Time of a Married Couple 2
At the mention of reporting to bed, Jaye blushed and nodded.
“Even my mother is mischievous. She’s asking a twenty-six-year-old child how to have sex with her husband as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Don’t you think?”
Actually, about a year ago, when they reported to bed and Seonwoo caught them, the house had been turned upside down.
Ever since then, he had forbidden them from reporting like that, but while he was buried in work, the custom revived, and it continued until now.
“Even so, Shin Jaye told a perfect story.”
“That’s…”
Jaye’s face burned crimson as she scrambled for words, but nothing came to mind.
In truth, the bedtime reports were all lies she had invented.
She remembered the way her mother-in-law and Yonghwa Shaman wanted their marriage conducted, then lied by saying she had actually slept with him in that manner.
“You’re truly amazing. How on earth do you know what happens between a man and a woman in bed and still deliver those reports every morning?”
Seonwoo must have known all the stories she had made up.
“I’ll make sure you never have to report to bed again. If they ask, just tell them to come to me.”
It felt like she had been caught making filthy imaginations and words about him, and her face burned hotter as she lowered it toward the floor.
“Understood?”
“Yes. I understand.”
At the end of the story, Seonwoo covered Jaye’s crown with his large hand and stroked her hair without any reservation, the way one would a six-year-old child.
Over the three years they had been married, the reason he had never treated her as a woman was because the marriage was also a contract marriage, and because she was in her early twenties, she was still young.
“Then study hard. See you at home tonight.”
“Yes.”
Seonwoo got back into the sedan, and the black sedan made a sharp U-turn in front of the engineering building and headed toward the main gate.
With her scarf still wrapped around her neck, Jaye stood there until the car her husband had taken disappeared from sight.
They had only a casual relationship, yet ever since she had faced him, her throat had always been itchy.
She loved the poplar blossoms of spring, yet when she got close, her throat felt as if it were tickling from the inside, just like the way her heart felt fluttery and uneasy whenever she met her husband.
Left alone, Jaye muttered the morning greeting she had never managed to deliver.
“Have a good day, Professor Seonwoo.”
Her breath scattered through the air, pure white and fleeting.
***
At the end of November, the campus was ablaze with autumn colors. The half-naked yellow ginkgo trees blended harmoniously with the red-brick buildings, creating the most beautiful landscape of the year.
After finishing the three-hour polymer engineering lecture, Jaye shaded her eyes with her hand and walked around the campus.
Under the crisp blue late-autumn sky, the trees and grass glowed with golden light, and her eyes watered from the brilliance.
Thinking back, the call from her grandmother before she left home had warned her to be careful because rain was expected today.
Jaye tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like it would rain. The sky was a clear, cool blue.
The cold wind slipped through her thin coat, but she chose not to wear the scarf Seonwoo had given her; instead, she folded it neatly and tucked it into her eco-bag.
Seonwoo’s fur scarf was too expensive and stylish for a university student like her.
“Shin Jaye!”
Minjeong, with her short dyed hair, came running and hugged Jaye tightly around the neck. Her body swayed backward from the force.
“Let go, I can’t breathe!”
“I told you I was coming out today!”
“I already said I have plans today!”
“Then let’s eat jjajangmyeon for a quick bite before we go. There’s a new place nearby that makes delicious jjajangmyeon.”
Jaye’s eyes widened at the unfamiliar dish name.
“Jjajangmyeon?”
Minjeong shook her head.
“It’s like Vietnamese bibimbap noodles. Anyway, I’m going to eat there. Want to come with?”
“Vietnamese bibimbap noodles?”
Then, at that moment, she remembered the bibimbap her mother had often made when she was still a teenager. Chopped kimchi mixed with sesame oil, the bibimbap was one of Jaye’s favorite foods.
“I knew you probably didn’t know what jjajangmyeon was, but you really don’t?”
At those words, Jaye pouted her lips.
“Where in the countryside would you find jjajangmyeon? Or pasta?”
