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8. Hidden Sincerity
In front of the outdoor pool attached to the villa, the blue sea stretched endlessly into the distance. The view was incomparable to that of the indoor pool, but Dowook was slightly disappointed. Swimming through waves that heaved as though alive would have been far more thrilling and enjoyable.
However, his father would not allow him to swim in the sea because it was dangerous. Dowook’s skills had already far surpassed those of children his age—so much so that people said he might even become a national swimming representative in the future—but his father had no idea. The ends of young Dowook’s eyebrows rose in a sullen pout.
The villa in Gangwon Province where they had come for their summer vacation was grand and splendid. The massive mansion felt even more desolate because only three people were staying there: Dowook, his stepmother, and Cheongyang-daek.
Because of his father’s busy schedule, they had decided to spend this vacation quietly in Korea rather than travel abroad. But even that plan had been disrupted by trouble with the new business his father had recently started, and he had to return to the company on the very first day of vacation. Judging from past experience, Dowook would probably not see his father’s face until the day they left Gangwon Province.
“How boring.”
Dowook grumbled softly before getting into the pool. Splash! Though his body was small, the sound of him plunging into the water was loud enough to fill the languid space.
Without realizing it, Dowook glanced toward the room that adjoined the pool. Its entire front wall was made of glass, and it was the room his parents used. Since his father was away, his stepmother was using it alone.
Dowook held his breath for a moment, afraid that his stepmother might open the door at any second, come out, and complain about the noise. He immediately frowned, displeased with his own behavior. Before she had come to live with them, he had never once worried about anyone’s mood.
He was deeply dissatisfied with how things had been changing little by little since his stepmother arrived. The adults in the household and his father repeatedly emphasized that she was pregnant and needed to take care of herself, so Dowook was especially warned not to cause trouble.
They demanded that a young child understand that there was nothing to be done even if she acted somewhat sensitive. But in Dowook’s experience, she had always been irritable and sensitive only toward him, even before becoming pregnant. She was cunning enough to wait until no one else in the household was around before tormenting him.
*Seriously, the story of a poor child walking on eggshells around his stepmother is so old-fashioned that even fairy tales these days wouldn’t use it.*
Dowook, famous for being stubborn and hot-tempered, was not the sort to simply endure it. Before she became pregnant, he had often retaliated with mischievous pranks, such as catching all kinds of disgusting bugs and releasing them in her room. But now even that was strictly forbidden.
The adults and his father had never witnessed his stepmother harassing Dowook. They only ever saw Dowook tormenting her. Thus, even then, Dowook had been reduced to a malicious, wicked child who bullied an innocent person for no reason.
Even knowing he was misunderstood, Dowook did not particularly care. After all, he was the one who carried the bloodline of this family. His stepmother, who had once been his father’s mistress, was an outsider who could be cast aside at any time if his father’s love cooled. Dowook, on the other hand, was a firmly rooted stone that could not be removed no matter how badly he behaved. Even at that young age, he knew exactly where he stood, and so he was confident and free-spirited. His stepmother often glared coldly at him while stroking her swollen belly.
Though he considered it boring compared to the sea, the spacious pool had been designed for adults as well, and the water grew fairly deep toward the side closest to the ocean. Disappointed that he could not swim in the sea, Dowook swam deeper into the pool.
When he moved forward, entrusting his entire naked body to the water, he felt refreshed down to his bones. Dowook loved swimming because it made him feel as if he were flying underwater. They said that from the time he was very young, he had played frantically whenever there was water nearby, swimming until he lost himself in it.
He went to the deepest part of the pool, touched the wall, and turned as though racing alone. He swam back toward the middle with the relaxed, practiced movements of an expert when, suddenly, his legs began to tremble as if seized by a cramp. His previously unhesitating strokes came to a halt.
The leg that had been moving so well no longer obeyed him. His body sank as though someone at the bottom had seized his foot and was dragging him down. He thrashed desperately with both arms. Splash, splash—the frantic sound of the child struggling was loud enough to reach even the master bedroom nearest the pool.
