Misfortune Always Comes All at Once
Misfortune always comes all at once.
Happiness rarely visits of its own accord, but misfortune always crashes down in a heap. Who said that, again? I couldn't quite remember. Still, I had to agree it belonged among the great quotes — because I was living the proof of it right now.
"Honey…?"
The man and woman thrashing through a violent coupling on the master bedroom bed didn't even register the door opening. So I forced myself to stay calm and spoke. The woman riding him, dripping sweat as if she'd been oiled from head to toe, letting out those shattering moans while she worked her hips without pause… that woman was my wife.
Only then did my wife and the man beneath her seem to notice I was there. But none of the frantic blanket-snatching or screaming you always see in movies followed. The two of them simply glanced my way and let their open disgust show without the slightest effort to hide it. When the man turned his head to look at me, I finally recognized him.
My wife's boss from work. The solid, dark-skinned man who had once come to our wedding, shaken my hand, and offered his congratulations was lying in my bed today, staring at me with a face that said this was all rather absurd. As if no excuse or explanation were even required. So in the end, the one who left the room was me.
I shut the door, came out, and sat in the living room. The moment I left, the bedroom filled again with those lingering cries, as if they meant to shake off whatever interruption I'd caused. A few minutes passed like that. Then, with one final shattering scream from my wife — a sound I had never once heard from her before — the master bedroom went quiet. My skull, on the other hand, felt ready to split open. I had no idea where to begin, or what I was even supposed to do.
Then the bedroom door opened and someone stepped out. It was my wife's boss. He hadn't even bothered with the decency of a shower after finishing; he emerged fully dressed, still trailing that particular musk. Looking at me sitting blank-faced on the living-room sofa, he even managed a smile as he spoke.
"Well… sorry about that. Work things out with Yeonhui, yeah?"
As if nothing of any consequence had happened, he dipped his head to me with that same smile and headed for the front door with the ease of long familiarity. My wife came out right after him to see him off. Astonishingly, she shot me one look of pure irritation on her way past, then followed him straight to the entrance. After he put on his shoes, she said to him:
"I'm sorry. I ruined the mood all of a sudden."
"Don't be. I'm the one who should apologize. See you at the office tomorrow."
And with that, he kissed her — as casually as anything. My wife pulled him into her arms the way a wife sees her own husband off and kissed him back just the same. The whole scene was so alien, so utterly unreal, that it felt as though I were watching it happen in someone else's home.
Once he was gone, silence settled again. I dropped my head and clutched at the throbbing ache in my skull. Then my wife came toward me. Unlike her boss, who had at least put his clothes back on, she was still completely naked — exactly as she had been while they were at it.
As if she wanted me to look, she stood before me across the table from the sofa, body gleaming with sweat and fluids, teeth marks visible all over her skin. I couldn't form a single coherent thought about what I ought to say.
In the end, after endless circling, only one conclusion remained. So I forced down whatever was rising in my throat and spoke to my wife.
"About today… I'll pretend I never saw it. I'll understand, and I'll forgive you. So just… never again—"
"Are you out of your mind…? Who the hell are you to forgive me or understand me?"
"Honey…?"
At her violent words I lifted my head and looked at her. There was nothing apologetic in her face, nothing that suggested she meant to deny any of it. She was looking down at me with an expression of pure contempt — almost as if things had worked out rather well.
Looking at her like that, I could barely breathe. Her full breasts, the clean line of her waist, her hips — all of it was right there, completely exposed. On any other day that body would have been so alluring I would have wanted to fetch her clothes and cover her up myself. I had fretted over that more times than I could count.
I had always believed that sight belonged to me alone, her husband, something no one else would ever see. Today she was shoving it in my face on purpose — as if the person standing in front of her weren't her husband at all, but some insignificant, worthless creature who could look all he liked and still do absolutely nothing.
So today, instead of looking sensual or beautiful, she looked cruel. Terrifying. The same body she had offered her boss only moments ago with sobbing abandon was now posed against me in open hostility. She spoke.
"What right do you have to run your mouth like that? You limp-dick bastard who can't even function as a man."
"H-honey, what are you even saying right now? That's way too—"
"I've put up with as much as I can. I'm sick of hearing how tired you are. Sick of watching you drag yourself around every single day. Why do I have to live like this? I make more money than you. I get more respect out there than you do."
I knew that when she got angry she ran hot and said ugly things. But today she had crossed a line I could feel in my bones. At the same time, I understood the rage underneath her words. Yeah. The limp-dick problem. After Yujin was born, we hadn't had anything worth remembering for a long time.
No — let's be honest. Our sex life had never been great, not even in the early days of the marriage. No matter how hard I tried, my trouble getting a proper erection never improved, and a passionate woman like her probably never got what she needed.
