I Was the Presidential Family's Scapegoat Daughter-in-Law

"Wake up, Woo Seol-hee."

Her hands wouldn't obey her. They clamped the steering wheel, trembling at the fingertips, cold sweat seeping into her palms.

When she squeezed the wheel tighter, the raw gash on her wrist throbbed into sharp relief.

Seol-hee drew a deep breath and checked the rearview mirror, then the side mirrors. Her eyes darted ceaselessly—scanning for a car tailing her, for a familiar license plate flickering anywhere in her field of vision.

I can't stop.

The moment she stopped, she knew she'd be dragged back to that house again.

Bzzt— bzzt—

The phone she'd tossed onto the passenger seat was ringing itself hoarse.

It was a number she didn't know. And yet, strangely, the last digits had burned themselves into her memory. She'd seen it somewhere before. But there was no time now to trace the memory. Seol-hee gritted her teeth and pressed the accelerator—and the faster she went, the worse the trembling in her hands became.

Where had it all gone wrong?

Suddenly, the days right after her wedding flashed before her eyes.

Before the honeymoon, her mother-in-law had dragged her off to a shaman's house.

Bewildered, she had stood before the old wooden gate. Beyond the closed door, a faded Five-Direction Flag swayed with every gust of wind as if it were alive. The smell of incense spilled out past the gate, thick and acrid. Her stomach turned.

'This is a very important person who looks after our family. You must serve her well.'

At her mother-in-law's words, her husband, Jin Dong-chan, strolled inside without a second glance. But when Seol-hee tried to follow him into the shrine room, her mother-in-law blocked her path.

'You wait out here.'

Seol-hee was left alone in the courtyard. Standing at the edge of the wooden porch, she stared at the crack of the door where incense smoke leaked through, her eyes clouded with suspicion.

'Sweetie, come here a moment, won't you?'

A short while later her mother-in-law emerged, calling her in a honeyed voice.

In her hands was a broken dish. Its cracked pieces had been forced back together, a bowl that had already served its purpose.

'You take care of this now, sweetie.'

Seol-hee hesitated, then nodded. She assumed she was simply being asked to clean up a bowl that had been dropped by accident. Following her mother-in-law's pointing finger, she wrapped it tight in newspaper and a garbage bag and threw it out beyond the shaman's gate.

Without having the faintest idea what ritual it was.

She could never have imagined that one small act would upend the next ten years of her life.

'I have to run. If not now, then never…….'

Seol-hee bit down hard on her trembling lower lip.

Her married life had always been slightly, maddeningly out of joint.

Dong-chan, who had once acted as if he would give her the whole world, changed his temperament at a single word from his mother. Every important decision belonged to her mother-in-law, and Dong-chan simply stood behind it all without offering so much as a peep.

It had been a lonely, wretched marriage.

Worse, whenever something significant came up, her husband and mother-in-law would head for the shaman's house. And after each visit, mishaps large and small began to trail Seol-hee.

She missed her footing on the stairs for no reason at all. She lay awake through entire nights wracked by sudden, inexplicable pain. Hospital visits turned up nothing.

She learned the truth only after she lost the baby.

It was the child she'd conceived after ten years of marriage. Just past the three-month mark of the pregnancy.

When the bleeding started without warning, fear seized her before the pain even registered.

And inside what should have been the safest place in the world, the child was stillborn.

Seol-hee wept until she could barely breathe. In the hospital room, at home, alone in the bathroom. Yet on the faces of her mother-in-law and her husband, relief flickered before grief ever had the chance.

Her suspicions about the pair's strange behavior over the years hardened into something darker.

Who loses a grandchild—a great-grandchild—and doesn't mourn?

The doubt branched and spread, and on the day of the child's 49th-day memorial rite, the ceremony meant to guide the baby's soul to the afterlife, she came face to face with the truth.

'You stay here.'

'Wait in the courtyard.'

As always, the two of them left her behind and slipped into the shrine room.

But as she paced the yard, Seol-hee—for the first time in ten years—defied those words.

Something was clearly happening in there.

Something only she was being kept in the dark about. And above all—

That was my child.

It made no sense that the mother would be excluded from her own baby's funeral rites. Seol-hee made her way toward the house where the shrine stood.

She wanted to speak to her child. To say I love you. To say I'm sorry I couldn't protect you.

Not even the sound of breathing escaped through the door's seam. Just as she raised her hand to knock, the shaman's voice, steeped in certainty, dropped like a stone into her chest.

'A good thing, truly. With the child gone, it's become a stepping stone for the father to rise high.'

Her breath caught in her throat.

The shaman's frigid tone seemed to freeze the very air. A moment of silence passed—then her mother-in-law and Dong-chan exhaled in relief and began to rejoice.

'It's all thanks to the talismans you wrote for us, Teacher.'

'The dish worked beautifully, thanks to you.'

'When you use a human as a misfortune sponge, you ought to get your money's worth.'

The corners of Seol-hee's eyes trembled.

The words threaded themselves together in her mind, one by one.

The broken dish. The child. The stepping stone. The misfortune sponge. The endless run of bad luck that had poured down on her and her alone. And the two of them, laughing.

Just then, Dong-chan turned his head toward the gap in the open door.

Seol-hee flinched and stumbled back a step. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and cold sweat ran down her spine.

After that day, she was forbidden to leave the house. Her husband and mother-in-law watched her around the clock.

For days, Seol-hee clutched her phone and searched.

