I had always waited for a reason to leave him. A lot of people did that; leave their spouses. They come, they  leave, marriages happen and marriages end. Many of them probably never knew when it started, or how, or where or even why. It was just the course of life, constant change. Hearts were as fragile as that, I realised. It only took the slightest prick to burst, the gentlest coax to turn. They changed as fast as seasons. It was summer one moment; bright and warm and brilliant. Cold and sombre autumn the next. 

Our love was like that. The man whom I had once loved, whom I thought held my entire world soon became a stranger. The heat in my heart became stone cold, and it didn’t flutter as much anymore upon meeting his gaze across the room. Our love had gone from warm summers to dark, cold winters, and I did not see anywhere else that we could go from there. I did not know how or where it started, or why, or when. But I did most certainly know where it would end.

Kim Sung Gyu was not the kind of man one would have thought his wife would leave him. He had it all. He was witty, charming, successful; he had a twinkle in his eyes that made your heart flutter, a smile that was so infectious that you’d find yourself smiling along, smiling for him. His words were compelling, his thoughts were of such eloquence that you’d feel you’ve been swept off your feet, delving right into his world. When I first met him one warm summer, saw him across the hall and felt bursts of fireworks in my heart, I immediately thought it was going to be forever. Perhaps anyone who'd fallen in love felt the same, that they were star crossed lovers who’d travelled through centuries, through lives and hopes and dreams, searching for each other in parallel worlds, praying for a moment to meet. Sung Gyu had crossed the threshold that night, stepped right into my life as would a prince off a carriage, and I immediately knew he was the one.

Years into our marriage, however, I just did not know anymore.

It was summer again. The heat of the afternoon formed perspiration under my collars. We were outside the courtroom; it was the day of the verdict. The fate of a serial murderer was to be announced any minute now, and I, a reporter from one of the most renowned papers of the city, had to be the first to get the story in words before anyone else could. It was a constant struggle in this world, an endless unwinnable fight. The sun had no mercy on the waiting reporters, continuing to dry out the last of the energy we had. I’d have much preferred the cold of my air conditioned office over this, a chilled americano and a long train of thoughts rapidly being put into words. But I had to have a story to tell in order to make a living, hence the voluntary hours of pain.

A moment, and a buzz went across the gathered crowd. There was always one to know it first in this swarm of busy bees. Words went around like wildfires and it was not long before it reached me. The verdict had been made just a few seconds ago in the honoured court; the killer had been convicted to fifteen years in jail, just not enough. 

As the court doors opened, it was as if the flood gates had come undone. I did not have to so much as walk, when the entire swarm of journalists pushed forward, a pack of rabid bulls, they were; hungry for words. I held out my mic, sharp on the point, and over the sound of clicks and shouts of the others, I threw out my questions too. ‘Is it true that he was convicted? Is it true that his sentence is only fifteen years? How do you feel about the verdict sir? Would you appeal?’ I would have remained in the battle much longer, followed the army of reporters with every lawyer, with every detective and every law enforcement officer that stepped out of the court. But just like it always did in the most important moments of my life, my phone rang. 

I ignored it, of course. There was no real reason why I’d receive a call at a crucial moment like this. Everyone in my life knew that I wasn't to be disturbed unless it was an inevitable emergency. There weren’t many emergencies that could happen at this time of the day. But when it rang and rang and continued to ring, when it rang through us trying to get a word out of two attorneys and a detective and failed, I had no choice but to yield. There was only one person who wouldn’t understand any part of ‘not to be disturbed at work’, or just didn’t care enough. With a sigh, I stepped away from the mob and out into the street under the balmy, hot sun. My eyes were narrowed at the screen of my phone, one hand clutching the sweaty dampness of my hair, and my husband’s number blinked at my face. It was with spite that I picked up the call.

“I’m at work, what is it?” I asked him, no greetings, no sweet talk, we have grown way past that.

There was the unmistakable sound of shuffling papers on the other end, soft curses, deep sighs. “I can’t find it” He finally replied.

“Find what?”

“The flash drive. I swear I put it in the drawers, I always do, but its not there anymore”

I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. I had specified to my whole family what I’d classify as emergencies; it could be an accident, a broken arm, a house on fire or somebody nearing their death, but I was pretty sure a misplaced flash drive came not even close to that.

