A Secret Only I Know, People Happy Without Me
“Ha! You really went and did it. You completely wrecked the place.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are we supposed to do about this? I told you to do inventory. Who told you to trash everything?”
“I’m sorry.”
Jeong-a had been waiting for this the moment she walked in that morning, and she tore into me without holding back. All I could do was bow my head and apologize the way I always did. Today, though, something about her anger felt sharper than usual. She snapped at me as if she wanted me to feel every word.
“Hey, lady. Is this funny to you?”
“I’m sorr— …what?”
“Is this situation funny? Why the hell are you sitting there grinning?”
The sudden question made me turn toward the mirror beside me. There she was—an actual woman smiling softly, almost bashfully. What… what was that? In the middle of getting thoroughly chewed out, even I could see how idiotic that vacant little smile looked. Anyone would get pissed off looking at it.
Still… I didn’t want to deny it. Because the truth was, I didn’t feel bad. That surprised me. My body reeked of garbage and olive oil, and after pulling an all-nighter I was dead on my feet—and yet, somehow, my mood was good. Even Jeong-a’s nasty little digs didn’t sting the way they usually did.
A thought rose unbidden in my chest.
I have a secret. One you’ll never know.
It was a strange thought. Over something that small? And yet it left me with a faint, inexplicable sense of superiority. Truly bizarre. But I didn’t hate it. Riding that hard-to-name feeling, I smiled again, and Jeong-a stamped her feet as if the sight of me made her even more annoyed.
She couldn’t keep scolding me forever, though. However the night had gone, the inventory—the one thing that actually mattered—had been finished perfectly. She must have come in fully prepared to tear me apart for botching it. When she realized it was flawless, her face only twisted tighter with resentment.
So I carefully watched her mood and slipped out for the day, heading home early for once and finally letting myself breathe. The first thing I did was peel off the sticky, reeking clothes. Then I grimaced.
“Ugh… the oil smell.”
It clung to every inch of me. It had soaked through even my underwear, leaving my skin slick and shiny. One look in the mirror and I wanted nothing more than to scrub myself clean immediately. And then… another strange thought drifted through my head.
“Is it because it’s olive oil? It doesn’t smell as awful as I expected. And weirdly… my skin looks kind of glossy. Almost nice.”
While muttering that absurd nonsense to myself, an image rose unbidden. A body that had been just as drenched in oil as mine—and yet nothing like it. Tight, sculpted muscle, all hard planes and ridges, gleaming under a sheen of oil. God… that had been something else. A real man’s body.
Not a half-finished, incomplete thing like me. A male body that could conquer females and make them follow. Thinking about it, Jeong-a and the other women suddenly made a little more sense. Seeing that, what else could they do? Any female would be drawn to it. Even I had been.
“Huh? What am I even…”
I slammed the brakes on my thoughts and rapped my knuckles against my head, as if to knock some sense back into myself. Lately it felt like my mind ran wild more often than not. I was grateful for the help, and contrary to my first impression he was more capable—and bigger-hearted—than expected. Still. Time to stop the useless fantasies.
“He said to buy him a meal sometime, right? Fine. That’s enough. No more weird thoughts. Just wash up. But…”
I looked at my reflection again and felt a faint sense of wrongness. What was this?
“Why do I look… a little younger? And my chest is weirdly…”
I adjusted my glasses, but that only confirmed what I was already seeing. It was eerie. Compared to just a little while ago, I looked subtly more feminine. Just… my imagination, right? I turned away from that strangely eye-catching reflection of myself and hurried into the bathroom as if fleeing.
A few days passed after that. Nothing really changed. My misery at the store continued, and so did Jeong-a’s constant nagging. If anything, it seemed to have gotten a little harsher. And Kang-ho still strolled through the store like a king, that same mocking look on his face.
Between us, just like before, there was no contact. As if that night had never happened—as if it had only been a dream. But one piece of proof remained that it had been real.
“Ah, it’s nothing. Drop it.”
“Come on, oppa, did you get into another fight with those gang kids? Why else would you be this banged up?”
“Fuck, you think I’d waste my time on those little punks?”
The wounds on his head and shoulder. The ones I had disinfected and bandaged myself. Every time I caught sight of him from across the store and saw those bandages, something warm and private stirred in my chest. Jeong-a. You’ll never know. How those wounds got there. I made them, and I treated them. On your king’s precious body, no less.
…Huh? Another weird thought had just skimmed across my mind. Anyway—maybe because of that, even though my work was still the same hot, stinking, unpleasant garbage disposal, for a while I was able to get through my shifts in a not-entirely-terrible mood. But of course, even that small mercy was too much for someone like me.
“Living… really well, huh.”