The search results were merciless. Every single one matched her situation exactly. The longer she read, the colder her fingertips and toes became.

She was not a wife. She was not a daughter-in-law.

They had never once seen her as a human being.

A curse shield—a living thing erected to absorb every calamity meant for Jin Dong-chan.

That was her role. That was her use.

The thought that even her child had been used by these people made her teeth chatter. There wasn't a single second more she could bear to be near them.

The next disaster might cost her her life.

She judged the situation with a cold head, and at last, she made her decision.

Late at night, with everyone asleep, Seol-hee walked out of the house—vowing never to return.

The ground was still wet from a rain that had just stopped, and the air hung heavy with damp, dreary stillness.

Her own car might have a tracker planted in it, so she took her late father's car, parked in a lot nearby.

She'd assumed no one would notice she was gone until morning. Her prediction had, of course, been gloriously wrong.

Bzzt—

The phone rang yet again.

Now even Jin Soo-sung was calling.

Could she trust him?

He was the only one in that entire household who had ever listened to a word she said. The one who had comforted her when she secretly wiped away her tears, the one who had taken her side in front of her mother-in-law and husband.

But there was no time now to explain anything to anyone.

"First things first—get out of Seoul."

She could call him back once she was clear. It wouldn't be too late.

Just as her foot pressed the accelerator—

A massive tanker truck came barreling down the opposite lane, suddenly wrenching its wheel and swerving across the center line.

She was squinting into the blazing glare of its headlights when, with a shriek of torn exhaust, a motorcycle roared past her car and shot out ahead of her.

Only then did Seol-hee wrench the wheel in reflex.

CRUNCH—!

But it was too late.

The motorcycle vanished under the wheels of the tanker.

A thunderous roar shook the very earth—and then a blinding flash—

White light swallowed her vision whole.

The next instant, the world turned upside down.

A piercing whine of tinnitus shrieked through her skull, drowning out everything.

Hanging in the overturned car, strapped into her seatbelt, Seol-hee's dimming eyes caught a puddle pooled on the pitch-black asphalt.

Rising flames mirrored themselves across its surface, unbroken.

Through her sluggishly drifting gaze, she saw a figure in a helmet sprawled on the road.

Just then, the voices of men who had barely scrambled clear of the tanker caught her—a thread that tethered her, for one last moment, to the world of the living just as she tried to flee into death.

"Looks like she's dead."

"F***, I told you not to kill her."

In that instant, the world flickered and went dark.

And so, I died.

Used up as my husband's misfortune sponge.

Violent dizziness crashed over her—and with it, a familiar voice pierced her eardrums.

"Sweetie? Seol-hee?"

She fought her way back from the fog. Seol-hee forced her dry, gritty eyes open.

"Oh my, our little darling. The wedding must have kept you up all night."

Her mother-in-law Yeo In-ok's face popped abruptly in front of her own, and Seol-hee stared at it with a dazed expression.

Seol-hee swallowed hard, startled.

It was too vivid to be a dream. It made her skin prickle.

"Seol-hee, have a look. See how beautiful you are today. There won't be a bride alive lovelier than you."

Staring at In-ok, Seol-hee slowly dragged her gaze to where the woman was pointing—the mirror. Her stunned eyes wavered.

The woman reflected in the glass, dressed in a pure white wedding gown, was her.

Herself, ten years younger—looking exactly as she had in what now felt like a distant lifetime ago.

In-ok placed both hands tenderly on Seol-hee's shoulders and whispered.

"From now on, all you have to do is listen to this mommy. You understand, don't you?"

A chill crawled up her spine.

Back then, having lost her mother young, Seol-hee had let In-ok dismantle every wall of caution with one sentence: 'Think of me as your real mother.'

And twenty-four-year-old Seol-hee had taken those words at face value.

Never realizing it meant obey without question, be the docile daughter-in-law, don't you dare defy fate.

Seol-hee gripped the calla lily bouquet tightly in her hands.

"Wow, our Seol-hee. Why are you so gorgeous?"

Just then the bridal room door swung open, and Jin Dong-chan—bow tie already knotted—poked in his smirking face.

The chill that had settled on In-ok's lips melted instantly into radiance.

"My darling son, praising your wife's looks in front of your mother already?"

"Oh come on, Madam Yeo In-ok, why would you say that? I love both my women."

Her jaw went slack. A hollow breath escaped her.

She remembered.

Right—that repulsive line.

I love both women. Cheap, selfish garbage that deserved to be tossed out with the trash.

Too vivid for a mere montage of dying memories. The recollections of everything she'd lived through burned too clearly to be a dream.

The moment she saw Dong-chan's face, it all crystallized.

Seol-hee was certain now.

It was unbelievable—but she had gone back ten years.

Somehow, someone had sent her into the past instead of letting her become a ghost haunting the Jin family—a message, perhaps: go back and blow this doomed household to pieces.

Seol-hee looked down at the calla lily bouquet in her hands.

'Calla lilies… isn't their meaning "a new beginning"?'.

She swallowed quietly.

Laughter kept spilling out from the corners of her mouth.

"A new beginning……"

Her breath blossomed, and her pulse thundered as though she'd been handed a brand-new heart.

Slowly, she rose from her seat.

She peeled off the cumbersome, suffocating satin gloves.

She plucked the tiara from her head and pulled loose the pins anchoring the veil.

"Ah… Sweetie?"

"Seol-hee?"

She fixed both of them with a gaze gone hard and clear, and in a voice of perfect lucidity, made the first declaration that would rewrite her fate.