A lot of things changed since then. I suppose all I had wanted was a push of some sort, a better reason perhaps, or like some people put it, a moment of enlightenment. At work when I met Hyejoo again, I told her that I had decided to leave my husband. She cheered for me, held me in her arms and gave me her best wishes. I did much better in my articles after that, Woohyun the chief editor told me this in his usual, professional tone inside his office, and then over at home, he kissed me and said he was delighted by the progress I had made. We no longer made love in the archives. We had our secret nightly encounters at his home. I claimed to my mother that I worked long nights so Yulhee would stay with her most of the time, with Sung Gyu accompanying her whenever he wished to. 

I didn’t see him much, talk to him much, I didn’t know what happened in his life. We would see each other at home, we would have breakfast together for the sake of Yulhee and tried to be tolerant of each other’s presence in front of the TV, on the dining table, eating outside, at picnics in the park. When we were alone, he would lock himself in his study, I would lock myself in mine. We slept in the same bed, still for Yulhee who sometimes came to find us in our room. I knew that Sung Gyu hadn’t gotten any better. He was still erratic and mindless, and it was becoming evident that there was indeed something wrong with his mind. I witnessed him struggling to make the coffee machine work, halting mid sentence during phone calls or while talking to Yulhee. I found certain things in odd places, like his car keys in the bathroom and his clothes abandoned on the floor. 

Once he couldn’t find his spectacles and yelled at everyone in the house, making Yulhee cry. He didn’t even bother to comfort her but picked up his jacket and keys and stormed out of the house. I found his spectacles under a pillow in the sofa, its frame crushed, glass cracked. The next morning, I found his white Mercedes with its front bumper badly dented. It was a struggle to get his glasses replaced and I had no choice but to accompany him, where we happened to find out that his eyesight had declined even further. On our way back, he nearly ran a redlight, got pissed off again and I took the steering wheel from him. I was not surprised when he accused me of thinking that he was blind and old. I kept quiet nevertheless, drove home, stayed quietly in my room until late and went to Woohyun’s to spend the night.

Such was life for nearly a month. I knew that mum had noticed things; how Yulhee had to stay over at hers more often than not, my infrequent phone calls and ones that were cut short. I spoke to her a little about Sung Gyu, he too stayed not too long to chat with her like he used to. Missus Lee noticed things as well but she never spoke a word. Yulhee was troubled, she had so many questions to ask. 

Once, on a night when Sung Gyu had locked himself away and unsurprisingly forgot to have dinner and put his daughter to bed, I did that for her. We chatted a little while she was in the bath. We didn’t have to wash her, she did that on her own. But either Sung Gyu or I stayed in the bathroom with her. While I waited, we talked.

“Omma, why didn’t appa come to have dinner today?” She asked me as she carefully slathered herself with soap. I tucked her hair into the showercap and lowered the stream of water for her. 

“Appa is busy with work tonight, sweety, he will have dinner with us tomorrow”

Yulhee, the biggest fan of her father, pouted her lips in disappointment. “But he’s always busy, omma, are we going to go to war soon? Is that why he’s so busy?”

This made me smile. “No we’re not going to war, Yulhee, why did you think like that?”

“Because that’s what appa do, telling the president not to go to war…” Yulhee gathered a handful of water from the shower stream and distractedly let it pour down to her feet. “Maybe the president doesn’t listen to him so he had to tell him many, many times''

“You can ask appa about that, sweets, he would probably know better” 

Yulhee only hummed in response. We were quiet again, and Yulhee went on playing with the water. She was distracted, so many things were probably filling her young mind. Everytime I think about her, about our marriage, about all the repercussions and problems that we would eventually drag her into, it broke my heart. She was still too young to have a second father when she was already so attached to the one she had. She was too young to see her parents going separate ways. I did understand that we should be trying better, make her the priority, put our disagreements aside, just for her. But what good would that do if we were to be constantly fighting and if that’s the household she would grow up in? 