Jaye had lived in a mountain hermitage with her mother who suffered from an illness until she was twenty-one.
Her mother had taken the Yonghwa Shaman, who had been the family’s most trusted shaman and was even thought to be controlling the real-life Unamjae Yeosa of Samjeong Group, as her mother-in-law, and the pair had lived in seclusion in the mountains to avoid the world.
After middle school, Jaye had not been able to attend school, and only at twenty-one had she been able to step back into society again.
In Seoul, even after saying she had been experiencing everything, she had still not tried many of the foods…
Three years had passed since she moved to Seoul, yet there were still countless things in the world she had never experienced.
“Shin Jaye, are you really living your married life properly? Have you gone on dates with your husband?”
At Minjeong’s words, Jaye’s stomach twisted.
Actually, the reason she had been able to come out into the world was entirely thanks to that marriage.
“Who asks about someone else’s private life so insidiously?”
“Now that I think about it, it seems strange. You ate pasta with me for the first time, right? You went to a café with me for the first time. Doesn’t your husband just leave you alone?”
“It could be the first time we’ve done something together!”
“Honestly, did you get married because you didn’t want to go out to drink? What kind of married life is that? You haven’t gone on a single date with your husband. Or are you still living with your mother-in-law?”
“What do you mean, my mother-in-law?”
“An old man too weak to lift a spoon? There’s no way he would leave Shin Jaye alone like that.”
“What? I’ve done everything there is to do in my married life!”
At those words, Minjeong let out a bright cry and cheered.
“What have you done? Tell me quickly! Tell the goddess of the engineering building all the juicy details of a married woman!”
Minjeong was insisting she reveal her married life, but there was nothing more to say about it.
She had only learned her husband’s name and face on the wedding day, and they only faced each other at night in the bedroom, so there was nothing worth telling.
“Stop with the boring talk and hurry up and go eat that jjajangmyeon or whatever.”
“Why? Come with me. Okay? Okay?”
Minjeong grabbed the straps of Jaye’s bag and pulled her toward the main gate, dragging her along.
“I have to go to the dermatologist today. It’s the day for my laser treatment.”
“Oh, right. You said you had a big scar on your back, didn’t you?”
Every summer vacation, Minjeong had begged Jaye to come swimming or go to the beach together, but Jaye had always refused, using her scar as an excuse.
“How ugly is that scar that you’ve never even been to a public bath? If you let me see the goddess Shin Jaye naked, it would be worth it.”
“You like goddesses.”
“Thanks to that scar, you can’t even go on a little rebellion, Shin Jaye. Maybe it’s the will of the gods, telling you to live uprightly.”
“What will of the gods?”
Perhaps Minjeong was right; the scar on her back had been sent by the gods.
The scar on Jaye’s back had been made by the Yonghwa Shaman, whom she called Grandmother.
“Let me see the scar. I’m your best friend, after all. I’ll tease you about it!”
“Enough already. After the treatment, it’ll be gone, and I’ll show you.”
“If the Shin Jaye scar disappears, I’ll go around showing my back every day!”
“That’s why I’m getting the treatment! Why!”
Minjeong knew about the big scar on Jaye’s back, but in truth, what she had was not a scar but a large tattoo. It was the Samduiljogungbo talisman drawn by the Yonghwa Shaman.
People believed that every nine years they would face three disasters, called Samjae. There was a saying that the three-headed bird with a beak on each head pecked away the three disasters.
Right on Jaye’s back was that very three-headed bird tattoo.
“What did your husband say when he saw your scar?”
“My husband?”
“Of course. It’s our third year of marriage. He must have already seen the scar.”
“Right. I’ve already shown him everything there is to show.”
The reason she had gotten the three-headed bird tattooed on her back and married was because of Seonwoo’s unfavorable fortune, which made it difficult to overcome the three disasters.
Originally, they would have had to bury Seonwoo’s fortune and perform a ceremony like a funeral to deceive the spirits, but because his fortune’s energy was too strong, the ritual alone could not fool the spirits.
