middle of her forehead.

If this continued, her forehead was going to become a barcode of veins.

Jane realized she had found the right button.

“Me.”

“In your dreams. This will end just like it did last time—with you kicking and screaming because he’ll never love you.”

Despite her words, Yuna seemed to have a creeping doubt. Every word she said was faster, higher, and fraught with anxiety. This was Jane’s chance to deliver the final blow. She picked a cliché but tried-and-true option from her playbook.

“We wanted to get married before my stomach got too big. We found out three months ago.”

Yuna’s eyes snapped to Jane’s stomach. Her gaze then zigzagged back to Jane’s face. She would have been less shocked had an opossum been pregnant with a kitten. Jane added one final punch for good measure.

“Do you want to see the ultrasound of your nephew? It’s in the car.”

“Don’t try to trick me.”

With the cleaver dangling between her bent legs, she started to mumble like a crazy person.

“Shameless son of a bitch. If I knew he was fucking you while begging to see Jiyoo. I can’t believe he threatened to call the police if I didn’t let him see Jiyoo.”

Jane was silently watching the veins that were exploding in Yuna’s eyes like fireworks.

It didn’t take long for the fireworks to catch fire.

Jane didn’t need to fan the flames anymore.

It would turn into an inferno without her help.

But for the sake of time, Jane decided to pour a bit of gasoline on the flames.

“That’s not an unreasonable demand. She’s Joon-young’s daughter, after all. Just like she’ll be my daughter once we get married.”

“What?”

Yuna tightened her grip on the cleaver that had been dangling.

“Your daughter? Did you just say she’ll be your daughter?”

Jane fixed her gaze on Yuna’s eyes so as not to flinch. Now that she had started, she planned on taking it a few steps further.

“Shall I tell you how I found this place? Jiyoo was in the hospital for a week after you dumped her off with me. She had a high fever for days and started talking deliriously. But there was something strange. Children usually want to find their mommy in times like that, but she didn’t ask for you.

Not once. All she did was cry and call for Daddy.

She kept saying he was at the ‘Half Moon Marsh.’ And that Mother took him there in a wheelbarrow. ”

Yuna blinked as though she were wincing. Appearing for a moment beneath her fluttering eyelids was a look of shock. If Jane had to guess what that look of shock was about, it would be, without a doubt, a feeling of betrayal.

“Is there another Half Moon Marsh besides this one?” Jane asked.

Yuna responded with her own question.

“So, is that why you came here? To find out if what Jiyoo said was true?”

“Yes.”

As soon as Jane said this, the cleaver came slicing through the air toward her neck. Jane instinctively ducked. The blade just barely grazed the crown of her head and stuck into the box next to her. Yuna pulled the knife out of the box and spoke:

“You want to know what I did to Joon-young?”

Yuna brought the knife down on the box. Again and again, until the box was reduced to slivers. Tumbling out of the box was a set of finger puppets and toy tables and chairs.

Jane looked down at the rolling bits of yellow fur that were among the things that had fallen out.

According to her memory, this was what remained of the duck Yuna had stabbed to oblivion thirty years ago.

Yuna used the edge of her blade to collect the tuffs of fur and bring them to Jane’s feet, as though she were presenting Joon-young’s corpse to her.

“Does that answer your question?” Yuna asked.

Jane was speechless. Even if she asked Yuna to clarify what she meant, she wasn’t prepared for Yuna’s answer. Did you really do it, Yuna?

“You seem surprised,” Yuna said.

Jane clenched her jaw. She felt something working its way up her throat.

Her needlessly wild imagination had already brought her to that place.

It showed her the scene of Joon-young dying, drugged with sleeping pills and in a trance.

Did it happen in the first-floor bathroom?

Was the wail of the loons actually Joon-young screaming as he drowned in a pool of his own blood?

And about Eun-ho . . .

This time it was Jinu Kim’s voice that Jane heard.

The night before it happened, he drank Yuna’s quince tea. He fell into a deep sleep, unaware that his child was dying .

It appeared as though Yuna had done one for the ages. She had murdered a girl’s father right next to her, and she had murdered a father’s son right next to him.

“Open your mouth,” Yuna said as she pointed the cleaver at Jane’s lips.

Jane didn’t need any time to think about this. Not only was someone holding her at knife point, but that someone had also lost their mind.

Yuna stuffed the head of the duck in Jane’s mouth. She couldn’t breathe and her jaw felt like it was going to break. The duck’s head pressed against the back of her throat, making Jane gag.

Yuna went out of the room and came back with duct tape. She wrapped the tape around Jane’s head, like tying a bandage, then lowered her hands. The uncut roll of tape was dangling by Jane’s ear.

“What did you say you were going to do earlier?”

Yuna sawed off the dangling roll of tape with the cleaver.

“Didn’t you say you were getting married to that son of a bitch? Didn’t you say you were going to steal my daughter?”

Jane craned her neck like a lollipop and sat still. She was afraid. Yuna’s hands were shaking with anger and looked like they might accidentally cut off Jane’s head.

“You’ve grown a lot since we were kids, Jane. I bet that’s why you thought you could take me.”

Yuna put her hand in Jane’s jacket pocket and, after a few moments, pulled out a ballpoint pen, a cellphone, and car keys. She turned the pen and inspected it from several angles, as though she had never seen one before.

“You’re a real romantic.”

A grin returned to Yuna’s lips as she muttered to herself. A good idea seemed to have just come to her. Jane felt even more uneasy. What was a good idea for Yuna would be a very bad idea for her.

“Jane.”

Yuna’s voice was once again chirpy like a hummingbird.

Jane felt like she was listening to a soprano jump back and forth between octaves.

She had seen her sister’s extreme shifts in mood countless times before.

But, listening to her sister call her name with a grin on her face as she held the cleaver in her hand, she had never been as intimidated as she was now.

“If you want to marry that son of a bitch, be my guest,” Yuna said as she put the pen back in Jane’s pocket. “We’ll have the wedding tomorrow. At the Half Moon Marsh.”

Jane wasn’t sure if she had heard Jane correctly. As she blinked one eye, she went over her sister’s words, one syllable at a time. Tomorrow, at the Half Moon Marsh . . .

“I’ll keep these with me.”

Yuna showed Jane the cellphone and car keys.

“Sleep tight. And sweet dreams.”

The lights in the room went out. Yuna closed the door and disappeared. Jane could hear the click of the door being locked and the sound of Yuna walking down the stairs. After that, she heard something clattering. This continued for a while until she heard Yuna drive off in her car.