“Did you check your cupboard?” I asked as patiently as I could. “The file cabinet? I’m sure you’d have put it somewhere”

“No,” said Sung Gyu, as if nothing I had said made sense. “I put it in the drawer, the top one of my desk, I always do” A moment, and I heard him slamming something shut and with exasperation. I imagined my husband on the other end, annoyed, a hand in his hair, another on his waist, blaming the entire world for his mistakes, the entire world but himself. “Did you clean my room by any chance?” He asked me, his tone coated with doubt. “Or Missus Lee? She must have put it somewhere else-,”

“Missus Lee nor I would ever open your drawers, oppa, you know that” I reminded him, approaching the edge of my patience now. “Maybe you put it somewhere else and forgot, maybe you should keep looking”

“I am” another sigh followed. “I need it for the conference tomorrow and there are some amendments to be made-,”

I looked over at the mob of reporters by the entrance of the court, and realised, with a sinking heart, that the crowd had begun to dissipate. This happened only once the most crucial information of the case had been shared with the reporters, the most important parts that were required for a good story. Had I missed all of it, I was as good as gone now, returning to the office with empty hands.

“Look” I called my husband, putting a pause to his endless rambling. “I’m sure you put it somewhere else, just keep looking. And if it’s so important, maybe you should put it somewhere that you’d remember”

“Eunji-,” He started in a warning tone, an implication that we weren’t stepping into something good.

“I need to go now, I have to get back to work,'' I told him, already hurrying across the hot asphalt towards the steps of the court. “I won’t be back until late tonight. Don’t forget to pick up Yulhee from mum’s”

A heavy, resigned sigh on his end. He had understood the conversation was over as much as I did. “Fine” He replied, followed by more banging of drawers and doors. “See you tonight” and he was gone.

I stared down at the empty screen for a second, contemplating, wondering if we were still on a journey with a definitive happy ending. Sometimes, I genuinely felt that we’ve already had that happy ending. Now we were at the beginning of something very, very bad.

On the tenth floor of the Seobuk commercial towers was the office of Joongang Ilbo, the news agency and the home for the popular news site of the city ‘The Seoul Observer’. At a regular time on a regular day of work, it was complete chaos in the wide expanse of the office floor. Joongang Ilbo did not only lead the Seoul Observer, but a number of magazines and newspapers covering various aspects of the journalist universe. In the very right corner of the floor was a fitness magazine that was dedicated only for women, and a little to the left of that were two editors of the miscellaneous column of the Business Daily. The division of the Seoul Observer was the biggest as it was the most elite of all, and perhaps even the most chaotic, equipped with the several editors with the tightest deadlines that could possibly exist. More often than not, we would feel we were on a run for our lives.

The chief editor of the Seoul Observer was a man in his mid thirties, a pair of gifted eyes and  keen attention to detail, a stoic face and dark, mysterious air. His sense in fashion seemed to have diminished with long hours dedicated to work that he often went for chinos with leather shoes, a dress shirt and a jacket with contrasting colors. But that did nothing to lessen the aura of intimidation around him. Nam Woohyun always carried himself like that; stern, impassive, unrelenting. He expected work, work, and work, nothing less. That afternoon, having returned to office after a failed attempt to cover one of the biggest cases in history, I had nothing to deliver. I went in empty handed, lowered my head and clutched my hands, listening to every word of disappointment he had to say.

I hated it that it wasn’t even the first time for the past few months. I had come in to work late on myriad occasions, and I couldn’t even tell him my excuses of fighting with my newly-dimwitted husband over missing socks and stained shirts. I couldn’t tell him my struggles as a wife, as a mother, as a woman lest I came off to him as a failure. I couldn’t decline now, not when I had risen to the top of my game in the field not so long ago. It broke my heart to realise that my decline had evidently started now. 

I returned to my cubicle with a heavy, angry heart. Nobody had benefited out of our last conversation, and it only made me angrier, a growing resentment towards my husband which I’d long realised I had. He climbed on every possible nerve in body, pressed every switch that could trigger me. Everything he did and said made me angrier, and nothing he could do or say now would make any difference. It had already started, like my friend Hyejoo had pointed out to me over lunch a few days ago. My marriage to my perfect, perfect husband was coming to an end.

It wasn’t like he was even trying. Every day he’d do something to be less of the man that I used to know. His study was a mess, he intentionally skipped meals with my mother and slept for longer hours on the weekends. He didn’t hold me in bed at night anymore, nor did he wake up for our crying child at the crack of dawn although he knew perfectly well that I’d had a longer day at work than he did. Every day, every hour, Sung Gyu gave me more and more reasons to leave him. I had failed to grasp when it started or what happened for things to be this way. There was no longer happiness in our household despite the ecstatic gurgles and laughter of our daughter. Slowly but surely, we were becoming strangers. No effort was put from either end, and we weren’t even desperate to save the sinking ship.

