Chapter 3

The woman frowned as though she had a terrible headache.

Without even realizing that she had collided with something, she merely blinked her half-closed eyes and mumbled.

“Room 2…….”

Tae-kyung quietly looked down at Seo-ah.

Normally, he would have either quickly left the scene or irritably pushed the woman away.

Had he suddenly developed hearing loss?

The woman’s faintly trembling voice sounded distant and hazy, as though it were coming from underwater.

He had never wanted this, yet everything felt strangely shocking, as if he had been struck by something without even realizing it.

And what was truly bizarre was that every little detail of the woman’s expression was being etched into his mind by the second.

“Excuse me, are you all right?”

Unable to watch Tae-kyung simply stand there staring, Hee-jun spoke to Seo-ah.

“……Yes?”

At the sound of Hee-jun’s voice, the woman finally seemed to regain her senses and lifted her head.

“……Ah.”

Her body suddenly curled in on itself as another wave of pain seemed to strike her head.

Startled, Tae-kyung carefully held both of Seo-ah’s arms to keep her from collapsing.

“Um…… ahem.”

He wanted to ask if she was all right, but Tae-kyung found it strangely difficult to get his voice out.

He merely swallowed a sigh for no reason, and perhaps hearing it, Seo-ah moved her lips with difficulty and spoke in a small voice.

“I-I’m sorry, but…….”

Every time Seo-ah’s large eyes, filled with tears, slowly blinked, his eyebrows twitched.

She’s…… talking?

It was a truly strange thought, even to himself, but that was what her voice sounded like to Tae-kyung.

For some inexplicable reason, it felt unfamiliar, almost as though it were not human speech at all.

How does that even make sense? This is insane…….

“Where is Room 2?”

“…….”

At the sound of Seo-ah’s voice as she spoke again, Tae-kyung swallowed the breath that had been about to escape him.

He could clearly see his own face reflected in the tiny tear drops clinging to her eyes.

Even his serious, bewildered expression was laid bare.

Huh…… Am I possessed or something?

The situation was utterly absurd.

Something abnormal was happening right in front of him, yet his mind had gone completely blank.

Still, he had to do something.

She was desperately searching for Room 2.

“That’s…… Room 2…….”

Just as Tae-kyung finally managed to move his lips to answer, a woman’s voice came from behind him.

It was coming from the very Room 2 they had just passed.

“Grandma, you’ll collapse if you keep this up. Mom, stop it, too.”

Seo-ah’s head turned toward the voice.

Had she recognized someone she knew?

Her face was filled with a mixture of emotions, including relief.

“U-Unni?”

At the entrance to Room 2, Seo-ah recognized the face of her husband’s sister, Lee Dong-joo.

As though summoning the last of her strength, she shook off Tae-kyung’s hands and ran toward her.

“Dong-joo unni!”

“S-Seo-ah?!”

The moment Dong-joo spotted Seo-ah, she rushed out as though she had seen a ghost.

Then she embraced Seo-ah and immediately turned around.

But it was already too late to hide Seo-ah.

Like a swarm of zombies that had spotted their prey, a group of elderly women descended upon her in an instant.

“You wretched girl! How dare you come here?! Who called you?! Who the hell called that damned girl?!”

The first person to start hitting Seo-ah was her mother-in-law.

Following the fists she swung, the women who had rushed out after her joined in with shrill screams and kicks.

The woman who killed her husband.

The woman who ruined the family.

The woman cursed with an unlucky fate.

Every insult hurled at Seo-ah was vulgar beyond belief.

Lee Dong-ha was the only son in three generations of his family.

Even though times had changed, he was the precious only son of a family with few children, and now that he was dead, all their resentment naturally fell upon the unfortunate daughter-in-law.

Had it been a mistake to marry their precious son, whom they never wanted to lose, to the daughter of the president of a rival company with whom their family had a poor relationship?

Or was it because of the aura of Jin Seo-ah, who, just as the shaman had claimed, supposedly carried every kind of misfortune wherever she went?

Dong-ha’s mother had been unable to save her son despite following the shaman’s rituals and remedies for years, and her despair finally exploded.

“You should have died! Not my son—you should have died!”

Tae-kyung, who had been silently watching the scene, tilted his head to one side.

Seeing something that looked like it had come straight out of an old-fashioned drama made him uncomfortable.

They were actually punching a woman who looked like she was about to collapse at any moment.

Tsk.

He clicked his tongue softly, and one eyebrow rose crookedly.

“Why? What are you planning to do?”

Hee-jun suddenly grabbed Tae-kyung by the sleeve.

Tae-kyung’s long, narrow eyes lowered toward him.

His eyes had lost all their light, and their depth sent a chill down Hee-jun’s neck.

