[Chapter 2] Perfect Life~
He was at the airport by noon.
Terminal 2E of Charles de Gaulle had the particular energy of a place where emotions ran close to the surface — reunions and departures happening simultaneously, joy and grief sharing the same tiled floor.
Juno stood beyond the arrivals barrier with his hands in his coat pockets, watching the sliding doors open and close, open and close.
He had cleaned the apartment that morning. Properly cleaned it, not the surface tidying he usually managed. He had bought groceries. Ara's favorite yogurt pouches. Minjun's cereal.
Flowers for the kitchen table because Soo-yeon liked flowers even though she never asked for them.
He had stood in the flower shop for ten minutes trying to remember what her favorite was.
He settled on white peonies and hoped for the best.
The doors slid open and he saw Minjun first — the boy was tallest, moving with that particular eight year old energy that was somehow simultaneously urgent and directionless. He was pulling a small rolling suitcase and scanning the arrivals hall with serious eyes until they landed on Juno and his whole face cracked open into a grin.
"Appa!!"
Juno crouched just in time to catch him, the boy colliding into his chest with full force, arms wrapping tight around his neck. He smelled like the airplane and the particular shampoo Soo-yeon had been buying since Minjun was three.
"Hey." Juno held him tight. "Hey. Look at you. You got taller."
"Eomma said the same thing." Minjun pulled back, already composing himself back into dignity. "How's your shoulder?"
"Better."
"Good." The boy nodded seriously.
"You should be more careful on site."
"I know. You're right."
Then Ara hit him like a small warm hurricane, no warning, no preamble, just suddenly she was there and her arms were around his neck and she was saying Appa Appa Appa like it was the only word she knew and Juno laughed — really laughed — pressing his face into her curls and holding her small warm weight against him.
"I missed you so much baby."
"I missed you MORE." She pulled back to look at him with enormous gravity.
"Appa you need to come home. My fish keeps looking sad."
"Your fish?"
"The one Minjun drew on my wall." She whispered it conspiratorially. "With Eomma's marker."
Juno looked up at Minjun over her head. The boy was suddenly very interested in the arrivals board.
He was still smiling when he straightened up and finally looked at his wife.
Soo-yeon stood a few feet back, giving him space with the kids the way she always did. She was dressed simply — dark coat, hair pulled back, small rolling suitcase at her side. She looked exactly like herself. Exactly as he knew she would look.
And yet.
For just a fraction of a second — just the smallest, most disorienting sliver of a moment — she looked like someone he was meeting for the first time.
Like a beautifully familiar stranger. Like a photograph of a person rather than the person themselves.
It was gone before he could examine it.
He crossed to her and kissed her cheek and she leaned into him briefly, her hand pressing flat against his chest for just a moment.
"You look tired." She said quietly.
"I'm fine." He took her suitcase handle
from her. "Come on. Car's outside."
The apartment felt different with them in it. Fuller. Louder. Ara immediately claimed the couch as her territory and arranged her small collection of travel toys across it with the systematic authority of a city planner.
Minjun walked through every room with his hands behind his back like a building inspector, nodding at things he approved of.
"It's smaller than our apartment in Seoul." He announced.
"Most things in Paris are smaller." Juno said.
"But the ceiling is higher."
"Good observation."
Minjun looked pleased.
Soo-yeon moved through the space quietly, touching things lightly. The kitchen counter. The window ledge. The white peonies on the table. She paused at those.
"Peonies." She said.
"Yes."
She looked at them for a moment. "You remembered."
He hadn't. But he smiled anyway.
They spent Tuesday simply. A walk along the Seine in the afternoon, Ara on Juno's shoulders demanding to be taller than everything, Minjun asking architectural questions about every bridge they crossed with an intensity that made Juno quietly proud.
They ate at a small restaurant near the apartment where the waiter charmed Ara completely by bringing her bread in the shape of a duck.
It felt like a family. It looked like a family.
Juno watched Soo-yeon laugh at something Minjun said across the table and thought — this is good. This is right. This is what I have.
He believed it almost completely.
That night after the children were asleep Soo-yeon changed into her nightclothes and Juno turned off the lights and they lay in the dark the way married people do, the familiar geography of each other close but not quite touching.
He was aware of her. Of course he was. Nine years of marriage meant his body knew hers in the way hands know a familiar tool — the weight of it, the shape, the specific warmth.
He turned toward her.
She turned toward him at the same moment and they both giggled at the synchronicity of it, the awkward sweet collision.
He kissed her. She kissed him back. Her hands were in his hair the way they used to be and for a moment it felt like it could—
"Appa—"
The small voice from the doorway stopped everything.
Ara stood there in her pajamas, one eye closed against the light from the hallway, her stuffed rabbit dangling from one hand.
"I can't sleep." She announced. "The cars are too loud."
Juno dropped his forehead against Soo-yeon's shoulder. He felt her silent laugh more than heard it.
"Come here baby." Soo-yeon said softly.
And just like that Ara was between them, asleep within minutes, her small body radiating heat like a tiny furnace, one foot somehow in Juno's ribs.
He lay in the dark staring at the ceiling.
Outside Paris hummed on.