Mental
Mr. Cheong did find his wife’s behavior strange and – frankly speaking – frightening. However, it was still difficult for him to believe that “she might genuinely be going soft in the head.” He remembered her as an ordinary woman who used to behave reasonably, so he decided to wait a little bit longer and see what was going to happen next. (Metaphor)
To recollect
Mr. Cheong spent a lot of time thinking about his wife strange behavior and every time he did it “her incongruously firm voice, surfaced in my mind.” The only one explanation she offered was some nonsense about her having a bad dream and – ironically enough – this explanation didn’t make the situation any clearer. (Metaphor)
A secret meaning
When Mr. Cheong “was a young man barely out of adolescence” and his was dating his future wife, he had happened to put his hand on her back and only to find out that he couldn’t feel a bra strap. Then he spent a minute or two “looking at her through new eyes.” He tried to figure out, whether the absence of the bra was a certain kind of a sigh for him. (Metaphor)
Bloodless
After the incident with wrist cutting, Yeong-hye was hospitalized. The woman was clearly exhausted, her face “was practically bloodless, almost as white as milk.” She looked as if she was dead. (Simile)
Determined
Mr. Cheong was convinced that his wife would come to her senses sooner or later and start eating meat in a week or two. However, Yeong-hye “was as good as her word.” Even he admitted that he had “never saw a single piece of meat pass her lips.”
A fancy place
The restaurant Mr. Cheong’s boss chose was genuinely fancy. It was clear that working-class people couldn’t afford a dinner there. There was even “an ornate ceiling, which was as elaborately decorated as the eaves of a traditional building.”