He wanted to shout for help, but the water that had always been familiar to his eyes, ears, and mouth poured mercilessly over him, making it difficult even to breathe. Facing a distant terror for the first time, Dowook felt his throat clamp shut.
That was when he saw his stepmother emerge, opening the terrace door with an irritated hand. She approached the pool, smoothing her slightly disheveled hair as though she had just awakened from a deep sleep. The expression on her face gradually changed in a strange way.
She saw a fragile child, pale as a corpse and thrashing as though seized by a water ghost, desperately longing for the help of the very woman who was practically his sworn enemy. Yet she did not hurry to save him.
The adults had always said that to Dowook, who could not grow close to his stepmother. Instinctively, he could feel that there was not a trace of warmth in his stepmother’s eyes—in that woman’s eyes—but part of him still wanted to believe what they said.
What child would want to be hated for no reason?
Somewhere in his heart, Dowook had thought that the adults might be right. He was a stubborn and arrogant child, but he knew at least that adults, with their greater experience and wisdom, were more often right than he was.
But they were not.
Dowook’s instincts had been right. That cold gaze, as though she wanted him to disappear—to cease to exist. Now that gaze shone more intensely than ever, constricting his airways along with the water.
*You were wrong. All of you…*
The moment he realized he could not escape the water, despair and resentment toward his grandfather, father, and mother—people he had trusted—darkly swallowed Dowook’s heart, eclipsing even his fear of death and his rage toward the woman.
Watching Dowook sink beneath the water, the woman bit her lip hard. Her face, straining to suppress the laughter threatening to break free, was the last thing Dowook saw before losing consciousness. His vision became a muddle, as though countless colors of paint had been spilled before his eyes, and soon everything went completely black.
#공유금지@비가 #공유금지@비가
His eyes opened in darkness, with not a single ray of light entering thanks to the blackout curtains. When Dowook sat up in bed, a chill lingered across his back, damp with cold sweat.
*I should quench my thirst before taking a shower.*
Brushing back the hair scattered over his forehead, Dowook flung open the bedroom door.
He had thought quite a while had passed, but was it still night?
The ticking of the second hand grated on his ears. It seemed to emphasize that time was passing, yet not much time had passed since the hour he had seen before falling asleep after returning from work. It was strange. Surely, from the moment he arrived home, time had always flown by.
Dowook was the sort of person who liked and even enjoyed his work to some extent, but he liked resting even more. As a person governed by instinct, he had always thought it perfectly normal that time seemed to pass more quickly when he was relaxing after work than when he was at the office. Yet recently, even at home, time had dragged by as tediously and drearily as it did outside.
*Was it because Seonha was there?*
Dowook belatedly found the answer to why the hours at home had always seemed so short. Time was already scarce, but whenever he was with Seonha, the hands of the clock seemed to move even faster, leaving him constantly impatient. He had been too busy taking her like a beast, so he truly had no excuse even when she cursed him as a lecher who knew nothing but sex.
He had to constantly remind himself that outside the bed, he was not to touch her even with a fingertip, because his body refused to obey him. He guessed that the reason he could not control his desire was that she was his first woman. He was old enough, but until then he had never had any experience between a man and a woman.
On the day he had nearly drowned in the pool, the person he saw before him when he finally managed to breathe after vomiting up the water he had swallowed was Cheongyang-daek. She had been much younger than she was now, and she was weeping bitterly.
Cheongyang-daek had discovered Dowook sinking underwater, jumped into the pool in near-hysterical shock, and somehow rescued him. His ears were clogged, so he could barely hear her repeatedly asking if he was all right. His vision was blurred as though covered in mist. Each time he breathed, he coughed up the pool water that seemed to fill his entire body.
He seemed to remember hearing the raised voices of two women intermittently. His stepmother—the woman—had yawned nonchalantly and said that she had been deeply asleep and heard nothing, while Cheongyang-daek’s jaw trembled when she realized that the woman had witnessed Dowook’s condition just before he died and simply stood by.