Woohyun said to me once when I had shared this concern with him. ‘Would you rather she had a father who hurt and despised her mother, or would you rather if she had a new one who made you both happy?’ I believed that Woohyun would still make a brilliant father. He had yet to show me his colors as he hadn’t really been one. But if he would, well then…

“Omma-” 

“Yes, Yulhee-ah?”

“I forgot to tell you something”

I perked up, raising my brows at her. “What is it?”

Yulhee crouched down, cupped her hands under the shower and slowly stood up as the stream slowly filled her tiny hands. “Today when we were coming home, appa and I couldn’t find the right road so we drove round and round and round, then we stopped at a children’s park and ate ice cream because appa was tired of driving too much”

My hand stopped in mid air, my heart skipped a beat. “He-he did?”

“Yup” Yulhee nodded as if it was a completely normal occurrence. “I thought we were on a different road, but we were on the same road, appa and I went by that big statue of We Bare Bears a hundred times! Then appa said he can’t remember the road home, so I told him it was okay because I don’t remember the road either...then we found it on the map in the car after we had ice cream”

Sung Gyu drove home and back in his car to work every single day, he was also the one to take Yulhee to her nursery and when mum wasn’t the one picking her up, he would. There had never been a time he had forgotten his way. Almost immediately I remembered the dent on his car. The mess in his brain was so much as a pickle by now. He either went and got himself checked, or Yulhee and I should leave while we could.

“Yulhee, did anything else happen with appa?” I pushed on carefully, searching in her eyes. “Anything else like that? Like him forgetting the road? Forgetting...you somewhere?”

If he ever put Yulhee in danger with his recklessness, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive him.

Yulhee seemed to think about it for a moment and shook her head. “No...but one day we got lost in the lotte mart and we pushed the cart all over for hours!”

The dread in my heart went up in multitudes. “In the lotte mart?” I asked her. “When was that?”

“Hm…” She tilted her head. “I don’t remember” She replied, giggled and covered with her hands. It sounded like a fond memory for her. Anything that she’d do with Sung Gyu was a fond memory for her, but however long could they still be fond memories? What if it wasn’t only losing their way in the lotte mart but forgetting her in an aisle instead? What if it wasn’t forgetting his way back home but, god forbid, something even worse? What then? 

The first thing I wondered was if Yulhee was even in safe hands. Sung Gyu’s frustration seemed to have no limits, his patience was as thin as a thread. He was becoming dangerous, I realised, although it was a thought that I hated to entertain. It was becoming dangerous for Yulhee to be with him. 

Even as I helped her out of the bath, patted her dry and prepared her for bed, I was making up my mind  to finally leave him. It was for the best, I told myself. For Yulhee, for myself and perhaps even for Sung Gyu as well. It had become clear to me now that the root of his problems was me. I frustrated him. My presence frustrated him. He could no longer bear my existence and no longer wanted me in his life. Perhaps if we left him for his bearings to pull himself together, he might even feel better. He would find a better future for himself, straighten his life out, start things over careful and slow. I would be happier too, with Woohyun, with Yulhee, in his tiny house with a garden and French windows, all new for Yulhee and me.

But when I put Yulhee to bed and when I leaned down to kiss her on her head, she asked me a question that made me question everything from the beginning. 

“Have a good night!” I told her in a small whisper and kissed her long on where her soft curls had parted.

“Omma too” she whispered and smiled. She continued to stare at me, nevertheless, her doe eyes shining, but there was something else that I was seeing in there, as if she had so much more to say.

“Omma, can I ask you something?” She went on, answering my doubts.  I laid partially down in the bed beside her, her soft sheets ruffled beneath me. ”Go on, sweets”I told her and caressed her head.

“Omma, what is divorce?”

My heart stopped the very instance, my hand frozen in her hair.

“W-what...Yulhee?”

“What is Divorce?” Yulhee returned, pronouncing the word very clearly. “Appa said Omma wanted one,  divorce” She slowly turned to me while I stared at her in horror, my heart in my throat. “Omma what is that? Why do you want one?”

