Cursed Bunny(21)

The voice doesn’t answer.

Feeling rebuffed, she stops asking questions.

But after walking in silence for a moment, she can’t help asking again. “Where … where can we be, do you think?”

“Well …” The voice seems reluctant to answer.

She persists. “Teacher Choi’s house, where is it exactly? Is it close to here?”

“Well, the thing is, I don’t know either … I fell asleep as soon as we left …” The voice’s answer trails off.

She thinks a bit more.

She asks, “Do you happen to have a phone?”

The voice does not answer for a moment. Then, “A phone? No. Do you have one, Teacher Lee?”

“I don’t either.”

The voice asks, “Did you not look for it when you were searching for your ring?”

Sensing a shade of reproach, she answers, “There was nothing in the front seats … What about the back?”

“It was too dark to look. It could’ve flown out the window.” But the voice seems uncertain.

The conversation stops again.

She has no idea how long they’ve been walking since leaving the car behind. All around them, it is still complete darkness. No risen moon, no stars. How long do we have to wait until daybreak, she wonders.

“Where … where exactly are we going?” she tentatively asks.

The voice doesn’t answer.

She asks again. “Do you… do you even know where we’re headed?”

For a moment, the voice doesn’t speak. Then, instead of answering her question: “Teacher Choi, I feel sorry for her.”

“Excuse me?” She’s taken aback.

The thin voice mumbles as if it isn’t meant for her to hear. “So happy when she got married, like the whole world belonged to her, but then divorced within a year, quitting her job at the school …”

She waits. But the voice does not continue.

So she asks again. “Um … what are you talking about?”

The thin voice mumbles again. “It’s not her fault that her husband had an affair … Don’t you think it’s unfair? They say a teacher must always set an example, but she’s a woman, after all. A divorced woman, at that …”

“What are you talking about … Didn’t you just say Teacher Choi was a newlywed?”

The thin voice laughed a thin laugh. “I suppose she is, if it was only a year ago she got married—”

“But, just now, you said Teacher Choi just got married, we were at their housewarming party …”

“Oh Teacher Lee, you must’ve hit your head rather hard.” Patiently, the thin voice explains. “Teacher Choi got divorced, went alone down to the countryside, and we were visiting her in her new room, as both a housewarming and consolation…”

After a moment of silence, the thin voice starts mumbling again. “Living alone turned her into such a lush, all that drinking she did …”

She is flummoxed. “But, but—”

“You really don’t remember anything?” says the thin voice. Then, muttering, “Oh my goodness, we really ought to take you to the hospital, quick.”

The words make her shut her mouth.

There are no more words as they keep on walking.

She stares at the sky as she walks. It is so dark that she has no idea whether what she is looking at is, indeed, the sky. She thinks of how she has never known such a darkness before in her life. If she has indeed been in a car crash, that would mean she’d been on a road, but how can there not be a single streetlamp?

Where is she? And where is she walking to?

“Teacher Choi, such a shame …” The thin voice, walking in front of her, is speaking again.

She doesn’t answer.

“Her mother, she kept crying … She was so young, and to die so horrifically—”

Interrupting sharply, “What are you talking about?”

The thin voice sighs. “You saw it, too, Teacher Lee, at the funeral … Oh, right, you said you don’t remember.”

Hearing a mocking tone at the trailing end of the voice’s reply, she fiercely counters with, “Why are you talking about a funeral? You said it was a housewarming, earlier—”

“You really must have hit your head hard.” The thin voice tsk-tsked. “I understand if you like someone for a long time, but to kill yourself over a crush … So young at that, the poor family—”

“Didn’t you… didn’t you say Teacher Choi was married?” she says, forcing her trembling voice to sound firm. “That her husband had an affair, that she got divorced … Isn’t that what you said?”

The thin voice lets out a thin breath.

“Whew … What on earth are you going on about … You should know better by now.”

“But you said so earlier. You said it was Teacher Choi’s housewarming as a newlywed, then it was her room … You said she was married, then she was divorced …”

“Teacher Lee, you’re talking in circles. Does your head hurt a lot?”

She shuts her mouth.

“Teacher Choi … such a pathetic tale, don’t you think?” mumbles the thin voice after a pause. “Even with those rose-colored glasses of hers, you would think she’d seen how blatantly her man was getting it on with the teacher in the next class. The whole school knew about it, but she was really stubborn in her denial … Then when that other woman stole her man, she quit teaching and kicked up that whole fuss about killing herself …” The thin voice briefly pauses.