“Ajumma, you know what happens if you say the wrong thing based on pointless suspicions without any evidence, don’t you? The child he wants to make his heir isn’t that one—it’s the child in my belly. You can tell just by looking at how he normally treats that brat, can’t you? Didn’t you say your daughter is about to get a job at the company? Don’t ruin your life by pretending to help out of pity when you’ve got no support left. Keep quiet and stay still. Understood?”
Listening to those words, Dowook had ground his teeth in fury. What did she mean, there was no evidence? He had seen it with his own two eyes. The instant his father returned—or the moment he came to his senses—he would contact his grandfather and expose every last detail of that woman’s demonic nature. Malice had surged through him.
He had never dreamed that Cheongyang-daek, threatened through her family, would truly remain silent like a blind person with her eyes open. Nor had he imagined that, just as the woman had said, neither his father, grandfather, nor grandmother—in fact, no one at all—would believe him. No, he had never imagined that even after his father learned what she had done, he would protect her and cast out his own child. When the father who shared his closest bloodline turned away and refused to believe him, everyone else followed, one after another.
The woman may not have planned to kill Dowook herself at the time. But within the unconscious mind of the young Dowook, who had suffered nightmares every day after that incident, she gradually became etched as a murderer who had wanted to kill him rather than merely abandoning him to his fate.
In his dreams, she would grip his head as he tried to rise from the water and force it back down. His lungs would fill with water until he could no longer breathe, his vision would grow distant as though he had gone blind, and above all, a bone-chilling terror would crush down on Dowook’s shoulders.
With reality and delusion intermingled, Dowook’s body would tremble merely at the scent of that woman’s perfume. Whenever she came near him, his pupils would dilate and shake unstably, appearing terribly abnormal to anyone else.
Perhaps she feared that her own child might be threatened because of what she had done to Dowook. Or perhaps she was obsessed with driving out the former wife’s child in order to raise her own as the sole heir. Whatever the reason, she used every means at her disposal to get rid of Dowook.
In the end, contrary to what had actually happened that day, Dowook was driven from the house under the false accusation that he had tried to harm his infant half-sibling.
He felt no resentment at all toward Cheongyang-daek, who wept as she apologized for being unable to take his side. He understood her. No—the choice she had made was the right one. With that demonic woman potentially harming her family, Cheongyang-daek had simply chosen to protect them. She had done so for the sake of her family, the thing most people in the world considered most important.
The people Dowook needed to hate were elsewhere.
This was not merely a matter of injustice or betrayal. The world he had trusted had been shattered completely, broken into countless pieces. Dowook had been an ordinary child who loved his family, even if he was somewhat ill-mannered and arrogant, and cherished the affection they showed him. But from then on, family became something he could never trust—something he must never trust.
On the day his family abandoned him, Dowook abandoned them in turn and cast away his emotions. Otherwise, he would only have to taste that worst feeling again someday.
From that day onward, he never swam again, despite how much he had loved it.
And it was not only swimming. He became terribly uncomfortable with anyone seeing him with his bare body exposed. The fear of death he had felt in the pool had been seared so deeply into his mind that he became extremely sensitive about exposing himself defenselessly. Whenever that happened, every nerve in his body would stand on edge, and he would become angry because he felt as though he had turned into an unstable beast rather than a rational human being.
That habit, severe enough to interfere with daily life, did not end with childhood. It remained uncorrected through puberty and into adulthood, firmly taking root.
While he was in the military, he gradually became more comfortable showing his body in front of men, but women remained a problem. Perhaps because the person who had given him this trauma in the first place was a woman, he could relax around men, but his wariness toward women never eased.
The moment he caught the scent of women’s perfume or cosmetics, he instinctively thought of her and grew tense. It was not only their scents. Their brightly painted manicures, their shrill voices that seemed about to break, and countless other things reminded him of the woman he hated beyond measure. It seemed he had developed some illness, whether a phobia or an aversion, he could not tell.
He did not feel the same terror or fear he had felt when his stepmother approached, not when he looked at women who had nothing to do with her, but he could not help becoming exceptionally guarded.
