Later that night, I laid in bed, unable to sleep a blink. Sung Gyu had comfortably drifted off to sleep; calm, quiet, serene and beautiful. In the quietness of the night, I gazed at his sleeping form as millions of thoughts crossed my mind. 

Something wasn’t right was all I knew, but I didn’t think the things that happened were enough to deduce that. People had problems, and so people often forget things. Sometimes it was easier that way to live like things never happened or they never existed. Sometimes it was just the spur of the moment, a glitch in the motors of their mind. Sung Gyu had been listless the past few days, counting down to the conference that he’d been preparing for, day and night. Perhaps the end of it had made him calm again, perhaps that calm would last for a while, keeping our marriage afloat. I had to give him that benefit of doubt, for there was nothing much I knew of my husband anymore. He had changed so much. He just wasn’t the man that he used to be and I wanted to believe there were reasons for this change as well. “There’s probably more to it than we think,”  mum's words echoed in my mind. 

I quietly sat up on our bed and reached for my phone. It was late in the night, but not too late to catch my mum on the phone, she and the people in her store finished work much later than this. I had to accept that it was not something that I could draw conclusions of on my own. I needed a second opinion, and it was certainly mum’s wisdom that I needed.

Mum picked up the call at the seventh ring, and I quietly slipped out of our bedroom lest I disturbed my husband’s soundly sleep. “Omma” I called in a lowly whisper, but she wasn’t considerate enough to maintain the same tone.

“Eunji-ah, why so late in the night? Is everything okay?”

She perhaps referred to my outrage from the other day, where I had run to her in tears, grabbed my child and told her with indignation how I had wished I could leave my husband behind.

I sighed and laid across the sofa seat, my feet hanging off the edge. “Yes and no….I don’t know, mum. I really don’t know”

There was a shuffling sound in her end, and her yelling at someone off the phone, telling them that she would be away for a moment. She made time for her only daughter like that. “What is it, Eunji-ah? Is it about Sung Gyu goon again?”

My mum adored Sung Gyu. She loved him as much as she loved me and my brother, and accepted him from the beginning like her own child. Sung Gyu had grown up with his grandparents after his mother and father passed away. He had been still a child when that happened, yet he said he never felt like he lacked love and affection. His grandparents had given him all. Once they passed away after he moved out of Jeonju and joined the army, Sung Gyu hadn’t had a mother figure for a long time; that was until he met mum and me. For this reason, Sung Gyu loved and trusted my mum too. So mum never hesitated to do it if she thought she had to take his side.

“It's about him” I told her and stared at the irregular patterns on the darkened roof above me. I didn’t know where to start, where to end, or what to say. There was just too much in my head. 

“Tell me everything” My mum prompted nevertheless. And I found myself doing just that. 

“Did he tell you anything else?” She asked me afterwards. “You know, anything about work? Anything at all?”

Sung Gyu did tell me about work sometimes, just as much as I did, which was only from the surface, nothing more.

“No, not really,” I replied. “But I’m pretty sure it's work he’s stressing about” I went on, recalling the previous weeks where it was his job related irritants that had set him off like a bomb. “Omma, he’s the kind to bring home all his frustrations from work. It doesn’t help that he does half his work at home, so it would never end”

Mum tutted on the other end. “It must be tough work. Politics musn’t be fun and games when you are the one to teach it”

That made me smile. “I don’t think he hates it or anything” I replied. It was the truth. Sung Gyu loved what he did. “I don’t know...I just don’t get what’s going on with him”

“Maybe it's a bit of both, Eunji. Both home and work” Mum told me, gravity embedded in her tone. I narrowed my eyes. I already knew home surely had something to do with it. But which part? When we had just about two to three hours to spend in each other’s company every day?

“He’s not only a college professor now, is he?” Mum went on to ask me. “He does other things as well?”

“Yeah, you know, the consulting and diplomatic things”

“Like telling the people who go to other countries what to do and say?”

I nodded with a shrug. “Yeah...just the other day he was telling me about the one guy who abated at a UN conference when he’d told him to vote for it”

Sung Gyu was pretty beat up by the incident, and although it happened a while ago, he kept bringing it up to complain about the incompetence of newly appointed diplomats.

