How Much Do You Really Know?
"Forgiveness, you know... you have to honestly admit what you did wrong before anyone can forgive you. I still don't really know what you've been running around doing. You're... strange. And that Yeom Seong-bong character—he seems genuinely unhinged. Just what the hell have the two of you been up to?"
"Are you going to torment me to death? Going on business trips, not even working—just thinking about how to grind me down? Fine. All right. If you don't want to forgive me, then don't. But once Pil-jun is in college... I think we should get a divorce. When that time comes, I won't cling to you pathetically. That should be enough, shouldn't it?"
"Why are you acting so self-righteous? You think you did a good thing?"
"I've never once said I did a good thing. I've told you I was wrong dozens of times. I even begged. If you still don't want to forgive me, there's nothing I can do about that. Why do you think that man contacted you? Because I kept telling him I wanted to break it off. Because I felt guilty and wanted to end it—so he went and told you, to force a divorce. I have no intention of getting divorced. And I have no intention of going to that man. If I get divorced right now, the person who'd be happiest about it is him. He's already divorced, so of course he wants me divorced too. I want to stop now. I'm tired too."
Ji Hye-in shoved her chair back, stood up, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Yoo Kang-soo was at a loss. But the thought settled over him that there was nothing to gain from laying everything out and fighting here. The adultery lawsuit was already a lost cause. The man looked like he didn't have a won to his name, and if they filed against him, his divorced ex-wife would almost certainly come after them with a suit of her own. If the man had held down a respectable job, the fear of exposure might have made him dread a lawsuit. This wasn't that. He looked like a man at the bottom of his life, with almost nothing left to lose. He hadn't been afraid of being found out—he'd been the one to pick up the phone and blow himself up.
Yoo Kang-soo finished the rest of his chicken gomtang and went into the bedroom. His wife was lying on the bed with the blanket pulled over her head.
"I'm going on another business trip in two days. Just so you know."
He said it as he took his suit jacket from the hanger and headed out of the room. The blanket stirred, and Ji Hye-in sat up. She followed him all the way to the front door.
"I'm sorry. I know—the guilty ones are always the ones who lose their temper. I just... I wish you'd forgive me. Just once. That's the only thing I want."
As she spoke, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, locking both hands tight around her husband's waist.
"I really did wrong. But for one mistake of mine to erase every memory of nearly twenty years with you... that's too unfair. I loved you. I really did give it everything I had."
She held him fast from behind, her face pressed against his back, and kept talking. For a moment, Yoo Kang-soo couldn't say a word. The question of who this Ko Dong-seok was—the man Yeom Seong-bong had mentioned—rose all the way to his throat. He swallowed it. No matter how he turned it over, this didn't feel like the moment to let it explode. There were still too many things he didn't know. For now, Yoo Kang-soo held it in.
Every insurance company maintained its own special investigations unit dedicated to insurance fraud. If cases of fraud were as rare as beans in a drought, there would have been no reason for such units to exist at all. But the number of insurance fraud cases was climbing year after year, and the damages were growing severe enough to be alarming. So the companies had begun specially recruiting investigators with years of experience in particular fields—the police, the prosecution, military investigative officers—and putting them on the problem.
Yoo Kang-soo was one of those people. His position, however, was far from secure. He was paid strictly on performance, and his contract had to be renewed every year. Like a professional athlete, if his numbers for the year were poor, there was no telling whether he'd still have the job come spring. From the company's perspective, there was simply no reason to keep an investigator who produced neither results nor skill.
In that bloodless, tearless world, Yoo Kang-soo had held on for four full years, renewing his contract again and again. More than half the former police officers and prosecutors washed out in under a year—but Yoo Kang-soo had clawed his way through on sheer grit and spite, grinding out results by force of will.
Over the past four years of investigating insurance fraud, he had come to one unshakable conclusion: there wasn't a single person in this world you could trust. No one was honest when money was on the table. He'd thought something similar during his days as a military police investigator—but military crime had been, if anything, far simpler than this. Insurance fraud didn't just catch the bad guys. Good people, bad people—it didn't matter. Anyone could get sucked in before they even realized it, blinded by money.
Before heading out into the field, Yoo Kang-soo sat blankly at his desk, thinking about his wife. What the hell am I even living this hard for? Why am I fighting through this war of a life, day after day? The questions were bitter, and they had no answers.
He ought to have hated Ji Hye-in enough to beat her to death. And yet that morning, watching her wrap her arms around his waist and tell him she was sorry, the thought had crossed his mind—just once—that maybe he should forgive her. But he still hadn't finished establishing the facts. Forgiveness came after that.
However long it took, he would get the facts straight first. That was the decision he made. He couldn't afford to neglect his work, either. Whatever else was happening, he would have to give the job everything he had—and keep one eye on his wife at the same time.
A man of forty-seven. He'd heard it often enough: this was the age when a man's hormones started to fall away. Yoo Kang-soo felt as if he were standing alone on a vast, empty plain. The strength was draining from his body. His courage was shrinking.
Yoo Kang-soo was caught off guard. A call came in out of nowhere. Yeom Seong-bong. He was frantically gathering documents for a regional business trip the next day, and he picked up without thinking.
"I know you're busy, but... I'd like to meet with you. Whenever you have time—I'll come to you."
The man's tone was so thoroughly polite that Yoo Kang-soo was, for a moment, thrown. But no matter how completely the other man had reversed course and come at him with deference, Yoo Kang-soo had done twenty-one years in the military. He had looked at dozens of dead bodies with his own eyes. His had never been an easy life, and he was not an easy man.
The two of them sat across from each other on the second floor of a coffee shop near the insurance company.
"What's this about? I don't want to see your face. At all."
Yoo Kang-soo's expression didn't change. He had no interest in treating the man who had wrecked his family like a human being, and the words came out blunt and rough.
"I'm sorry. I've committed an unforgivable sin. I was drunk—drunk on liquor, drunk on my own ruined life—and I made a terrible mistake. I want to cut my own hands off. I don't want to see Hye-in suffer because of me."
"Hye-in? That the name of somebody's stray mutt? That's not a name you get to throw around. Don't call her that."
"Yes. I'm sorry."
"Why'd you want to meet? I'm busy. Get to the point."
"You're not going to divorce her, then?"
"Why the hell is that any of your business?"
"I... I love Hye-in—ah. No. I'm sorry. I love Ji Hye-in. I want to take responsibility for her. Rather than have her live the rest of her life with her head bowed like a criminal... I would rather take her in myself."
"You crazy bastard. Have you lost your mind? You got divorced, so now she should get divorced too—is that it? Is that the kind of spiteful crap you're pulling right now?"
"No. That is absolutely not it. Ji Hye-in... she can never live a normal life now. Sir. When it comes to Ji Hye-in—to your wife—how much do you actually know?"
Something felt off. Yeom Seong-bong's eyes, his clothes—none of it was the same as before. Back then he had looked like a man who had given up on life completely, a piece of trash with the eyes of a wreck. The eyes looking at Yoo Kang-soo now were not those eyes.