And just like anyone on a sinking ship, I had most readily thrown myself right into a lifeboat. I didn’t suppose he had too, given the way he lived his life. I didn’t suppose that I had saved myself either, and I didn’t suppose he should, at least not now.

“The Chungnam-Dong report?” I asked the assistant editor in a lowly whisper for clarification. There was not a hint of recognition in his eyes as he nodded, as rebellious strands of his hair fell over his eyes. “That’s what he said,” he nodded and carefully pasted a post-it on top of my laptop screen. ‘From the archives’ it said on the post it, in handwriting so messy and spontaneous that it made my skin prickle. I already knew what this meant. I nodded at him, placed a hand on his arm in gratitude for passing the message to me. It wasn’t the same person who delivered the message every time. It changed; the person, the words, the time of the day. But always, always the reason behind them  was the same.

I’d had a long, tiring day, and it couldn’t get any worse. I was to return home to a deranged husband, an oblivious toddler and a marriage that was falling apart. When one was living a life like that, a life that didn’t feel like it was a life anymore, they were bound to deviate and go off course sometimes, become somebody else for a moment, pretend their world was different just so they could continue living.

And that’s what it was for me. The archives, the coded messages, the reports and files that never existed. It was my distraction, my pretense, my secretive life just so I wouldn’t fall off the real course.

I gasped, clutching the back of his neck as I raised off the cold, hard table. Perspiration dampened my skin, my shirt slipping off my shoulders, skirt hiked up to the hips, and there were stars bursting behind my eyes. His lips traced every inch of my skin, at least every inch that he could reach within the narrow confines of the archives room, the four walls closing upon us the longer we spent in here. It was my pretense, my disgusting, twisted lie. For that one moment I wasn’t myself but somebody else, wrapped up in a heated love affair, its secrets lost among the opened files and scattered papers, reduced to hushed hums and lowly murmurs. We hadn’t a lot of time, but the few minutes we could spare was just enough. We’d lock ourselves in the dark, clothes coming undone. We’d kiss, we’d hold, we’d stumble in the dark and make love. We’d pull ourselves together afterwards, fix shirts, put on soiled knickers again and out we’d go, hoping the wrinkled papers on the desks would have no secrets to tell. 

“You alright?” He asked me in a lowly voice once we were done, as I laid spent and disgusted by my own doing on top of the table, unable to move. He hoisted me up by my waist, kissed me long on my lips. I didn’t know which kiss I liked better, which touch, which feel; if it was my husband’s or my lover’s. But the latter made me feel the kind of things the former hadn’t for a while. I nodded as I pulled away. A wry smile appeared on his lips and I replied with an uncomfortable smile. “Just-just had a long day”

He helped me put my clothes back on, fixed my collar, arranged my hair. “I hope I made it a little better,” He said. And I had nothing else to say in return.

♡♡♡

I hated my life sometimes. I hated the woman that I had become. When I walked down the aisle with Sung Gyu’s hand lovingly wrapped around mine, millions of dreams and wishes in our hearts, had I thought, for once, that I’d choose another man over him? I thought I’d never have a reason to. He would be my first, so would he be my last. We built a life together, a whole world together. Just where did we go wrong? Just what has changed since then?

What I thought was that I had never seen it for its impermanence and believed that nothing was stronger and unchanging as our love. Sung Gyu and I never loved in the way that couples in books and movies did. We never exchanged flowers, cuddles and nightly kisses, he never knew my favorite colour nor did I know what he dreamt about. We weren’t the type to tell each other that we loved them every waking morning and night. We didn’t need to seal our love to reassure ourselves that it still existed, because it was there, it was always there, constant as the stars. 

Sung Gyu didn’t have to tell me that he loved me for me to feel that he did. It was in every threadbare of the bright colored scarfs that he’d picked for me from Italian streets, in the china jars that he’d bought from his walks in the nightly markets, in the jewel stones that he said had reminded him of me, although he didn’t say in so many words that he’d seen the twinkle of my eyes inside them. It was in the way that he smiled through tears the  moment he first held our child, it was in the way he stayed up late for me to return home so we could have dinner together and sometimes in the way he cleaned it when my hair clogged the drain. It wasn’t that I never noticed the subtle little ways that he had loved me. But the question was, was it ever enough? For me? What would I do if it started to disappear then? Like it’s doing now?

