Are You Out of Your Mind?

Gong Juhee expected Han Taemin to explode in rage. But all she caught in his eyes was a fleeting flicker of bewilderment. He quickly schooled his expression back into calm detachment and answered in an even tone.

“You’re frigid, Gong Juhee.”

Juhee frowned as if she hadn’t heard him correctly and asked again.

“Say that again. I’m… what?”

“Let’s be honest about what we have to be honest about. Even in my arms—the arms you supposedly love so much—you went stiff as a log and trembled like a leaf.”

Juhee was so stunned she couldn’t even laugh. How could he possibly think that? She squeezed her eyes shut to collect herself, but Taemin’s serious voice pierced her ears even more clearly.

“You might be able to endure it. But Yoon Jeha won’t. A man can’t do it if he’s not turned on.”

She couldn’t listen to this anymore. Juhee slowly opened her eyes and stared at him in icy silence. Meeting her gaze without flinching, Taemin continued.

“Besides, Juhee, why would a man like Yoon Jeha—who has women lining up for him until it’s annoying—bother sleeping with you?”

“……”

“And yet, I love you so much that I’m willing to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Taemin spoke as if sighing, as though he regretted loving her at all.

How dare he? With what right did he speak of love? As Juhee’s silence stretched on, Taemin’s voice softened gently.

“Juhee, I never betrayed you.”

“……”

“Marrying Haena is just a means to succeed even more than I have now. My endgame is you.”

Her stomach churned and her head spun. Juhee steadied her shaky breathing and shot back in a low, composed voice.

“No matter what you do, oppa, am I supposed to understand everything, turn a blind eye, plug my ears, and wait like I have no brain at all?”

Taemin rubbed his face roughly. After his large hand swept across it, his eyes looked even colder.

“We’ve climbed so far the hard way. It’s about time we took a shortcut. I’ll use Joo Haena, and you use Yoon Jeha. By the time I get divorced, we’ll both be too successful for anyone to ignore. Then we can be together for the rest of our lives.”

Good grief. Taemin wasn’t crazy. Every single word was painfully sincere.

“You stuck with me so I could use Yoon Jeha? Oppa, you really have lost your mind.”

“Why can’t you?”

Juhee swallowed a bitter sigh and squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.

She understood Taemin’s big picture. But she had no desire to understand him, and even less to go along with it.

That kind of plan he’d never once discussed with her? He could shove it.

“I don’t want to. And you expect me to believe you slept with Joo Haena for the sake of that ridiculous plan?”

Taemin let out a long sigh.

“I’m a man too, Gong Juhee. And I held back a lot.”

“If it was that hard to hold back, you should have said something. But you never once showed it, oppa.”

“Why would I, when you’d just go stiff again the moment I touched you?”

So now even that was her fault?

At Taemin’s shameless, selfish attitude, Juhee finally exploded.

“It was my first time! I was scared and terrified!”

It was a fear no man could ever understand. He hadn’t even tried to understand that fear, yet he expected even greater understanding from her.

“Any woman would have been the same. But you never made any effort for me when I was like that.”

She’d tried to speak as calmly as possible, but her voice still trembled faintly.

“You’re the one who should have made the effort, not me.”

“……So you’re saying it’s my fault you slept with Joo Haena?”

Taemin turned his head with a tired expression.

“I’m not saying I did well, but it’s not like you bear zero responsibility.”

Juhee barely held back the urge to scream at him—what right did he have to talk about responsibility?

Any more conversation would be a waste of time and energy. Knowing that, she finally pulled out the words she had been carrying in her chest.

“I’ll give you one last chance. Come back to me.”

It wasn’t a chance for Executive Director Han Taemin. It was a hand extended to the kind, gentle boy from the past. If he was lost and drifting in a vast sea, she wanted to reach out one final time—just as he had done for her when she was a child, lost and ready to die.

“We’ve both succeeded enough. Even now, dump Joo Haena, quit Seohwa Group, find a new job, and let’s start over. That’s all it would take.”

When Taemin turned back to look at her, his eyes were ice-cold.

