Reason for Marriage

Chapter 16

Everyone is a bit crazy

“She was a noisy woman, but she was really fancy.”

“She must have been pretty.”

She could not help it. It was natural for Minju to wonder about Seo Hye-ryeong’s face. Emotions became much clearer when the object of her jealousy was accurately visualized.

“As a woman, I wanted to embrace her at least once. It’s a shame to just say that she was pretty. There was a unique atmosphere around her. Once you fall for it, you can’t get out of it… But she was crazy.”

In the last sentence of the grandmother describing Hye-ryeong, Minju felt a little relieved.

“How was she crazy?”

“I don’t know, but she was very loud and strange. Because of her, I couldn’t sleep at night, so I had to take sleeping pills.”

“Is she not here now?”

“Yes, one night she… bit her tongue, saying that she would leave this place on her own.”

“Did she… die?”

“Well… Even if she survived, she was already dead.”

“What does that mean?”

“Everyone here lives waiting for their death day by day. I’m sure she did, too. We’re all stuck here. Our guardians put us in here. A nursing hospital? No, this is a prison that you can only leave if you die.”

“What was her name?”

“Seo Hye-ryeong. It’s this room.”

Minju stopped the grandmother’s wheelchair in front of the room where Hye-ryeong stayed.

“No one has tried to enter this room since that night. Some old people say they can hear a cello playing here every night.”

Minju entered the empty room.

Rather than a hospital room, it was like a well-decorated room in a boutique hotel. The clean and well-organized bed and the dust-free window frame did not look like an ownerless, deserted room.

It seemed that at any moment, Hye-ryeong would open the door and ask who entered her room without permission.

Minju went to the window. The sky from the room with a nice view was red as if it had been sprinkled with blood.

At the end of the day, what was Hye-ryeong thinking standing by the window? Why did she want to break up with Sang-yeon? Where was she and what was she doing now?

Minju was now at a point where she had to know every little thing about Hye-ryeong to be satisfied. The obsessive curiosity amplified in an instant and made Minju a little crazy.

She started searching the room. She took off the cover in front of the closet, searched the locker, and even looked under the pillow, but it was almost impossible to find traces of Hye-ryeong in a perfectly cleaned room that was ready to welcome a new patient.

Finally, she pulled the drawer handle of the narrow table next to the bed. Huh? The drawer did not open.

It did not seemed to be locked. It was clear that something was hanging between the upper and lower drawers.

Minju pulled the handle once again as hard as she could. It was only then that the drawer opened, as if what was hanging had slipped back.

She reached out her hand and felt the wall behind the drawer. There was definitely something.

After several attempts, what Minju had in her hand was none other than a sheet music.

It was Arnold Schoenberg’s string sextet, ‘Verklärte Nacht’ (Transfigured Night).

Minju sat on the bed and read the sheet music. It was a song full of bizarre and shady energy.

Minju inhaled the unique smell of the hospital, combining an appropriate amount of alcohol, antibiotics, urine, and sweat.

When the smell, which reminded her every moment that death was not far away, took over her soul with Schoenberg’s fanatical melody, Minju felt with her whole body that she was completely going crazy.

Suddenly, a tremendous fear came over.

She had to get out of here. She had to run away from here quickly.

Minju jumped up from her seat and came out of the hospital room. However, it was hard to tell where she was, as if she was trapped in a maze.

Her legs became weak, her focus became blurred, and her pulse became faster.

She was overwhelmed by the fear of suffocating, and could not take a step forward.

She stood in the hallway of the hospital with her body folded in half and exhaled deeply. Cold sweat flowed down her spine.

“Are you okay?”

The doctor who was going around asked in a kind voice, and at that moment, Minju lost her consciousness and collapsed.

How much time passed? Minju opened her eyes. Unlike before, she felt calm and refreshed as if everything had returned to normal.

“Are you awake? Come here and have a cup of tea.”

The place where Minju woke up was the clinic of Dr. Kim Myeong-hoon, the director of the hospital.

The thick carpet on the floor and the curtain-covered window were telling her that this was not a common medical room.

Minju, who was lying on a recliner, slowly got up and moved to the sofa where Dr. Kim was sitting.

Dr. Kim, who was wearing a white gown, had a warm and trustworthy impression.

Dr. Kim deliberately poured herbal tea into a teacup without making eye contact with Minju in case she was uncomfortable.

“It’s lemon myrtle. There’s no caffeine in it.”

When he saw that Minju was wary and was not drinking the tea, he took a sip first.

“Do you usually get this nervous?”

“…”

“You had hyperventilation and fainted for a while earlier. I guess you’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

“…”

“Oh, I’m Kim Myeong-hoon, a neuropsychiatric doctor.”

“I’ll get going now. Thank you.”

“Panic disorder is a disease that requires treatment. Get your medicine on your way out.”

