慈禧太后的秘密

She opened the door to the veranda. Looking around, she saw her laundry basket full of clothes. She separated them by color and put them in the washing machine. The old washing machine started operating with a clunk.

She tied up her hair above her head and took out some baggy clothes to wear. She had to go to war with some old grime and dirt from the corners of her house. While she was not a clean freak, this place was so terrible that she couldn’t bear to watch. She was even disappointed in her former self. While not as thorough as Maru, she put in the effort to clean the places she could reach and see.

Just then, she heard the washing machine asking for fabric softener.

Maybe it was because of all her efforts, but her house became a lot better than before. She did work hard until she was sweating, so she expected this much. She turned the AC on and went to the bathroom.

While showering, she found a tattoo behind her flank. She remembered the moment she saw it. It was a tattoo she got due to peer pressure when she went traveling with her friends. The tattoo, shaped like a Mobius strip, represented eternal friendship.

She chuckled. Actually, the former her disliked tattoos. Not only was she afraid, she felt repelled by drawing a symbol on her body that could not be erased later. However, she couldn’t say no when everyone else was leaning towards doing it. The results of that were left on her body.

She rubbed the protruding skin. Her former self might have disliked it, but the current her liked it, so it did not matter. She also had a small tattoo on her shoulder when she was an actress, and she frequently had hennas.

After wiping her body, she had lunch. For lunch, she had milk, which was two days past its expiry date, and some cereal, as well as some yogurt in a large container, which she felt she would never finish.

The food inside her fridge was just as frustrating as her dirty house. It seemed that she had bought various things to go on a diet, but the composition of those foods was hard to accept as a housewife. It was no wonder that she felt powerless when she woke up in the morning. Her dogma was that eating proper food was the best.

She probed her memories. She would very often throw away the side dishes that her mother made for her, and she rarely cooked for herself. Her main source of nutrition was dairy, and even then, she rarely ate it. On the contrary, she really liked starchy food, and she would control her calories by starving the next day if she ate high-calorie foods at night.

She stopped thinking. She felt like she would have a headache if she kept thinking. She emptied her plate first and took out the yogurt from the fridge. As it was cheap, there were three whole containers. She would never finish them before they went bad.

She knocked on her neighbor’s door with the yogurt. “Hello, I’m your neighbor. I have something to give you.”

A moment later, the door opened. Her neighbor was someone she would awkwardly greet if they made eye contact, but otherwise, they would pretend not to know each other at all. It seemed that her neighbor never imagined that she would knock on her door, as the housewife who opened the door kept blinking in surprise.

“Hello?” Haneul greeted first.

“Oh, hello.”

“You see, I bought a little too much yogurt on my last grocery shopping trip. It’s too much for me to eat by myself, so I was wondering if you would like some. There’s a bit until the expiry date, so you can put it in the fridge.” She handed the dumbfounded woman the yogurt container. “Or do you perhaps not like things like these?”

“Oh no. We’d love it. My child likes it too.”

“That’s a relief.”

The woman who stood in a daze after receiving the container told her to wait for a moment before going inside.

Haneul waited with a smile. She could feel the ‘affection between neighborhood wives’ vibe from this exchange.

“We made this fresh kimchi last night, and you should have some.”

“Oh my, these cabbages look so pretty. I really like them. These are spring cabbages, right?” She took out a piece of fresh kimchi from the plastic container and put it in her mouth. It was plain and not too salty, perfect for the dining table.

“You’re really a good cook.”

“You flatter me.”

“I think you can run a shop with this alone.”

“Well, I do hear that I’m pretty good at cooking.”

They laughed together for a while. Haneul looked at the woman and spoke cautiously, “I’ve been too cold until now despite being neighbors, wasn’t I? It looks like I was too focused on myself because I lived alone. We live in the same building, so I should have greeted you at least.”

“Oh, don’t mention it. These days, everyone lives like you, miss. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who has a close relationship with their neighbors.”

“And so, if it’s okay with you, can I call you unni? I was feeling bored because I didn’t find anyone I could prattle with.”

“You know a word like prattle? I told my daughter about it, and none of her friends seem to know.”

“My mother’s from the south. So I know.”

“I see. My hometown’s in the south too.”

“Ooh. Then… can I call you unni?”

The housewife tilted her head before slapping her shoulder and speaking, “Right, right! I actually didn’t like that we were so awkward too. We met a lot of times, but you always avoided my eyes.”

“Yeah, I did. It’s much better now that we’re talking to each other like this.”

“Right, right. Oh, you are in college, right?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like I’ve misunderstood you until now. You looked really shy and you seemed like you would run away if I talked to you, so it was quite awkward. But now that we’re talking, you’re actually really nice.”

“Looks like I was a little on the edge because I started living by myself after living with my parents.”

“That can happen. It’s not easy living alone. Oh, look at me. Why don’t you come inside and have coffee with me?”

“You’re offering? I’d love to.”

Haneul returned to her house first and placed the fresh kimchi container in the fridge. Then, she picked up a packet of snacks on the table and went back to her neighbor’s house.

