Chapter Four: An Old Friend of Hers

In Emma’s ears echoed the sound of a child singing ‘Three Bears’, her voice was as clear as a bell, nevertheless she would still love to hear that voice singing in the mind’s eyes of hers, the innocent laughter that would still be echoing both inside her head and her heart. She was then awakening by the buffeting caused from the braking. She was in Woo Bin’s car. Ah, she remembered she was the one who initiatively asked him to bring her to Min Hee’s house. For that matter, Emma, she had not been there for such a long time. Five years, yes, she had not been there for five years. And that was her first after those five years.

“So, should I call you Emma or Min Hee because I’m very confused now,” Woo Bin started, breaking the tension that they had in his car. “I preferred Emma more.”

“Is that so?” he said, after the lights became green, he drove his car, heading to Kang’s residence, “well, I’ll get used to it right now... Emma. Oh, right, aunty, had she known that you are coming back from France? Ah, what was I thinking? Of course, you had told her, she’s your mother after all.”

Wrong. Emma hadn’t told Aunty Kang yet. She didn’t think of going there on the first place, however since she had moved her first pawn, she had nothing to do unless play with the game that she had just started. “No,” she answered him, “I was thinking of surprising her, actually.”

“Well, not bad at all, I bet Aunty Kang would be very surprise for your presence.” Yeah, she would. Emma wished that she could say that. Min Hee’s mother was actually blind because of a car accident and she nearly couldn’t recognize who Min Hee was since Min Hee, herself, had died because of that terrible accident. Deep inside her heart, she felt guilty of taking Min Hee involved in her ‘revenge’ actions—however it was her only way to approach Woo Bin. It was the only way.

Woo Bin seemed to have known Min Hee’s address for a long time, somehow Emma caught in something through his actions in a flash of a break in her head. “How could you know where my mom’s address is? Do you often stalk me?”

He smirked. “Well, to be honest, yes, because of the game we played, I often felt guilty about it, so one time I went to your house and it seemed that nobody was there and the last time I went there was when you moved out from our school, and your mom said you wasn’t there, you went to somewhere, some place far.” Min Hee had actually gone to a place really, really far away, Emma fell silent, while Woo Bin continued, “And by the way, you haven’t told me the reason why you moved out in the fifth grade?”

“I think you have heard the fact that I moved to France when I was twelve, so that was the reason why I moved out from school.”

“Ah, is that so?” Woo Bin turned the steering-wheel. The conversations between them ended there as they had arrived at the Kang’s residence. On the moment, Emma went out from Woo Bin’s car, she scrutinized the whole area. Nothing had changed, not even the yard. As if she could hear someone’s calling her name, she turned and faced to the big old mansion—the place where Min Hee spent her childhood there, the place where Aunty Kang lived for decades, the old full of memories mansion.

“Hey,” Woo Bin touched her shoulders as he called her, “what are you thinking about? Won’t you lead me to your house?”

Emma swallowed her saliva. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Everything is going to be alright. That was right, she would be alright and everything would be alright, too. She got on her nerves. She smiled. “Of course, but first we needed to act as if we are strangers to my mother.”

“Well, it sounded fine for me.”

They went on and walked to the big mansion’s entrance which was hemmed in with bronze-colored fences. Emma pressed the bell-button, which on the left-side near the fences, then suddenly there was a voice came out from a small box, at first it sounded a bit raspy because of some noisy buzz sound, “Yes, this is Kang’s residence. With whom am I speaking to?”

“Ah, Ms. Lee, it’s me, Min Hee, I had just came back from France.”

“Oh, agassi,” the woman’s voice from the box abruptly said, it was far clearer than before, “Do you need me to call Madame?”

“No, you don’t need to—I will meet her, myself, could you please open the door?”