He was already incomparably larger than he had been as a child, stronger than anyone, and above all, the parents who had once rendered him powerless had died long ago. Even so, the trauma imprinted on him in childhood still quietly ruled him.
He had realized a very long time ago that living a normal life would be difficult. Human emotions had gradually withered inside him, and he had come to trust no one.
To such a man, Seonha was a very strange presence. From the moment they first met, he had felt neither wariness nor rejection toward her. Perhaps it was because of her scent.
She was a woman with a delicate, fresh fragrance, nearly unscented and entirely free of anything artificial. It was for that trivial reason alone that he decided to marry her—a marriage he had thought impossible with any woman in the world.
And yet even when she had her makeup done by a professional at a salon and applied strong perfume to attend a couples’ party, Dowook felt no revulsion. At the time, he had already begun accepting her presence naturally at his side, so he had not been conscious of it.
The unexpected confession possessed a force more powerful than any bomb. Even in the situation where he had shamelessly and arrogantly changed his words on a whim, declaring that they could not get divorced, it had silenced him at once and left him dazed.
After Seonha, her eyes sunk in gray, confessed in a faint voice that sounded as though it might break, then shut the door to the guest room, Dowook had to stand rooted to the spot for a long while. He wanted to open the closed door and see her face, but he could not bring himself to do so.
If he tried to start a conversation without sorting out even a single one of the thoughts tangled chaotically in his head, he felt she might be hurt far more deeply than before. No—perhaps it was because he had sensed, however slightly, that she had spent all this time being hurt countless times by his indifference.
Even from the sight of her smiling as though she had resigned herself to everything, he could guess how much she must have suffered while liking him. Without needing to think deeply about it, even he could tell that he was the worst kind of man to love. A man she deserved a hundred million times better than.
‘Why?’
Why had she come to like him? Since when? Why had she not told him all this time? Why… did the confession, “I liked you,” in the past tense rather than “I like you,” twist his heart into such pain?
He was drawing closer to interpreting his own feelings, rather than remaining lost in confusion as though he had been cast alone into space.
Had a day passed since he heard her confession? No, perhaps it had been two.
Should he contact her? Was he even allowed to?
But there was no time to find his first-ever dilemma strange. The next morning, when Dowook answered a call that came without warning, he felt his heart drop heavily, as though mocking him for foolishly wandering in search of an answer.
The report that Seonha had left Seoul pierced his eardrums like a sharp awl.
*
Dowook, who had abruptly and willfully canceled his scheduled appointments before leaving the company like the wind, had returned.
The secretarial staff did not dare speak to him, merely watching his fierce expression. Their superior was like a robot wearing a human disguise; they had never once seen him smile or become violently angry. Yet over the past month, he had displayed quite a number of impulsive behaviors full of humanity.
Dowook shut the door irritably as he entered his private office, then roughly dragged down his innocent tie. He had just come from meeting Munhyeong.
A few hours earlier, Dowook had made a perfunctory call to ask after Munhyeong’s well-being. When Munhyeong casually told him how Seonha was doing, Dowook had even leaped up from his chair.
He asked in a restrained voice, but the answer was obvious even without hearing it. She had hidden her changed number from him, while telling Munhyeong.
His ears went numb at the words “sort out her feelings,” and he had immediately gone to see Munhyeong without even looking back. It was a serious matter that required speaking face-to-face.
He had spent every day barely enduring the feeling that his blood was drying up, unable to discover where his wife had gone after dropping the massive bombs of a divorce demand and a confession, completely destroying his daily life before vanishing without a trace. And now he learned that Munhyeong had been in contact with her.
It was absurd, yet at the same time, he felt relieved. The thirty days without her had passed so slowly they felt like three hundred, to the point that he had seriously wondered whether she had shot up into the sky or sunk into the earth.
He was relieved to know she had not disappeared above the heavens or below the ground, but the words from Munhyeong’s mouth were far from welcome.
