The foreboding rang through her chillingly.

“Mother,” she started…to what? Lie again? Come up with some excuse to save her ? Prolong her time here?

Wasn’t that what she was sick of?

The futile emotions shut down when Madam Oh touched her arm. A soft grip. Saying, “Let’s sit down.”

It was that moment Namjoo knew she made the gravest mistake of her life.

She should have never taken the keys from Moonbi. Never driven Sehun past the house gates. Let him fool her into his act. Continue lying alongside him.

Fought harder when he confessed.

Why did she let him sway her?

How could she think this was ok?

A grand-scale life was far out of her bounds.

Dropping onto her knees before reaching the couch, Namjoo lowered her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

The thousand feelings of heavy guilt poured through her. Tears of shame and regret poured down her face. She did not have the courage to look into Madam Oh’s face, see for herself the anger and disappointment she hadn’t given her the courtesy to hammer her with.

Because Namjoo was a coward.

She had no courage to bear the consequences long overdue.

What else did she have to say? Other than being a pathetic liar who’d come from nowhere.

ꞜꞜꞜꞜꞜ

“Black coffee, please.” Sehun ordered and began digging through his wallet for his credit card.

“One iced coffee, too.” A voice interjected.

It was Suh Jin.

Sehun rolled his eyes away at the sight of her. He’d forgotten she was still hanging around. This café was nearest his workplace. A convenient drop-in whenever he needed a caffeine fix. Least expecting to run into an ex-girlfriend frequenting the area.

God, he hoped his workplace hadn’t hired her.

“It’s on me.” He received a flirtatious smile that made him nauseous. After getting their orders, Jin asked, “Why not sit for a few minutes?”

“I’m not actually on a break.” Sehun tried to ween his way out.

“A few minutes.” She bartered stoically.

Compressing his lips, he followed her to a round table in the corner. Even through the glass he could feel the warm air radiating onto him. What he would do to be walking back to work instead of sitting here with a woman way past.

“I didn’t make the hire.” Jin began.

“Well…” Sehun wasn’t sure he sympathized. Thankfully, she did not press for it.

“Sehun,” the real question now, “don’t you miss me at all?”

He was too prepared to answer. “I don’t.”

“I miss you all time.”

“Honestly?” he contradicted. “I had a lot of time to think, Jin. After all that happened to you, me, I could say, us. Though that hardly matters now. I sent you away; packaged my trust in a box with a bow believing you would come back to me. But you never took the box, Jin. You didn’t even open it. Actually, I don’t know.”

Sehun shook his head. Doing his best to reminisce every swinging detail that had previously occurred. He had long buried them. Accepted it as is and stepped into a new dimension.

“Maybe the distance did us in. We never saw each other. You were bombarded with classes. I was devoted to work. We only ever spoke on the phone, hearing each other’s voices, but I don’t think that worked for us. And I have to say, I don’t feel very sorry about it. When I saw you again, I was only clouded with confusion. Maybe I was relieved. I’m not sure. But Jin,” he really looked at her, “I think we already stopped loving each other. I stopped holding onto the remembrance of what we used to have. You should, too.”

Truth dangled in her eyes like diamonds. The brown liquid in her plastic cup sloshed a bit, ice cubes knocking into each other as her hands trembled. The woman he used to love came off weak and frail. Fragile.

Quickly setting down the cup Suh Jin clasped her hands. Direly struggling to keep it together as it crashed and it burned. Covering her face, he listened to her sob a deep and haggard sound.

That was the last time he saw her. She refused to let him walk her to her car. He let her be and returned to work. Prepared to, at the end of the day, run home to give Namjoo the news. Although it held no importance in their bonded relationship, he still wanted to assure her no one else could come in between them.

“I’m home!” he called out the second he barged in.

A lonesome home vibrated deep in the walls.

No one came charging toward him.

“Hello!” he yelled walking further in.

He wouldn’t panic again. This time he would take it in stride. Namjoo had to be somewhere. She wasn’t running off again. Of course, where else did she have to go? This was her home now.

“Namjoo?” he called out again as he headed upstairs. If she was in the bathroom, he’d surprise her.

They could take a shower right now. Enjoy a few intimate minutes together before cooling down for dinner and the rest of the evening.

He’d like that.

But no one.

Namjoo wasn’t in the bathroom. On the bed. In the closet.

Perhaps…at the manor hanging out with his parents? Namjoo hardly had reason to go there anymore.

