“What’s this?”

His wife’s foot was covered in a dark bruise. Ikhyeon touched it, and she flinched but said nothing.

“How did this happen?”

He asked again.

“An axe got me.”

“An axe?”

Ikhyeon looked up at her.

“I must have let my guard down.”

She lay on the bed and answered, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Looking back, that was the moment. The moment his wife’s mood had shifted in some subtle way.

Even as he pulled her legs toward him and undressed her, even as he spread her bare lower half open without restraint, she lay still like a doll. Whether he traced playful scribbles across her chest with the tip of his tongue or went wild on top of her slight frame, she simply took it all in quiet silence. Her lukewarm response may have been what drove Ikhyeon further to the edge. He loved seeing her languid and loose after intense lovemaking. He loved the drowsy look in her eyes, like a well-fed Persian cat. That look alone was enough to make his spent c*ck stir back to life, shamelessly.

Why hadn’t he noticed?

Ikhyeon looked again at the photo, at his wife’s young face with her braces.

He should have realized the moment she pushed his hand away. It wasn’t his wife who had let her guard down. It was him. Just as she said, Ikhyeon had let his guard down. Three years of marriage, and he had been thoroughly drunk on the belief that she loved him.

Wondering if he had missed anything else, Ikhyeon sat at his wife’s worktable and opened the drawer. It was a low thought, but if there was a diary in there, he wanted to read it. For better or worse, the drawer held nothing but art supplies and restoration materials. Nothing he was looking for.

He needed to know.

Who his wife had met that day.

Hyungrin might know.

He shut the drawer and moved to stand, and his phone rang from the living room.

Thud.

Rushing out of the room, Ikhyeon kicked the trash can beside the worktable. It toppled over, but he had no time to right it. He ran to the living room and grabbed his phone.

An unknown number. His heart began to beat uneasily. He exhaled sharply and pressed the answer button.

“Hello.”

— Hi.

It was not his wife. The unfamiliar voice carved a deep furrow between Ikhyeon’s brows.

“Who is this?”

— It’s me.

Me.

“Who is this?”

He asked again.

— It’s me, I said.

The other person gave the same answer.

“So… who exactly is this?”

Ikhyeon gathered his patience and asked again, as politely as he could manage.

— Haha. Did you forget my voice, or are you pretending to?

The moment he heard that laugh, metallic and grating, an unpleasant sensation scraped across his nerves like a fingernail dragged down a chalkboard.

“You have the wrong number.”

He hadn’t been pretending. He genuinely hadn’t recognized her, not until he heard that laugh. He had forgotten her completely and lived that way.

— It’s me. Noh Yoon…

And knowing he intended to keep living that way, Ikhyeon hung up before she could finish. The moment he did, the phone rang again. He checked the number and blocked it.

Ha. An out-of-nowhere phone call. He let out a hollow laugh.

How soft must Kwon Ikhyeon have been toward Noh Yoonji for her to pull a stunt like this. It wasn’t so much insulting as it was irritating, the way a spam call was irritating. He supposed he could count himself lucky that the unknown number hadn’t been a voice telling him his wife had been kidnapped.

Some memories become nostalgia. Others become nightmares. For Ikhyeon, his connection to Noh Yoonji was a nightmare he never wanted to revisit. He had erased it, forgotten it, let it cease to exist.

He raked a hand roughly through his hair and called Hyungrin, his youngest brother-in-law.

— Hey, Kwon. I was actually about to call you.

The sound of a pot clattering suggested he was cooking.

“Why?”

Ikhyeon walked toward his wife’s room to clean up the overturned trash can.

— Come over if you haven’t eaten yet. Morin told me to have dinner with you.

“When did she say that?”

Ikhyeon stopped, hand reaching for the trash can.

— Yesterday. She said you were going on a business trip.

“Have you talked to her since?”

— No.

“I can’t reach Morin.”

Ikhyeon checked his watch. Exactly thirty-six hours had passed.

— She’s probably just busy.

