A Slap Behind Closed Doors
For the first two days of his business trip, it really had seemed as if she drove to the office every morning and came straight home at five o'clock on the dot.
But on the third day — with Yoo Kang-soo already back up in the city — his wife Ji Hye-in's car was heading somewhere it had no business going. Not home.
Around three in the afternoon, a good two hours before she was supposed to get off work, the car was on the move. When Kang-soo checked the map on his phone, the destination looked an awful lot like the building that housed Yeom Seong-bong's office.
"Please let go of me. It would be better if we simply stopped contacting each other."
"Hye-in... I threw everything away for you. I even abandoned my own kids. All of it — just for you. I'll do whatever you want. I'll do everything you tell me to, I swear. Please... just divorce him. Come live with me. I'm begging you. For whatever life I've got left... you're all I have."
"Stop it. Who was it that ruined everything? I never dreamed you would actually contact my husband."
"I'm sorry. The night before... I'd been drinking till dawn, hadn't slept a wink. I was in a panic. I was in so much pain I started drinking again first thing in the morning, and before I knew it I couldn't tell the dream from reality."
"That's why I made that mistake without even realizing it. I regret it. I really do. I want to cut this hand off."
"It's too late. My husband knows everything now. I cannot see you anymore. He's going to be watching me. He's coming up from the provinces tomorrow. That's why I came here — to warn you. He hasn't forgiven me. You need to be careful. So please... do not ever contact me again. Do you have any idea how many times you called and texted me yesterday and today? Have you lost your mind?"
"I'd rather die than let you go..."
Yeom Seong-bong's voice was shaking badly.
Yoo Kang-soo stood in front of the door to the small office called Hongjin Planning, listening to the conversation unfolding inside between his wife and Yeom Seong-bong.
No — it wasn't as if he had come here to eavesdrop.
His wife's car had left the office earlier than usual and hadn't gone home. It had come here. Kang-soo, who had come up from the provinces a day ahead of schedule, had wanted to know what the hell was going on, and so he had come to this building. When he reached the office door, the two voices inside carried straight through to where he stood. So he simply listened.
He had most certainly not come all this way intending to spy on their conversation.
"Stop it. You dug your own grave. How could you even think of calling my husband first? And how could you send him that video? Is that why you filmed it?"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll never do it again."
"Never do it again? There's no need, and no reason. The water has already been spilled. Do not contact me again."
"I'll kill myself."
"Do as you like. It's your life. Lately all I want to do is die anyway."
"Hye-in... I was really wrong. Please, just divorce him too. Are you going to spend the rest of your life suffocating like a criminal?"
"I'll handle it myself. Don't concern yourself with me."
"How can you do this to me... I never told him everything. I was trying not to tell you until the end — I was trying to change your mind. You... you're seeing Ko Dong-seok, aren't you?"
Yeom Seong-bong's words left Ji Hye-in unable to answer. She just stood there in silence.
"The reason you told me you wanted to break up... it was because of Ko Dong-seok, wasn't it. You're seeing him. This whole time you were seeing me, you were seeing Ko Dong-seok too."
"Stop talking such nonsense. I'm leaving."
"Don't go. Did you think I wouldn't find out? You've been seeing Ko Dong-seok this whole time. He told you to break up with me — that's why you were going to throw me away so wretchedly. Did it never occur to you that I knew, and I just pretended I didn't — for your sake?"
"Let go of me."
Yeom Seong-bong had seized her arm in a crushing grip.
"You wrecked my entire life... and now you're going to go off and live with some other guy? What kind of person are you? I really loved you. I meant it. How can you do this to me?"
"Stop it. The fact that you called my husband... there's nothing you can say that—"
In that instant, a sharp smack rang out, loud enough to carry all the way through the door.
Kang-soo couldn't see it, but he knew exactly what that sound was. Yeom Seong-bong had slapped Ji Hye-in across the face.
"I—I'm sorry... Hye-in..."
Even after hitting her, Yeom was apologizing in a flustered voice.
The slap had sent Ji Hye-in crumpling to the floor. She pushed herself back up.
Kang-soo couldn't stand at that door any longer. He moved quickly down to the end of the hallway and hid.
The door opened almost at once, and his wife came out with her face flushed red, walking fast. Yeom Seong-bong followed her out and caught her by the arm, but she shook him off roughly and hurried toward the stairs in short, quick steps.
Kang-soo watched it all, so stunned he couldn't get a single word out.
Yoo Kang-soo sat alone at the counter of a quiet Japanese restaurant, tipping back glass after glass.
Forty-seven years old. The first place the aging had shown up was in his eyes. They'd been getting dim for several years now — stare at a phone screen for more than thirty minutes and for the next two hours everything went blurry, near and far alike. Presbyopia, plain and simple. But aside from his eyes, he still considered the rest of his body to be in decent shape.
Twenty-one years as a professional soldier before he retired. Regular exercise had long since become a habit; he hadn't skipped a single day. A military pension came in every month — not much, but enough. Even without the insurance fraud investigation work, living modestly would have been no problem at all.
The driving force that had let him gut out more than twenty years of military life through sheer grit had been that sweet fruit at the end of it: the right to collect a soldier's pension. He'd put in his twenty-one years, filed for discharge immediately, and come back into civilian life. He'd already been at the insurance company for four years now.
Honestly, he didn't even worry about old age anymore. If his son Pil-jun just got into a decent university, he could live out whatever years he had left without any great concern.
And yet the wife he had believed in — truly believed in, leaned on — had had another man. Today she had even taken a slap from that man. And the reason that man had hit her... seemed to be because of yet another man.
He was so appalled he couldn't even taste how bitter the soju was.
Ji Hye-in was forty-one — six years younger than he was. Of course he knew that even past forty she still had a slim, pretty figure without an ounce of extra weight on her. But she wasn't some strikingly sexy celebrity type. Just a modest woman who always dressed simply. She worked, yes, but not at an ordinary company — at an association office, the kind of quiet place that almost never had after-work dinners. Her salary was only about eleven hundred dollars a month. Short hours. He'd always thought of it as a peaceful job she could keep without incident for a long, long time.
But it seemed Ji Hye-in had a private life her husband knew nothing about. The thought was enough to drive him insane.
By himself, he had put away three bottles of soju.
"I made chicken gomtang. Have some broth for the hangover and get to work. I didn't think you'd come home after drinking like that last night. I knew you were coming up today..."
Ji Hye-in set a steaming bowl of chicken gomtang in front of him for breakfast. Kang-soo looked at his wife's face. She'd taken a hard slap yesterday, from the sound of it — but there was no mark, no bruise, nothing. He'd only been guessing from what he'd heard through the door. Looking at her now, her face seemed fine.
Either way, he was working through his hangover with the hot chicken broth. Kang-soo had always loved dishes like this — chicken gomtang, chicken kalguksu, anything where you simmered a bird down into a milky white stock. He finished one bowl of broth and asked for another, and drank that too. Three bottles of soju, and yet the steaming soup seemed to settle his stomach all at once.
"Did Pil-jun already leave for school?"
"Yes... he left early."
"Listen. Hye-in."
"I did a lot of thinking while I was down there on that trip."