Back down the stairs he tried calling her. Bracing himself for it, because…this just had to be a faulty scare. How many times had Namjoo disappeared into thin air to reappear at his side later?

His heart raced. Legs walked faster when he entered the manor. Look for his parents. Find his wife. Take her home.

He just needed to confirm she was with them. Then he’d spend the rest of the evening punishing her.

His father was throatily coughing when he reached. At the rectangular table his mother first turned hearing him. Keen eyes observed him, scanning every inch of him. Her expression was impenetrable.

Sehun noted no bowl of fruit on the table. None of Namjoo’s favorite tangerines his father loved dishing out for her. Dinner wasn’t even being served seeing how the dining table was bare.

Assuming they weren’t worried about him as usual, he continued to ask, “Where is Namjoo?”

Turning her back to him, his mother told, “Left.”

The word hung like a void.

“What?” Sehun asked uncertain he had heard correctly.

His mother’s nonchalant behavior didn’t make sense. She loved Namjoo to bits. They were pulling his leg. Perhaps trying to test the limit of his love for their precious daughter-in-law.

“Mom.” He airily scolded.

Hoarsely coughing more violently, his old man clutched his thick chest. “Aren’t you embarrassed!” His cheeks blew up with another round of coughs. Grasping his shirt, his red-faced father, screeched, “You just want to send me to my grave, you worthless son! Good for nothing…”

Another round of gut-wrenching coughs put a pause to his verbal attacks halfway. His father bent over in his chair nearly face planting the table.

“She left Sehun, she left!” his mother shrieked. He finally saw that her face was tear streaked as she ran to help her husband.

Sehun back stepped. Heart drummed in his ears. The blood flow whishing stormily inside his body.

All his weight seemed to drop at his feet. Everything suddenly unimportant.

Namjoo’s pretty smile flashed before him. Sehun saw her sleeping beside him. Of when he first started waking in the middle of the night to notice her. Remembering that stupid long pillow he couldn’t wait to get rid of. The first time he put the opal ring on her finger to hear her tell him she wanted to sell it. But it was still there in her drawer.

It rushed through his mind. The difficult tug of war they’d had. Days like years when Namjoo refused to hear him out. And then to hear her tell him, “I’ll stay.” lit up his world magnificently.

Sehun had never been so crazy in love.

He never wanted someone so much before he felt like a fish gulping air without her presence.

It beat in him fearfully. A life without Namjoo. Despite his father dying in front of him. He could hear the old man sickly coughing thinning out while the wheels in his brain spun an imagery of an empty future.

“SEHUN!” his mother belted a high-pitched scream when he skidded another step backwards, prepared to run.

“I have to go. I have to go.” He repeated drunkenly quickly losing hold of his sanity.

His hand subconsciously clenched into a fist at his side.

“Your father is dying!” his mother banshee screamed. Sauntering over she slapped him. A stream of tears rushed down his face. The sting a shock to him, but it was taking too long to register through his brain. Sehun was more panicked over the sudden loss of his wife.

All he could think about was Namjoo waiting for him. He couldn’t see anything that didn’t include her.

She was supposed to be waiting for him at home.

She was supposed to be here…

“Are you going to choose her over your parents?!” his mother shouted. “Wake up, Sehun!” she hiccupped through sobs. “How much more are you going to disappoint us!? You have no respect for your father and I! You’re just driving the stake through our hearts!”

Her tiny fist weakly hit his chest.

Yet he could not derive any amount of sincerity from their heartache. Sehun saw himself and this journey he had taken with Namjoo. And in that he was selfish like Jin, too. Unable to see through his vision the world outside. That his actions impacted others around him whether in small or big amounts.

By the time his father arrived at the emergency room and was wheeled off, Sehun stood in the midst of chaotic beeping machines unable to think any clearer. The cacophony in sync with the rash beating of his heart.

Just a while ago all seemed in his favor. He and Namjoo were going to do a pregnancy test this week. Sehun had high hopes for a positive. That would certify her claim to continue to stay with him.

That would make the lie ok.

He glanced around at the life around him. Craving the assurance of Namjoo’s hand in his. The love he had for her. The security of her at his side.

It was gone too soon.

What was he going to do without her?

For an entire night he sunk into a rock-hard chair in the hallway. Gloom melted around him. Visitors gone home leaving him alone with the attendants. His exhausted mother had taken up an empty bed in the public ward for the sick.