My throat went dry, my mind empty. I didn’t know what I could possibly say. Sung Gyu and I hadn’t spoken about it, not even once and especially not when Yulhee was around. But it was obvious now that he had definitely mentioned that to someone at some point and most certainly somewhere that Yulhee was around. My first instinct was to get mad at Sung Gyu. His fault, it was all his fault. How dare he mention something like that in front of her? Secondly, it hit me hard like a slap; he had talked about divorce because he wanted one.

“Yulhee, when did appa say that?” I pushed on, trying to hide the panic in my voice. “Did he say that to you?”

Yulhee slowly shook her head. “He was telling someone on the phone, that omma wanted one” Then she attempted a very bad impression of her father’s voice. She was a gifted child, gifted with the most extraordinary gift, and that was that she could remember certain things in their exact words. “‘I think Eunji wants a divorce’”

As cute as it was to hear  in Yulhee’s little voice, the words left a painful sting in my heart. I knew it was inevitable; the way we were going, it would have come up at some point in our lives. But the fact that Sung Gyu and I had never exclusively spoken about it and that I had to hear it from our four year old child was truly painful to me. Now I didn’t know how to answer her, what I could possibly say. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want one when it was bound to happen at some point and she would inevitably become a part of it. I couldn’t tell her that divorce was something else. I couldn’t tell her that her father was kidding, or scold her that she shouldn’t be listening to adults’ conversations. I was at a loss, gazing into her curious eyes, my heart in angry flames.

“Yulhee-ah….baby” I started in a thick voice, reached down and caressed her cheeks. “It's...it's something that appa and I have not talked about, so I don’t have an answer to you. A divorce...is a good thing sometimes. Sometimes it's bad...it's not always good, it's not always bad…”

“Like spicy tteokbokki” Yulhee provided her own rendition of something that fit the description, and I smiled. “Like spicy tteokbokki” 

“So do you want one, omma?” Yulhee asked me, not backing away just yet, something she’d gotten from her father. I waivered a little, gazing down at her with my lips pursed. Did I want one? Did I not? I was still on the crossroads, the paths left for me to take both barricaded and covered, uncertain. Whatever the decision I took, however, I had to take with her, for her.

“I don’t know, Yulhee” I told her in the end, reached out and caressed her head. “But if I ever decide that I do, I will tell you, okay?”

“Okay” Yulhee replied sleepily but pleasantly as if it was a nice thing she could look forward to. She fell asleep soon after, I stayed with her until she did, a tight knot forming in my heart.

Sung Gyu was already in bed, turned to his side when I stepped out of the shower and slipped in. He wasn’t asleep, for his glasses were still on his eyes; now the wire rims replaced with a thick black plastic which looked quite good on him. I sat on my side of the bed, desperate to lay down the weight that I carried on my back.

It’s been long since we last properly spoke to each other. Our conversations were minimal, limited to single syllables and phrases, limited to topics only revolving about our child. It had never been  this hard to speak to him, to Sung Gyu who was once my best friend, my lover, my everything. But now, getting a word across to him was emotionally taxing to me, like I was screaming over a crevasse at my husband who stood blindly on the other side. 

“Oppa…” I called him, unable to replace the endearing term I’d used for him for so long. A moment passed, and Sung Gyu hummed, just the slightest, not once moving from where he laid. I started from the most crucial part, the one which worried me the most.

“Yulhee told me that you had trouble driving home today” I told him. “She said that you got lost on the road...is that true?”

Sung Gyu remained quiet, nor did I expect an answer from him. I looked down at him, at his back, at his arm, at the way the dim shine of the moon was reflected on his dark hair. 

“It’s not the first time” I reminded him gently. “You keep forgetting things, you keep misplacing things, it's becoming too much now…” I trailed off for a second and quietly flattened the creases on the sheets. “You should probably do something about it, see a psychiatrist, maybe”

“I’m not mad” Sung Gyu muttered for the first time, in a lowly voice. I swallowed hard, not in the mood for yet another fight tonight. It was expected from him. In his mind, nothing was wrong. Or it was, but he was too haughty to accept that.

