I'm Throwing Him Away

Bang. The moment the closet door swung open, Sa-ra huddled into the pitch-black corner, body curled tight, breath held.

It didn't take long for Tae-kyung's voice to ring out. "See? There's nothing in here. I told you, that sound didn't come from this room. It was next door."

Hidden behind the densely packed winter coats, she appeared to be safely out of sight. She had even pulled Tae-kyung's t-shirt down over her face in case the worst came to pass, and still the unease refused to fade.

I can't get caught yet. Not now, not ever......

Yun-seul had to know nothing — not until the day she stamped her seal on the marriage certificate with Tae-kyung. Feeling her heartbeat hammering at her ears, Sa-ra willed that damned door to close, even one second sooner.

But her wish went unanswered. With a sudden whoosh, the coats that had concealed her were shoved aside, and everything stood exposed in the light.

"And what is this?"

"Huh? Th-that's...... well, you see...... A c-coworker. Someone from my team!"

Tae-kyung stammered, tripping over his own tongue. Yun-seul spared him one flabbergasted glance, then turned her gaze on the closet. There, sticking out brazenly from beneath the hem of the t-shirt, Sa-ra's toes twitched with nerves.

A laugh nearly tore out of her before she could stop it, and Yun-seul hastily clapped a hand over her mouth. Not in his wildest dreams imagining that she was laughing behind her palm, Tae-kyung gulped and kept his pathetic excuses coming.

"We had a meeting we needed to prep for at the last minute, so we stopped by the house for a bit...... Then out of nowhere you said you were coming, and I was scared you'd get the wrong idea. S-so I asked her to hide for a moment. That's the truth, Seul-ah. I was only being considerate — I didn't want you hurt over a misunderstanding......"

Yun-seul gave him no answer. She simply looked at him with winter-cold eyes, and that alone made Tae-kyung's voice creep lower and lower until it died out altogether.

As the silence stretched, his mind spun in overdrive. He couldn't let the golden rope that had tumbled into his lap slip away now — so he decided groveling was his best play.

"I should have just introduced you two from the start. I wasn't thinking straight. I'm sorry, Seul-ah."

Pfft. A scornful breath slipped out between Yun-seul's lips. "Then go ahead and introduce us right now."

"......Huh?"

"Introduce us. I said."

Her words lashed into Tae-kyung, who was shamelessly groping for a crack in his lie to squeeze through. His eyes bolted every which way with nowhere to settle, and cold sweat came off his temples like rain.

He was badly rattled. He had never dreamed that Yun-seul — who used to light up at whatever he said — would back him into a corner like this. But he had to keep hold of himself, so in a shaking voice he addressed the woman buried under his t-shirt. "Um...... you can come out now. My girlfriend seems to have gotten the wrong idea."

It was theater, of course. Sa-ra would never crawl out on her own just because he told her to. And beneath the performance lurked a hollow hope — that maybe, just maybe, the naive Yun-seul would buy a little of it.

But Yun-seul said nothing at all. She only watched him through narrowed, razor-sharp eyes, and the silence wound tighter and tighter around Tae-kyung's throat. So, still monitoring her face, he threw out yet another reckless gambit.

"She's, uh, terribly shy, that employee of mine. Bad with strangers, always has been."

At that, Yun-seul — who had been silent this entire time — finally lost it and burst into a peal of hollow laughter. The sight of this stranger wearing his girlfriend's face made Tae-kyung's heart shrivel on the spot.

"So shy that she hides in other people's closets? Barefoot, no less?"

At her remark, the toes peeking out beneath the t-shirt hem curled inward in a flash. The color drained from Tae-kyung's face. It wasn't summer — spring had only just begun. What possible excuse could he offer for a woman wearing neither socks nor stockings, with his t-shirt pulled over her head? This was not a hole he could argue his way out of.

The lone blessing buried in the disaster was that Yun-seul still didn't know the woman's identity was Sa-ra. Tae-kyung made up his mind: he would confess to this much, ride the moment out, and somehow patch the relationship back together afterward.

"I'm sorry, Seul-ah. I think I lost my mind for a minute there. I wasn't in my right head. But nothing like what you're imagining has ever happened between us. Not once. I swear it."

Yun-seul gazed down with frost in her eyes at Tae-kyung kneeling before her, begging with his head at her feet. "I'm sorry for making you misunderstand......"

