Our Marriage Manual

Prologue: A Manual

Prologue

To whoever picked up this manual,

First of all, congratulations.

Whether you picked this up because you're about to get married, you're already married, or you simply thought the cover looked interesting, you've made an excellent decision. Mostly because you're about to spend the next hundred chapters listening to me, and I'd like to think I'm fairly entertaining. My wife disagrees, but she's legally obligated to tolerate me, so I believe my opinion carries slightly more weight.

Right, introductions.

My name is Silver Yu. I'm a high school teacher, a reasonably competent cook, and, according to twenty-four years of careful observation and an overwhelming amount of undeniable evidence, the most handsome man currently walking the Earth.

Before you start judging me, allow me to defend myself.

People hear that sentence and immediately assume I'm arrogant. That's the problem with society these days. Everyone is so quick to mistake confidence for narcissism. Let me ask you something. If I told you the sky was blue, would you call me arrogant? No. I'd simply be stating a fact. So when I say I'm devastatingly handsome, I'm merely acknowledging another equally undeniable fact. That's called honesty.

See?

We're already getting along.

Now then, let's move on to something a little more important than my face.

...Actually, no. That's impossible.

Let's move on to the second most important topic.

Marriage.

People have an odd habit of making marriage sound terrifying. They say it's difficult. That it demands endless patience, trust, communication, compromise, and understanding. Some even describe it as the beginning of your greatest challenge.

They're not wrong.

Marriage really is difficult.

Not because you stop loving each other.

It's because two completely different people suddenly decide to share one life.

One likes sleeping with the air conditioner on.

The other freezes to death.

One squeezes the toothpaste from the middle.

The other silently questions every decision that led to this moment.

One spends ten minutes complimenting himself in front of the mirror every morning.

...

We'll get back to that one.

"Silver."

Ah.

Speak of the angel.

I looked up from the notebook resting on my desk and found Sapphire Yoon standing by the bedroom door with her arms crossed. She wasn't glaring at me. My wife rarely wasted energy glaring. Instead, she possessed a calm, unreadable expression that somehow felt significantly more threatening. It was the kind of look that made me wonder whether she was mentally calculating prison sentences.

I'd like to believe I wasn't the reason she developed that expression.

The evidence, unfortunately, suggested otherwise.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm writing."

"I can see that."