A Solid Road After Divorce, Episode 2
Episode 2: The Truth Behind the Regression (1)
“Take out the food waste on your way out.”
A terrible voice came from the bedroom.
Though the tone was soft, as if she weren’t fully awake yet, hearing that voice on the early morning commute truly made anger surge up.
Without the strength to even respond, I turned on my heel. Without sparing even a glance toward the bedroom.
With practiced movements, I picked up the food waste bin that had been crudely shoved full.
The ever-present mountain of dirty dishes greeted me from the sink.
“Sigh…”
Fearing she might hear, I let out a small sigh and stepped out the door.
Today marked over four years since I’d first thought that being outside was better than being at home with my wife, even for a single second.
“I don’t even expect breakfast… At least wash the dishes daily, ugh!”
The packed food waste tumbled out in chunks, splattering brine everywhere.
I hurriedly wiped my hands, dampened them, and tried to erase the stains on my dress shirt, but it was already too late.
Thick kimchi brine had left its marks all over the dress shirt.
“Damn it…”
With a hollow expression, I looked at the food waste disposer lid. The electronic scale beneath the splattered, messy lid showed over two kilograms.
“How long has this been piling up. Crazy… Sigh…”
The bigger problem was the smell. The strong reek of kimchi saturated my hands and dress shirt. If I went to work like this, I’d definitely get an earful again.
My head was already throbbing at the mockery I could already imagine.
Fury surged, but I forced myself to steady my heart and headed to the car. There wasn’t enough time to go back inside.
Honestly, more than anything, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing my wife again, still snoring away in sleep.
Even while driving, the smell of kimchi violently assaulted my senses.
What annoyed me more than the traffic jam, the smell, or the dirty dress shirt was the image of my wife getting annoyed a few days later, asking why the car smelled of kimchi.
“My day’s already gone to shit from the morning. Ugh…”
I felt like I’d poured out a barrage of curses the entire way. Suddenly, the dashcam recording all of this caught my eye, and a terrifying thought crept over me.
Having lost my words, a brief silence filled the car.
“Goddammit! Let come what may.”
I tried to put on a false bravado. No matter how scary my wife was, did I really have to watch my words even when alone? Hmph, let come what may.
Contrary to my words, silence still reigned in the car. Unlike my spirited shout, an unresolved anxiety slowly seeped upward.
Given my wife’s paranoid personality, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t check the black box.
Thanks to my wife constantly checking my phone, I’d endured three years feeling half-castrated.
Perhaps black box censorship was a realistic possibility.
* * *
“Puhahaha, Bongjin, you’re totally a ho—no. You’ve become a complete henpecked husband!”
“Just call me a pushover, you bastard.”
Better to be mocked openly, I suppose. When I glared at him, eyes full of rage, Dongho awkwardly tilted his glass without a word.
Choi Dongho. The only colleague and friend at the bleak company with whom I could speak my mind.
Despite the cutthroat atmosphere of performance competition and spec competition, I’d always maintained a good relationship with Dongho, a fellow new hire who happened to be assigned to the same place.
Though having a peer nearby usually meant frequent comparisons and difficult relations, strangely, I’d never had any conflicts with him.
“But you love her, right?”
“Ah, but seriously, this bastard’s crossing the line.”
I tried to flare up, but Dongho wore a bright smile on his mischievous face.
Dongho, being single, couldn’t understand my situation at all. No, I should say he was closer to mocking it.
He might be the type to read pathetic community posts and slam married couples.
The sizzling of the cooking meat mingling with the kimchi smell from my dress shirt diverted my attention.
Ironically, it was a pleasant smell. He was still giggling, but this time, composure came to me instead.
Hmph… Fine. Laugh. Mock me to your heart’s content. Soon enough, it’ll be your future.
Do you think just anyone gets married? I’ve walked this path ahead of you as your senior in life. What’s left is your turn, yeah!
Imagining that carefree Choi Dongho getting torn into by a wife made me feel pleased involuntarily.
“Well… I think I know what you’re thinking. Sorry, but I’m going to stay single for life, so that won’t happen to me.”
“Bullshit. You think you can endure the loneliness without getting married? What are you going to do when you’re old and alone? Who’s going to take care of you if not your kids?”
“Who’s lonely? There’s tons of stuff to do. Don’t married guys say they can’t even play their PlayStation properly at home? The wife sells it on Onion Market or drowns it in the bathtub and all sorts of crazy shit… In that case, living alone is a hundred times better, I’m telling you.”
“That extreme thinking is why you can’t get married, dumbass!”
“Bullshit, I’m choosing not to. Since we’re on the topic, let me ask again. Don’t take it the wrong way. I’m asking because I’m worried about you as a friend.”
What was he going to say now.
My brow furrowed and the back of my neck stiffened at Dongho setting the mood. I had a feeling I knew why.
“The paternity test. So, did you do it or not?”
“What kind of bullshit is this all of a sudden?”
“Ah, damn. This friend is getting pissy again. No, you said it yourself. The kid doesn’t look like you. Honestly, there are plenty of wives who nag their husbands, but there was something about your wife that seemed excessive, you know? I don’t mean to tell you how to run your family, but if you really suspect something, I think it’s worth doing. If it’s your kid, okay. If not… well… anyway, it’s better for you, right?”
“Hey, that’s…”
“No, listen carefully. Do you know what percentage of paternity tests come back with a mismatch? A whopping 30%, bastard. Of course, that doesn’t mean every kid is like that—it means that for cases where there’s enough suspicion to request a test. But I’ve also seen your kid’s photo, so… hmm…”
“My kid’s photo?”