“That’s right. There’s nothing better than traveling to sort out your feelings before getting divorced and starting anew, is there? Young people these days travel alone all the time, they say. To cast off her feelings for you as well—”
Munhyeong stopped mid-sentence, seeming to realize his mistake, and studied Dowook’s face. He was trying to determine whether Dowook knew how she felt, but before he could do so, Dowook reacted furiously.
“Starting anew? What do you mean, starting anew? We’re not getting divorced. Why the hell did you tell her to sort out her feelings…!”
From the day Seonha had presented him with the divorce papers, every circumstance, from beginning to end, seemed to force him into a corner, and anger surged through him. At the sight of him, Munhyeong was dumbfounded, then his expression brightened ever so slightly.
“Judging by the way you look, it certainly seems Seonha has no need to sort out her feelings.”
Now that he knew she was on Jeju Island, Dowook was already working out how he could determine her location by turning over the single island inch by inch, without needing to investigate the whole country. As though he had read his mind, Munhyeong shook his head.
“I know what you’re thinking, but it would be best if you stayed put.”
Munhyeong advised him to quietly wait until Seonha returned. The fact that the very person responsible for driving her away from him was saying something so carefree made his anger flare up all over again, but his head understood to some extent.
For the past three years, she had not been able to take a proper vacation even once because she had a workaholic for a husband. She must have needed a chance to recharge after being drained both mentally and physically. If he ruined that opportunity and dragged her back again by force, he would earn himself an even greater black mark—one that would never be erased this time.
Following Munhyeong’s advice, the right answer was to let her rest for as long as she wanted. If he had no idea how long “as long as she wanted” meant, each day of waiting would feel like being trapped in the hell of time. But if it was only about a month, as Munhyeong had told him, he thought he might be able to wait with patience.
Besides, Seonha had said she had never really traveled before. Even when her parents were alive, her family had been too preoccupied with scraping by to afford leisurely trips. After both of them died, their circumstances had grown even more difficult, so traveling had been nothing more than a dream. She had spilled it all out like a drunken complaint on the night they met at a pojangmacha before their marriage.
“Damn it.”
Dowook suddenly recalled their honeymoon and muttered a quiet curse. It must have been her first trip, essentially. Instead of spending time together, they had not even eaten a single meal face-to-face. From the very first day of the trip, he had grown tense because she had seen the body he had been most reluctant to show ever since childhood.
It was obvious that she must remember her first trip as the worst trip of her life. It was almost astonishing that she had not fallen out of love with him. It was not as if she had done it intentionally—had he really needed to treat her so coldly? His reluctance to show his body was no longer due to the trauma that constricted his throat. It had simply become a habit after so many years.
Back at the company, Dowook sat with a deep frown, repeatedly tapping his fingertips restlessly against the desk. Surely she would not really return after neatly putting her feelings in order?
That day, Seonha had confessed in the past tense that she had liked him. But judging from Munhyeong’s reaction, it seemed she had not yet sorted out her feelings for him. That was why she must be traveling from place to place, suddenly wandering all over the country as though expressing her turmoil.
Yes, a person’s feelings could not possibly be sorted out so easily.
For three years, he had been a pathetic husband who did nothing but coldly focus on his work, who devoted himself solely to sex at home, and who never missed a chance to say things that made her lose all affection for him. And yet she had continued to like him.
‘She likes me?’
Dowook was briefly stunned by his own thought. Rather than feeling uncomfortable or displeased that Seonha liked him, he seemed to want her to keep liking him…
His pupils wavered chaotically. That was impossible.
Just then, Director Yoon’s voice broke the silence.
“—Division Head, Director Cha Yuju of HN Apparel is here.”
Yuju was the person with whom Dowook had unilaterally canceled his appointment today.
HN Apparel’s casual clothing brand Roy had opened a select shop and achieved successful sales. Soon, they were planning to open second and third branches in Gwangju and Incheon, carrying on the first branch’s distinctive character. She had probably used that as an excuse to ask to see him. He had anticipated it was merely an excuse because she had also made an out-of-the-blue appointment during his last business trip under the pretext of discussing work.