Ikhyeon’s eyebrow ticked upward. His wife was unreachable, and this was the reaction he got? The Hyungrin he knew should have been in a panic, insisting they file a missing persons report.

“Has she mentioned meeting anyone recently? A friend who came back from abroad after a long time?”

He picked up the trash can and gathered the scattered scraps of paper and tissues.

— …Hmm. I haven’t heard anything.

It was only a split second, but Ikhyeon didn’t miss Hyungrin’s hesitation.

“You really don’t know?”

— She’s not a kindergartner. It’s not like she needs permission to meet someone, and besides, why would she tell me something like that when she has a husband?

“Why so many words? I was just asking.”

He knew his wife sometimes told Hyungrin things she couldn’t say to Ikhyeon, her husband. But that wasn’t something to feel hurt about. It was something Ikhyeon, who had no siblings, had to understand.

— So are you coming or not?

“I don’t feel like it.”

He had no appetite either. He reached under the table and picked up a purple ribbon from the floor, tossed it into the trash can, then pulled it back out and looked at it. The moment he saw the logo printed on the deep purple band, a curse slipped from his mouth.

“You know where Morin went the day before yesterday, don’t you?”

— What are you talking about?

Hyungrin’s voice rose in a way that sounded like denial.

“Gu Hyungrin. Stay right there.”

Ikhyeon didn’t even stop for a jacket. He ran to his wife’s family home, five minutes away.

“I reorganized the study.”

He should have paid attention to those words his wife had said offhandedly a week ago. He remembered now. His office assistant had stacked mail and magazines on the table, and he had shoved them all into his bag and brought them home. Going through the mail, he had come across Noh Yoonji’s invitation and, without a second thought, tucked it between other DMs and magazines and tossed it in a corner.

He ran without an umbrella. He ran with his teeth clenched, cursing his own carelessness and stupidity. The spring rain fell harder than spring rain had any right to, and within moments Ikhyeon was soaked through.

“Are you insane… you ran here without an umbrella?”

Hyungrin opened the door and stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

“What is this?”

Still catching his breath, Ikhyeon held out the purple band to Hyungrin.

“What is that? Where did you get it?”

Hyungrin played dumb, but Ikhyeon already had his answer from Hyungrin’s expression. The men in this family should never play poker.

“Don’t tell me you took Morin with you.”

“You’re going to catch a cold. Let me get you a towel.”

Hyungrin disappeared down the hall as though trying to escape the interrogation, and didn’t come back for a while. Ikhyeon took off his shoes and stood barefoot, watching the drops of water fall onto the hardwood floor. He wiped the rain running down his forehead with his palm, and the memory of the first time he had ever stepped into this house came back to him. It had been raining that day too, and he had stood in the middle of the long hallway and heard his wife’s voice. It felt like that young voice might come flying out from the kitchen at the end of the hall at any moment.

***

Before he could even go on his first university MT, he had to have surgery for a pneumothorax. On the day he was discharged after a long, slow recovery, it had been raining since morning.

“Give me that. The doctor said no heavy lifting for a while.”

Uncle Giseop finished the discharge paperwork and took the bag from Ikhyeon’s hand.

“Your father said you’d be fine, but I couldn’t stand it. You’re so thin.”

At first, Ikhyeon had turned down his father’s suggestion to stay at Uncle Giseop’s place. It felt uncomfortable, and he didn’t want to be a burden. So Uncle Giseop came to the hospital and talked him into it.

“If you get sick again, your father’s going to drop dead. You matter, but Deokjo matters to me too.”

One sentence from his uncle, and Ikhyeon had to nod.

“The youngest might give you a hard time. Try to understand. She’s going through puberty.”

Uncle Giseop winked with an expression that said, don’t even get me started.

“No, no. Sit in the back. That’s our youngest’s designated seat.”

He pointed Ikhyeon to the backseat when Ikhyeon moved to sit in the front.

“She’s the drill sergeant of the house. Impossibly particular about everything.”