"Hey, I heard Min-jung polished off a whole bottle of soju at the tteokbokki after-party," Cheolsu said over a drink, and the sentence lodged like a splinter. Min-jung is—was—my wife. She could barely touch soju. In our newlywed days I’d marveled at how a thimbleful drooped her eyelids. I scrolled up our old Kakao chat. March 14, 2018, 11:47 p.m. her last message: Tonight’s just a quick dinner, then home. Not until 3:12 a.m. did she reply: I’m back. Three hours twenty-five minutes. I never suspected; the restaurant was a fifteen-minute drive.
The Discovery That Devours Time
Last night Cheolsu added, "She shared a taxi with our manager that night. Rumor says they… clicked. There was talk." My heart stopped. Six years. Two thousand one hundred ninety days. Even after the divorce we stayed friends—Mom and Dad to our kids. Last Christmas we sliced cake together; she still placed the strawberry I love on my plate first. Now every memory felt counterfeit. Had anything I believed been real?
A Time Machine Arriving Too Late
I hunted for traces: a lipstick smudge on a forgotten tumbler, our marital bedsheets I couldn’t discard, the love-locker still squatting in the kitchen cabinet. That morning, Min-jung showered twice. It flashed like lightning. During our marriage she always showered after company dinners—“to wash off the alcohol,” she said. So why twice that night? To rinse someone else’s cologne from her hair? I opened the bedside drawer. Her blue silk scrunchie lay inside—the one I gave her for her birthday in 2018. Wearing it, whose breath had she held six years ago?
Other Husbands’ Stories
"I found out three years later," said Sang-hoon, swirling a now-cold Americano. "While I was away on business, my wife met her ex. Afterward she told me, ‘I’m tired, going to bed early.’ All a lie." He remembered she spent thirty minutes in the bathroom at 2 a.m. "I thought she was just exhausted. But no—shower, brush, perfume…"
Her Desire, My Possession
Why does a six-year-old betrayal still make me shudder? Time has passed; she and I are strangers living separate lives. Psychologists call it delayed betrayal trauma—the brain treats yesterday’s wound as today’s threat. Yet that’s only half the truth. The deeper sting is this: I still believed I owned her. The divorce severed the paper bond, yet I laid claim even to her past—her memories, her mistakes, her regrets.
The Truth of the Tteokbokki Joint
Whose soju did she drink that night? Did she pour it herself, or did someone pour for her? While she ate the spicy rice cakes I loved, what did I eat? Probably instant ramen, saving half for her. I picked up her old phone—still in my contacts under kids’ mom. Last week she’d called: Sujin didn’t show up at school—did you drop her off? I’d been glad to hear her voice, clinging to the illusion that we remained family.
Now I know whose pain this is. Not Min-jung’s crime, but my delusion that she was still mine. Six years ago she deceived me; six years later I deceive myself. Whose pain are you feeling right now? The past lover’s, or the possessiveness you never finished burying?