Five Months of Watching

"She arrived in Korea this morning."

His wife had finally returned. As if some wandering streak had seized her, she had swept across the entirety of Europe—and Taejun had known her every destination.

Where she stayed and for how many nights, where she moved on to next, what dishes she ate in which cities. Taejun had tracked it all, from the moment she left the country to the moment she set foot back in it.

Who she met on her travels. What conversations they shared. Even the expressions she wore when she laughed.

And who had come to meet her at the airport this morning, and what Yoon Chaeyoon had been wearing—he knew all of that, too.

"She is eating tteokbokki at the moment, sir."

At Secretary Lee's careful report, Taejun let out a laugh before he could stop himself.

Living the good life, eating tteokbokki. Not a single word from her in five months, and this.

"How... shall we bring her in, sir?"

Having watched Taejun's every move for the past five months, Secretary Lee genuinely believed that at this point, his boss abducting his own wife and hauling her home would not be out of character.

This was the man who had surveilled her every movement as though watching it all unfold right beside him.

Yes—surveillance. There was no other word for what he'd done.

And since he was the one who had reported every bit of it, Secretary Lee could answer without a flicker of hesitation, with steely resolve.

At first, he assumed it was anger driving his boss. Then he assumed the man would simply go fetch her back. But a month passed, then two, then three, and somewhere around the third, Secretary Lee began to grow afraid of his superior.

Because he could not fathom, at all, what the man intended.

The only mercy was that his wife's flight of rebellion—of which he knew nothing—had ended after five months. Any longer, Secretary Lee had privately thought, and he might have resigned himself.

In those five months, he had never once seen Taejun so mercurial. He would have preferred the old, impassive man a hundred times over.

"Never mind. Tell them to keep watching her."

"Understood, sir."

Secretary Lee finished his report and left the executive office. In the moment the door closed, the signature scrawled from a hand gone slack was rougher than Taejun's usual penmanship—an uncharacteristic lapse.

Thwack. Taejun slapped the stack of documents shut. Keeping his emotions in check was easier said than done. For the first time in his life, he was discovering that he could be this vulnerable to feeling.

The blind date had been arranged when he was thirty.

He'd had no appetite for it, but he judged it a rite of passage he ought to endure at least once—and the date he reluctantly agreed to was Yoon Chaeyoon.

Twenty-four, she'd said. The girl, freshly out of college, took one look at him and launched into a flurry of chatter. He had never encountered her type before. Those plump, squirrel-like cheeks—looking as though she were hiding an acorn behind her lips—chattered away about the world as if they were an inexhaustible pouch of stories.

How could anyone be that talkative? He could hardly keep his bearings. And yet, somehow, her chatter didn't put him off. At the very least, there was no pretense in it.

That one quality alone was enough for Taejun to decide Yoon Chaeyoon would do. The marriage was settled just like that—because their necessary and sufficient conditions aligned perfectly. Chaeyoon had been desperate to marry him.

The year or so of married life that followed hadn't been bad. At least, not from Taejun's side of it.

In a household where everyone wore masks and played at a masquerade ball every single day, the only person who went unmasked was Yoon Chaeyoon. That alone satisfied Taejun completely. And he'd assumed she felt the same—she had rejoiced over his acceptance of the proposal as though it were a gift from heaven itself.

Besides, as a couple, their physical compatibility had been beyond reproach.

Taejun rose from his seat and walked to the window.

The night before she demanded a divorce—he had just become the department store's president and decided on its expansion, and worries had come pouring at him from every direction. Even so, Taejun had pushed forward with iron resolve.

The exterior, still under construction, was beginning to show its grandeur, while the interior work and the Luxury Hall's fit-out buried him in reports every day as they scrambled to hold schedule and budget in place. On top of that came contracts with brands making their first domestic debut, and his head was saturated with numbers and deadlines. That night, too, he had gone to bed near midnight.

His wife lay facing away from him, as she usually did. He assumed she was asleep. But shortly after he slid under the covers, an arm wound around his waist. He turned slowly and looked at her in the dark.

Her eyes, damp with shadow, glittered strangely, and something in her face hesitated—as if deciding whether to speak.

She was the one who had avoided him for so long, claiming she wasn't feeling well.

Then her warm fingertips brushed softly along his jaw, and as her hand glided gently up his face, he felt the faintest tremble in her touch. For an instant, the very bottom of his heart tingled in a way he couldn't name.

"...Why?"

Taejun's voice was dry. But he felt it himself—the very tip of his words trembling, barely perceptible.

Chaeyoon didn't answer. She simply stroked his cheek, tenderly, again and again. As she drew closer, the faint scent of her shampoo drifted up and needled into his senses.

Taejun drew in a breath. He didn't show it, but his entire body already wanted her.

"I want you."

Before her whisper had even faded, their lips found each other. Reason vanished in an instant, and breathing turned ragged almost at once.

One hand locked firmly around her back; the other slid to the nape of her neck.

Her hair threading between his fingers felt molten.

He pulled her deeper into him, so their lips would not part.

His body remembered first how long it had been since either of them had reached for the other.

When Chaeyoon pressed a hand to his chest to catch her breath, Taejun instinctively yanked her waist tighter. The instant every sliver of distance between their bodies vanished, he had no time to refuse, no moment to recover his reason. He leaned over her.

The strong arm braced against the bed tightened, and he climbed over her body.

When Chaeyoon's breath landed hot beneath his throat, Taejun lowered his head again and looked at her.

The moment he met her wavering gaze, he seized her lips in a kiss too forceful for her to resist—and that night, he lost himself entirely.

He traced and tasted every inch of her body. He left deep marks even on her most hidden places.

When it was over, the marks scattered across her skin were strong enough to sting his own eyes.

And that wife demanded a divorce the very next day. Without a single warning sign.

Wait—was THAT the warning sign?! All those times she'd refused him lately—he'd simply thought she was under the weather.

He had reached out again and again, and each time she had turned her back and refused him.

So he had deliberately stopped approaching. Until she came to him.

So was that her rejecting me all along? Why.

Taejun couldn't imagine a single reason she would reject him. Their marriage had been, he'd believed, quite good.

Where exactly had it gone wrong?

No matter how he turned it over, Taejun could not find the answer. He had thought himself a decent husband.

She had wanted for nothing financially, and he believed he had properly fulfilled the role of husband.

Yet why she had suddenly demanded a divorce—even after five months, Taejun could not say.

He hadn't gone after her in those five months because he wanted to give her time. That was also why he had left the divorce papers unprocessed.

But somehow, the wife who had returned did not seem likely to come back to his side.

That, Taejun could not accept.

His eyes sank into shadow.

He could no longer clearly picture her smiling face. Her chattering voice, too, had grown faint somewhere along the way.

Come to think of it, her smiles and her chatter had been dwindling steadily. At some point, silence had grown more familiar between them. And yet Taejun had never once thought anything of it.

Chaeyoon had always been honest with her own feelings.

He'd believed she was the type to say when something was hard, to show when something hurt her. That was exactly why he'd missed it all.

No. Perhaps he simply hadn't tried to know.

...Is that why she left. A corner of his chest went suddenly cold.

And yet Taejun could not accept this divorce. That was his conclusion.

Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. Whatever had happened, Taejun had no intention of letting Chaeyoon go.

Not now, at least. The conclusion was clear.

But... whether she would accept it was another matter entirely.