Chapter 19

The red bruises scattered across her body were slowly turning shades of purple and green. Yaein brushed her fingers over the faint kiss marks before letting her hand drift lower.  

Her palm rested on her stomach, and her expression darkened with worry.  

For days now, ever since she had first woken up with abdominal pain, there had been a persistent pulling sensation in her belly.  

The pain would appear suddenly and then disappear just as quickly, completely consuming her thoughts.  

Unlike the varied hues of her bruises, her complexion was a ghostly pale, so dry and lifeless it almost resembled that of a corpse.  

She had begun waking up in the middle of the night after dreaming of miscarrying again.  

Out of habit, Yaein checked the inside of her thighs—the same place where, in her dreams, warm streams of blood had soaked her skin.  

“I need to go to the hospital.”  

The words escaped her lips in a whisper.  

She wouldn’t be able to calm down unless she spoke to a doctor and heard that everything was fine.  

But how?  

If she received an examination at an obstetrics clinic, Taeheon would find out. Kwon Taeheon was someone who knew everything about her.  

Yaein paced around the bathroom, restless.  

She had to do something, but no solution presented itself.  

Like a trapped animal, she kept circling the small space—until suddenly, she stopped.  

Perhaps her mother-in-law could help her.  

With Seonghwan’s constant hospital visits, Gyeongju had many connections in the medical field.  

If Yaein convinced her that the divorce was inevitable and that Taeheon’s remarriage was something to consider, maybe she would understand. If she argued that it would be better for neither the chairman nor Taeheon to know about the child, would Gyeongju turn a blind eye?  

She had once said that if Yein had been honest, she would have helped.  

Would she still mean it now?  

Maybe—just maybe—she didn’t know.  

The memory of Gyeongju’s worried face, the way she had held onto Yaein at the last moment and asked if she was sick, made her cling to the tiniest possibility.  

Perhaps she was just desperate for something—anything—to lean on.  

The thought that she had to protect this child alone cornered her relentlessly.  

Stepping out of the bathroom, Yaein dialed Gyeongju’s number.  

There was no answer.  

Telling herself she was probably busy, she tried again.  

Still nothing.  

On the third attempt, a text message arrived.  

[Never contact me again. If you want to know why, ask your husband.]

Yaein read the message, then rubbed her forehead.  

Her hand slid down to cover her eyes.  

From her forehead to the bridge of her nose, everything ached.  

She was alone again.

Yaein’s phone vibrated, lighting up the screen. Hoping it was her mother-in-law, she checked quickly—only for her expression to darken.  

“Hello? What’s the matter at this hour?”  

It was her husband. As she answered, faint background noise crackled through the receiver. He must be calling from outside.  

‘—I’ll be late because of work.’

That was nothing new. These days, coming home on time was the anomaly. More often than not, he would return around midnight. And he wasn’t the type to call just to inform her of a delay.  

If only he had changed sooner.  

If Kwon Taeheon had acted like this before she brought up divorce—if he had been like this from the start—perhaps she wouldn’t have even considered leaving him.  

‘—I did say I’d be home early today.’

But now, it felt like she was being watched.  

“You must be busy,” Yaein said.  

‘—It turned out that way.’

“You’ve always been busy. Make sure you eat properly.”  

Between the usual static, she faintly heard something—someone sobbing.  

Yaein’s brow furrowed.  

“What was that sound just now?”  

‘—What sound?’

“It sounded like someone crying.”  

‘—That’s not it… You must’ve misheard.’

It was an unconvincing response.  

Before she could dwell on it, Taeheon spoke again.  

‘—I might not be back until morning.’

The moment she heard those words, her heart pounded.  

“…Okay. Just don’t overwork yourself.”  

Yaein forced herself to respond as calmly as possible. 

The call ended.  

As soon as the screen went dark, the implications of what she had just learned rushed into her mind.  

‘If Taeheon wasn’t coming home past midnight, he wouldn’t come home at all.’

He always said it was more convenient to stay out and head straight to work the next morning.  

Which meant—her husband wouldn’t be home until the next day.

This was her chance.

She had to move.  

Yaein didn’t have the luxury of waiting for another opportunity.  

Looking around instinctively, she hurried to the dressing room, her steps quickening.  

As soon as she powered on her old cellphone, a new notification appeared.  

Still no reply.

They were always fast when they wanted something from her, but when it was the other way around, it was as if they barely checked their messages.  

She had expected this, but the bitterness in her mouth was hard to ignore.  

Swiping through past conversations, she read them over again, from the very beginning to the end.  

Her decision was made.  

Yaein typed a new message into the unanswered chat.  

[Meet me.]

[I’ll come to you.]

Yaein had always given whenever she was asked. Never once had she refused.  

Then surely—just once—she could receive something in return.  

She could ask the one who had abandoned her to take care of her again.  

She had to. For the child.

She could do this.  

Pushing herself forward, Yaein moved with urgency, her mind racing through the list of things she needed to do.  

She sat at the living room table and unfolded the divorce papers—papers that her father-in-law had once thrown at her, which she had folded and carried with her ever since.  

Filling in the sections meant for her, she felt an unexpected ache in her chest.  

The half-completed document felt too much like her marriage—unfinished, left hanging in the middle.

She placed a vase over the papers to hold them in place and stood up. Her body felt lighter than before.  

Now she could truly leave.

She found a suitcase, unzipped it, and counted the cash in her wallet.  

Her mind busied itself with calculations—how long could she survive on this?  

Luckily, she still had her old savings account from when she had collected money for her grandmother’s hospital bills, as well as the tutoring wages she had earned on the side.  

Rushing to the dressing room, Yaein pulled clothes off the hangers. She didn’t need many.  