“You plastered your kid’s photo all over your Talk profile, didn’t you? Anyway, I saw it. The kid is handsome. Yeah, handsome is right. Seems to take after your wife a lot. Your wife is pretty, isn’t she? Yeah, I admit that… but like you said last time… from what I saw, he didn’t look like you either? Ah, of course, you were a bit… emotional back then. I thought it’d be dangerous to speak my true mind, so I said he looked like you. But… I just couldn’t let that sit on my conscience…”
From then on, it was a long stream of nagging.
With a serious expression, Dongho gave a lengthy speech, mixing gestures with statistics.
To some, this might be an unbearable insult, but in my current situation, would it carry the same meaning?
The more reasonable Dongho’s words were in many ways, the more sharply they gouged into my chest.
“Right, when they’re young, they say kids look like someone or other, and that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t, it really doesn’t. But there’s a limit. The kid is four years old now, and more than anything, double eyelids. Didn’t your wife get double-eyelid surgery? Why would the baby have double eyelids when neither of you has them? This is just the appetizer. Overall, the eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, even the feet—there’s nothing that looks like you….”
The fully cooked meat began to burn. But no one reached for the meat. No, no one cared about the meat at all.
I could imagine the cross-section of the meat charring pitch black.
If it was moderately burned, I could just cut it out with scissors and eat it. But if it became a lump of charcoal, it was better to just throw it away.
Even if the other side was fine, there was no way to cut out meat that had turned to charcoal.
Meat half-charred black. Perhaps that was my life.
My gaze was nailed to the meat, but my hand remained motionless. My appetite had vanished.
It might be true.
My eyes turned back to Dongho. I could feel sincerity in his eyes. He’d always been a smooth talker, but more than that, he had a power to draw people in.
He wasn’t the type to casually badmouth others’ weaknesses.
[Ring ring.]
A call came in right then, and it was my wife. Dongho saw my expression and nodded as if he’d expected it.
Normally, I would have moved to a quiet place, but now I didn’t even have the strength to stand. I touched the loudly ringing phone, and the terrible voice I always heard flowed out.
“How late is it and you’re not home yet? Are you drinking again?”
“Uh… Yeah.”
“Brilliant. Your wife is slaving away at home taking care of the baby while you go out drinking? And why didn’t you do the dishes yesterday? You think you can put off housework just because you come home late using work dinners as an excuse? Do you really want to see me go crazy?”
“Sigh…”
“What did you do right to sigh, huh? Did I say something I shouldn’t have? I went through the pain of giving birth to your child, raising them, doing the housework, and my dreams and my life are trapped because of you because of all that. How dare you sigh! How can you do that!”
What career. What does quitting an SME accounting job right after marriage have to do with dreams? Is being a cocksucking queen bee her life’s ambition?
The words I wanted to say surged up to my throat, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak them.
Emboldened by my silence, my wife poured out a stream of vitriol.
Mostly insults to my character, lamenting her own misfortune, comparing me to the neighbor’s husband, Mom Cafe stories… things like that.
I didn’t know where to put my eyes. When I turned my head, Dongho sitting across from me was looking at me with pitying eyes.
A sharp, high-pitched voice pierced my ears, mixed with the metallic sound from the old smartphone.
The din of the noisy restaurant, the smell of burning, and the smell of kimchi overwhelmed my senses. Then, even the sound of a baby crying over the phone. And yet, this damn woman didn’t know how to stop her venom.
I wanted to hang up right then and there, but if I did, it might really cause a huge disaster.
My mind was growing hazy. It felt like blood was flowing from my ears. Please stop… Stop it!
* * *
It was roughly a month after that incident that I resolved to get a divorce.
Though I returned home before ten o’clock, I had to endure my wife’s demonic nagging that day.
But perhaps it had started when I took that phone call. My heart, hardened in some way, quelled my anger.
Steadying my exhausted body, I finished the dishes and immediately went to the sleeping child, secretly plucking a hair and sending it to a private agency.
To avoid any possible errors, I sent it to three places simultaneously.
Unfortunately, the result was a 0.03% match rate.
It was an irrefutable figure. My mind went blank as I stared at the results for a long time, unable to say anything. Uselessly precise—all three showed the exact same probability.
“There’s still a chance it could match at 0.03%, right? It could still be your child. Why are you only thinking negatively? Then what does everything we’ve been through together amount to? Are you doubting me right now?!”
Even my genius gaslighting wife seemed unable to handle it this time; that was the extent of her limit.
I immediately began divorce proceedings after entering separation, and my wife, apparently changing tactics midway, clung to me crying and wailing.
“I’m sorry… I was really wrong. I must be a real bitch. I drank too much at the bachelorette party… I really didn’t know. I was so drunk I fell asleep, and somehow I ended up pregnant. It’s true. And then we went straight on our honeymoon, right? I really didn’t know. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I’ll really do better from now on. I’m sorry for being so harsh, and I’ll live the rest of my life apologetically. I must have been crazy for a moment. I’m begging you. Please forgive me. Sniff…”
Such humility was a sight I’d never seen from the dating phase through our entire married life. To cling and beg for forgiveness while crying.
It was utterly incompatible with the Minju I’d always known—overbearing and neurotic.
From before marriage until now, this was a sight I could never have imagined even in my dreams.
Her hair was a mess, her face covered in tears and snot, kneeling and grabbing my legs.
The usual me—or rather, me from even a month ago—might have softened at such an apology.
But to the present me, it was out of the question.
The word forgiveness filled me with revulsion. Even in this extreme situation, a strange sense of relief came over me instead.
Funny enough, the worst-case scenario had become an opportunity for counterattack. No, rather than funny, it was tragically laughable.