The Tyrant Husband - Chapter 3.2

Chapter 3.2

The gauze soaked in saline solution, and he placed his hand over the wound.

Her lower lip instinctively tightened.

She braced herself, determined not to let out even the smallest sound this time, even if he handled the wound roughly like before. She didn’t want to give him any satisfaction from his strange habits.

But this time, it was completely different. From the very first touch, his movements were light and careful.

Her lips pressed together again, but for a different reason. This time… it tickled a little.

“Ah, wait… hold on…”

Her body kept flinching involuntarily.

“Does it hurt? Even this much?”

After being so merciless while stopping the bleeding earlier, he now asked with concern.

Eun-sol hesitated for a moment.

‘If I say it hurts, will he stop? If I say it doesn’t hurt, will he stop?’

Eventually, she decided not to answer at all.

‘No matter what I say, this is a man who will just do whatever he wants anyway.’

When she didn’t respond, he focused on gently cleaning the wound with the saline-soaked cotton.

The shadow cast by his eyelashes was unnecessarily serious.

Her breath, which she had been holding in tightly, grew increasingly warm. It wasn’t painful, but it felt… strange in a different way.

Soon, he placed one hand on her knee to keep the gauze from slipping and used his other hand to pull out a bandage.

The bandage was wrapped in plastic packaging. He soon bit into it. Since he could only use one hand, he seemed to be trying to tear the plastic packaging with his teeth.

The contrast between the dark hue of the man’s lips, the pure white bandage, and the plastic wrapping now dampened by moisture from his teeth was unnecessarily suggestive.

Eun-sol couldn’t bear to watch any longer and quickly turned her gaze away.

Rip— 

He tore the bandage packaging with his teeth and another hand, pulled the bandage out, and began wrapping it around her knee.

Her back kept tingling. Still, she held back and decided to sit still until he was done wrapping the bandage.

“W-wait a second.”

But this was too much. He was wrapping far too much bandage.

Even after using up an entire roll of bandage, he added yet another compression bandage, wrapping it tightly around her knee and both above and below it. Her knee was so stiffly bandaged that she couldn’t even bend it.

“You don’t need to wrap it this much.”

She made no effort to hide her dissatisfaction.

The power of a fragment of memory was astounding. Just last night, when she thought he might be nothing more than a thug rather than her husband, she wouldn’t have dared to complain like this.

“The wound is on your knee. If you bend it, the wound will tear open further.”

She had expected retaliation for her protest, but instead, he responded with a considerate explanation.

“Still, this is just too…”

Judging by the amount of bandage he had used, it looked less like she had a simple scrape and more like her kneecap had been completely shattered.

But it seemed even this wasn’t enough for him. He loosened the tie that had been neatly knotted over his dress shirt.

A khaki-colored tie with gold diagonal stripes. Now that she thought about it, she recognized that tie very well. It was one she had sold to him herself back in the day.

“…That tie… I don’t think you should just use it like that… It’s a limited edition piece. Only ten are made every year.”

His hands, which had been wrapping the tie around her knee, paused.

“…I remember now. I was the sales clerk who recommended that tie to you.”

She expected his gaze, which had been fixed on her knee, to lift. As he always did, she thought he would lock eyes with her, pin her down with his stare, and interrogate her.

Ask her if she’d regained her memories.

But his gaze remained fixed on her knee. For a moment, it seemed as though his breath faltered.

Of course, she couldn’t be certain. Perhaps it was just her imagination. That’s why it was a little frustrating.

If the fabric tied around her knee had been a light scarf, she might have been able to make a more objective judgment by observing the way it fluttered…!

But what was tied around her knee was a heavy tie.

She had no choice but to rely on her senses. Eun-sol heightened her focus as much as possible.

‘Would he be happy to hear that I’ve regained my memories, or not?’

Under normal circumstances, he should naturally be happy.

However, since he didn’t lift his head, she couldn’t read his expression.

“…Jeong-hyeok.”

It was the first time. The first time she had called his name while hoping he would look at her… at least as far as she could remember.

* * *

“…I remember now. I was the sales clerk who recommended that tie to you.”

Eun-sol’s voice was filled with curiosity, like an observer pricking someone’s skin with the tip of a needle to see how much pain they would feel and how they would react.

Kwon Jeong-hyeok had no intention of showing any of the reactions she might have been expecting.

He simply mulled it over quietly. The fact that Kim Eun-sol had regained her memory.

And then, he asked himself again.

‘So what?’

Her recalling past memories was something that could have started happening at any time.

There was nothing surprising about it.

Yet, despite that simple conclusion, a suppressed breath eventually escaped through his teeth.

The single breath that fell seeped beneath her knee. Beneath the bandage, which wasn’t covered by the tie, faint traces of blood began to spread.

He thought he had done enough to stop the bleeding… but it seemed impossible to stop the blood seeping from the already wide-open wound.

Her memories were likely the same. No matter how much they were blocked or suppressed, they were bound to resurface eventually.

“…Jeong-hyeok.”

At that moment, her voice pierced his ears. A voice tinged with earnestness. It had been a long time since his name had been called in that tone.

“…Yes.”

Before meeting her, he had always thought of his name as being like a stone. A stone, no less.

A stone among stones, like basalt.

A porous basalt stone that had endured scorching lava and rolled around, full of holes. Its dark, ghostly appearance was exactly like him.

Compared to other stones, it might seem to have a bit of history and uniqueness, but in the end, it was just a stone. On Jeju Island, it was nothing more than an overly common stone.

However, when Kim Eun-sol called his name, it was different.

In those fleeting moments when she called him, it felt as though flowers bloomed one by one on the barren basalt stone.

He lifted his head. His gaze met hers directly, piercing through with even more intensity.

“…Speak.”

His eyes, which had avoided hers for just a moment before, were now unwavering, sharp like an arrowhead, and fortified like armor.

Her shoulders trembled slightly. Then, she clenched her small hands and poured out her words.

“A tie that’s only produced ten times per season. That day, ten of them happened to arrive at the store where I worked. You ordered all ten, and when I looked flustered, you asked me about my shift hours.”

As if to prove that she had regained her memories, she started recounting details that he hadn’t even asked about.

“Did I really do that?”

The truth was, it was a vivid memory in his mind.

How could he possibly forget that day? It had taken him over ten years to stand before her again, to finally decide to make her his.

“Yes. I think you did.”

Eun-sol’s lips moved slightly. She seemed flustered by his indifferent reaction, as though she had expected him to show some kind of response upon hearing that she had remembered.

“And then? What else do you remember?”

He tilted his head slightly to the side and gestured with his chin, urging her to continue. As if to say, “If there’s more, go ahead and say it.”

Her eyelashes quivered. Her delicate jaw, which would leave an imprint if held in one hand, and her bangs, damp with cold sweat, seemed desperate to draw his attention.

But he simply focused on her lips. More precisely, on their color. 

Eun-sol’s plump lips, when drained of color, always reminded him of white tulips.

But now, her lips had a healthy hue. They looked dry and slightly rough, but they were different from back then. They weren’t the pale, bloodless lips that seemed on the verge of revealing some unspeakable secret.

And so, he felt relieved.

If Kim Eun-sol had remembered everything—if she had recalled that secret—she wouldn’t be talking about ties or sitting here with her knee entrusted to him.

As he reached a plausible conclusion, the doctor’s words came to mind.

“She might regain all her memories at once, but more often, people recover fragments of their memories. Those fragments can become a starting point, leading to more memories resurfacing. Or, she might only recover part of her memories without recalling everything.”

Those words were enough to completely cool his composure.