My mum somehow found it a reason to laugh about. “I wouldn’t blame him, seeing how politicians act these days. No wonder he’s frustrated like that”

I just hummed and said nothing at all. She didn’t seem to understand much, but there wasn’t a lot that I could possibly say.

Mum heaved a great big breath in the end, as if the load of his work took a toll on her too. “See? Eunji, it must be tough on him. He’s doing all that while being a full time dad to a toddler as well, isn’t he? He’s doing a great deal on his own, he’s bound to get angry and forget things. Just give him a break and help him through, talk to him when you both feel better, and don’t rush in to make conclusions, okay? Just let him be”

I wasn’t exactly sure if I was prepared to take mum’s word for that. I trusted her wisdom; she had indeed lived much longer and much tougher than I had, but that was not to say she understood the big picture any better than I did. I could give him time, I would. I could give him chances time and time again, waiting and hoping for a day that this madness would end. But he kept forgetting things, kept blaming things on me. He acted hot one moment and cold the next, his moods changing at a pace that I could hardly keep up. On top of that, he’d put a flash drive in the freezer and forgotten things that he had grown up learning for half his life. What more was to come after this? And how much more could I take? It was easier said than done, giving us time to heal. But the problem was, there was no sign that we ever would.

“But mum” So I went on to tell her. “I told you what he did. He forgot the German flag. He put his important documents in the freezer! Do people get stressed to the point of doing things like that?”

At this, for my amazement, mum burst out in laughter. “Ji, you’d think that’s the worst a stressed person could do” She replied through her chuckles. “Once, when you were little, I put a plastic plate on the gas stove and turned it on! I nearly set fire to the kitchen that day, nearly got us killed!” She continued to laugh as if it was a a fond memory to laugh about. “That’s the kind of silly things your brain could do when you’d worked it too much, Eunji. What Sung Gyu had done are just little, little things. He would be fine”

Our call ended soon after that, but I didn’t think It was a productive enough conversation that we’d had. It provided answers, enough to draw a better conclusion than Sung Gyu running outright insane. But what did it say about the expression that I had seen in his eyes? When it happened, he consciously knew that it did. He knew it, he felt it, that glitch, that stop, that skip in his brain. I didn’t know how people’s brains worked, I’m not smart enough to understand that. But one thing I did know, it wasn’t going to be long before it happened again, so it was for me to decide if I’d stay and fight, or run while I could.

♡♡♡

The follow up report on the serial killings was to be published later that day, and for this reason I had finished up my article and presented it to the chief editor.  A few minutes later, he called me back into his office, and I was not surprised to find him with an unimpressed frown, his lips firmly pressed as my printed document laid on the table before him. Nam Woohyun was steadfast and straight-forward when he had criticisms to make; he was blunt, never held back, he never thought about consequences. That, I suppose, was one of the many reasons why the Seoul Observer had remained one of the most prominent newspapers in the city for a very long time.

“Take a seat, Eunji-Ssi,” He told me, gesturing at the iron chair in front of him and I cautiously slipped into it. He gathered my printed article in his hand and slid it across the table towards me.

“What do you think about this?” He wanted to know. That was how he always went about his feedback. He never launched into sharing his own comments and was often gratified when the writers admitted their work was before Woohyun could inform them that he thought it was as well.

I stared down at the papers, disappointed at myself. Just a few weeks ago, I had received the best reporter award of the year, and now here I was, being called out for my incompetence. I had no excuses for what had become of me. “It’s...not one of my best work” I finally replied.

“And do you know why that is?”

The story sounded like something written by an amateur writer; there were too many filler words, sentences just felt isolated and disconnected, and in the reader's perspective, it just wasn’t something that could be read and felt. It was one of the most contentious cases of murder that I was following up about, something that the general public would be eager to read, and if I were to write and publish in the way I have done…

“It lacks a lot of things” Woohyun answered for me when I refused to say anything else. “There’s no voice, no resonance. Just a bunch of sentences put together out of obligation but with no intention to share a story” 

I nodded, and I couldn’t blame him either for feeling that way. Nothing he had said was wrong, and Woohyun certainly knew better. 