I was searching for the parts that were missing in me, and I had known this from the moment that my illicit second life began. Parts were lost in our lives, they were gone, disappeared, and I needed them to feel complete again.  I had gone too deep down the wrong path for so long that I no longer knew my way back home. And even more heartbreakingly, I no longer wanted to trace my way back home. It was not a place worth returning to, and I hoped he knew this too.

Back at home, I was Kim Sung Gyu’s wife again. I returned a little late into the evening as dusk had started to fall in the western sky. The city was visible breathtakingly to our fourteenth floor apartment as if it was a massive creature made up of tiny living and breathing lives. Standing against the twinkle of the twilight was my husband, a silhouette so achingly beautiful that for a moment, I found myself backtracking. Maybe this was the man I loved. Maybe I still loved him. Maybe I was still able to find those missing pieces somewhere in the depth of his heart and feel complete again.

“You’re home” Sung Gyu told me, turned around and gave me tiniest of a smile; a flash that disappeared too soon. The city lights were reflected in his spectacles that I couldn’t exactly tell what his eyes were like. His hair a boyish mess, already in his silk pajamas, ready for bed. I felt a tinge of guilt in my heart, although there was nothing that he could possibly know. I had betrayed him, this wonderful, beautiful man who probably still loved me. I betrayed him again and again.

I sighed heavily and proceeded to remove my coat. “Did Missus Lee leave already? Did she say anything about dinner?”

Sung Gyu was quiet for a moment, gazing at the direction of our open planned kitchen. “I think so” he pressed a hand on his forehead. “Good day?”

The tiniest bud of admiration that I had had when I  stepped into the house immediately disappeared upon being reminded of the events of the day; the report, the phone call, the missing flash drive.

“Didn’t go well” I replied distractedly and hurried my way into the kitchen. It didn’t appear to me that he had any idea if dinner plans were arranged by our long-time house maid, so I had to look into it myself. There was an iron pot left on the stove, still slightly warm and there were chicken thighs grilling in the electric oven. In the rice cooker, rice was warming up. “Did you find your flash drive?” I called back into his silence, intending to make him realise that the reason behind my bad day was him.

Sung Gyu stepped into the kitchen, the undone straps of his dressing gown sweeping the floor. There was an unreadable expression on his face. A hint of annoyance, perhaps? A bit of rage.

“It’s not there, I looked everywhere in the room” He said.

“Maybe you left it at work,” I told him, trying to be helpful. “Did you check it there?”

“No, no, I never took it to work” He went on, the same tone of exasperation underlining his voice. “I put it in the drawer, I always do, and now its gone”

He made it sound like the drive had magically disappeared, like it was never his fault to begin with. One of his pairs of socks would be lost in the nether, his research reports lost somewhere in cyberspace and he spoke as if I had submerged my hand in there and pulled it out for reasons unknown. Things disappeared from the drawers of his mind sometimes. It was there one moment, and it wasn’t the next. And whenever this happened, he’d be overtaken with temper as if it had always been my fault.

And tonight, right now, I was too tired to be fighting over anything. I put the chicken to heat up in the oven again and wiped my hands on my pants. “Maybe it's just lost in the mess of your room, did you ever think about that?” I asked him, and something dark immediately crossed his face.

“I know where I put things when I do”

“Fine, alright” I sighed and headed out of the kitchen, crossing the length of our flat towards his room. “But If I find it somewhere in there, I swear to god-,”

The study appeared as if an entire gail had passed through it. Cupboards were open, drawers pulled out, carpets hardly visible under crates and stacks of files, papers strewn about. On the armchairs were stacks and stacks of old dissertations, on his table thrown aside were his two computers, the printer with printouts left untouched. He had looked in the drawers, alright. He had indeed looked at every nook and cranny in the room to the point that if one lost their way somewhere in this mess, they wouldn’t find their way back and die of asphyxiation.

“What on earth happened here?” I asked him.

“I’ll clean it up,” He replied.

“Well, you better, I don’t want you living in this house like in a pigsty” I went on and proceeded to haphazardly collect the papers on his desk in my hands. “This whole mess just to find one flash drive? Why do you live like this, oppa, at least if you let me or Missus Lee clean things up for you-,”

“Leave them alone” He growled, and I wasn’t even surprised when the papers were snatched from my hands. I looked up at him, hot white rage raising up my neck. I didn’t want to be a controlling cleanfreak, I never was. In fact, I hardly stepped into his office for he wished for his privacy, I never touched his things because he never wanted me to. But if he was going to lose one single flash drive and behave as if it was entirely my fault, well then, he was asking for his boundaries to be breached.

