Reason for Marriage - Chapter 9

“Minju-ssi?”

“This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“You don’t mean it’s a nightmare, do you?”

No way. A prince on a white horse saved her in ragged clothes. That dream could not be a nightmare. It was just that she could not believe it…

“Eat something and rest. I’ll be home early. I’m hanging up.”

Holding the phone tightly in her hands after the call ended, Minju breathed out several times not to get excited. Then, she got up from the bed and ran down to the living room on the first floor.

She put her hands between the sofa’s seat and the backrest, stirred around, and looked around the empty living room for some reason.

In fact, last night Minju had the key to her apartment.

When she got out of Sang-yeon’s car, which was filled with a refreshing smell, and stood in front of the rooftop room where the quaint smell of the sewer came up, Minju thought. She fiddled with the key inside her coat pocket that was not in her lost bag…

God, if there’s any luck left in my life, I’ll use it all tonight. Please have pity on me and close your eyes just once.

Minju came down the dark stairs and ran to Sang-yeon.

“Conductor-nim! Can I… borrow 50,000 won? I can’t enter my house because I don’t have the key.”

In a cute way, Minju lied and achieved her desired purpose.

When she opened her eyes, her rent problem was solved and she had a new cell phone. Besides, Jerry was at Sang-yeon’s house. It was an overly fast development in which what she wanted was accomplished like a lie.

Minju thought, throwing the key of her rooftop room, which had been hidden on the sofa, into the toilet and flushing water without hesitation.

Even if God did not overlook it, she could lie a hundred or a thousand times more to have Sang-yeon.

Along with the key, Minju’s small conscience disappeared into the toilet.

The bathroom, which was much larger than her rooftop room, had a bathtub large enough for three adults.

In order to fill such a large bathtub with water, the water bill would be very high, but she laughed, thinking that people who used such a large bathtub would not worry about the water bill.

The bathtub was overflowing with hot water, and she laid herself down after putting in it a lot of fragrant bath bombs from an unknown country. Sweat formed on her forehead, and the muscles that had been sore were getting drowsy, and it felt like her body and mind had softened a little.

Listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, which was flowing from well-equipped audio and speakers instead of her cell phone, Minju seemed to have become a noble in the 17th century Europe and Baroque era.

She opened the door of the refrigerator with her wet hair and a shower gown. It was the perfect timing to think of a can of beer.

Drinks, sauces, cheeses, processed meat products from brands that she had never seen before, fresh fish, bright red meat, and green vegetables fresh from the field were all marked with eco-friendly organic marks.

The refrigerator filled with healthy food ingredients seemed to have been taken directly from a commercial, making it awkward that it was not Jun Ji-hyun or Kim Hee-ae standing next to the refrigerator.[1]

“Let’s see… Huh?! There’s no beer. How come there’s no beer in a man’s house?”

Minju picked out the prettiest drink out of the countless drinks with her eyes full of curiosity.

“What is it? Why is this so good?”

Minju’s eyes were wide open to a completely new taste that she had never tried before in her life.

Minju was not the only one experiencing a new world with a totally new taste on the tip of her tongue. Jerry was also eating high-end feed carefully prepared by Sang-yeon at an incredible rate.

“Jerry, I thought you were a picky eater, but you weren’t. You’re a gourmet, even a glutton. Baby, I know it’s expensive. Eat a lot. When are we going to eat something like this again?”

Minju went out to look around the house with a bag full of snacks in her hand. The next place to go through the bathroom and kitchen was the women’s dream: the dressing room.

Dozens of pairs of shoes, sneakers, soft clothes worn for performances, bow ties and watch collections that cross luxury and vintage with slightly different designs, glasses, sunglasses, and shirts were neatly arranged by color.

Minju tried to understand Sang-yeon’s taste by carefully opening the closet and drawers one by one. And she dreamed that the unfilled empty space would become her territory.

The next room she opened was a space for exercise where one wall was all mirrors.

There were all the exercise equipment in the pictures posted by women on Instagram that they used in order to wear tight leggings and show off their flexibility and body shape. It was a room equipped with Pilates reformers, barrel, mats, balls, medical physical therapy devices and massage chairs.

Due to the nature of Sang-yeon’s job, which required him to continue to raise his arms for hours, health care was essential because it could put a lot of strain on his neck and shoulders. But wasn’t Pilates mostly done by women rather than men?

She was trying to close the door, letting her useless curiosity behind her, but she suddenly found some strange holes in the ceiling. It was a flaw that did not suit the perfect Sang-yeon’s house.

The house was so big that it was not easy to look around. Minju opened a new bag of snacks, thinking that the reason why rich people could be slim while eating such delicious food may be because they moved so much inside their house.