I flipped through the photos and let out a long breath. It had started just a moment ago.
After finishing another round of reeking food waste the way I always did, I took a short break—and a strange thought hit me. Seeing Kang-ho walking around with the bandages peeled off, casually showing the faint remaining scars, had brought back the conversation from that night.
‘Ah, yes. The kid’s just such a handful…’
That had made me think of my son. My son, whom I hadn’t seen in so long. After the divorce, when she said she didn’t want visitation, I hadn’t even dared to reach out. And once my body became like this, I couldn’t show myself even if I’d wanted to. My sweet, beloved child.
Suddenly I missed him. And then, absurd as it was, the face of that hated wife—no, ex-wife—rose with him. Was she doing okay? She’d always been terrible at keeping house no matter how well she worked, and without me she’d lived on takeout. Was she even eating properly?
What she had done that day—the betrayal, the humiliation—still burned and hurt. And yet thinking of her now, I found myself wanting to see her. So, careful no one would notice, I hid in a corner by the food-waste bins and pulled up her Instagram. How was she living? What if she was struggling?
That workplace superior she’d been having an affair with… he looked every bit the playboy. What if he’d just used her and thrown her away, and her life had gotten as rough as mine? Then our son would suffer for it too. Worries piled on top of worries as I opened her account.
And looking through her Instagram, all I could feel was a hollow kind of regret. My worries hadn’t just been unnecessary—they had been laughable. She wasn’t just doing fine. She was living happily. Radiantly so.
“Is this the Maldives? She always said she wanted to go… so she finally did.”
Standing on a bungalow over the water, my ex-wife posed like a model in a flashy latex bikini, fingers forming a V. Photo after photo like that—and then the next one was clearly taken by someone else.
Her tangled up with that superior I’d seen before, kissing on the sand.
“Wow… what kind of person posts something this explicit on Instagram…”
I told myself I was worried about what Yujin would think if he saw it. That was a lie. What I really felt was disappointment. The sheer brightness of her happiness stood in such brutal contrast to me, standing here buried in food waste, that I couldn’t help but sink.
Contrary to my fears, that man seemed to be a decent partner after all. I couldn’t tell if they’d remarried, but they were clearly living together. Below were a flood of photos introducing their new place.
Compared to the ordinary little home we’d shared, it was embarrassing to even put them side by side—a house that looked like it belonged in a movie. And in it, my ex-wife wore a smile I had never seen on her before, pure happiness and contentment. Without me… she wasn’t unhappy at all.
If anything, she looked happier because I was gone.
That fact hit me with a pain I didn’t know how to name. Had I… just been an obstacle to you? I had spent my whole life wanting nothing but to make you and Yujin happy. And now you were happier without me. Then what… had I even been for?
And Yujin seemed to be doing well too. The private English kindergarten he’d begged so hard to attend—the one I’d stopped him from because we couldn’t afford it. Seeing him there in the uniform, backpack on, out and about… my chest felt like it was tearing open all over again.
My son. When had I last actually seen him? Was it the night before the betrayal, when I’d put him to bed? The next day she’d thrown me out, and I’d fled without even looking at his face. And I hadn’t seen him since. What did my son think of me now?
A father who vanished without even a proper goodbye—did he even remember me properly? The thought brought the grief surging up again until it choked me. I hated this. This wretched version of myself. The endless parade of misfortune. And this pathetic, miserable self that could still feel a little better over the scrap of kindness from people living at the bottom of the pile—that was the most disgusting part of all.
Would the day ever come when I could see my son again while I was still alive? I couldn’t even begin to measure how far away that day might be. All I could do was stand in the garbage dump and sob as quietly as I could, choking the sounds back down.
Once the storm inside me had run its course, my mood sank flat again. And whenever that happened, something always came to torment me. Today was no different. After finishing another grueling day, dragging my garbage-stinking body toward home, someone blocked my path. Kang-ho.
“Hey, lady. Heading home?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“Huh? What’s with the attitude? We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
Kang-ho shrugged as if he couldn’t believe it. If I hadn’t seen those photos, I might have been a little kinder. But not today. I tried to step around him, and he blocked me again, tapping the wounds on his body as he spoke.
“Whoa, whoa. Just walking off? You forget you promised to pay me back?”
“Haa… I remember… fine.”
“Great. Then we’re doing it tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“What? Problem? Got a lover waiting at home or something?”
Somehow the words felt like a provocation. They irritated me—and yet, for some reason, I also felt like having a drink tonight myself. So… I let out a long breath and answered.
“No. Nothing like… that. Let’s go.”
“Heh heh heh. Follow me. I’ll take you somewhere killer.”
And just like that… I walked, on my own two feet, down a path I would never have taken if I’d known—and that I would come to regret.