Breakdown (2)
Chae-rin, who had taken the morning off, waited only for the moment she was supposed to go to work, then returned home at three in the afternoon. And yet there I was, sitting brazenly in the middle of the house.
"I swapped my half day for a full day off. I couldn't bring myself to go in."
My eyes landed on the bundle of papers in Chae-rin's hand as she sat at the living room table. That had to be the complaint.
Even though it had been sent to me, the defendant, I couldn't bring myself to say, "Let me look at it too." Instead, I stood at a distance and offered only this:
"I rushed out and took the afternoon off too."
At that, Chae-rin let out a bitter little laugh.
"That's hilarious. You quit your job, didn't you?"
"...Yeah."
I blurted out the truth before I could stop myself.
"Defamation, violation of personality rights, violation of sexual self-determination. Does that even make sense to you? What the hell have you been doing all this time? Living a busy life, were you?"
Every one of her words came at me like a gleaming blade.
My legs gave out and I nearly collapsed on the spot. I somehow dragged myself to the sofa and sank into it.
"Everything Han Jae-yu did in Human Guilty — is it all true? ...Right. It's mostly true, isn't it."
Chae-rin didn't give me a chance to answer before pressing on.
"Team Leader Hye-jeong? Wasn't she a guest at our wedding? So even back then—"
"We weren't like that back then."
When I cut in desperately, her voice rose.
"Shut up! Can't you be quiet? Do you know how much that Hye-jeong demanded in settlement money? A hundred million won! And you still have something to say?"
I had nothing to say. A hundred million won. I didn't have that kind of money.
"You wanted to serialize that novel so badly? I hear she asked you several times to stop. And you kept publishing anyway — that makes it worse, doesn't it."
As if that were all. Han Yu-jae's crimes were too vile for words. I, the author, knew that better than anyone.
But I never expected a lawsuit to come flying my way like this.
Team Leader Hye-jeong, like me, could simply have kept a stone face about it all.
According to what I'd heard through the grapevine, she'd even landed a solid new job. So she could have dismissed the story of Kim Jeong-hye in the novel as nothing more than the author's delusions and maintained plausible deniability.
The complaint's claim that the novel was based entirely on true events was, in other words, an admission of her own affair.
Her plan, it seemed, was to ruin me even at the cost of branding herself an adulteress. I couldn't even fathom how deeply she must resent me.
"In Human Guilty, you were busy meeting other women too, weren't you? How long has it been since you quit? You haven't just been writing and fooling around this whole time, have you? Those women — you actually met them, didn't you?"
"No. That was all fiction. I made it up."
I hedged with an offhand lie, and Chae-rin shot back in a stern voice:
"Don't lie. Tell me straight. You've lied plenty already. Look me in the eye and say it."
"...It's true."
I confessed, avoiding her gaze.
Chae-rin let out a long, heavy sigh that lasted a good ten seconds. Only then did she speak again.
"All that serializing — do you have any savings? How much did you even make, that you kept publishing like that?"
"...Twenty million won. But if I keep pinching pennies and serialize for another four months or so like this... I could raise about seventy million for the settlement. If she's asking for a hundred million, I can at least try to talk her down to seventy—"
"Do you think the settlement terms are only about money? It says serialization has to be stopped immediately, you idiot."
Idiot. I never thought I'd hear that word from Chae-rin's mouth.
She always told me I was smart. That I should quit a company that made me work such endless overtime. That with a head like mine, I could move somewhere far better.
And with that smart head of mine, I deceived her. My crimes were truly vile.
I had assumed that if she ever discovered my atrocities by any means, divorce would be the natural consequence.
"...Whatever debt I take on, I'll take responsibility and fix it. It's all my fault. I will never ask you or your parents for help."
Not that I could. Once we divorced, we'd be strangers.
"Fix what? If we're each going to walk our own paths from now on, what exactly gets fixed? What about my heart? What about this feeling of being torn apart?"
"...There's no other way."
Right. She couldn't exactly stay married to a piece of trash like me.
"You know this is clear grounds for divorce, right? A husband who cheats and pays off his mistress. Did you think I couldn't file a suit of my own?"
Chae-rin flung the bundle of papers in her hand toward me.
I quietly looked down at the cover of the papers lying crumpled at my feet.
Complaint. Plaintiff: Kim Hye-jeong. Defendant: Han Yu-jae. Claim for Damages (Tort).
It felt like I was trapped in some nightmarish delusion.
Chae-rin pushed herself up from her seat and abruptly walked toward the front door. In the glimpse of her profile, the traces of tears she'd been shedding were unmistakably clear.
"...Where are you going? You're leaving?"
"Don't ask."
With those final words, Chae-rin walked out of the house.
After that, she didn't come back. Not a single word from her.
I left a notice on Human Guilty saying the serialization would be on indefinite hiatus, and lived like a wreck.
Only after four days like that did Chae-rin finally contact me.
"Where are you?"
When I asked, her quiet voice came through the phone.
"My parents' house."
"Our home" should have meant the house I was currently rotting in. But she meant her parents' place.
Chae-rin and I were no longer bound by the word our.
"Have you been eating? Taking care of yourself?"
When I asked — I who had eaten nothing but instant ramen for four days — only a terse answer came back.
"Yeah."
"Why the sudden call? What's going on?"
"Meet me at the café in front of the house in a bit. There's something I need to tell you."
With that, Chae-rin hung up immediately.
Soon a notification popped up on my phone — Chae-rin had sent the café's address over messenger, along with a short message: [Meet at 2:30.]
She was going to discuss the divorce, surely.
I braced myself hard so that no matter what cruel words came, I wouldn't break down.
I couldn't break. I didn't even have the right to.
I hadn't spent those four days just lying there. I'd done some thinking.