“No...you’re not” I sighed. “I just meant…” There was nothing else I could possibly say, so I jumped on to the next. “Anyway...I was talking to Yulhee...we were talking about...things”

He was quiet again, unmoving, almost as if he were asleep.

“She mentioned something….” I took a deep breath, unable to put my thoughts into words. “Oppa when I put her to bed she asked me...she asked me what a divorce was...and asked if  I wanted one because apparently you had said so” I looked over at him again, at his long, rigid form. “Why would you mention that when she’s around, oppa, what were you even thinking? She’s too young to know any of that”

“Do you?” Sung Gyu’s voice, deep and quiet, stopped me mid ramble. My heart stopped, and I stared at him in silence.

“What?” I found myself asking him.

A moment, and- “Want a divorce”

I didn’t know what he was asking of me, I didn’t know what I felt. There were no thoughts in my mind; just the pounding of my heart, the echo of Yulhee’s words in my head.

“That’s not-that’s not the point, Sung Gyu oppa, you shouldn’t have brought it up when Yulhee is around and-,”

“Do you want us to get divorced?” He interjected me, turned around and sat up beside me. His eyes were cold, distant, unfamiliar. I found myself rendered speechless. “Because if you do, it doesn’t matter if Yulhee heard it or not, Eunji, she’s going to be in the middle of it whether you like it or not”

“I…” I started breathlessly, trying to put my thoughts together. I didn’t think I had a definitive answer right now, I didn’t think I ever would. “I don’t know” I ventured out in the end. “I don’t know, I really don’t know and we never even talked about it!”

Sung Gyu sighed heavily, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Maybe we should,” He quietly replied. He looked tired, resigned,  his face clouded, hair overgrown, cheeks unshaved. But I wouldn’t say I was in a better shape myself, given that I was the one beaten up the most in this entire ordeal.

“You should have brought it up to me first then!” I returned, gripped the sheets in my fist, hard. “You should have talked to me first before you talked about it to anybody else-!”

“What difference does it make?” He looked up at me, his tired eyes fell into mine.

“I…” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think-,”

“Fine, we’re talking about it now, if that’s what you wanted” Sung Gyu pushed on in that same quiet, lowly voice. “Do you want to get divorced, Jung Eunji?”

My heart pounded, my head felt light and the words hung in the stale air around us like looming ghosts. I stared at him, he stared back, his dark eyes gleaming, his hair, a thick mess, catching the shine of the summer moon. For a split of a second, I saw the Kim Sung Gyu that I had known and loved, the Kim Sung Gyu who had brought me to this very room six years ago, held me in his arms and whispered that he loved me, his warm breath fluttering in my ears. I saw that youthful hope and anticipation, the endless uncertainty and possibilities that I had carried us here to this day, and then I did not know what I wanted anymore.

“I don’t know” I found myself repeating the same words again, the thickness in my throat making them sound tearful, desperate. “I really don’t know…”

His eyes flickered, something flashed within them before he turned away. He was quiet for a moment, staring at his clenched hands. “Maybe you should think about it, Eunji. If that’s the end that we need…” A heavy sigh followed, and with a pang, I realised, his voice had started to break as well. “Twelve years of being together, six years of marriage, to go separate ways with a four year old….” He lifted his eyes at me and I turned away, feeling my heart shatter like glass. “Is that what we really want? Is that what you want, Eunji? Just think about it again...”