So the Yonghwa Shaman created a powerful talisman for Seonwoo, who needed strong Samjae-appeasement, and sent it to the Samjeong Group fortune-teller.
The three-headed bird on Jaye’s back was Seonwoo’s Samjae talisman.
The Yonghwa Shaman had advised that the better the protective talisman, the closer it should be held.
Following that advice, on the day they first met, they had exchanged a cup of Hwanju and performed a simple ritual.
Jaye had been a bride sold for money.
By the time they reached the main gate, Jaye waved to Minjeong in farewell.
“Eat your jjajangmyeon deliciously and send me photos. I’m curious what kind of food it is. See you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Get well with your treatment.”
“Okay. Bye.”
At the same time, a bus heading toward Jongno was pulling into the stop.
Jaye ran to the bus stop and boarded the bus going toward the university hospital in Jongno.
***
To truly see Seoul, one had to see Jongno, she had said. Holding the handrail on the shaking bus, Jaye watched the various people outside the window.
Even on a weekday, the Kwanghwamun area, where palaces from the Joseon era blended with modern architecture, was bustling with people. Foreigners stood in front of the palace walls, taking souvenir photos.
The eyes of those foreigners marveling at Seoul and Jaye’s eyes looking at the Kwanghwamun area from the bus window were not so different.
She had come into the world with the condition of having to live a marriage that would deceive even men she had never seen and ghosts, and she had already filled her three-year contract period.
During those three years, she had studied relentlessly and visited every place in the world that she could reach.
Even though she had lived so diligently, unfamiliar things kept appearing one after another, just like the jjajangmyeon Minjeong had mentioned. Every time, Jaye felt thirsty.
“Next stop is Korea University Hospital, in front of Korea University Hospital.”
“I want to see more. I want to learn more and experience more.”
Jaye had so many things she wanted to see, hear, and experience in this world.
“This stop is Korea University Hospital.”
The bus stopped in front of the hospital. Jaye tapped her bus card on the terminal, then exited through the rear door.
Along the palace wall beside Korea University Hospital, ginkgo trees with yellow leaves stood neatly aligned.
The treatment she received at Korea University Hospital was to erase the tattoo. Seonwoo had been the one who had first suggested it to her, urging her to remove the terrifying tattoo on her back.
Seonwoo was not a gentle husband, but he always did whatever Jaye needed.
Thanks to him, the Samjae talisman that had painted her back red was slowly fading from the laser treatment.
After receiving a few more treatments, the Yonghwa Shaman’s precious Samjae talisman would be completely gone from her back.
When the Samjae talisman became even fainter than now, her married life would also end. It was an absurd contract, yet Jaye had no regrets about it.
By accepting the marriage contract, she had been able to escape the mountains of the shaman temple where she had never seen another person, and thanks to Seonwoo’s support, she had been able to attend university.
Because of that, she could now roam the world freely. To her, the contract was one she could bear, even with the disadvantage of divorce.
Jaye stopped in front of the palace wall and captured the autumn leaves contrasting with the blue sky in her phone camera.
The urgency in the hand holding the phone might have been from the fear that the contract would end and she might be called back to the mountains again.
“When I become independent, I want to live near here…”
The last maple leaves of the year fell to the sidewalk in the autumn wind. The last season she would spend with her husband was beginning.
While admiring the late-autumn leaves on the palace wall, Jaye turned toward the hospital for her appointment.
“Jijjing, ji-ing!”
The phone in her hand began to vibrate as she was just entering the hospital gate.
She stopped and pressed the call button. Immediately, a frantic voice came through.
“Are you the wife of Mr. Jeong Seonwoo?”
Although she had been playing the role of a couple on the surface, this was the first time she had received a call asking if she was his wife from a stranger.
“Yes, but…”
Before she could ask what the matter was, a lightning bolt of words came back from the other person.
“Mr. Jeong Seonwoo is being transported to the hospital right now due to a traffic accident.”
At that moment, a sudden gust swept up the fallen leaves on the street and carried them far away.