My Wife and Me (1)
"So-hee, are you going to the hospital today?"
"Ah... Oppa, can we talk tonight?"
"Huh? Oh... sure..."
I had only asked because I was heading off to work and wanted to know whether my wife was going to the hospital, but that sudden request to talk left me tense all day.
Did something happen yesterday? It wasn't her birthday...
It wasn't any special day, and after worrying over whether I'd done something wrong, I even started wondering if she'd somehow discovered the porn on my computer.
I had hidden it deep inside the hard drive, tucked away so carefully it would be difficult for anyone to find. The thought that she'd somehow uncovered it made my stomach clench.
We'd been married for five years.
We were an infertile couple.
After a series of tests, it turned out I had no particular problem, but my wife did.
I hadn't pressed her for details, but before we married, she'd told me that when she was in college she had gotten pregnant by a man she'd been dating, and at such a young age she'd had no choice but to make the agonizing decision to have an abortion.
I hadn't been completely unaware of it from the beginning, but I had never imagined that it would leave her infertile.
It was a shock to me, of course, but when I saw her crying and apologizing, all I could do was comfort her.
That much was true.
I couldn't say it left me entirely unaffected, but it had happened before she met me, and when I thought about how painful it must have been for her to get pregnant so suddenly as a college student, I actually felt sorry for her.
I wasn't someone who especially loved children anyway, so I thought I could probably live as a DINK couple and be fine with it. But my wife, perhaps because she felt so guilty toward me, had started going to a fertility clinic, and by then she'd already been undergoing treatment for two years.
Maybe because of that, our sex life had gone flat from that point on.
Even before marriage it hadn't been especially passionate, but after that, unlike couples who aroused one another through caresses and whispered love while making love, our sex became something closer to business.
My wife hadn't enjoyed foreplay much even as a newlywed, and after that incident she became even more resistant to it, saying it was ticklish and uncomfortable. So what we ended up with was a routine of sucking on her breasts a little, then penetrating her and finishing quickly.
The thing men commonly called Sakkashi was a fantasy I couldn't even dream of.
Not even touching her lower body was easy; if I tried to insert a finger, she would refuse, saying it hurt, though she would allow me to touch her lightly from the outside.
I wasn't exactly inexperienced myself. I'd had sex with girlfriends before. But when the woman I loved rejected certain acts, I shrank from pushing her, and out of consideration I went along with her wishes. Over time, though, my dissatisfaction only kept building.
So my hobby became watching porn.
Since my wife's idea was that we'd only have sex during the one fertile week each month, I had no choice but to go along with it, and for me, in the prime of my life, porn was the only escape I had left.
I kept my videos in a folder hidden so deep they would be hard to find, and after watching them I always cleaned up every trace, so I thought there was no way I'd get caught. But now I wondered if I had somehow forgotten to erase something.
"Hey, what's wrong? Why are you spacing out today?"
I spent the whole day after getting to work unable to focus, my mind jumping from one thought to the next because of my wife's request to talk tonight. Seeing me like that, my friend—the boss—called out to me.
"Haa..."
"What, seriously? Something's really up?"
"No, it's nothing..."
"Then what is it? If it's something this big brother can solve, I'll solve it. If not, I'll still listen."
"Ah... it's just... sigh... never mind."
"Damn it, I ask because you're wandering around like a soul with nowhere to go since morning, and if you're going to talk, just talk. Don't start and then say never mind in the middle—that only makes me more curious."
My friend, the boss, was the same guy I'd been best friends with since college. Thanks to his father, he'd started a company, and because he was bored he had scouted me and paid me a salary.
"My wife said she wants to talk tonight..."
"Huh? Did you screw up with your sister-in-law or something?"
"Sigh... I don't know..."
"Man, why are wives like that? Why can't they just say it straight and instead always make you wait until later? It's nerve-racking."
"I don't know."
"So that's how it is... I know that feeling too. You haven't even done anything wrong, but somehow you feel like you've done something terrible anyway. Then all kinds of thoughts start crawling into your head... sigh."
"You too, huh? You don't seem like the type to worry about your wife at all."
My friend was the boss, sure, but he was also the kind of guy who had to go out entertaining clients because, as he put it, business was business.
I went along a few times too, but as everyone knows, that meant drinking with women beside you, doing all kinds of degenerate things in the room, and then moving on to a second round outside to empty yourself out...