No matter how hard she looked, the boy she remembered was no longer there in those frigid pupils. Only a man blinded by success and consumed by ambition remained.

Exactly as she had expected. Juhee squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

“Gong Juhee, what we need right now isn’t conversation. It’s time. A brief separation so we can accept each other as our final destination in life.”

A brief separation. What utter nonsense.

“I’ll divorce Haena in three years. Five at most. It doesn’t have to be Yoon Jeha. If you can sleep with another man, go ahead. Do whatever you want, experience everything, and then let’s meet again.”

“……”

“I’m not that narrow-minded. I can understand.”

He was saying he’d let her enjoy herself to the fullest because it would be a waste to devote her life to a woman with nothing. The way he wrapped it up so elegantly was almost impressive.

“Just remember this. I will come back to you no matter what.”

Suppressing the urge to rip apart that smooth-talking mouth, Juhee slowly opened her eyes.

“How very unlike you, Han Taemin, to make such a pathetic excuse.”

A salty taste spread across her smiling lips.

“You cheated. And not just once—you threw away the woman who spent years looking only at you, supporting you from behind, and betrayed her to marry a rich woman and live the good life.”

I’m crying right now.

These weren’t tears of heartbreak from his betrayal. They were tears of resentment for all the time she had wasted on Han Taemin.

“Juhee, you might not understand, but this marriage involves countless interests and calculations.”

Please understand me. Even if no one else does, you have to. At Taemin’s softly added words, Juhee let out a cynical laugh.

Contrary to what he thought, she understood all too well. The gains and losses, what was won and what was sacrificed. The benefits went to everyone except her, and the only one suffering losses was herself alone.

“You’re going to give up the position of son-in-law to a chaebol family and come back to me? No, oppa, you’ll never give it up.”

“……”

“And I won’t understand you, nor will I wait for you.”

Juhee gripped the handbag beside her tightly and rose slowly to her feet.

“We’re done now.”

You were the one who betrayed me, but I’m the one ending it. In this moment, it was the only pride Juhee could still claim.

She was about to leave when she suddenly whirled back around. It felt too unfair, too unsatisfying to disappear like this.

“Han Taemin, you’re a son of a bitch.”

The first curse she had ever uttered in her life made Taemin’s face stiffen. The moment his lips parted, Juhee shot out of the room at the speed of light.

It felt as if ten years of pent-up frustration had eased by a fraction.

Juhee couldn’t remember how she had left the room. When she came to her senses, she was at the emergency exit, crouched down, sobbing with strange, hiccupping sounds.

A crushing sense of reality washed over her. The way she had acted like a pushover with no spine or liver for Taemin and his mother—it had all been because she didn’t want to be alone. She had worked so desperately, yet here she was, back at square one. Back to the days before she met Taemin and Hye-sun, when she had always been alone.

Burying her face between her knees, Juhee kept muttering endlessly.

“Bastard. The worst bastard in the world.”

“Who’s such a terrible bastard?”

Startled, she lifted her head and saw a man plopping down beside her.

The friend of that bastard. The man who would benefit the most from Joo Haena and Han Taemin’s marriage. The man whose very existence grated on her nerves—Yoon Jeha.

Why did she keep running into this man? That’s right. They were holding a welcome party for Yoon Jeha here. She had crashed it again.

Juhee glared at him resentfully before burying her face between her knees once more. To think she was crouching at an emergency exit, crying out loud. In that moment, she realized that embarrassment was far worse than wounded pride.

Completely unaware of her feelings, Yoon Jeha was relentless.

“Princess, who’s such a terrible bastard?”

“……Could you please leave?”

She was dying of embarrassment, so she wished he would just disappear.

“If I leave, are you going to cry again?”

“I’m not going to cry!”

The moment she snapped her head up in anger, her eyes met his.

Her swollen eyes from crying so much, the endless stream of tears, and even her humiliating feelings—everything was exposed.

“What? You really are crying.”

She let out a long sigh. Seriously.

“……I’m fine.”

So please just go.

“I’m not fine, though.”

With Yoon Jeha resting his chin on his hand and staring at her openly, her tears stopped as if by magic.