“You shouldn’t have brought that. You should eat that when you’re by yourself.”

“Snacks are a must for coffee.”

“You’re actually very bold. Looks like I was wrong about the shy girl image.”

“I can be bold at times.”

After conversing for about thirty minutes, she went back to her house. She was glad that she could get along with her neighbor. They even made an appointment to eat lunch together in the cheonggukjang restaurant near the market.

She opened the washing machine, which had finished spin-drying, and hung the laundry to dry. Whether it was her house or the people around her, she was planning to change them all starting with the trivial things.

If she toppled the things that formed her former self, everything would probably return to its place.

“Yeah, mom. Yeah, I had food. How about you? Oh, you had doenjang-jjigae. I was just talking to the unni next door and I’m finishing up some cleaning. She’s a good person, so don’t worry. Rather than that, I’ll go visit you on the weekend. Why, you ask? Of course, to steal food. I’ll snatch some side dishes, okay? Oh, the one you gave me last time? I finished them all already. Your cooking skills are great after all.”

Her mother, who was rather taken aback, hung up after saying that they should see each other over the weekend. She seemed rather weirded out by the fact that her daughter was acting friendlier than usual.

Haneul’s lips twitched. She was so good at smiling in front of her friends, so she couldn’t understand why she was always so annoyed in front of her mother. It was time to show her that the immature daughter had graduated.

She placed a yoga mat on the floor and lay down. It was time to organize her thoughts. Her memories were like pieces of a puzzle, so unless she actively put them in the right places, it was hard to see their meaning.

First up, she recalled the people close to her. There were no major problems with her family. While she was a grumpy kid, she never got into big trouble. In the first place, her former self was not bold enough to cause any accidents. She was extremely conscious of those around her. Heck, maybe it was fortunate that she was able to get annoyed in front of her family. If she couldn’t even do that, she might be on antidepressants already.

As for her boyfriend, that was sorted out, so she just skipped past it.

What remained were her friends. This was unexpectedly a big deal. Well, she did get along with them, but her position among them was someone who went with whatever the others said. She was well-rounded, so she could join the group without much trouble.

The problem was that she couldn’t say no. One consequence of that was the tattoo. She was a ‘yes girl’ who always accepted what others said.

Quarreling, fighting, and checking what lines they shouldn’t cross is one of the processes of becoming friends, but the past her just nodded continuously until she was absorbed into the group without being able to show them what region of her they could not intrude.

She picked up her phone. She checked the group chat with all of her friends in it. Among the trivial conversations were things that caught her eyes:

-I think Haneul can do that.

-Haneul’s good at that.

-Right, Haneul?

She flicked through the chat and had a look at chat logs in the past. She saw a conversation she had with her friends when they went traveling two weeks ago on the weekend. Not to mention buying tickets for the train and lodging, she also investigated what places they could look around and where they should go sightseeing. That was what always happened.

Of course, it wasn’t like that from the beginning. It was just the constant “I’ll do it”s and the lack of “I don’t want to” that put her in this state.

Haneul looked back at the things that happened. Before she became a ‘yes girl’, some of her friends asked worriedly: are you okay? Are you not pushing yourself? Are you sure you want to do it?

She wasn’t brave enough to reply honestly to those questions. Ultimately, doing things for others became momentum, and as someone who wasn’t forceful enough to escape the law of momentum, she just gave up. She was dragged around and put to a stop whenever others pushed her.

“I guess that makes it easy in some sense.”

Haneul put down her phone. Her relationships would fall apart if she suddenly changed her attitude. That wasn’t something she wanted. Just because all of her memories had returned didn’t mean that her current friends would become strangers. She just now had things that were much more important, but she still wanted to cherish the friendship that continued from high school.

She had to approach this carefully, like climbing the stairs one step at a time. The ones who cherish Han Haneul would understand her change and welcome it, and if they just treated her as some gullible girl until now, she could deal with them all at once, so it wasn’t that bad.

What she realized in her numerous lives was that it was very hard to create or meet a close friend that lasted a long time. If her friends whom she had known for years turned out to be treating her like a tool, then it would be better for both parties to take separate paths.

She lightly stretched her body and finished her thoughts. The habits she made as an actress in the previous life still remained in her. Dazing out was good, but stimulating her muscles in her spare time was much more comfortable for her.

Just as she calmed down her breathing and was about to call Maru, the name of her ex-boyfriend appeared on her phone. Maybe he was trying to say what he wasn’t able to say yesterday? She picked up the call while calming down the sense of pity in her heart.

-Let’s meet right now.

“Right now?”

-Is now not a good time?

“No, it’s okay. I don’t have a shift today.”

-I’ll wait for you in front of the cinema. The one we always went to.

“Alright.” She took her phone off her ear. She put on her clothes and then sent a message to Maru as she went out. She didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings, so she told him everything.

-I’ll go as well.

She was about to tell him to not, but then just told him to come. If she was in his shoes, she would’ve said the same. Not because she didn’t trust him, but because she was worried about him. Maru was probably worried because she told him that the boy had impulsive tendencies.

She put on her shoes and left her house.