Her face was blanched, a result of protracted insomnia. A stranger coming across her in the street would have assumed she was a hospital patient. A little earlier, pretty much as soon as we’d both come in through the front door, she’d been summoned to the master bedroom; after a while, my sister-in-law was the first to emerge, and judging from her baffled expression I guessed that my wife had come out without a bra. Sure enough, when I looked closely I could see her light-brown nipples showing through like smudges on the cotton.

“How much was the deposit here?”

“Really? We went to look at the real estate site yesterday; this apartment had already gone up to around fifty million won. Because next year they will have completed the underground line extension, you see.”

“My brother-in-law certainly has a good head for this kind of thing.”

“What did I do? It was all down to my wife.”

While our polite, amiable conversation carried on in intermittent bursts, the children seemed unable to sit still, hitting each other and making an almighty racket, pausing only to stuff their mouths with food.

“Sister-in-law,” I asked, “did you prepare all this food yourself?”

She gave me a half smile.

“Well, I’ve been doing it bit by bit since the day before yesterday. And those, the seasoned oysters, I went to the market expressly to get because I know Yeong-hye likes them…and she hasn’t even touched them.”

I held my breath. Here it comes, I thought.

“Enough!” my father-in-law yelled. “You, Yeong-hye! After all I told you, your own father!”

This outburst was followed by In-hye’s roundly rebuking my wife. “Do you truly intend to go on like this? Human beings need certain nutrients…if you intend to follow a vegetarian diet you should sit down and draw up a proper, well-balanced meal plan. Just look at your face!”

So far my wife’s brother Yeong-ho was keeping his own counsel, so his wife decided to have her say instead. “When I saw her I thought she was a different person. I’d heard about it from my husband, but I never would have guessed that going vegetarian could damage your body like that.”

My mother-in-law brought in dishes of stir-fried beef, sweet and sour pork, steamed chicken, and octopus noodles, arranging them on the table in front of my wife.

“This whole vegetarian business stops right now,” she said. “This one, and this, and this—hurry up and eat them. How could you have got into this wretched state when there’s not a thing in the world you can’t eat?”

“Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, eat up,” my father-in-law boomed.

“You must eat, Yeong-hye,” In-hye admonished. “You’ll have more energy if you do. Everyone needs a certain amount of energy while they’re alive. Even priests who enter the temple don’t take their austerities too far—they might be celibate, but they’re still able to live active lives.”