No matter how much she ate, she did not think she would gain weight. Minju was constantly eating food like she had a perforated stomach, but it was more like filling her desire than filling her stomach.

Minju felt incredibly good with the crispy sound filling her mouth, kept chewing and went into the laundry room this time.

There was nothing special about the washing machine, dryer and detergents.

She thought she would go out after a quick look, but Minju came back in to see if there was anything she had forgotten and opened the basket with the laundry.

As if to find traces of a woman who might have been there, she took out clothes one by one and sniffed them. Fortunately, there was no smell of a strange woman.

Minju put her nose in the clothes that had Sang-yeon’s body odor and took a deep breath. The smell of his sweat, saliva and flesh that she had tasted last night were all tangled up and dug deep into her nose.

Although she was not confident that she could turn red again with just that slight smell, Minju decided to fully enjoy the moment.

“Wow! There’s a treasure trove here.”

She exclaimed, while opening the door to the next room.

As she passed Sang-yeon’s awards and trophies, which were displayed on both sides of the entrance, music sheets filled the room. The arrangement of composers in alphabetical order reminded her of a library.

Once she got her hands on them, she pulled out any sheet music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K.626. When she searched for the famous ‘Lacrimosa’ among them, she noticed a note written at the corner of the sheet. It was definitely a woman’s handwriting.

If I had a wish, it would be to die before you.
So that I can hear the requiem you will play for me in heaven.
I love you to death!
From HR.

It was exactly what she had been looking for.

Was it the price of peeking at something she should not have seen? A terrible jealousy flowed through her and made her want to pull her hair as hard as she could.

What was it like to love to death? Minju was suddenly scared, wondering if this memo, which had no date written on it, belonged to a current lover.

“What are you looking at so hard?”

The owner is back! I’m sure I didn’t hear anything…

Minju’s face turned blue as if she had seen a ghost.

“When… when did you get here? I was just looking around. By the way, where is Schubert’s Symphony No. 4? I can’t find it no matter how hard I try.”

Minju hurriedly put the sheet music in place and looked elsewhere.

“It’s not here.”

“Well, what about Mahler’s Symphony No. 6?”

“I don’t have it either. Why are you only looking for the songs I’ve played?”

“I’ve always wondered what the conductor’s sheet music says.”

“I throw away the scores of the songs I played.”

“Why?”

“It’s all here.”

Sang-yeon said while pointing his finger at his temple.

“I don’t know if I can say this, but you’re really cool and you’re really not materialistic.”

Sang-yeon smirked at Minju’s honesty and took out a sheet music.

“Don’t you want to know more about the songs I’m going to play in the future rather than the ones I’ve played before?”

“It’s Schumann.”[2]

“You know Schumann was mentally ill, right?”

Minju nodded as if she knew it roughly, fearing that her ignorance would disappoint Sang-yeon.

“This violin concerto in D minor came to the world 80 years after it was composed. Joseph Joachim, who requested this song, kept the sheet music hidden.”[3]

Sang-yeon said, stroking the sheet music with his palm.

“Why?”

“He thought Schumann wrote this song when he was too crazy. Well, that’s not wrong. Schumann wrote it when he was suffering from tinnitus and hearing hallucinations.”

Minju shrank slightly at the word ‘tinnitus’.

Sang-yeon approached Minju’s ear and hummed the melody of the second movement and whispered in a low voice.

“This is what Schumann said. The dead Schubert and the dead Mendelssohn sing the music.”

For a moment, goosebumps appeared on Minju’s arms. She turned her eyes slowly and looked sideways at Sang-yeon, who was standing next to her.

“It must have been very difficult for his wife Clara.”

“Maybe? You never know when you might get hurt. I’ve said that a lot.”

Just then, boom! They heard a sound.

When Minju looked back, surprised, it was already over.

Sang-yeon’s trophy had plummeted to the floor. On the shelf of the cabinet where the trophy used to be, Jerry, Minju’s cat, was sitting dignifiedly.

“Jerry-ya?!!”

Minju’s voice calling Jerry was fierce.

Jerry, who intentionally caused an accident because he felt Sang-yeon threatened his owner, looked in the distance in bewilderment at the criticism returned instead of praise.

When Minju ran and picked up the broken trophy, Sang-yeon blocked her.

“Don’t touch anything.”

Surprised by Sang-yeon’s strong tone, Minju stepped back.

“I’ll clean it up, so just stay where you are.”

She was so embarrassed that she could not even say a word of apology, and she just stood there waiting for Sang-yeon in an awkward posture, as if she were on thin ice that might break at any moment.

TL notes

[1] Jun Ji-hyun and Kim Hee-ae are both famous Korean actresses.

[2] Robert Schumann

[3] Joseph Joachim