A desperate apology, spilling from the mouth of Woo Tae-kyung. In her past life — the life where he had committed sins against her that could never be washed clean — she had not heard those words from him once. To think the man who had only smirked even while doing his vile, cruel deeds could bow his head this easily...... The spectacle of him groveling as if he'd lick the soles of her feet, all so he wouldn't lose his meal ticket, was truly something to behold.

In that case — why don't I pay you back right now, for everything you ever took from me?

Yun-seul gathered every ounce of strength into her palm and swung it across Tae-kyung's cheek. Crack. The slap rang out with a stinging report, and his head snapped sideways.

"Y-Yun-seul."

Tae-kyung sat rooted where he'd fallen, staring at her as though lightning had struck him, his face a canvas of pure disbelief. Looking down at him as if he were something small and worthless, Yun-seul roared with laughter inside. She found she rather liked the red bloom of her handprint standing out on that fine, smooth skin.

Then she turned her back on him and approached Sa-ra, still jammed into the closet's darkest corner. "It must have been awfully stuffy in there. The smell of sweat carries all the way out here."

At the contempt steeping her mockery, the t-shirt-shrouded figure trembled from head to toe with barely contained fury.

"Tell me — do you actually like a man who makes you crouch in a cramped little closet like this, wearing nothing but a t-shirt over your head?"

Sa-ra looked ready to spit curses then and there, yet under such naked ridicule she could do absolutely nothing. For a woman with her usual hair-trigger temper, it was a feat of staggering restraint. Yun-seul sniffed, then deliberately flung the coats wide open one more time, drinking in the sight of Sa-ra shrinking deeper into the corner like a cockroach. Then, slowly bending at the waist, she dropped her voice to a whisper pitched for the woman alone.

"I don't need that trash anymore — so he's all yours."

Gripping hard onto Sa-ra's rage-shuddering shoulders, Yun-seul dealt the finishing blow.

The words she had been dying to say for a very, very long time — the moment they left her mouth, her chest felt deliciously light. Dragging her lips into a long, wicked smile, Yun-seul straightened up slowly. There was no reason to linger in this place a second longer, and she turned away without a flicker of regret.

"Don't you ever contact me again. The reason we're breaking up — I don't need to spell it out, do I?"

"Y-Yun-seul...... wait. Just hold on!"

His soul half out of his body, Tae-kyung scrambled frantically after her. Angry as she was, he had never imagined Yun-seul would sever him this cleanly, and the shock scared him out of his wits. "Seul-ah, just listen to me......"

He rushed in and grabbed at her, but she flinched away and shook off his hand, her whole bearing repulsed, as though his fingers were smeared with filth. And at the expression of naked contempt on Yun-seul's face — one he had never once seen in all their time together — Tae-kyung's body froze solid as ice.

Bang. The front door slammed, and only then did he come back to himself, tumbling out after her in a graceless scramble. Bang. The door boomed shut a second time, louder still.

In the same breath, Sa-ra's strangled sobs burst from inside the closet. "Hahk...... huk......"

Jerking the t-shirt off over her head in a fit of nerves, she flung it out of the closet. Sweat was streaming from her forehead as though someone had upended a bucket over her. Her jaw shivered without pause, the humiliation brimming all the way to the roots of her hair.

Barely minutes ago, she had believed stupid Min Yun-seul lay sprawled in the palm of her hand for her to toy with and trample at will. And now here she was, crouched in the dark looking exactly like a mistress hiding from a legal wife's eyes. I'm throwing him away — so you pick him up.

Yun-seul's words kept circling her ears. Sa-ra raked her fingers wildly through her hair, half-mad with fury at the fact that she had been ground underfoot in total silence — unable to fire back even one word at a nobody like that.

"That fucking bitch. I swear I won't let this slide."

Roughly scrubbing the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, she ground her teeth — vowing to repay this humiliation in full — and stretched her legs out of the closet. But her body had been crammed into that narrow space for over an hour; the instant her feet met the floor, the strength drained from them and she pitched sideways.

"Ahhk!"

Sa-ra went down hard on her tailbone and let out a scream of pure spite. "I can't stand this! Argh! Ahhk!"

Nothing about any of it suited her. Not the sweat still raining down her face, not her backside throbbing as though someone had clubbed it. But what she couldn't stomach most of all was the fact that Tae-kyung had left her sprawled right there and run off after Yun-seul, scrambling to cling to the seat of her pants. Being left alone in this room — that was what made Sa-ra feel, in the end, utterly wretched.