Chapter: 1
“I did it because I loved you so much! You know that!”
As the sun was setting, the man’s loud excuses grated on her ears. His voice echoed along the quiet riverside.
Kneeling on the ground, the man clasped his hands together in front of his face, rubbing them up and down over and over again.
Haeru let out a long sigh as she stared at the crimson sunset.
“Hah…”
“It’s true! I did it because I loved you!”
The man, as if desperate, kept blurting out excuses before she could even respond.
Haeru placed one hand on her hip and slowly lowered her head, which had been tilted toward the sky.
Forcing down her anger, she scolded him in an even colder voice.
“If you loved me, you should’ve told me.”
“I was afraid you’d leave if I did! I mean, I—”
It seemed he still had more to say, but she cut him off, no longer willing to listen to his absurd justifications.
“You’re saying you hid the fact that you were married for three years because you loved me? Do you really think that makes sense? Mr. Kim Taejun, do you normally become this selfish and despicable when you’re in love?”
At her sharp, methodical questioning, Taejun looked flustered, pressing his lips together and darting his eyes left and right in search of another excuse.
For Haeru, an affair was something that should never exist in one’s life—something morally unforgivable.
Even if she had been deceived, the fact remained that she had unknowingly dated a married man for three years and had even begun living with him.
It hadn’t even been a week since they started living together, yet she had already imagined marriage. They had visited each other’s families.
Realizing it had all been a lie made a burning rage surge inside her, her clenched fists trembling.
“Because I loved you!”
Taejun’s shameless insistence left her speechless.
“Ha. A man with a son claiming to love a woman who isn’t his wife—are you joking right now?”
She was so dumbfounded that words failed her.
Not long ago, she had collapsed on the spot after seeing a white envelope stuffed into her mailbox.
In the photograph inside, Taejun was holding a young boy who resembled him. Beside him stood a beautiful woman with smooth, waist-length hair, pressed close to him, smiling affectionately.
The photo alone was enough to raise suspicion, but unwilling to believe it, Haeru had someone investigate.
The results were undeniable. Taejun was married. And that very morning, she had seen him leave a house, followed by the beautiful woman and a five-year-old child seeing him off—clear proof of his family.
Hiding inside her car, she had loosened her grip on the steering wheel.
All her strength drained away.
Tears welled up, filled with resentment.
How could he see her every day for three years and never tell her the truth?
Kim Taejun, the man who had deceived her, was a colleague at Seongju, the same company she worked for.
Company policy prohibited discussion of personal matters, making it easy enough to hide the fact that he was married.
Though they were in different departments, she had met Taejun—then the PR team leader—at a workshop.
As the CEO’s secretary, Yoon Haeru had caught the attention of Taejun, who had approached her first.
They were compatible in every way and dated for three years without any major fights.
Still, with her principled and upright nature, the moment Taejun admitted with his own mouth that he was married, she immediately said they should break up.
But Taejun apparently felt differently. Clutching at her pant leg, he clung to her like a drama protagonist.
“You know how much I love you! How can we break up?”
She kicked upward sharply, shaking off his grip.
“That’s enough. This ends here.”
As she turned to leave, her heart completely cold, Taejun jumped up and urgently grabbed her wrist.
Perhaps because it had rained the day before, his hand was caked with dirt, which smeared roughly against her skin.
“No. I can’t end things with you.”
Stunned, she sharply turned her head away and took a long breath before facing him again.
“You said you have a son. You need to take responsibility for him.”
“I’ll get divorced. I’ll even give up my son if you don’t want him!”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Hearing him say he would abandon his own child reminded her of her mother, Kim Jangmi, who had had an affair with an employee at her father Yoon Haeseok’s company, then ran away with all the company money—abandoning Haeru.
The more Taejun spoke, the more distorted her expression became.
“Do you think that makes any sense? If you brought a child into this world, you’re responsible for them.”
“But you come first!”
