Chapter 9

Tap. Setting down the glass, Iheon faced Jei across the island table.

“Did you mean that?”

“I meant it.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m the one who did wrong. How could I cling to you?”

“It’s not that you’re not desperate enough to cling, though?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“To my ears, it sounds exactly the same.”

“And you’re the kind of person who never takes back a decision once it’s made.”

“…….”

“I gave you a choice. Just as I chose to run back then, you can leave if you find it too hard to endure someone like me—”

“Don’t be a hypocrite. I never asked for that kind of consideration.”

Jei, who had been staring intently at Iheon, let out a small sigh.

“What if I cling to you and say I don’t want a divorce? Are you willing to accept that?”

“Let me ask just one thing.”

“What.”

“Were you ever curious how I lived during those six months without you?”

Jei, who had briefly lowered her gaze to the floor, moved her empty lips a few times before meeting his eyes again.

“At first, no. I was overwhelmed just by myself, with no room to think.”

“…….”

“But as time passed, I worried about you, left alone in the empty house after I left. I was curious, I missed you, I wanted to see you.”

“You didn’t answer a single one of dozens of calls and messages, and yet you call that words……”

Iheon trailed off and clenched his jaw hard. His temples throbbed as he swallowed the anger that stung him again.

“If you were me, could you believe that?”

“Right…… Even I think I’m terribly shameless.”

“…….”

“I was so blinded by my own wounds that I didn’t know you could be hurt too. No, actually, I turned away from it.”

Jei curved her lips faintly in self-mockery.

“Do you hate a shameless woman like this?”

“What?”

“I should have nothing to say even with ten mouths……”

Jei swallowed a difficult breath and continued. Her two hands clasped before her lower belly were twisted together so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

“I just hope you won’t turn away from me. You, at least.”

* * *

Three hours had passed since the study door closed.

Papers he needed to review lay scattered across the desk.

It was only after reading the same paragraph for the fourth time that Iheon admitted he had not understood a single line.

Throwing his glasses onto the desk, he pressed hard at the space between his brows.

I just hope you won’t turn away from me. You, at least.

It was a shameless request.

She had turned away from him completely for half a year, and now she asked that he not do the same to her.

If it had been anyone but Jei, he would have laughed in their face the moment he heard it.

Iheon sank deep into the back of his chair. His gaze turned toward the firmly closed study door. Beyond it, not a single sound could be heard.

He could not even believe that his wife had returned, and yet the first thought that came to him was that she might have disappeared again.

His eyes hardened stiffly.

In the end, he rose from his seat only when it was nearing two in the morning.

The living room lights were off.

Surely not……

His steps toward the bedroom grew anxious.

He did not want to check. Because the moment he checked, it would amount to admitting that he was still being swayed by Jei’s absence.

But whatever his own feelings, his hand flung the bedroom door wide open, and his eyes checked the bed first.

Fuck.

Having confirmed the bed was empty, Iheon spat out a curse.

Again. She had surely disappeared without a word again.

“Ha. Haha.”

A hollow laugh burst out on its own. The ragged breath that escaped became a blade and dug into his heart.

Unable to hide his emptiness, he pressed a large hand to his forehead.

If he had known he would lose her so futilely again, he should have begged her to ask for his forgiveness and cling to him. He should have schemed and said that maybe he would take her back.

Just then, a rustling sound came from the silent living room.

He turned his head toward the sound and did not move for a while. Then he strode out of the bedroom.

The living room, sunk in darkness, was quiet. Only the faint glow of appliances leaking from the kitchen dimly outlined the shapes.

Again, the sound of fabric brushing.

It was the sofa.

Iheon fumbled along the wall and flipped the switch. The moment his eyes adjusted to the light, relief rose on his stiffened face.

Jei, whom he had thought gone, was curled up on one side of the sofa, asleep.

She had turned her body on her side in an uncomfortable position, both hands gathered near her chest. A thin summer blanket had slipped down past her knees and hung half off onto the floor.

“……Jei.”

At the low call of her name, Jei’s eyelids trembled faintly. But she could not fully wake, and all she did was shift slightly.

Only then did Iheon notice the slippers beneath the sofa and the phone on the table. There was no sign anywhere that she had prepared to leave.

The breath that had been pressing on his lungs escaped belatedly.

He was absurd, feeling relieved.

Iheon bit hard at the inside of his lip.

It was utterly unpleasant to realize that in that brief moment he had acted like a man whose ground had fallen away beneath him.

“You really make a person a fool in every possible way.”

Muttering to himself, he picked up the edge of the blanket trailing on the floor.

He looked displeased at his sleeping wife’s face, then draped the blanket over her curled shoulders.

Returning to the study, he rubbed a hand over his face.

And he admitted it. That just now, he had acted like a dog abandoned by its owner.

For someone who understood the minds of criminals so well, he was utterly helpless and crumbling when it came to his wife—the person who should be closest to him.

What had his past self believed he knew, to be so certain about his wife?

Jei.

After spending her childhood in the United States, she returned to Korea at twenty and graduated from Hankuk University’s Department of Media and Information Studies.

Former PD of the investigative reporting team in HJBC’s Current Affairs and Culture Division.

Both of her parents currently reside in Chicago.

That was the extent of her history he could recite when introducing Jei to someone.

Then, what kind of person was Jei?

She preferred a simple salad or cereal in the morning over rice, and drank orange juice instead of coffee.

When reading a book, she could not bear her curiosity and would open the back pages before the front, and even while watching a movie she would open a search window to check the ending before she could relax.

She was a light sleeper and often tossed and turned, and she liked sleeping in his broad arms.

On rainy days she left the windows open for no reason, and though she disliked the cold, she insisted on thin clothes.

When she was in a good mood, she wiggled her toes, and when she had many thoughts, she chewed at the inside of her lips.

When angry, she grew quieter rather than raising her voice. When she was truly angry, she smiled instead.

Of course, Iheon knew that smile was not real.

On the eighteenth of every month, she stopped by the flower shop near the house and filled the rooms with the fragrance of the flowers she brought home in armfuls.

Rather than having a favorite flower, she tended to buy whatever was freshest that day.

Those were the kinds of things Iheon knew about his wife, Jei.

Because he knew so much, he had vaguely prided himself on knowing her very well.

But the wife he met again did not seem to be the Jei he knew.

No. Had he ever really known her properly in the first place?

He did not know why, but a strong unease welled up that he could not leave things as they were.

Iheon did not want to remain an incompetent bastard who did not even know why his wife had left.

What his wife was hiding, what she had endured, what kind of person she was afraid of being.

Before it was too late, even now, he had to know.

To do that, he first intended to hear what the request was that she had come all the way to the lecture hall to make.

* * *

The following evening, when Iheon returned from work and opened the front door, he heard a presence from the living room. Soon Jei appeared.

Perhaps she had been sitting on the sofa and hurried out, because the hair swept to one side was disheveled.

Though she had come out to the entrance to greet him, she seemed unable to decide what to say, and after hesitating, offered a greeting utterly devoid of color.

“You’re back?”

Leaning down to take off his shoes, Iheon glanced up at Jei once. When their eyes met, the corner of her mouth rose awkwardly.

As Iheon stepped up into the entrance, Jei twisted her body to make way. Iheon passed her without a word.

Entering the living room, the laptop on the table before the sofa caught his eye first.

On the screen, document files and several internet windows overlapped, and beside it lay scattered memo papers dense with writing and a ballpoint pen.