He yearned to leave this miserable building of life and death and the impossible. But he thought about Namjoo and he couldn’t. He imagined her patting his back, murmuring words of bravery. Recalling in her farewell letter for him to love his parents more.

In his daze a pair of legs emerged in front of him. Slowly lifting his head up, he recognized his mother, her clothes now rumpled beyond a state of correction. Purple smudges underneath her eyes riveted his heart, and he was ashamed.

“Her mother came to me today.” She sat down beside him. “She begged me to forgive her foolish daughter.”

A spiral of tears flowed down his cheeks when he clamped his eyes shut. Imagining the damage it must have done to Namjoo’s mother’s pride.

in a shaky breath, Sehun remorsefully apologized, “I’m sorry, mom.” his knees, he forced the words out, “Everything was a lie. It was all my fault. It was all me. Namjoo had nothing to do with it. I forced her to do it. She wasn’t pregnant. There is no baby.”

It was his mother’s silence that hurt more than her slap.

That was also when he knew he had failed them as a son.

A day then three passed. Sehun went to work. Came to the hospital. Another minor placed his father in the emergency ward again. Labs and tests all over again. This time his old man needed to be under observation for a longer period, no excuses. He wasn’t leaving early again. It was the doctor’s orders.

It remained on Sehun’s agenda to go after Namjoo, but there is a time and place for everything. For now, he had to lay low and be quiet for the sake of his parents. He was confident Namjoo wasn’t running anywhere further than her home. Wherever that was he had ways to find out later.

Every so often he peeked through the crack of the door to find his father laying depressingly on the hospital bed. Worried he’d send the man into another fit Sehun stayed a distance. Only his mother came in contact with him, but even she didn’t have much to offer. A glance here and there. Everything else remained unspoken.

Sehun was starting to wonder if he’d ruined his relationship with them. They had loved Namjoo so. Been excited and devoted to an unborn and nonexistent baby. Coming to face the fact that none of it was real must be demeaning and embarrassing for them. Sehun could understand that.

What he had put them through was enough of a lifetime’s humiliation. Now his parents would have to deal with the aftermath. Explain to relatives and friends about a wedding and a fraudulent daughter-in-law. Scorn an ungrateful son.

He had caused his family to be criticized. His family would be judged. People would point their fingers and say this is what kindness does, it makes one stupid. Uncle and Aunt Na would whisper that he was a bigger mistake than Hwayi.

Thinking about that made his blood boil incessantly.

“Stop lingering outside the door,” his father called.

Waking up Sehun noticed his father eyeing the door. Caught, Sehun was left with only one option. Slipping into the room Sehun slowly trudged toward the heavily blanketed bed. The room was bizarrely cold due to the air humidifier on the table stand.

He came to stand next to a stool placed beneath a computer monitor hosting buttons and words, none of which he understood.  

“Where is your mom?” his father questioned.

“Went down to the cafeteria.” Sehun replied.

“She must be exhausted.” His father empathized.

Sehun had nothing to add.

“You come from work?” his father wondered.

“Yea.”

“Have you seen her?”

Only then Sehun realized he hadn’t possessed the courage to look his father in the face. The man was gaunter than he recalled. Worn by his illness. Cheekbones too prominent making the blacks of his eyes too wide. His father looked half-alive, half-dead somehow.

Was this damage also done by him? Guilt washed over him like a tsunami.

“Who?” Sehun asked.

“The daughter-in-law.”

His eyes inched bigger. Shocked his father still wanted to mention Namjoo despite knowing.

“Dad…” was all he stupidly uttered more speechless.

“I’ve lived too long to know a bad egg when I see one. So, I can tell you made a good choice.” Solemnly looking at him, his father comforted, “Don’t be angry with your mom. To have the strength to apologize and willingly go is an attribute worthy of being applauded. Your mother and I could not have stopped her. Our daughter-in-law is indeed sincere.”

“What?” Dropped from his mouth. Relief and tears burned the backs of his eyes. “It wasn’t mom?”

All along he assumed his mother had spoken the words of utmost harshness to Namjoo. To leave the home and never come back.

“Go bring her home, son.” His father had never said such heartful words to him. Sehun nearly shed tears of gratefulness then and there. “You look even worse than I do.”

“Thank you, dad! Thank you!” Forgetting the machines his father was hooked to, Sehun fiercely hugged him. “I will never disappoint you again!”

Ignoring his father’s grunts of pain Sehun squeezed him before hurling out of the room, racing past a confused nurse.

It was finally time to go.

***Grand finale next chapter!!!!