Yuju’s grandfather and Chairman Choi had been high school classmates and close friends until their deaths. Because of that, Dowook had occasionally seen Yuju since childhood. Yuju called their relationship a childhood friendship extending from their grandfathers, subtly showing those around her how close and familiar they were.
There was no way he could welcome a woman who tried to approach him whenever she found an opening. He avoided women because of the memories of his stepmother, and more than anything, he was uncomfortable with women who liked him. Women who liked him wanted to close the distance somehow, whether emotionally or physically, and that was what he found most horrifying.
“Dowook.”
Yuju entered the office and curved her blood-red lips into a seductive smile, as though she had just devoured a mouse. Every single thing about her that entered his view was unbearably unpleasant.
The closer she came in high heels that clicked sharply against the floor, revealing her shapely legs, the more Dowook’s head began to throb and his stomach churned—not at all in the same way it did when he thought of Seonha.
“Since I canceled our appointment unilaterally earlier, make some time after work. Let’s have dinner together. I have something important to tell you today.”
Her tone was as haughty as ever, but the eyes that stole glances at Dowook were more tense than usual.
“Is there any need to move elsewhere? What is it? Say it here.”
“That’s a little…”
“It’s not about work, is it?”
His gaze, sharp as a honed blade, pierced coldly through her. Under his unchanged, frigid stare, Yuju worried her lower lip.
“Are you divorced?”
The tip of Dowook’s eyebrow rose sharply.
“What?”
“I happened to hear it when I visited the chairman’s house after a long time. They said you and Ms. Yoo Seonha weren’t really married, but had a contractual arrangement. Apparently, the woman who works at your house found the contract while cleaning. You didn’t know the chairman already knew everything?”
Yuju’s lips slowly curled upward as her rekindled expectations rose once more.
When Choe Do-uk announced that he was marrying another woman—an orphan who owned nothing in the world—it felt as though the sky had come crashing down.
She felt deeply betrayed that Chairman Choe, who had always looked at her and said she would make a desirable granddaughter-in-law, had allowed their marriage without much objection. Do-uk was even forcing himself into an unplanned marriage because his grandfather had been given only a short time to live. If Chairman Choe had stubbornly insisted that it had to be Yu-ju and no one else, surely Do-uk would have agreed, even if reluctantly.
She had already realized, over all the years she had known him, that Do-uk was equally indifferent to every woman. It was obvious that he was entering the marriage itself against his will, and there was no way he could have been determined that this particular woman had to be his bride. Because she knew him better than anyone, she believed she still had a sufficient chance.
She wanted to become Do-uk’s bride. It did not matter if his grandfather forced him into it. It did not matter if the marriage was nothing but an obligation.
So when Chairman Choe gave Do-uk the stern order to marry as soon as possible, she could not say how much she had looked forward to it. She wore out the soles of her shoes visiting Chairman Choe’s house, doing her best to ingratiate herself and make a good impression.
In fact, Chairman Choe had already casually put Yu Seon-ha’s name forward to Do-uk at the time. But, as expected, Do-uk had rejected her outright. Chairman Choe found it awkward to spell out the truth to his closest friend’s granddaughter, who had been brimming with expectations, and so he had no choice but to pretend not to know.
Yu-ju, who had no reason to know about those circumstances, heard the thunderbolt that Do-uk was marrying a woman from an undistinguished family and inwardly resented Chairman Choe.
But even after Do-uk married, she could not bring herself to put her feelings in order. Despite all the years she had known him, Do-uk would not meet her at all unless it was work-related, and even when they did meet, he was so businesslike that a chill seemed to blow from him. It was as though he were ridiculing her for continuing to hover around him, unable to let go of her feelings.
Yu-ju had always been treated specially wherever she went, so Do-uk’s attitude constantly wounded her pride. Yet she could not suppress how strongly she was drawn to him. No matter how coldly he treated her, it did no good; she was so taken with him that she sometimes wondered what was wrong with herself.
In the end, Yu-ju went to Chairman Choe again. Her hurt had not completely faded, but Chairman Choe was the only person who could connect her to Do-uk, however tenuously. No matter how she tried to approach him, he would never meet her privately, so she wanted to use Chairman Choe to create a way to grow closer to Do-uk, even if it meant disguising their encounters as coincidences.