I had some curiosity, and because I was dissatisfied with my wife, I joined in a few times and had my fun, but I wasn't the type to fit in. I wasn't young enough to endure old men's tastes and flatter them all night, so after that I stopped going.
But my friend seemed to enjoy it, or maybe he was really doing it for business, because he often took client presidents and executives out with him.
As for those clients, most of them were my friend's father's acquaintances or his seniors and juniors, all older men, but they seemed to know how to match the mood and have a good time.
To give you a bit of context, our company was a small parts manufacturer. The parts were essential for our clients, and since almost all of them were made and supplied exclusively by our company, it was the kind of business people called a money machine.
My friend's father owned several buildings and was very well connected. Through those connections, he steered work to his son, so as long as the boss kept entertaining client presidents and executives, the company could make a living without any real trouble.
The parts factory mostly ran automatically, so there were only five factory workers. In the office, it was just me and one female accounting clerk.
My title was director, but I didn't really have much to do.
Sometimes, when things got busy, I'd help the clerk a little or go down to the factory to eat with the foreman and workers and check whether they had any complaints. That was about the extent of my duties.
That was how my friend had scouted me in the first place.
I had a company car, and my salary was around what a section chief at a major corporation might make, though not quite that high. There weren't many employees, so I rarely had any reason to use the company card, and with that I often treated my wife to dinners out as well.
For someone my age, being able to hand out a director's business card and earn more than I would have from ordinary work meant I had no real complaints about the job.
When I first heard about being recruited, I worried a lot about whether the future would be okay, but when I met my friend's father, he told me I was the kind of friend he could trust and asked me to take good care of his son. I was touched, and that was what made me move.
Once I actually came here and saw how the company ran, I realized the truth: there probably wasn't a more stable job than this anywhere.
"Hey, nothing's going on today, so stop sighing in the office and leave early. Go score some points with your sister-in-law."
"Ah... can I do that?"
"Since when do you need my permission?"
My friend shouted while looking through the glass toward the female clerk in my office.
"Assistant Lee, does Director Jeong have anything on his schedule today?"
"No, nothing special."
"Okey~"
"See? Nothing's going on. Clock out. I'm thinking of leaving early myself for once."
It was still a little before five, but I hurriedly tidied my desk and left the company.
Maybe this is what men are like even after marriage—most of them still watch porn.
I drove home thinking about whether I should use that as an excuse or start with an apology.
"So-hee, I'm home~"
"Oh? Oppa, you're home early."
"Yeah, nothing came up, so I came back early. Should we go out for dinner?"
I brought up eating out, hoping it might soften her up even a little.
"No... let's just order delivery."
Seeing my wife's face grow grave, I knew the moment had come.
"Should I order the bossam you like?"
"Yeah~ And order some drinks too."
"Drinks?"
My wife had liked alcohol, but for two years, while trying to get pregnant, she hadn't touched a drop. So when she suddenly told me to order drinks, I couldn't help growing even more tense.
"I think I should drink a little today."
"O-okay... sure."
I opened the delivery app, ordered the alcohol and the bossam, and then, with my nerves stretched tight, I didn't even think to go to the room and turn on the computer. I just sat in the living room and watched TV, trying to look normal.
After a while, as if something had just occurred to me, I asked my wife, "Um... didn't you say there was something you wanted to talk about today?"
"Mm. Let's have a drink first and talk later~"
"Ah... okay..."
I grew even more serious.
I was watching TV to seem relaxed, but every nerve in my body was focused on my wife, who was sitting one seat away from me and looking at her phone.
I had no idea how an hour had passed. Tense as hell, I received the bossam, set it out, and sat down at the table.
"Oppa, pour me one. It's been a while since I drank..."
Silently, I poured soju into my wife's glass, then poured some into mine as well.
"Hey, what's this? Why are you pouring for yourself?"
"Hm? I just thought I would."
"Come on, let's drink after all this time."
My wife raised her glass for a toast, and I lifted mine too, clinking it against hers before tipping it back and swallowing.
Consumed by worry, I didn't even taste the soju's bitterness as I gulped it down. I picked up a piece of meat and waited for my wife to speak.
"Oppa~"
"Hm?"
My heart pounding, I wondered whether I should confess on my own that I'd been watching porn, but I couldn't summon the courage.
All I could think about was how I was supposed to beg for forgiveness.