“This...this is not what I had expected from you, Eunji-Ssi” He went on, and the disappointment was palpable in his tone. “You used to do so much better than this. The winner of the best reporter award,” He shook his head. “You really need to step up the game again. You can’t back up now”

I heaved a deep sigh. He was right, I had declined so much for the past few days; I missed important stories, had to write and rewrite articles again and again whereas I had managed to put something decent together at one try back in my better days. Woohyun had closely monitored my work, I realised, and I had tried my best to not let my personal struggles come in between. Yet, at this point, it had become inevitable. My frustration had become the root of my writer’s block, and I was seeing the consequences of it now.

I agreed to rewrite it again, collected my article and returned to my cubicle with a heavy heart. Hyejoo looked at me across the floor and gave me a sad little smile and a thumbs up in encouragement. I hadn’t told her anything, yet she seemed to have read it right off my face. I slumped back into my seat and stared at the framed photographs of Sung Gyu, Yulhee and me sitting on my table like a constant reminder, all the good and bad things of my life.

A few minutes later, one of the newly recruited admin assistants passed by, carrying a truckload of printouts and photocopies demanded by other editors in the room. As she did, she laid an empty sheet of paper on my table, looking confused. On the papers was a single post-it, the familiar handwriting, the familiar words. My heart leapt to my throat both with guilt and anticipation. I stood up and grabbed my jacket before I crossed the length of the office towards the lift.

When it opened, Nam Woohyun stepped in along with me. We were quiet as it descended, the heat of our last conversation still lingering in the air. The lift stopped at the basement, the doors parted. We both stepped outside. In a matter of minutes, I was pulled into the fire exit and held against the cold iron door, Nam Woohyun’s lips tracing patterns on my skin.

When we were in the confines of our office room, under the unsuspecting scrutinization of our fellow editors and colleagues, Nam Woohyun maintained his position as the chief editor. He scolded me when he had to, criticised me whenever it was due. He tossed my badly written articles on the table, papers sent flying and scattered across the desk and barked at me to rewrite them again. In the same way, I continued to be his subordinate; I listened to his scolding, bowed my head and accepted all the criticisms, flinched when he threw my articles on the table and rewrote everything from scratch. But when we were in the archives, the fire exit, the closed, tight space of his car, we were no longer an editor and the chief editor of the Seoul Observer; we were Nam Woohyun and me, the illicit lovers.

“I didn’t want to be mean to you” He told me after we had parted from a long, heated kiss. His hair was a mess under my ministrations, cheeks tinted pink. He held me in his warm, strong embrace and caressed my skin, left a gentle, chaste kiss on my lips. “I’m sorry if I sounded like that, Jung Eunji-Ssi”

“No that was fine, I understand” I muttered, lowered my head and rested it against his shoulder. “It wasn’t my best work, I should have done better…”

“You can definitely do better….” He agreed and tucked my hair behind my ear. “You always do...that’s one of the many things that I love you for, and I just don’t want that to go away”

I didn’t know what it was about his words that made my heart flutter. It was very unlikely for me to hear anything good about myself from anyone. Sung Gyu never loved me like that. He had never told me the reason why he had loved me, not even when I had asked, whereas with Woohyun, everything was different. I didn’t even have to say it in many words when I needed that affirmation. He showered me with compliments, he was generous with his love. If I ever had to list down all the reasons I liked him too, that would be one of the many of them.

I buried my head in his chest, feeling his fingers threaded in my hair and closed my eyes. I had wondered myriad times why I was risking everything for this forbidden affair; my job, my marriage, my dignity and respect. But then I would find myself here, in his arms, in this moment and I’d understand all my wrong and right reasons.  I had desperately craved to be touched like this, loved like this, be told nice things. Nam Woohyun was everything that Sung Gyu no longer was for me, and selfishly so, I continued to delve into this lie.