It was on the day she went to Chairman Choe’s house for that purpose that she happened to learn that Do-uk and Seon-ha had entered into a time-limited contract marriage.
In front of Chairman Choe, Yu-ju made a great fuss, saying that Seon-ha was frighteningly bold and audacious to deceive an elder and enter into such a contract over a mere handful of money. Yet beneath her chest, she felt the hope buried there flare sharply once again.
Their marriage had an ending already decided.
Do-uk had not the slightest feeling for Seon-ha. He had merely found her convenient to use because she was a poor woman who could be easily moved by money. If that was all it was, Yu-ju could endure it. She had quietly waited for the day Do-uk would become alone again.
“After you divorce that woman, Yu Seon-ha, what do you think about marrying me? Unlike that orphaned woman, my family has enough influence to support you. I’ve known you for a long time, so I understand your personality, what you’re sensitive about, and what makes you uncomfortable. The difference in our standing is obvious, too. One day, you’ll realize that living with me is better than living with her.”
Yu-ju had let the words slip lightly, concealing her feelings as much as possible. But the moment she saw his expressionless face, as though it were a mask, her lips went dry. His eyes, black as a bottomless night, stared straight at her as if they could see through her every intention. As though her schemes were not even ridiculous enough to amuse him.
“I’m not asking you to love me or anything. I mean that we should enter into a contract too, just as you did with Yu Seon-ha.”
Moving her stiffened vocal cords, Yu-ju continued, pretending to remain at ease.
“You’re not planning to live alone for the rest of your life after getting divorced, are you? Not when you’re the heir who has to lead Seongil Group in place of the late chairman. The people around you won’t leave you alone, either. You hate troublesome things. So use me. It’s a contract, so I’ll use you too. What I want is to be the mistress of Seongil Group—”
“Hey.”
Do-uk had listened in silence to her rambling with his eyes languidly half closed, but now he cut her off as though his patience had finally run out.
“What the hell are you doing?”
As he mulled it over, the absurdity of it seemed to strike him anew, and a derisive breath escaped between his teeth.
“I’m already so busy I could die, and you come bothering me, so I wondered what you had to say. Marriage? A contract? Don’t say ridiculous things beyond a certain point. I should use you? What value do you have to me? Do you think you’re something special?”
He leaned his broad back against the chair and looked her up and down with an unbearably arrogant gaze.
“If it’s a contract, shouldn’t both sides benefit? You have absolutely no value to me. No—since you seem stupider than I thought, let me be precise. I can’t stand women like you. I hate you. I’m already irritated having this pointless conversation with you, so how the hell could I live with you? Stop talking nonsense.”
Yu-ju’s complexion turned deathly pale. Her lips trembled with humiliation at the insults she had heard.
Of course, she knew that Do-uk’s way of speaking was harsh by nature. She loved him so much that even that side of him seemed attractive. But she had never imagined that he would lash out at her with such cruelty.
She had been born the daughter of a chaebol family and had spent her entire life with everyone fawning over her. She had been born with a glamorous appearance and figure without ever lifting a finger, and though private tutoring had helped, her academic credentials were nothing to be ashamed of.
The elders of her family overlooked any mistake she made, and she was accustomed to ordering around employees older than herself. Even the invisible social hierarchy at school had always placed her at an overwhelming number one. The same had been true at work after graduation. Everyone she met was kind and generous toward her.
Perhaps it was because her life had been so unhindered that she had fallen even more deeply for Do-uk, who had never once looked back at her, and could not escape from him.
Most of her meetings with Do-uk had taken place at public gatherings or at appointments arranged by their two grandfathers. For that reason, she had never expected him to possess such an icy temperature. Even then, she had sensed that he was cold and sharp, but only now did she realize that it had been a form of consideration on his part.
He pressed his fingers to his temple, his brow deeply furrowed as though the thought of being alone with her was unbearable.
