Page 65 of Perfect Happiness

Jane looked down at the keys in her hand.

Was Eun-ho still alive? If he was, then there wasn’t any time to go to the police.

And even if he was dead, it didn’t matter anyway.

In the time it would take for her to come back with the police, Yuna would realize Jane was missing.

And that would be dangerous for Jiyoo. It appeared she had no choice.

Jane looked for something she could use as a weapon, but there wasn’t even a butter knife.

She remembered the scissors in the attic, but she didn’t want to go upstairs and risk having to talk to Jiyoo again.

She detached the aluminum pole from the mop next to the shoe rack and ran outside in just her socks.

Thankfully, the car was parked just outside the front gate.

She used her hand to dust the snow off the front and rear windshields, then got in the car.

She stuck the pole between the front two seats, started the engine, buckled her seatbelt, and turned on the high beams. After backing the car up to the road, she positioned the car in the tracks of the wheelbarrow. She was now ready to go.

Jane looked down at the snow-locked wetlands. She tried to convince herself that this was a chance to cross off from her bucket list “racing through the snow in someone else’s car.” Jane clasped the wheel tight as she stepped on the gas.

The car shot forward with a whir. She could feel the blood and adrenaline pumping through her body. She felt dizzy, and her vision was shaking. Her head was being pushed backwards, and her butt was having trouble staying in the seat. The car bounced up and down as it jostled side to side.

And yet she wasn’t hitting anything, nor was the ground as soggy as she thought it would be.

Despite the ground being covered in snow, because the path was so uneven, there was enough friction to keep her wheels from sliding too much.

The car barreled forward like a tank, erasing the wheelbarrow’s tracks and leaving a trail of fallen reeds behind it.

Time worked differently here than in the attic.

While Jane was in the attic, it felt like she was adrift on a placid lake, but now it felt like she was racing down white water rapids in a valley.

Jane noticed something ahead. It didn’t take long for her eyes to tell her it was the footpath that circled the Half Moon Marsh.

But there was someone standing on the path.

Yuna. This was Jane’s chance to finish this in one fell swoop. It wouldn’t be hard. All she had to do was turn toward Yuna and keep her foot on the gas. She already had the speed, and there was just a small slope demarking the entrance to the path.

Yuna stood there motionless, as if to tell Jane that she didn’t think Jane could go through with it. She was standing next to the wheelbarrow, her arms down at her sides, just staring at Jane.

And she was right. Jane couldn’t do it. Leaning sideways toward the front passenger’s seat, she used her whole body to turn the steering wheel to the right.

The front of the car hit the side of the bank, spun at a right angle, and traced the curve of the side path as it kicked up snow and flora.

Grasping the wheel and stepping on the brake, she braced herself as the car created a tsunami of snow.

Debris rained down on the car, making it feel like she was inside a building scheduled for demolition.

The car came to a stop at the corner of the bank. Somehow, Jane had managed to prevent the airbags from deploying, which would have trapped her in this steaming dumpling of a car. Jane unbuckled her seatbelt, grabbed the mop, and lowered it to hide it from view.

The car’s headlights illuminated the terraced rice paddies below the wetlands.

Yuna was standing on the footpath, turned toward the marsh with her hands on the wheelbarrow’s handles.

She looked amused by Jane’s theatrics, but still determined to finish what she came here to do.

The light from Yuna’s headlamp illuminated the frozen surface of the marsh.

With barely any difference in elevation between the water and the land, the marsh looked like a vast snowfield.

The wind herded snow along the surface of the marsh like a flock of sheep.

Jane heard a siren in the distance. But whether it belonged to a police car or a firetruck she didn’t know.

Jane got out of the car and stepped onto the footpath.

She didn’t call out to Yuna or yell at her to stop.

Instead, she just started running toward Yuna.

It didn’t feel like she was getting any closer.

There were only a few seconds separating her and Yuna, but for some reason it felt like Yuna was located on a planet across the solar system.