I was truly, impossibly sorry to Chae-rin. Toward Hye-jeong, apology and resentment coexisted. I was sorry to the other women too, but not the way I was to Chae-rin.
I had committed an undeniably grave sin. Han Yu-jae, the model for Han Jae-yu, protagonist of Human Guilty — guilty as charged.
I had prepared dozens of variations of "I'm sorry" to say to Chae-rin. But not a single version of the luxury of "please forgive me."
Once I'd poured out all my apologies, I intended to grant whatever she wanted.
Settlement money in the divorce proceedings, playing the role of inventing a fake story to tell her parents and acquaintances — I was even prepared to accept an order to confess every one of my atrocities to my mother and older sister.
Whatever she asked, I would gladly do. That alone would be my atonement. Or so I believed.
The moment Chae-rin faced my haggard face, she asked:
"That novel. ...Do you want to keep writing it?"
Instead of telling me what she wanted, she was asking what I wanted.
"...What?"
"Human Guilty. Do you want to keep serializing it or not?"
It was a question I hadn't anticipated, so I had no answer prepared.
Keep publishing Human Guilty? For a settlement with Hye-jeong to happen, every published chapter had to come down. Continuing to serialize would mean plunging into a courtroom battle.
"...There's no way."
"There is a way. That's why I'm asking. If the serialization could continue, could you keep publishing it like this until a proper ending? Or are you too worn out to go on? Answer me."
The shock I'd inflicted on her was so great I almost worried something had broken in Chae-rin's head.
Even if we went to court, the more my undeniable sins were laid bare, the larger the settlement would grow. And yet there was a way? How—
"I met with a lawyer yesterday. After the consultation, it turns out we can fire back with an adultery suit."
A method I'd never imagined. An adultery suit.
Hye-jeong had claimed the affair between Han Jae-yu and Kim Jeong-hye in the novel was based on real events. That was why she'd sent me the complaint.
And yet that same Hye-jeong had attended Han Yu-jae and Moon Chae-rin's wedding as a guest. Beyond that, the evidence that she knew I was married was practically endless.
That's right. She, who had approached me knowing I was married and carried on an affair, could never escape an adultery suit of her own.
The fact that she'd sent the complaint anyway proved she never considered the possibility of Chae-rin firing back this way. Even I hadn't expected Chae-rin to come out swinging like this.
Maybe the person who resented me more than Hye-jeong was Chae-rin herself. Someone who would more than welcome Han Yu-jae's destruction, his searing revenge. That's what I'd believed.
"...Why? For my sake—"
"We were married, after all. Do feelings disappear that easily? You were the same. At least when you came home and faced me — not always, but when we went out on dates here and there — it was like that, wasn't it? Even those feelings weren't lies."
As I listened in silence, tears streamed down both my cheeks.
"When our anniversary approached, you'd buy me a ring or a necklace. You'd bring me chocolate to cheer me up. You apologized, saying you couldn't think about pregnancy just yet, and when I cried you fumbled, not knowing what to do, and soothed me."
Chae-rin went on without pausing for breath. And so my tears wouldn't stop either.
"You kissed me every night, hugged me tight when you left for work in the morning, cooked for me without fail on your days off. You rolled up your sleeves and pitched in with the cleaning and laundry you'd been too busy to help with, and watched the movies I'd been wanting to see with me."
It was true. All of it. Whenever I was with her, I always gave my best.
It was just that, whenever I met other women, I thoroughly turned my back on that plain fact.
"...Was all of that an act? It can't have been. If it were acting, you couldn't have gone that far. Or was I... just too oblivious?"
By now Chae-rin's eyes were wet too.
Yes. Maybe I really was broken beyond repair. If being human meant loving only one person with your whole heart, then I was unquestionably a broken human being.
After enjoying office sex with Hye-jeong and coming home to face Chae-rin, affection for Chae-rin would smolder quietly in some corner of my heart.
When I was with Chae-rin, I loved Chae-rin. When I was with Hye-jeong, I loved Hye-jeong.
And what about when I touched the Tender app?
When I was with Ha-young, I loved Ha-young. When I was with Ye-jin, I loved Ye-jin. Nagyeong, Tika...
I was honest with every one of those feelings. Han Yu-jae, who had been neither honest nor proud of himself all this time, had simply chased only those honest feelings.
"That's it. Cry as much as you need. You cried back then too. When I suddenly thought of our Ttikka and started crying, you held me and wept just like this. ...What were your feelings then? Were even those tears an act?"
No. They weren't acting. I missed Ttikka too.
If she had been born safely, what a beautiful daughter she would have grown into. How earnestly would I have lived, to be a good example for that beautiful daughter?
Thinking that, the tears came on their own.
And because it felt like all of this was a tragedy I had brought upon myself... that's why the tears wouldn't stop.
On the day we first met, Chae-rin and I hooked our pinky fingers together. Over a trivial little promise: we would only ever drink alcohol on happy days.
Since then, Chae-rin never once raised a glass out of sadness. Even after we lost Ttikka. She wouldn't even wash that terrible pain away with alcohol.
Now Chae-rin held her pinky out to me again, and the day we first met rose fresh in my mind.
The memory of three years ago flickered before my eyes — kissing in the middle of a gimbap diner, heedless of the stares of the other customers.
"Promise me. That Human Guilty will never end with a happy ending. That Han Jae-yu, the protagonist, will drown in regret and pay the price he deserves. That's how it ends."
I silently faced Chae-rin. My eyes were brimming with tears, so her features swam before me in a blur.
"And one more promise. Don't live like that ever again."
Chae-rin's resolute voice bored into my ringing ears and echoed there.
On the day I resigned, Manager Kang Yong-won of HR had said something similar to me.
"...Don't live like that."
I slowly lifted my head. And then I hooked my pinky finger around Chae-rin's.