“We have no intention of getting divorced in the first place, so if you understand, go home. And don’t ever try to make a move again under the excuse of work.”
Do-uk drove the final nail into the coffin for Yu-ju, whose body had gone rigid. He had closed his eyes and was pressing his fingers against his eyelids, looking thoroughly exhausted. Even that seemed like another way of ignoring her, as she stood trembling from the shock in front of him.
I can’t stand you. I hate you. You irritate me.
She had no immunity to such words, and hearing them one after another from the man she loved made the shock all the greater.
In the end, Yu-ju glared at him with reddened eyes before turning away in a hurry.
*When Do-uk arrived in front of the house, he pressed the doorbell. As expected, there was no sign of movement inside. He gave a faint, amused snort and entered the passcode.
He had pressed the doorbell under the mistaken assumption that Seon-ha was home until the third day after she left. Until then, it had merely been a mistake born of habit. But afterward, even while fully aware that she was not home, he would foolishly press the bell from time to time.
It was only recently that he realized he had pressed it with the hope and wish that perhaps she had returned. Whenever that happened, he was left shaking his head at his own emotional dullness and stupidity.
There had to be a limit to being insensitive. Perhaps he had missed countless feelings in this way—feelings that always pooled in his chest, yet never reached his mind quickly enough to be understood or interpreted. In the meantime, Seon-ha had left, and he had been left alone.
Do-uk strode into the house and sat on the sofa, leaning back with his full weight. He did not care that the suit jacket he had yet to remove was being wrinkled. If Seon-ha had been there, she would have asked him to take it off at once, her voice gentle but firm enough that he could not refuse.
An empty house. A suffocating silence.
What on earth had she done to him over the past three years to make being alone in the house feel so overwhelming?
No, it was not that he disliked being alone. It was the fact that Seon-ha was not there that he could no longer endure. Do-uk knew it for certain now. Even with his dull nerves, he could no longer fail to understand. He could no longer turn away from it.
She had told him she loved him—in the past tense.
Since then, a pain like his heart being trampled over and over had never left him. It was a feeling he had believed had nothing to do with him.
Thanks to Yu-ju, who had barged in and spouted such ridiculous nonsense, he became even more certain. He had not changed. Other women were still uncomfortable and unwelcome to him. There was only one thing that had changed since three years ago.
He wanted Seon-ha. He had come to want only Seon-ha.
As a child, he had first learned how to kill his emotions. He had changed that way after being wounded by the people who were supposed to be his family.
Even as a boy, he had been stubborn and hated losing more than anything in the world.
A father mad with love. A stepmother who wanted him dead. A biological mother who had forgotten his very existence and was likely living happily with the new family she had created.
He had lived without ever receiving absolute, proper affection from either parent. He thought it was losing to struggle against the wounds those people had given him, unable to forget them, when they could smile without a care even in his absence. He hated that, yet his anger would not subside.
He cursed them. He wanted that family—the family that could be happy without him, that could only feel complete because he was gone—to fall apart. It was while he was thinking such things that the accident occurred. Even his anger vanished pointlessly, leaving his heart completely empty.
He gradually became numb to every situation and every person. He neither gave affection to anyone nor felt joy or anger.
That was why he had failed to realize his feelings for Seon-ha for so long. He had neither wanted to know nor wanted to experience the emotion called love that his father had possessed. Only after recognizing his love for her did he learn that it was something he could not stop, no matter how hard he tried.
And now, it was completely too late.
The graceful way she reached for his briefcase to take it from him whenever he came home. The warm comfort that had once felt so natural. The touch of her hands as she carefully tied his necktie. The quiet stubbornness hidden behind her gentleness. The corners of her lips that slowly rose whenever he emptied a bowl of rice. The shy eyes she lowered whenever she embraced him.
He had thought none of it meant anything. He had believed it could never hold any significance.
“Damn it.”
The curse he had been holding back finally burst from his mouth alongside a bitter sigh.
“There’s no bigger idiot in the world than me.”
He had lost his wife.
Only after losing her did he realize it.
The hidden truth within him: that he had wanted to love his wife with all his heart.