I Got My Mother-in-Law Pregnant
My wife was crying.
Sitting hunched on the living room sofa, face buried in both hands, sobbing.
I had just gotten home from work, and I rushed to her side, startled.
"Soo-bin, what is it? What's wrong? What happened?"
Instead of answering, she pointed at the coffee table.
There sat a long plastic stick — white body, pink cap on one end.
I'd seen one a few times before.
A pregnancy test.
"...Huh??"
Two crisp, unmistakable lines in the little window.
Every thought imaginable flashed through my head.
My wife was pregnant.
And she was crying.
Why?
Before I could get a word out, she spoke first.
"It's not mine."
"What?"
"I'm telling you, it's not mine. It's Mom's."
I turned her words over in my head. Her mom — which meant, to me, my mother-in-law.
My mother-in-law's pregnancy test. Two lines.
...My mother-in-law was pregnant?
"I found it in her room. I went in to borrow some makeup and..."
She broke off and burst into tears again, tears streaming down her chin.
My mother-in-law, Han Seo-young. She'd be turning forty-six this year.
Twenty-odd years ago, she'd been the most beautiful actress in South Korea. Then she retired at twenty after a shotgun wedding to the chaebol heir who is now my father-in-law.
The baby she'd been carrying at the time was my wife, Yoon Soo-bin.
My mother-in-law. Pregnant.
Her husband had already passed sixty. This would be a late baby — spectacularly, absurdly late.
Hiding my cold sweat, I said to my wife, "S-Soo-bin, could you be mistaken? Your mother-in-law's age, pregnant? Maybe it's one you used before and somehow it ended up in there..."
"If it were mine, I'd have known first! I'm having my period just fine, so what kind of mistake would that be?!"
My wife shrieked her denial.
She had a point. Nothing like that had happened between us lately. Our schedules didn't line up, and even when we were home together we'd been too tired, putting off our nights. With my father-in-law and mother-in-law living under the same roof, we had to be that much more careful anyway.
I sat down on the sofa and rubbed her back. Her sobbing came straight through my palm.
"B-But still, there's no need to cry about it, is there? It's something to celebrate. You're getting a baby sibling, and I'm getting a brother or sister-in-law. No reason to bawl your eyes out over it."
Me, consoling her with a forced smile.
Still hiccupping, she tossed out one line.
"It's not Dad's."
"...What?"
"I called Dad before you got home. Told him Mom might be pregnant. And he said it's not his. Said he hasn't slept with her in over twenty years. Not once since Tae-joon was born."
Tae-joon. My wife's younger brother — my brother-in-law, Yoon Tae-joon.
My heart seemed to drop through the floor.
"O-Okay, let's just calm down. The test could be faulty, right?"
The words came out of my mouth before I knew it.
I had no idea who I was trying to reassure. Maybe the person least able to stay calm right now was me.
Just then, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
The name on the screen: Father-in-law.
...The moment had come.
"H-Hello?"
"Hyun-tae."
The moment I answered, my father-in-law's voice came through the line.
Low and heavy as always — but today, I could feel the fury simmering underneath it.
I swallowed dryly and replied, "Yes, Father."
"Did you hear from Soo-bin?"
"...Yes. Just now."
Ragged breathing came through the phone.
The head of SG Group. Chairman Yoon Jae-hyun.
A magnate ranked among the top ten in the business world, and he was grinding his teeth.
"Find out who that bastard is."
"F-Father? Murder is still illegal, you know. Let's just calm down first and..."
"Find him NOW and drag him in front of me! Do you understand?!"
After a roar like a boiler gone nuclear,
the line went dead.
I stared blankly at the darkened screen.
My hands were shaking. Cold sweat trickled down my spine.
Find out who he is...
There was no need to look far.
It's me.
The father of the child in my mother-in-law's belly.
That "bastard" was me — Kim Hyun-tae.