This guy’s angry!

Hee-jun screamed inwardly.

No matter how carefree Tae-kyung might seem, he was strangely softer when it came to people who were weaker than him.

Apparently, the situation before him had triggered that side of his personality.

“Please don’t do anything. I’m begging you.”

“Do what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking. You can’t. Not to that woman.”

What is he talking about?

Tae-kyung muttered quietly to himself and turned his head.

His eyes, now shining with an unusual intensity, settled on Seo-ah.

He looked as though, at any moment, he might charge straight into the middle of the women, throw someone else’s daughter-in-law over his shoulder, and run away with her.

Oh, my God!

Hee-jun grabbed at his own hair.

No matter how unfair the situation was, she was still a married woman, and this was her husband’s funeral.

Before the things he was imagining actually happened, Hee-jun felt that he had to get Jin Seo-ah as far away from Tae-kyung’s line of sight as possible.

Having made up his mind, Hee-jun quickly pushed Tae-kyung from behind.

“Let’s go. Hurry!”

“Don’t push me.”

Tae-kyung, who had remained completely motionless until then, spoke irritably.

“I’m not going to do anything. What do you take me for?”

He said that, but the vicious insults still being hurled at Seo-ah continued to grate on Tae-kyung’s ears.

Annoying.

A little while later, Seo-ah finally managed to escape the funeral room and sat down on the stairs outside the funeral hall.

Dong-joo had practically dragged her outside to get her away from the chaos.

“You should have tried to avoid them. Why did you just let them hit you? What happened to your face?”

Dong-joo touched Seo-ah’s brow bone, where deep fingernail marks had been left.

At the sharp pain, Seo-ah winced with one eye.

“Those old ladies and their tempers.”

Dong-joo seemed troubled by the wounds that had obviously been inflicted by her own mother.

Seo-ah’s mother-in-law had been the kind of woman who had cried fat tears at the wedding because she felt her son was too precious to give away.

Throughout Seo-ah’s married life, she had constantly badgered her, asking why she had not become pregnant.

She probably had no idea that her only son, the sole male heir of three generations, had never even touched a single strand of his wife’s hair.

Perhaps the bitter winter wind had dried up all her tears.

Seo-ah struggled to close and open her stinging eyelids before speaking.

“Unni.”

“Hmm?”

“Why didn’t you contact me? I’m Oppa’s wife, too. Did you think it was my fault, like Mother did? That I’m unlucky, and that’s why…….”

Dong-ha had died just last night.

After leaving the house despite leaving behind unresolved questions about Seo-ah’s father’s accident, he had been involved in an accident on his way to the airport and died instantly at the scene.

Yet no one in his family had contacted Seo-ah.

The only reason she had even come to the funeral hall was because her father-in-law’s driver, unable to stand by and watch, had contacted her separately.

“That’s not it.”

Dong-joo waved her hands and shook her head.

She had argued with her mother when she was told not to contact Seo-ah, but the truth was that Dong-joo had been more worried about Seo-ah’s safety.

She had known that something like today’s chaos was bound to happen.

But now she regretted realizing too late that not contacting Seo-ah had not been the best choice.

“I’m sorry, Seo-ah. Looking back, I didn’t think things through.”

Even so, among the Lee family, Dong-joo was the person Seo-ah had relied on the most.

Knowing that she had betrayed that trust made Dong-joo feel uneasy.

It was then that a man’s voice called out to her.

“Dong-joo noona!”

“What, what is it?! Kim Gi-young?!”

Startled by the unexpected yet familiar voice, Dong-joo turned around.

A man stood there, looking disheveled and on the verge of tears.

Dong-joo blocked Gi-young with her pale face.

“Weren’t you going to Canada?”

Kim Gi-young.

A name Seo-ah had heard over and over again through Dong-ha.

He was the very person whose name had already gotten on her nerves on the day of Dong-ha’s accident.

“I was going to. I was going to, but Dong-ha…….”

“Kim Gi-young, stop! Nobody’s in their right mind right now, so just go.”

Seo-ah’s gaze turned toward Dong-joo’s anxious face.

She had hurriedly cut Gi-young off before he could finish speaking.

Even so, Gi-young ignored her and clung to Dong-joo.

“I’ll stay quiet. I’ll stay somewhere out of sight so my parents won’t see me.”

Seo-ah had heard his name countless times, but the only time she had actually seen his face was on her wedding day.

Nevertheless, she remembered Gi-young’s face clearly.

A man with delicate features, even prettier than most men, who had stared strangely at her in the bridal waiting room.

—Dong-ha.

That thin, delicate voice she had heard through Lee Dong-ha’s phone late at night.

The man who had softly called her husband’s name was none other than Kim Gi-young, Dong-ha’s best friend.