‘She would leave behind everything that wasn’t truly hers.’

‘Including that man. He had never been hers to begin with.’

Even after gathering everything she could think of, her bag remained light.  

That was all she had in this house—so little that it barely weighed anything.  

Before stepping out with her suitcase, Yaein turned back one last time.  

Her eyes landed on the wedding photo hanging on the living room wall.  

In the picture, she gazed into the camera with a dazed, almost unreal expression.  

Her smile was hesitant, melancholy.  

She had thought she had smiled brightly that day, forcing herself to at least look happy. But the expression captured in the photo was faint—so faint it was barely there.  

Taeheon, on the other hand, didn’t smile at all.  

The photographer had encouraged him multiple times, saying he would look much more handsome if he did. But Taeheon had merely maintained a rigid composure, as if he wouldn’t waste a smile on something as trivial as this.  

That stunning man had pulled her into his world.

Most of the time, she had felt lonely.  

Sometimes, her heart had fluttered.  

And on very rare occasions, she had felt loved.  

And all of it hurt.

Dragging her suitcase to the door, Yaein suddenly stopped.  

In the mirror by the entrance, she caught a glimpse of her neck—**she had forgotten to cover the bruises.**  

For a moment, she had the eerie sensation of Taeheon’s large hand wrapping around her nape.  

She could almost feel the warmth of his breath against her ear.  

What surfaced in her mind wasn’t his cold sarcasm or his cruel rejections.  

It was just those words—”Don’t abandon me.”

The only moment she had ever seen him look vulnerable.  

Yaein touched her ring finger, her fingers brushing against the wedding band.  

The cold metal caught against her skin.

After the wedding, she had never once taken it off.  

It was foolish, but Yaein had always felt that this small ring was the only thing tying her to this household.  

On lonely nights, she had often held onto it, as if in prayer.  

But now, even this was no longer hers.  

She removed the ring and placed it in the dish by the shoe cabinet, where the house keys were kept.  

An odd emptiness settled in her chest.  

‘It was just a ring—so why did it feel like this?’

With her now bare hand, she opened the front door.  

It felt heavier than ever, as if it didn’t want to budge.  

Forcing it open, Yaein stepped outside.  

The garden surrounding the house and the brick walls enclosing it felt unfamiliar.  

She almost lost her way on the short path leading to the garage.  

Once she settled into the driver’s seat, her heartbeat pounded so loudly that it filled her ears.  

‘Is this really the right thing to do? Is this okay?’

As if sensing her hesitation, her stomach tightened.  

Uncomfortable, Yaein took a deep breath.  

“It’s okay. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.”  

She stroked her belly, repeating the words over and over—words she had wished someone had told her when she was a child.  

“Mommy will protect you.”  

The word *mommy* felt foreign on her tongue, something she had rarely said while growing up.  

She repeated it again and again.  

‘Mommy… Mommy…’

The car heater hummed as it sent warm air through the cabin.  

Though the space gradually filled with heat, Yaein’s trembling refused to subside.  

She gripped the steering wheel tightly.  

The car, which had remained still, finally began to move.  

***

‘—Okay. Just don’t overwork yourself.’

His wife’s soft voice lingered in his ear, tickling his senses.  

As soon as Taeheon ended the call and pulled the phone away, the warmth that had settled around his ear vanished, replaced by the dry, biting cold.  

Breaking the silence, he spoke.

“When someone is on the phone, you should be quiet.”  

The hunched man, who had been nervously watching, flinched and jerked his head up.  

“A-ah, y-yes. I-I’m really sorry, Director.”  

The apology came out clumsily, slurred—probably due to missing teeth.  

A pinkish froth of saliva, tinged with blood, splattered from his lips.  

The vacant building, newly renovated with fresh cement, looked pristine yet eerily desolate.  

The floor was covered with blue waterproof tarps, spread out across the entire space.  

A middle-aged man, sitting in the center, crawled toward Taeheon on his knees.  

The sound of the tarp crumpling under his movements filled the air.  

“I-I really am sorry about the overdue payment. But I’ll pay it back, I swear! You know that, right? We’ve done business together for over ten years! Please, just let me talk to the Chairman—just once!”  

The man, old enough to be his father, was practically groveling now.  

Taeheon simply observed him in silence.  

The man’s thinning hair revealed patches of pink scalp, stained with dried blood.  

“The Chairman isn’t well right now,” Taeheon replied.

Rejecting the man’s desperate pleas, Taeheon casually nudged his knee away as he crawled closer, seemingly ready to cling to his pant leg.  

“And more than the overdue payment, the real problem is the missing shipment… An entire trailer loaded with cargo just vanished. Now, how do you suppose that happened?”  

“I-I really have no idea…!”  

“Not knowing might be a bigger issue here.”  

The man’s words cut off abruptly.  

Taeheon kicked his knee again—this time, harder.  

A sharp cracking sound echoed through the empty space, like something hard breaking apart.  

The man clutched his knee, his face turning a deep, mottled red. Saliva dripped from his mouth as he stifled a groan.  

“The Chairman may have been willing to let this slide, but personally, I *hate* these kinds of messy little games where people keep passing things around.”  

Getting stabbed in the back? *That*, he despised even more.  

Muttering that last part under his breath, Taeheon turned away.  

“I’ll be stepping out for a bit. In the meantime, ask him nicely. See if he really can’t remember anything.”  

He gestured toward the suited men standing behind him.  

“Sometimes, a little *assistance* helps jog the memory.”

“I-Director Kwon! Please, just wait a moment! Director Kwon—!”  

The man’s shrieks faded as the door shut behind him.  

Would Yaein have called that crying too?  

The thought amused him as he stepped out of the building.