The Irredeemable Seo Jia
"T-Sign, Rumacon... what are these? I've never even heard of..."
"...I mean, no, Master. When I bought them, they were definitely going up!"
Just as he was about to unleash a string of profanities at her, she hurriedly waved her hands and began making excuses. He ignored her, scrolling down the list of stocks, and told her to sell the few that were up by 3–5% tomorrow. He picked up his phone and headed to the sofa where his laptop was, and she followed him, stepping cautiously until she stood by his side. He opened the laptop and began analyzing each stock at lightning speed, checking the status of this and that. He separated the ones that had been suspended from trading into a separate Excel sheet and told her to sell off the rest, to which she nodded repeatedly.
Finally, he snapped, "Hey, Seo Jia. You..."
"I'm sorry..."
"No, where is your digital certificate?"
"...It's on the USB..."
"Go get it. Right now."
She looked terrified, as if he were truly furious, so she scurried into the study and brought back the USB. He took it and said, "From now on, this is mine. Don't you do a single thing."
"...But still,"
"Are you actually insane? Are you trying to bankrupt this entire household? Can't you get a grip?"
By the time he had managed to get things somewhat under control, it was already 10:00 PM. He looked down with a weary expression at her, who was kneeling beside him.
"Do exactly as I say tomorrow. Just like this."
"Yes. I understand."
He closed the laptop and hesitated for a moment, debating whether to speak his mind. Meanwhile, she kept her head bowed low, unable to hide her anxious expression, terrified of what kind of verbal abuse she would be subjected to this time—
"The reason you blew through all that money was because of stocks."
"..."
"And the reason you did stocks was because you wanted to have more money than me. No, f*ck, I really can't understand this. Is this amount of money not enough? What are you going to do with more? What are you trying to buy?"
"..."
When he shouted at her once more, she squeezed her eyes shut and spoke quickly.
"...Because if I had more money than you, Master, you wouldn't leave me...!"
"...?"
She had taken her friends' advice to be "honest" to heart, so she told him the truth.
"Master... I'm older than you, and since all men like younger women... I wanted to earn more money to hold onto you so you wouldn't look at those kinds of people..."
"...You really are a crazy b*tch. This..."
He let out a dry, incredulous laugh.
"If things go on like this, my father will keep gifting me assets, and you'd have to keep multiplying your money several times over to keep up. Who the hell can do that?"
"But, if I didn't do that... I really felt like you would leave me..."
He sighed and fell into deep thought, suddenly curious why she had thought that way.
"No, why did you think that? Did you think I would suddenly ask for a divorce one day, or say I didn't want to live together anymore? What was the reason?"
"That's..." She pouted her lips slightly as she spoke.
"...Because I kept stopping you from doing what you wanted and kept being stubborn..."
The fact that she knew exactly what she had done wrong and was spilling it all out so easily only made him angrier.
"So you did it while knowing?"
"..."
"Why? Do you not like me?"
"No, no. Absolutely not."
With that, she swallowed the saliva pooling in her mouth and spoke. The reason she had been so demanding, so stubborn, tried to manipulate him for her own convenience, and gaslit him into thinking he was the one at fault—
"That was... I really learned that from reading novels."
"So you thought if you followed those novels, I'd turn into a masochist and crawl to you on my own?"
"That, and also..."
The only other explanation was that she had been deceived by familiarity and forgotten his value. That was all. When they were dating, they were lovers, so no matter how she felt inside, she had tried to be good to him and respect him. But once they got married, the thought that she could do whatever she wanted started to creep in, and all the pent-up feelings exploded. Seeing her explain it this way, he asked:
"Aren't you just a f*cking idiot?"
"...What? I-idiot..."
"Why did you bottle it up? Doesn't that mean you forced yourself into a relationship and a marriage that didn't fit you in the first place?"
"..."
"Hey, let's flip it. I have something I don't like about you. Should I just endure it? I married you because I thought we were a good match since you catered to everything I wanted. If I had thought like this, I wouldn't have married you. You were just putting on an act, and it came out after we got married, showing who you really were. You're saying, 'I showed you my true self without hiding anything, and then we got divorced, and something went wrong.' Isn't that what you're saying?"
He no longer cared why she thought he would leave her. What he had heard so far was enough to make him collapse from sheer absurdity. So, the woman in front of him had been suppressing her desire to manipulate her boyfriend while they were dating, let her true colors show after marriage, and even she realized it had gone too far, leading her to believe he would get sick of her and leave.
"Then, you f*cking b*tch, why didn't you find a man who actually fits you instead of making an innocent person a divorcee and causing all this sh*t?"
"No, Master, it's not like that..."
"Get your hand off. You f*cking b*tch."
She quickly pulled her hand away, resigned to being his punching bag. He sighed deeply, went to get a glass of water, and returned to his seat before speaking.
"...Right, fine. First... ha... no, this is a truly crazy b*tch."
"..."
He needed time to organize his thoughts. He opened his eyes slightly, shut them tight again, thought, and sighed repeatedly. The things she had said felt disjointed, as if they didn't connect, so it took a lot of effort to sort them out. He felt once again how complex human hearts—especially women's hearts—could be.
"Right. So, the reason you thought I would leave you was because you were acting like a maniac, and the reason you acted like a maniac was because that's your original personality. That's it."
"...That's right, Master."
The fact that she was admitting to it was laughable, but he didn't even have the energy to laugh right now. He had to use every ounce of his brain to retrace and re-examine everything she had said.
"So you thought that if you grew your money enough so I couldn't leave, I wouldn't divorce you. That's your logic. This is giving me a massive headache, seriously..."
"...."
He sighed deeply and shook his head as if frustrated. He would have preferred to just curse at her until he went to sleep, but his nature was inherently kind. While others used profanity a hundred times, he would hold it in and use it only once. And tomorrow, out of the blue, he had a message from his father to come to the National Assembly, so he figured if he got angry here, he wouldn't just be unable to go to work—he’d be vomiting from stress at home.
He handed his phone to her and said, "Why does talking to Seo Jia only make me angry?"
"...That's not true, I'll do better..."
"What will you do better? You."
"..."
Around that time, he suddenly remembered what Eunbyul had said. She had talked about boosting her husband's ego, not taking his salary, and earning more than him to support him. If Eunbyul’s words felt like they came from a pure and innocent heart, Seo Jia’s actions were the exact opposite—she had chosen every wrong path possible, and the purpose itself was to boost 'her own' ego. The anger flared up even more.
Finally, he said, "Hey. We had a company dinner."
"..."
"A female employee said this. She said even if she gets married, she won't take her husband's money, she won't make him live on an allowance, she'll boost his ego, and she'll always think he's cool and respect him."
"..."
Seeing her drop tears onto her kneeling knees, he continued.
"I don't know why you married me, but you've harmed someone else."
"..."
"It's not wrong, is it? If you were such a fake b*tch, if you hadn't seduced me into marrying you, couldn't I have married that employee and lived happily?"
She sobbed, "No, no... I'll do better..."
"Calling me Master? Doing whatever I ask? What good is that? I have no feelings for you. Anymore."
Kneeling before her ex-husband, listening to him talk about another woman and say he would have been better off marrying her—she felt a surge of rage, sadness, misery, and even shame. She felt those emotions as he compared her to another woman like he was comparing products, but she had nothing to say.
"And after all this, you're going to whine about how hard it is to earn money, ugh, f*ck seriously..."
"..."
"Look. I get angry just listening to you. Seriously, you're so twisted. Is marriage just what happens when a woman lives with a man?"