We spoke nothing more of it after that, for there was not a word I could say. Sung Gyu turned back to his side and buried himself under the covers again, but I didn’t think he slept a blink. I stared at his lonesome dark figure and repeated his words in my mind a hundred times. Was it really what I wanted? Was that really the end that we needed? I felt lost in the crossroads, every choice I had to make resounded worse than the other. It was a question that had no answer  to, a problem that had no solution. I felt warm tears b in my eyes, heart breaking into smithereens with every thought. As I lied in bed to my side, I was acutely aware of my husband beside me, quiet, ghostly and unmoving. Yet, for that one moment, I wondered if we were in the same boat once again; lost and broken, for the first time crying ourselves to sleep. 

♡♡♡

Summer had started to slowly transition into fall. Green leaves turning a crisp golden brown, staining the lengthy streets, days warmer while nights were cold to the bone. There were the occasional rains, while afternoons were mostly sunny and bright. I was glad to go back to the season of thick coats and sweaters, the sweltering heat now replaced by something between hot and cold. 

Hyejoo and I soon grew tired of the best bibimbap in the town and started having lunch at a new chinese restaurant that opened on the side of the road. It was only a few blocks of a walk from Seobuk commercial towers. They made the best fried rice of the town, Hyejoo claimed, and on our first taste of that, I could fairly agree that she was right. It was excellent. But only, to be able to savour delicacies of such taste, I hadn’t the appetite that I needed.

Throughout our lunch, I sat at our table watching couples passing by hand in hand. There were parents with children, younger couples that plump youthfulness barely gone from their smiles. A sharp sense of nostalgia hit my heart when a distinct pair passed by us, their daughter walking between them; the man was taller, bespectacled, messy haired and the woman with long hair, small built and barely reaching his shoulder. They were like us, my thoughts resounded in my mind like a beckoning. That could have been us, Sung Gyu, Yulhee and I. But instead, we were broken and slowly drifting away.

“Summer is leaving, fall has arrived” Hyejoo was saying beside me in a sort of dramatic inflection as if she was reciting poetry. She had a mouthful of fried rice and closed her eyes. “Mmm, funny how we missed whole of summer, sitting in that ugly sticky bibimbap place when we could have been sitting here”

I was hardly following anything that she said. I only hummed at her, played with my food and said nothing more. Indeed fall was here. It would be cold, rainy and sombre soon, just like my heart as pain and fear spiked through it everyday. I had thought this would have been easier, leaving him, as long as I had enough reason and conviction to. But everyday I was seeing Sung Gyu losing a part of him. 

He couldn’t find the keys of his car that morning, and lost his temper when I offered to drive him to work. I shut up, let him have his ways and drove Yulhee to school myself. While in the car she asked me if her appa had lost his keys again. ‘Again?’ I asked her, she nodded and said he’d lost it one time when he came to pick her up, and luckily she remembered he put it in the pocket of his jacket. ‘Why does appa forget a lot?’ Yulhee asked me after that, and I sincerely had no answer. I needed answers myself. 

I truly believed, if we separated, all his problems would be solved. I was the centre of all his problems, he had said it himself. Not in so many words, but from all the conversations we’d had I could deduce as much. Even then his continuous adamance to settle for divorce was completely beyond me. It was Yulhee perhaps, or it was that selfish longing of twelve years of our shared past. I hadn’t brought up divorce to him again nevertheless. The night that we had that conversation was too painful to relive.

Just this afternoon, however, when I met Woohyun again in his car he brought it up himself. “Have you thought about divorcing him yet?” It was just a question; not an inclination or any sort of convincement. But still it left me pressured and thinking. I simply did not know anymore.

“Eunji-Ssi...Eunji-Ssi...Eunji-Unnie!” Hyejoo’s voice echoed in my head from a distance, and then much closer until it shot up in my ear, right into my brain.

“Oh god, what?” I asked, straightening up. Hyejoo had a concerned look in her eyes. “It's fifteen minutes until the end of lunch hour and you…” She gestured at my untouched food. “You haven’t eaten a bit of it…” She pouted her lips. “Is it not good? Did you like the bibimbap better? Do you want to go there again?”