Yuna calmly lifted the wheelbarrow. Jane jumped to close the remaining distance between them, like a sprinter lunging for the finish line.

Three things happened at once. Yuna raised the wheelbarrow’s handles above her head. A man, who Jane assumed to be Eun-ho, slid out and fell onto the snow-covered marsh. And Jane’s airborne body crashed into Yuna. As a result, all three of them ended up rolling onto the ice.

Despite having a thick layer of snow on its surface, the marsh wasn’t frozen solid.

As soon as Jane fell onto the ice, it let out a sharp crack and caved under her weight.

Immediately, Jane fell head-first into the water.

The icy water penetrated her ears, mouth, and nose, preventing her from breathing.

Despite the shallow water, the cold shock immobilized her body.

It took her forever to get her feet under her and her head out of the water.

But once she did, she was able to sense light out of her left eye, which was still swollen.

When she turned her head, she could see the light from Yuna’s headlamp shining down on her.

Judging from the direction of the light, Jane realized she was now lying on her back and facing the sky.

It had to be Yuna. But because she wasn’t right next to Jane, she couldn’t make out her image.

The BMW’s headlights were also shining diagonally across the swamp, providing enough light to make out the shapes of objects. Thanks to this, she was able to find something that looked like a hole to her right. It looked like a second hole in the ice. Probably where Eun-ho had fallen.

Jane moved toward the hole. There was a good chance that Eun-ho was drugged and unconscious.

Most conscious men wouldn’t let themselves be loaded onto a wheelbarrow and disposed of in a marsh.

Yuna must have wanted to drown him in his sleep.

Jane knew there wasn’t much time, but she couldn’t move faster.

The bed of the marsh was covered in thick mud.

Every time she put her foot down, it sunk deep into the mud, and every time she tried to lift her foot, it felt like her ankle was caught in a trap.

In just two steps, she had lost both her socks.

And she was slipping with every other step.

Sharp rocks and shards of glass hidden in the mud cut her feet.

Had the water been deeper, she would have tried swimming.

The worst thing was the cold shock. Her back was shaking, and she couldn’t feel her legs.

And every time she took a breath, it felt like her lungs were collapsing.

At this rate, Jane wondered if she would reach Eun-ho before Christmas.

And just as she thought this, her knee got caught on something.

Something heavy was pressing up gently against her pants.

Jane turned slowly to look down at the water.

A face was floating in the dark, murky water.

Its dull eyes were open and appeared to make eye contact with her.

Jane jumped in surprise. She almost screamed and ran up onto the bank. If she hadn’t realized that this face belonged to the person she was looking for, she would have left him to drown.

“Eun-ho!”

Jane leaned over and put her hands under his armpits. As she lifted his body out of the water, his limp head slumped over sideways.

“Eun-ho. Are you awake?”

He didn’t respond, but there was hope. He started breathing on his own as soon as she lifted his head out of the water.

His breaths were loud and violent, as though he’d been holding his breath this whole time.

It seemed he was aware, just unable to control his body.

After all, an unconscious person wouldn’t be able to hold his breath under water.

“Eun-ho, blink your eyes for me.”

Eun-ho just managed to close one eye and open it back up.

It was a slow, clumsy movement, but that didn’t matter.

What was important was that he was aware of his surroundings and could hear her.

Jane put her arm under Eun-ho’s right armpit and started walking toward the bank like an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean.

It wasn’t far, and Eun-ho was lighter thanks to the water, but it still took an eternity to reach the shore. The slippery mud made it feel like she was scaling a steep cliff made of loose gravel.

The difference in elevation between the bank and surface of the water was a bit more than Jane had judged.

She could only lift Eun-ho’s shoulders up onto the bank before he became too heavy to push.

The rest of his body she could pull up when she got out of the water.

But she had made a miscalculation. She had forgotten one important variable: Yuna.