But I hadn't thought it was a real problem. We had affection. We cared for each other. And above all, we had our son — our precious treasure. That was enough, I thought. I never imagined it would come back at me like this. And of all days, today… She kept going.
"And I'm done putting up with your uselessness on top of everything else. Let's just open this up."
"O-open what?"
"You got fired, didn't you?"
"H-how did you—?"
She let out a sigh of pure disbelief.
"Everyone in banking already knew your company was restructuring. And once that started, of course the most useless one there was going to be first on the list. And what's this? Ha! You brought your things home today?"
With that she kicked the cardboard box sitting on the table. It toppled with a crash, and everything I had carefully kept from my years at work spilled out across the floor like so much worthless trash. At the same moment she dragged the company's disaster — the thing I had already thought was the worst misfortune of the day — right back into the light. She kept at me.
"So what now? You planning to play housewife? Ha! Why do I have to sit here and watch that? You think that's what I married you for? What happened to all those promises about making sure I never had to struggle? That was all just lies too."
"Yeonhui, that's not fair. I told you before we got married — I was never going to coast on my family or my father. You said you didn't care. You said you still wanted to marry me!"
She shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"I never thought it would actually be true. I never imagined Hexagon Group would treat the chairman's eldest son like a complete stranger. Is that my fault? You halfwit — ignored and thrown out even by your own family!"
Those words dragged up a memory I had wanted to bury forever.
Defective fool…
Father. Damn you, Father — you won this round. Looks like I really am the defective one after all. Standing here taking this from the wife who cheated on me, without even a scrap of an excuse. Then my wife shook her head as if she were finished with me for good.
"At this rate, it looks like I'll never see a single benefit from your family for the rest of my life. So whatever last bit of hope I still had in you is gone now. Which means… the timing's perfect. Let's end it."
"End it… end what? D-don't tell me you're saying divorce—"
"What else would I mean, you idiot?"
"No! What about our Yujin? Ah — wait, it's almost time to pick him up from daycare— eh? Guhhh!!!"
I shot up from my seat to protest — and in that same instant I caught sight of the clock. Then a pain I never saw coming dropped me to the floor. She had kicked me square in the balls. Watching me writhe on the living-room floor, unable even to scream, she looked down at me with pure contempt.
"I'll raise Yujin just fine on my own, so stop fretting over things that aren't your business and get out of my life. I'll mail you the papers and your things. When they arrive, stamp the seal without whining and disappear while I'm in the shower. Take that pile of garbage with you."
"Yeonhui… Yeonhui. Th-this isn't right. This is—"
But she didn't even glance back at me as I lay on the floor reaching toward her. She walked straight into the master bathroom. And like a pathetic fool, I did exactly what she demanded — I picked up the cardboard box I'd brought from the company and fled the house as if I were running for my life.
So on the day I got fired, I walked in on my wife's affair, got divorced, and was torn away from the son I would have given anything to protect. Truly… the line about misfortune arriving all at once seemed to have it exactly right. The problem was that it still wasn't over.
Everything after that passed in a blur. In what felt like an instant the divorce was finalized, I was thrown out of the house, I dumped my things in some dingy one-room flat, and I finished the resignation paperwork. By then I was in no state to function. And of course, my body gave out. It wasn't just a cold or a fever.
I didn't know why, but it felt as though my body were being torn apart and melting from the inside — a pain so vicious I could barely endure it. I forced myself to hold on as long as I could, then finally had no choice but to call 119. But when the voice on the other end asked for my address, I couldn't even answer properly. My consciousness began to slip.
That was when I felt it. Ah… I'm dying. So this is what dying feels like. If this is death… I just want to see my son one more time. The moment that thought formed, my eyes opened.
"Uh? Uh-uh-uh…"
"Ah! He's conscious. Get the research team in here, now."
There was a clatter of sudden movement. Looking around, I found myself in a completely unfamiliar space. It looked like some kind of medical research facility, and I was lying naked inside something that resembled an MRI machine. A person who looked like a researcher approached and spoke to me.
"Mr. Shin Hyomin, are you all right? Any strange sensations in your body?"
"Ah, yes… I'm fi— wait? My throat feels weird. My voice… and why am I naked…?"
At my question the researcher made a complicated face and looked away. Then I caught my own reflection in the silver metal plate mounted above the machine I was lying in, and a deep sense of wrongness hit me. What… is that? My gaze locked onto the wrongness almost at once.
It was gone.
The genitals and testicles that should have been between my legs. What… what is this? My face and body didn't look all that different from before, so how had things ended up like this? What the hell was going on? What had happened to me? And then a familiar voice reached my ears.
"You defective fool…"
"Ah… Father?"
Misfortune, it seemed, came with at least seven siblings. That was the first thought I had after becoming a woman.