“Hah… I’m too dumbfounded to even speak. Let’s just go back to being strangers. That’s the best option. Mr. Kim Taejun, never contact me again.”
She forcefully shook off his hand and turned away without hesitation.
Though her feet felt heavy, she clenched her fists and walked forward without looking back.
Part of the reason she could cut him off so decisively was her personality—but an even greater reason lay in her childhood.
When she was in the early years of elementary school, her mother had run off with her father’s coworker after stealing all the company funds.
After her mother left, her father’s business collapsed.
Their once-happy home was reduced to ruins, and her father struggled alone to raise Haeru.
Growing up watching that, she would grind her teeth at the mere mention of the word “affair.” Perhaps that was why she could turn away so coldly.
Haeru, often called cold-hearted for rarely shedding tears, finally broke down. Once she had put distance between herself and Taejun, she covered her tear-filled eyes with both hands and collapsed behind a large pine tree.
She sat there for a long time, unable to stand.
* * *
The next morning—Friday—she went to work as if nothing had happened.
On a warm spring morning like this, she would normally hum while driving, but her heart felt like the start of the rainy season—damp and heavy with drizzle she couldn’t shake.
Her emotions were written plainly on her face: the corners of her mouth drooped, and her eyes were lifeless, like dead fish.
She arrived at the company’s underground parking garage with slumped shoulders, completely drained.
As she got out of the car and closed the door, she caught sight of her reflection in the window—those sagging shoulders—and shook her head.
“Nothing happened.”
Repeating the words several times to steel herself, she straightened her back and shoulders, forced a slight smile, and walked on.
Passing through the automatic doors on basement level two, Haeru checked her phone as she approached the elevator.
It was a habit she’d developed shortly after getting hired—reviewing her schedule one last time.
There didn’t seem to be anything particularly difficult on her agenda, yet she sighed the entire time she looked at it.
The sigh wasn’t because of her schedule, but because of the luggage in her car.
Thinking about it made her chest feel tight.
Since the apartment they’d lived in was under Taejun’s name, she had loaded her belongings into her SUV that morning when she left—but she had nowhere to go.
She’d used the deposit money she got from moving out to help pay for an expansion of her father’s restaurant in the countryside, leaving her with little to spare. And if her father—already suffering from high blood pressure—found out that Taejun was married, he might collapse.
With nowhere to take her luggage, her head throbbed. The schedules before her eyes blurred into shapeless black shadows.
“Hah…”
As she sighed again, she heard footsteps.
Employees gathered around the elevator, but the coworkers who usually greeted her first now glanced at her strangely, whispering in small groups.
“How can she be so shameless?”
Their noisy gossip reached her ears.
She turned her head toward the two women who were speaking loudly enough for her to hear.
Startled by her cold expression, they awkwardly looked away, lips pressed tight.
Turning her entire body toward them, she asked,
“Are you talking about me?”
She pointed at her own chin with a finger.
If she had questions, she asked them directly—that was her nature. Because of that, she had little behind-the-scenes gossip at work.
That straightforwardness was also part of why she had risen to the position of chief secretary at such a young age after joining the company straight out of high school.
Faced with her confident demeanor, some covered their mouths and cleared their throats in discomfort, while others averted their eyes.
The woman she had pointed at hesitated, lips parting and closing, before turning her head slightly and biting her lower lip.
Stepping closer, Haeru asked again,
“What is it? Why would I be a topic of your conversation?”
Between graduating high school and turning thirty-three, she had been through enough to deal with rumors without so much as a change in expression.
She had always been confident.
At that moment, Kim Jaryeon—the division head’s secretary, who never missed a chance to pick at her—appeared from nowhere. Stepping into the elevator just as the doors opened, she said,
“Seduce a married man, and you still have the nerve to act proud.”
Kim Jaryeon smiled at her.
The others, as if Haeru were carrying a contagious disease, quickly squeezed into the elevator to avoid standing near her.