Minju left Dr. Kim’s clinic. She ran straight to the parking lot, ignoring the kind nurse who was handing her the medicine that he had prepared in advance.

I don’t believe I have a panic disorder. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s nothing, really…

Even though she muttered all kinds of negative words in her head, Minju was scared.

But what if I’m really sick? No, that can’t be true. It can’t be.

Just a few hours after thinking that it was fortunate that Hye-ryeong was not normal, the diagnosis that Minju received felt like a prank from God.

In a hurry, Minju started the car. The time had been delayed much more than expected, but she could not go back home immediately. This was because she needed a place to hide Hye-ryeong’s bag.

Dr. Kim stood by the window of his clinic located on the top floor of the building and looked down for a very long time as Minju’s car left the hospital.

***

What Sang-yeon had said about coming home late was not a lie.

In the practice room of the Philharmonic Orchestra, the practice for the recording of the album that would be coming soon was going on indefinitely.

A black turtleneck knitwear just below the chin suited particularly well Sang-yeon’s long neck, with a bloodless pale face showing off his unique charisma. His sharp eyes and nervous delicate gestures were enough to hold and shake the members.

No one but the performers and members could enter the practice room, but there was a secret space where someone could sneak a peek, and that was the instrument storage room just above the practice room.

In a place with a low and dark ceiling like an attic where repairs were needed, neglected cymbals, small drums, large drums, and timpani were scattered on the shelf, and one wall had a small crack, allowing one to look at the practice room downstairs.

President Seo often came here alone to appreciate the performances.

She was like intoxicated when she was looking at Park Sang-yeon, the most perfect creature she had discovered and raised.

The relationship between the two went back 20 years.

At that time, Ji-hee, the youngest Asian general manager of Columbia Artist Management Company (CAMI), visited her home country, South Korea, to recruit new artists.

And she first met Sang-yeon, who was 17 years old at that time, at a piano competition. Sang-yeon was a dropout who failed to win the competition.

There were no parents who came to cheer him, and he had no performance uniform prepared for the stage. He just washed and ironed his school uniform and participated in the competition alone.

However, in Ji-hee’s eyes, there was only Sang-yeon. His techniques were a little lacking, but he had creative interpretation of the song and showed no signs of nervousness or intimidation at all. And most of all, he was handsome.

Perhaps at that moment, Ji-hee fell in love with him, who was 10 years younger than her.

At the time when everyone was anxious to receive her business card, Ji-hee eventually talked to a 17-year-old boy who did not even know who she was.

“Aren’t you hungry? If you have time, do you want to eat with me? What do you like?”

“Are you going to buy me something expensive? I want to eat meat.”

“Okay, let’s go eat beef.”

Sang-yeon never begged. He always told what he wanted shamelessly, but he had a natural dignity that was never ugly.

In the classical industry, where ‘genius’ and ‘star’ were not always synonyms, Sang-yeon had grown into an artist who fitted both modifiers well.

Ji-hee transformed Sang-yeon, who looked younger than her age, into a 15-year-old boy, and exactly three years after the two joined hands, Sang-yeon became the only asian pianist to win all three major competitions in the world, Chopin, Queen Elizabeth, and Tchaikovsky.

And in the meantime, what she did was no different from making Sang-yeon a boy to a man.

Perhaps it was only natural that the two people who shared both private and public lives became indispensable beings in each other’s lives.

Seo Ji-hee was the only being in the world who could take care of Sang-yeon and accept everything about his tricky and sensitive personality.

Park Sang-yeon fully trusted and followed all Ji-hee’s plans and judgments.

The two were a perfect couple.

“Let’s get married.”

One day, Ji-hee suddenly said.

“Okay, but I’m not ready yet…”

“You don’t need to prepare anything. She has everything.”

“What do you mean she?”

“I found a woman that would suit you perfectly. A woman who is much younger, prettier, and a lot richer than me.”

Ji-hee introduced Sang-yeon, who was her soul mate, to another woman, Seo Hye-ryeong, without blinking an eye.

It was because of her extremely rational judgment that it would be much more beneficial for Sang-yeon to become an artist who maintained a greater reputation for a longer time with the full support of the wealthy upper class.

Sang-yeon was hurt by Ji-hee’s matchmaking, but he married Hye-ryeong quickly.

Of course, thanks to that, Ji-hee was able to establish a new company independently from CAMI with the help of Hye-ryeong’s family.

Ji-hee, who believed that the couple could divorce later and become strangers, and that Sang-yeon could never abandon her, despaired at his 180-degree change after marriage.

Nevertheless, she still secretly looked at Sang-yeon here and thought.

‘I’m the one who put you there, and I’m the one who can get you out. You can never, ever leave me. Because I made you.’

Ji-hee did not stop her obsession from running wild. She just thought of it as her natural right.

“President, you’re here”.

As if her hidden desire had been discovered, President Seo looked back in surprise.