“Clean the hell up then!” I called back, stepping away from him. “Clean it up! All of it! Find your bloody flash drive yourself! Don’t come running to me when you wouldn’t, not when your entire room and  your head is like this!”

I knew it was my frustration from a missed opportunity that was coming out in multitudes. This was the reason why I had avoided conversations with Sung Gyu the past few months, for they never ended quiet and civil like normal people’s conversations would. Either one of us would climb on the nerves of the other, and soon it would be a madfest of harsh words and insults until one of us slammed a door on the other person’s face.

There was no gentleness in the way he tossed his papers back onto the desk. “Maybe if you didn’t touch my things, then I wouldn’t have lost it in the first place” 

I widened my eyes, bewildered. The only thing I had ever touched in this room before now was him, and that too when he was not inside it. “What...what on earth is wrong with you?” I ventured out, my heart pounding in rage. “What are you even talking about?”

“Who else is in this house, then?” he shot back, and in his eyes what I saw was blue flames of anger, accusation, suspicion. “It's Missus Lee and then it's you. Missus Lee would have no business with my research, does she? But some reporters certainly do”

My hands were clenched on my sides. It took so much for me to not hit him on his chest and push him away from me; just because he was my husband, just because he was the father to my child.

“I don’t have anything to do with your work, Sung Gyu-Ssi,” I told him in the end, my voice a shrill whisper, my hands shaking on the other side. I took a step towards him just so I could see his eyes better, just so he could see the hatred in mine. “And I don’t have anything to do with you”

“Get out” Sung Gyu hit back in a tone so dark that I had heard from him only so many times, and I knew that I had certainly stepped on a nerve.

I pulled away from him, as he stared at me, his hands clenched, eyes ablaze. He was never like this before. Usually calm and composed, not even the biggest argument could waiver his patience. It’s been a while since he changed to this man that I barely recognised, for reasons unknown. Now his anger could easily reach beyond the limit that he could control. He made stories, ridiculous tales, passed the ball of his fault to everyone else. There was only so much that I could take from his erratic behaviour. He had not always been like this, but now he carried problems from his stressful work home, and it had come dangerously close to the point that could break.

I returned to the kitchen, leaving my husband to deal with his own temper. He would come around eventually, lock himself in there for the night, stare out the window, play classical music in lowly tones and fall asleep on his stacks of notes, only to repeat the mess of his life again. I left him to that and went on to check on Yulhee who would have returned home after school and the rest of the afternoon spent with my mother at her store. She went to bed early, woke up early, bright and jolly as sunshine. But the moment I went to her door and found it shut, something heavy settled in my stomach. It was never left shut when she was inside. She wasn’t tall enough to open it on her own. I opened the door as panic slowly settled in. The room was pitch dark, no joy, no sunshine, no laughter.

My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach and just as soon raised with blazing flames.

I stormed across the hall again, towards Sung Gyu’s study, my hands shaking in relentless anger. I slammed open the door and found him standing quietly in his room, staring out at the citylights again. I called his name, and he turned. In his eyes was an innocuous calm, the previous wrath already waning away. Yet that only made me angrier. 

“Where’s Yulhee?” 

It took a second for the words to register, maybe two, I couldn’t tell. Then the tranquility in his face took up unrefined panic and gravity, a flash of anger and something more. 

“Didn’t you pick her up?” I asked, my voice raising an octave higher. He could forget to pick up the post or to pay utility bills, that I would let pass, he could forget where he’d put his flash drive and I couldn’t care less; but to forget his own daughter?

“Eunji, I-,” He started, his voice shaking, standing a ghostly figure in the dark, a sight I could no longer bear to see.

“How could you?” I spat back as tears sprang to my eyes. “Oppa how could you? Your own child?!?”

He crossed the threshold towards me, already reaching for his keys. “Wait, I will-,”

“Forget it” I called back, no remorse by the harshness of my voice. I traced my way out the door again, hopeless and exhausted. My husband was not my husband anymore, and long had passed since I’d realised that. It wasn’t going to be the first time, nor was it going to be the last. He would do this again, lost in his own world of theories and philosophies, not realising what he was losing along the way. How long was I going to let it happen? I suppose I had given it long enough. Like all good things, our marriage had come to an end.

And that night happened to be my very last straw.