Chapter 4.2

“I’m more grateful that you understood my intentions well.”

Then Senior Executive Director Cha offered a practical solution.

This was the first time President Choi had thought of postponing or setting aside work. It must certainly be an urgent or important appointment. Instead of asking what it was about, he conveyed that he had arranged for the President to only participate in the meeting.

Senior Executive Director Cha could sufficiently handle the dinner in place of President Choi Jin-wook. Senior Executive Director Cha was proficient in English and Italian, and being of similar age to the retiring designer, he thought they would communicate well.

Once the meeting ended and President Choi left first, he could proceed with the rest sufficiently on his own.

“That would be very helpful. If you’re willing to do that, Senior Executive Director Cha.”

“Aren’t subordinates there to be used? Please use us at times like this.”

To Senior Executive Director Cha, who bowed his head once again, Jin-wook also gave a light nod. The subordinates who now asked him to trust them more felt reassuring.

If he followed Senior Executive Director Cha’s suggestion, he could at least have dinner with his wife tonight. Though it was unusual for him too, that wasn’t what mattered.

From the moment his wife said she would leave him, he had been sufficiently shaken. If that was his wife’s goal, he wanted to congratulate her on achieving it and even applaud her.

– Young Madam has disappeared without a trace.

During lunch time, a call came from the housekeeper. She said his wife was nowhere to be seen. She said most of her clothes and belongings were all left behind, but she herself had slipped out.

Then he just needed to find out where his wife had gone.

It was almost lunch time now. There was still plenty of time until evening.

***

Mia Intersection Station.

This was the name of the subway station closest to the result of tracking his wife’s phone location.

What kind of name was this wretched “Mia”?

[T/N: 미아 (Mia) → a proper noun (also means lost child in Korean, but here it’s a neighborhood name in Seoul).]

In the elevator heading to the parking garage after the meeting ended, he had quite a serious expression.

It matched perfectly with the situation of his wife having left home. What could she have gone there for, in a place that seemed completely unrelated? Had she perhaps already bought a house to live alone after divorce?

However, the card he had given her had barely any usage traces for weeks. No, thinking about it, his wife had never used that card except when buying gifts for Madam Shin.

Now that he thought about it, even that seemed deliberate. Other wives supposedly asked for their limits to be raised, but his wife never had.

She had never even pestered him to buy her a luxury bag.

When exactly had she decided on divorce?

Once he started thinking this way, his wife’s behaviors began to make sense.

She had always been prepared to leave his side—ready to brush him off at any moment.

Perhaps she had already finished preparing to stand on her own. The powerless and weak appearance he had seen when returning home from work might not have been all there was to his wife.

Ding. The elevator door opened on the first floor.

The two people who faced each other recognized one another and showed different expressions. It was Madam Shin who grabbed him happily and got on the elevator.

“Jin-wook. I was waiting to go up around when your meeting would end.”

“I have a prior engagement. Please make it quick.”

“How can you be even more cutting than your father…. No, that’s not the main point. That Ah-jin girl says she’s divorcing you. What on earth happened?”

They rarely talked about his deceased father. He didn’t particularly welcome it when any family member mentioned him either. That’s why when Madam Shin scolded him, saying he resembled his father, he would immediately furrow his brow deeply.

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

Watching him carefully, Madam Shin tried to continue the conversation, but there wasn’t much he felt like saying to her.

Both before and after marriage, Madam Shin had not welcomed Ah-jin. Even though it was a marriage she had ultimately permitted after considering everything, she had been regretful.

So even after the marriage, she made various demands of his wife, and his wife had accommodated and followed everything within her means. The housekeeper had told him just a few examples last time, saying she was truly remarkable for not complaining or grumbling even once.

“Did Ah-jin say that? That I told her to get divorced?”

The slight wrinkles around Madam Shin’s eyes suddenly deepened. When the phone was first disconnected, she thought it had been cut off due to some problem.

However, when she realized that her son was deliberately doing this by continuing to not answer her calls, she had come to the company. Regardless of what her daughter-in-law had said or how she had said it to her son, Madam Shin had plenty to say from her position as well.

“Even if it wasn’t Ah-jin, word gets around.”

Madam Shin seemed to realize that his words were referring to the housekeeper. She hardened her expression for a moment, then continued speaking with her arms crossed.

“Divorce, what’s the big deal about that. It was something I said to try to discipline Ah-jin. Just casually, like a greeting. On any other day she would’ve brushed it off and apologized politely. Wouldn’t she?”

To Madam Shin speaking as if it were nothing, he cast a cold gaze as if he were disgusted.

His wife wasn’t the first to be hurt by words Madam Shin had casually said. There was one more person very close to him that he knew of.

Divorce.

From a mother’s perspective, it might have been a word she could bring up lightly. She would always be thoroughly in the superior position. But it wouldn’t have been the same for the person listening.

He still remembered his father’s gaunt face when he came home late at night, exhausted. A man without much eloquence or tact, who simply poured himself wholly into his work—yet few people remembered that.

“What did Ah-jin do so wrong to you, Mother?”

“What?”

Madam Shin’s face, which widened her eyes as she asked back, also didn’t look well, but he didn’t stop speaking.

“Ah-jin is sick.”

“What?”

“She caught a cold recently. You must know since you heard from the housekeeper.”

“Yes. But what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why do you order a sick person to come and go? It’s irritating.”

Whether his wife really had a cold wasn’t what mattered. Even so, the fact that his mother had tried to boss around such a wife made him feel uncomfortable.

When he learned that his mother had treated his wife like some doll without even a word of consultation with him, he wanted to cut off contact for a while, even if it was his mother.

“Right. From what I hear, that Ah-jin girl isn’t completely naive. She asked me to persuade you to divorce her. Jin-wook, you’re not going to divorce, right? Right?”

Madam Shin had an expression that said why was he raising his voice over such a thing. What was most important now was what came after.

“I won’t.”

He wouldn’t. Absolutely not.

“Good. You thought well. Even though it’s a mid-sized company, there aren’t many companies with such solid finances when you actually look for them. It will help you when you work in distribution in the future too.”

However, Madam Shin’s calculations seemed to have nothing to do with his emotions.

She didn’t know that he had been going between heaven and hell for the past few days, and especially how crazy his thoughts had been today.

It wasn’t surprising. She was the mother who had been counting DH’s remaining affiliates even in the face of his father’s death.

He knew well that his wife’s family side was a place worth coveting.

However, he hadn’t chosen his wife based solely on that.

He had liked his wife’s attitude when she came to the matchmaking meeting without much expectation. Unlike other candidates his mother had arranged before, she didn’t pry into his family circumstances.

What he had needed was simply a stable feeling. A feeling of being naturally calmed just by looking at her.

A woman who would let him focus entirely on business without having to worry about home separately. He needed a woman who wouldn’t demand too much and knew how to adjust to him appropriately. That included covering for his mother, Madam Shin.

Though it was their first meeting, since first impressions usually lasted, he married his wife.

Even after marriage, he knew his thoughts hadn’t been wrong.

Of course, his wife in bed made him boil with passion, but seeing his wife’s sleeping face in the morning gave him an indescribable sense of fulfillment. In short, she was a perfect wife both day and night.