The Call That Shattered Everything
Family. Finish it. The call cut off with a single thud and then silence.
Junhee clutched the dead phone in his hand and called his wife’s name over and over. No answer came back from the broken device.
Biting his lip in frustration, he glanced around once more before sprinting toward the main road. He had to find a taxi—now. Right now.
Family. When had we become like this? Junhee thought as he climbed into the taxi and drove away.
Memories of his early days in love surfaced unbidden, and he smiled bitterly at them.
Back then, loving was so painfully small. With nothing to offer each other, they had simply gazed into each other’s eyes because their hearts were full. They had never taken a real trip together. They had never even set foot in an expensive restaurant on a special night.
Yet they had loved each other. Maybe it was because they were young, maybe because their hearts were still pure. If we were together, they had believed, any life would be all right. Foolish of them, both of them, to believe it. They had thought that the simple fact of being together was enough to make them happy. But… when had the crack between them started to split so wide?
Even marriage had been difficult. His mother-in-law had never liked him much. That had only grown worse over time, but even back then he had nothing to offer. His income was unpredictable at best. Writing meant scraping together meals, and if he earned a little this month, who knew what would happen next? The unstable future had made his mother-in-law reluctant to accept him as a son-in-law.
He could still remember the day he had sworn to his wife that he would live without a drop of tears or a drop of water from her, that he would stand tall with pride. He had been that young once. He could still feel the heat of that promise on his skin.
His mother-in-law’s disapproval had also come from the fact that Yeonhee’s family was never wealthy. Her mother had lost her husband early and raised her daughter alone, lamenting how little she could give her child compared to others. She had simply wanted Yeonhee to marry a man who could give her a life without money worries, even if it was not rich. But what had she gotten instead? A struggling writer who could barely pay the rent. Who wouldn’t feel the same hesitation if their daughter had brought home someone like that?
Junhee himself, if he were in his mother-in-law’s place, would have done exactly the same. Yet somehow they had still fought through it. The bond between them had been so strong it had felt unbreakable. They had refused to let go. He had believed the love they shared would never fade. And time had passed, and finally even his mother-in-law had relented, as parents sometimes do when they see their children suffer.
The wedding itself had been modest. They could not afford anything grand, but they had made it work. The first year after marriage had brought a lucky apartment through a lottery. Most of it was still in the bank’s name, yet it had been their own. His mother-in-law had chipped in too, and they had barely scraped by to claim it.
Everything had seemed perfect at first. A house, a wife, a future. They would live happily together, supporting each other, loving each other. But happiness does not last forever.
After Yeonhee became pregnant, the money began to crush them. Junhee’s freelance income was erratic at best, and with a child on the way their expenses would only grow. He would sigh deeply, staring at the dark ceiling, wondering how they would survive. At some point he had even regretted the pregnancy, but what could he do now? The child was already there. They could not erase it.
He started writing twice as many articles to earn the same amount. Where he had once produced one or two pieces a month, now he wrote two or three. The quality suffered. His reviews were merciless. But he had no choice. He had to keep writing, even if his fingers ached and his eyes burned. He wrote until his eyes blurred, until the dawn light crept in, until he could barely finish the day’s quota.
His passion for writing had slowly dried up. He had to force the words out of him now, like pulling teeth. Fatigue piled on fatigue. His temper followed, growing sharper, angrier. Arguments with Yeonhee became more frequent. She could not stay home all day forever, and she had started working as a web designer. She brought home more money than he ever could. He felt petty jealousy clawing at him, shrinking him inside. He lashed out at her sometimes, though he knew it was wrong.
The novels he once loved now felt like chains. Was this really the path he had chosen? Living as a writer, scraping by… Was it any different from touching the bones of a dead child? Maybe he should quit, find any labor job, carry packages, work in a warehouse. The thought crossed his mind more and more often.
His heart grew weary. His dreams shrank. The stress he carried at home spilled over onto his wife, and the fights grew longer, louder. After Sohee was born, for a short while things had seemed to calm. But the moment the costs of a young child became truly overwhelming, the house of cards collapsed again. They could barely breathe. Money felt like a vice tightening around their throats.
He no longer knew what to do. Should he keep writing, no matter how terrible the stories were? Or was it better to give up now, even if it meant losing the only dream he had left? The fear of abandoning his last hope kept him awake every night. If he stopped writing, it would feel like stopping living. A kind of mental suicide. That was why he could not let go. It was not simple stubbornness. Writing had become the only part of himself he still believed was his.
The more negative thoughts he had, the more his writing suffered. The stress only grew. Then, one ordinary day, he had finally said the words he had been avoiding for months.
“We should get a divorce.”
Everything had fallen apart after that.
“We have arrived.” The taxi driver’s voice snapped Junhee back to the present. He paid and stepped out, the door clicking shut behind him like a final sentence.
A strange cold wind brushed across his back, but it was not the wind that made his skin crawl. Something far more sinister had just brushed against him. Danger was whispering in his ears. Alarms were blaring inside his skull. He could not explain it, but he knew. Something terrible was about to happen.
It had been a long time since he had been here. After the divorce he had sold the house as soon as he could, refusing to linger on any more regrets. He had asked for less than market price, and the sale had closed quickly. He had not wanted to return here. Visiting would only reopen old wounds, and he had no desire for fresh pain.
Yet here he was again, phone in hand. The battery was low, flickering dangerously. He had tried calling Yeonhee from the car, but the call had come through with caller ID blocked. He could not reach her. Frustrated, he dialed her number directly. The ring echoed long into the silence.
As he walked toward the apartment complex, the place felt unnaturally dark and empty. Streetlights should have been glowing, but everything seemed swallowed by shadow. Most of the windows inside the buildings were dark. It was as if the entire complex had been abandoned overnight.
He shuddered again, the feeling creeping up his spine like ice water. This was not right. Something was very wrong here. And he had to find his wife before it was too late.