“There is something going on, isn’t it?” Woohyun asked me as he rested his chin on my head. “Tell me everything. Sweetheart, you know that I’m always here for you”

I nodded, nodded and nodded. Then I pulled away from him. We didn’t do a lot of talking. What our relationship had the most was that intimacy which I had felt I always lacked in my marriage. But when it was needed, when it was called for, Woohyun and I did a lot of talking too.

“Can we sit down a bit?” I asked him. And we moved to sit down on the steps. 

Huddled in the confines of the fire exit staircase, I told my lover all the reasons why I had wanted my husband to leave me. He was angry all the time; for everything that happened to him, he saw the cause and the fault in me. He was always forgetting things, he wasn’t like himself anymore, and most importantly, I didn’t think we loved each other. Whatever the amount of love we’d had when we started out and even when we had our child, it had completely dissipated over the time. Right now, our marriage was just a responsibility and an obligation, nothing more.

At the end of my quiet account, Woohyun reached out and took my hand. “You can always run away” He told me, and the tone of his voice brought a smile to my lips. He made it sound so simple, so easy as if it was a decision that I could up myself and make like I would decide what I could make for breakfast. But it wasn’t. We had a child, we had careers, we had families and friends and shared commitments to make. I wish I could run away from my entire life like that, leave everything behind and start all over from the beginning and the impossibility of it truly pained.

“I can’t run away, Woohyun-Ssi, I can’t just run away like that” I told him, shaking my head. “There are too many things to worry about...and Yulhee…”

“You know that I could love Yulhee as much as I love you”

By the implications of his words, my head shot up, and I met his eyes carrying all the sincerity, all that hope. I could never be certain if anyone would be able to love Yulhee just enough, but the warmth in Woohyun’s words were giving me an equal amount of hope and fear and excitement. A happier life, the words echoed in my mind. With or without him.

“Leave him, Eunji” Woohyun continued and gently took both my hands between his own. “Divorce him, leave him and come to me. There is no reason why you should stay in a marriage that makes you unhappy when there’s someone who’s willing to give all that love to you...and even more” He lifted a hand and caressed my cheeks. It didn’t take more for him to have me mesmerized by his charms. “I can make you happy, Eunji. I can make us happy; you, Yulhee and I”

I repeated his words in my mind, and they had never sounded so real and terrifying before. I had only imagined myself and Yulhee, going over to my mum’s and continuing our lives from where they were halted. But Nam Woohyun's offer gave us more. It was no continuation that he had in his hands for me. It was an all new start. An all new start with an all new love. Would I be happier? I had to ask myself again. What did Woohyun have that Sung Gyu didn’t which could possibly confirm that I would be?

“I have a home” He went on as he caressed my hand. “It has a garden, a lot of space for Yulhee to play in and grow up in. She can have her own room, she can have everything she need, you can have everything you need, Eunji, you can have it all, with me”

I have a home too. I wanted to tell him. Although we had no garden, Yulhee definitely had a lot of space to play. But did I have everything with Sung Gyu as much as Yulhee had everything with him? The world that Woohyun had built in my mind was impeccable, a world that I was desperate to be in. I could feel loved again, I realised, as he kept caressing my fingers, gazing into my eyes. I could feel wanted, needed and loved again. I wouldn’t be someone’s emotional punching bag, I would no longer carry that harsh baggage in me. I would no longer thread around in my own house, fearing the next moment that he would burst. I would be happy, truly, genuinely happy.

“Think about it, hm?” He asked me on an endnote, pulled me closer and left a long, lingering kiss on my forehead. He reached out and caressed my hair, laid a warm hand on my neck. “In  the meantime, darling, know that my doors are always open for you, if you ever need somewhere to run away to. And if you ever need a shoulder to lean on, I’m always here”

That, perhaps, was the only solace I had in that moment, knowing I didn’t have to be all on my own. Sung Gyu would burst at some point again, he would blame me, despise me, weigh me down with all his faults. I couldn’t run to my mother when that happened, my mother who had so much of blind trust in him, nor did I have anybody else to run to, but him. With that consolation, I leaned down and laid my head on his shoulder again. I would run if I had to run, I would hide if I really, really had to. Until then, I would hold on, waiting and anticipating for the right time to come.