I heaved a heavy sigh and looked down at the rice. There was an inflated air balloon inside me, that was the only explanation I had. I felt empty but large, I felt heavy yet there were no thoughts inside me. I had no space to fill myself up with any real food, for I was already full to the brim- full of worry, full of fear, full of all the problems I had. I could say none of this to the unsuspecting Hyejoo, I could only smile in return.

“You like the bibimbap better, don’t you?” She asked me with an apologetic smile. I was soon overtaken with guilt. “No, no, nothing like that Hyejoo-Ssi!” I exclaimed, shaking my head regretfully.  “I only liked Bibimbap because it's my husband’s-!” I started, and the words took a second to hit me. Hyejoo raised her brows, and the balloon in myself inflated even more.

Hyejoo was quiet as she finished up her food and even ate half of mine. I only had the side dishes and a whole lot of water just for the sake of filling myself. As we left the store and went back into the street, Hyejoo asked me. “It’s about him, isn’t it? your husband”

It hadn’t always been like this, but now whenever Sung Gyu was mentioned anywhere in my casual conversations, I felt like a part of me had died in pain. 

And it was true, it was about Sung Gyu. It was about his constant forgetfulness and the twelve years of our life that we spent together which seemed to be keeping me bound to our failing marriage. And it was his constant irritation, anger, the exhaustion from his behaviour, it was my lover’s proposal and the possibility of a happy life which was driving me away. I was still in that crossroad, still stuck between the ideals, lost and indecisive, wishing life would take its course on its own.

So I nodded at Hyejoo in response. We continued to walk, crossed the street and approached the main entrance of the Seobuk commercial towers. “But you said you were leaving him” Hyejoo reminded me as if I had forgotten it myself. “Are you having a change of mind now?”

“I’m not very sure, to be honest” I admitted with a heavy sigh. “It’s not...it’s not only him, you know. Its my daughter as well, she...she’s really attached to her father, and I don’t know how to separate her from him”

Hyejoo nodded empathetically and met my eyes. “How old is she now? Your daughter?” 

“She’s four and a half, will be turning five soon” Even the thought of her made my pain even worse. “She’s really smart for her age, knows a lot, very articulate, got it all from her father”

“He’s not a bad father then” Hyejoo pointed out to me, and I had to agree, Sung Gyu was not. He was a brilliant father.

“Is he a good husband though?” She asked me the real question then, cautiously tracing my eyes. I stopped in my tracks, contemplating this. He was a good husband too, I had to admit to myself. When we first got married, a simple transition from dating to becoming a family, I couldn’t have been happier. He was everything I could possibly ask for; considerate, intelligent, successful. My life had been only on a flower path since the day I met him in his last year of college, me in just my second, and I had really thought that he was going to be my forever. It was apparent that it wouldn’t be anymore. He made me unhappy and he was unhappy with me. But did that make him a terrible husband? I had to ask myself again.

“I think it’s just me,” I told her in the end. “I’m a terrible person, that is all”

Hyejoo laughed but when I didn’t laugh along with her, she furrowed her brows, realising that I wasn’t joking about being a terrible person. “Wait, why do you think you’re terrible?” She wanted to know.

I looked at her, yet there wasn’t a rational way I could admit the truth to her without coming off as unchaste. I understood there was more than one reason why the marriage went the direction that it did. It was not only Sung Gyu’s erratic nature, it was not only our constant fights. It wasn’t just that we were unhappy, because there was something nastier that had a bigger part to play.

“Oh god...” Said Hyejoo and pressed her hand on her lips. She moved closer, searching in my eyes. “You’re not...you’re not cheating on him, are you?”

I pressed my lips into a line, not saying another word. My silence at that time was a message as well, and she easily understood.

“And does he know?” She whispered. I shook my head.

She widened her eyes. “And the other man-?”

“He does,” I replied.

“Oh wow, you’re in a mess” She said at an endnote before we headed in to work again. “You’re in a very, very big puddle of a mess, unnie, no wonder you can’t have a meal in peace”

I agreed. There was no chance I could have a meal or sleep in peace again.