Chapter 10

“What? Immigration?”

“I mean, are you going to Konsu’s wedding ceremony?”

“Are you crazy?”

“You don’t have to be crazy, of course. I think he will get married when he feels up to it.”

“Is he getting married?” Arum opened her eyes with surprise. Though she was drunk, she instantly noticed Jina’s mention of Konsu’s marriage.

“I don’t mean he’s getting married. But when I look at his message through the messenger, it looks like he will get married soon.”

“So, is he getting married?” Arum cut off nastily.

“I didn’t say that. I mean, it looks like he’s going to. I have no clue, of course.”

Arum already became sober. She was stone cold sober now.

She wanted to check out his SNS account and find him.

But both had changed their numbers.

Arum was curious, though.

‘I’ve been waiting for you. Despite that, you are getting married?’

She was upset deep down.

“I think I said foolish things, Arum. I just brought it up to ask you to forget him,” said Jina.

“Who cares?”

“You are thinking about him again, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Don’t lie! I see it on your face.”

“Nope~”

It was true that the more she denied, the more she conjured up his face in her mind.

There was silence between them for a while.

Jina thought Arum’s wounded heart had been healed because she broke off the engagement three years ago. But it was JIna’s mistake. Jina meant well when she told Arum that she could start dating a man again.

“When is he going to get married? Is the woman beautiful? Is she buying a house for him?”

Arum already showed her myopic attitude. She was now all focused on Konsu’s marriage.

Instead of replying, Jina drank a glass of wine.

At that moment, Arum received a link message on her cell phone. It was from Hojoon, whom she met at the campus.

Why did he send me a text message? Why at this time? What the heck is this link?

When she pressed the link, she was introduced to his recent column.

<Have you found myongdang yet? Of course, it’s difficult for you to find it immediately. So, I’d like to let you know the easiest way. Just go to the neighborhood or school area where you were born and grew up at. You’ll feel refreshed because you can recall the pleasant memories of your childhood. Off limits to those who have unpleasant memories! The place where you had pleasant memories is the very good myongdang.>

As soon as she read his column, she was taken aback. His column was obviously an answer to her question of myongdang several days ago. But she only noticed the two words, ‘school’ and ‘refreshing’ because of what she experienced on the campus today.

‘What the heck? Is he making fun of me now?’

How she could be nice to him.

She parted with Jina in a sour mood and came back home. As soon as she opened the front door, she laid herself down on the sofa.

Home, my home.

Lying on the sofa, she thought about it for the first time.

‘Is this place myongdang?’

Several houses she lived at in the past flashed before her eyes.

The house she was born in, the house she spent her childhood days in, a stranger’s house, the house she stayed in while travelling abroad, and Green Villa, where she dreamed about her marriage life.

Hojoon advised in the column that if one had bad memories of any particular house, one should not revisit there. It’s a simple principle. Even if one didn’t know about feng shui, one could easily understand. Then why did she go back to the house?

No matter how hard she thought about her actions on that day, she could not figure out why.

At that moment, she recalled salmon.

The salmon would allegedly come back to its birthplace after leaving the river and swimming thousands of miles in the sea. Once the salmon traveled that far, it should settle there, but it would come back at the risk of its life. How could it come back to its birthplace without any built-in navigation?

She typed the word ‘salmon navigation’ on the search engine of her cell phone.

Some argued that the salmon had DNA that made it recall the environment of the river it came from.

Others explained that the salmon would find its way back home by using the Earth’s magnetic field like migratory birds.

Indeed, it was written in the relevant article that pigeons find their way back home by using the Earth’s magnetic field. As they had a magnetic substance in their brains called magnetite, they could return home anywhere, anytime. Namely, magnetite was a sort of navigation system for them.

Arum turned it over in her mind.

‘If I had a navigation system in my life, what would it be?’

Though she didn’t want to believe it, it was Konsu.

Damn it!

***

The company Hojoon worked at as its CEO was an interior company located near Hongik University in Seoul. Remodelled from a house into a modern-style building, his company had a liberal and comfortable atmosphere. Though it’s an interior company, it designed houses based on feng shui as the core. In other words, his company was the ‘Famed House of Feng Shui.’

It was his exquisite idea that as an architect major he could combine interior design with feng shui.

They might ask, ‘Who cares about feng shui at all these days?’

But they did not know better.

Hojoon constantly received calls from rich men with so much to lose, or high-ranking officials. After he appeared on certain information programs of cable TVs and the entertainment programs of national terrestrial TV companies, he became much busier.

He was widely consulted on various fields such as feng shui interior design, the real estate brokerage business, and tomb site feng shui. As he focused on interior design only, he was widely recognized for his expertise in the field.

He was once the most popular among the wives of rich men.

Why? He solved their headaches.

By using the secret method of geomancy , he showed them how to win back their husbands’ hearts, who were having secret love affairs.

He showed them how to deal with the messy women who, sensing that they had money, wouldn’t separate with their husbands.

He showed them how to arrange the matrimonial homes of their ideal sons and daughters.

Plus, he showed them how to have their daughters-in-law give birth to baby sons!

Of course, he didn’t deal with the rich only, but thanks to the constant consultation calls from their wives, he became a successful geomancy consultant.

Late evening.

Hojoon watched a soccer game on TV while eating jjajangmyon or black-bean-sauce noodles he had delivered from a Chinese restaurant. Though he wanted to watch more, he had a couple of meetings in the evening.

With a mouthful of jjajangmyon, Heemang, the youngest staff of his company, asked, “You don’t like jjajangmyon, do you?”

“Not really.”

“I know you used to have fried rice. So, I thought it strange you ordered jjajangmyon today.”

“Don’t you know they say you live long when you eat noodles?”

“Really?”

“My mom told me I should eat noodles on my birthday to live long.”

“Is today your birthday, then?”

Hojoon hesitated a moment and said, “Nope.”

“I see. Then, why did you go to the police station? Were you robbed in your house?”

“Who said that?”

“Team Manager Yun told me.”

“Yeah, a thief broke in. A thief.”

Heemang opened his eyes wide with surprise. As an architect major in a technical high school, he used to draw Webtoon before he was scouted by Hojoon. He had an excellent sense of design, but he had slow wits.

“Aha! A thief. Did you catch him?”

“Let me enjoy my food, man. Where is manager Yun?”

“He went out to date a woman. He said today is the 100th day since he met her.”

“Wow! He’s quite passionate.”

“You bet. It’s only one year and a half that he got divorced, right?”

There was something childish in Heemang’s way of speaking.

“Hey, boy, the relationship between a man and a woman is all like that. How can I explain to you the mystic harmony of yin and yang?”

“Well, I know all there is to know about it.”

At that moment, Assistant Manager Juyoung came out of the restroom with a toothbrush in hand. It’s been five years since he was separated from his wife and son.

“If you’s so slow-witted like that, you will get divorced, too. Keep our advice in mind,” Juyoung said.

“Why don’t you move to another house quickly? Your house isn’t a good one as you and your family are separated, right?” said Hojoon, pretending to know everything.

“I’m not separated, man. I’m okay as long as our family members are united as one in heart.”

“Well, you’re supposed to split when you live separated from your wife and child for so long,” quipped Hojoon.

“Yes, sir. I’ll keep it in mind.”