ALL BARK NO BITE | SADISTIC BEAUTY SPINOFF

Chapter 92

27 YEARS AGO

~ "Mideum" Manor, Cha Estate, Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul

"I have work" Wonsik simply echoed before fading into the late night. It had been 3 months since the dinner party and little had been exchanged between husband and wife. Little between her and Ryeo as well. Narae had sought to fight for her marriage. To evade the guilt of what she had felt for the butler... she no longer wished to be maddened.

So she had herself poked and prodded by doctors, drank ginseng, avoided wine, and walked across the gardens each evening hoping. Hoping. Hoping. For the sake of her marriage. To give Wonsik what he wanted most from her.

But she couldn't. Each week, each month, each time she'd shake her head with a protective hand on her belly and a dark grimace would shadow his face.

She had cried in bed. Only once. So hard that she dared to reach for Wonsik's shoulder only to be swiftly shrugged off. He didn't like being woken because he needed a fresh head for the next morning and he wanted no part in her sorrow. So she lay awake in her agony and rage. Not because she couldn't conceive.

But because she wasn't loved.

None of her beguiling smiles or silk nighties would work. In the way, he refused her advances and his roving eye. How her husband smelt a distinct way when he'd return home from work trips, how his friends knew their marriage was hollow, how they avoided her eyes. Like everyone knew she was nothing

*

Narae dug her toes into the edge of the bed, careful not to get caught in the sheets. The robe to her yellow nightie lay on the floor, its wide satin cord pooled in her hands as she threw it over the middle of the beam connecting the bedpost, trying to fashion it into a noose.

"That's not how you clean the bedpost," Ryeo said softly, startling her. Narae screwed her eyes shut, wondering how to explain her position. Her loose blonde hair fell down her shoulders, goosebumps raised on her skin from the window's draft, dressed in just her thin nightie.

"It's not?" she asked, going along with his joke and Ryeo pushed the door wider, letting more sunlight in. Outside of his usual monochrome shirt and pants, he was missing his suit jacket and bow tie.

"You'd know that if you knew the first thing about cleaning," he said

"You never taught me" she smiled

"You never asked"

"I didn't think I'd need to"

"You don't" he leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed with a dishrag tucked in his elbow.

"I'm sorry, Ryeo" Narae fiddled with the silk cord "For firing the handmaiden... I was being mad... jealous even... I don't know what I was thinking... about it. I'm a mess" Narae confessed

"It's alright... she got hired at the restaurant where her fiancé works" Ryeo shrugged.

Fiancé... the word rang out in her mind and Narae covered her face, laughing. Of course... she had been paranoid for nothing.

"Good for her... she's better off than me" she clambered down from the beam, sitting on the edge of the bed "Doesn't seem like I'm good for much"

"You're talking to the guy who cleans bedposts for a living" he reckoned and Narae pinned a hand under her chin, shaking her head.

"Why don't you leave this place, Ryeo? Is this how you want to live the rest of your life?"

"Is this how you want to live the rest of your life...?" he echoed and Narae gulped, lowering her gaze.