The Substitute Wife

CHAPTER 2

More than ten minutes had passed, but the message had still not been delivered, so Rose Jang gave Park Jimin another call, yet the line remained busy.

Rosè Jang had a vague idea of what was going on. She switched to the house telephone on the table and dialed for Park Jimin.

The call went through immediately.

It was just as she had guessed. Her mobile phone number had been blocked ever since he hung up on her first phone call.

Rose Jang's eyes dimmed slightly. She prepared to hang up and ask the housekeeper to contact Park Jimin during the day, but the call was suddenly answered. Park Jimin seemed to guess that it was her calling, as his voice sounded extremely annoyed. "What's your problem? Didn't I tell you to stop bothering me about anything?"

"Grandpa called..." Rose Jang immediately brought up the purpose of the phone call in fear that he might hang up the next second. "Grandpa said that he arrived in Beijing early this morning and asked us to meet him for dinner there in the evening."

Park Jimin remained silent on the other end of the line.

Rose Jang waited for a while, but seeing that Park Jimin had still not uttered a word, she continued, "Should I still wait for you at the same spot as last time?"

The time she was talking about was the day she had moved into his house. Grandpa had asked him to take her home for dinner that night. He hadn't wanted to pick her up in his car and had made her go by herself. She was told to meet him in a small alley next to the area where Grandpa lived before they went in together.

"He'll probably be unwilling to pick me up again this time around," she thought.

Rose Jang suppressed her disappointment and tried hard to make her tone even and indifferent. She asked, "What time should I be wait for you tomorrow?"

Park Jimin still didn't say anything.

"How about in the afternoon..." Rosè Jang just managed to say a few words before she was suddenly cut off by Park Jimin's cold voice. "You use Grandpa as an excuse all the time. Don't you realize how disgusting that is?"

Rosè Jang tightened her grip on the phone's handset. She felt as if she had been grabbed by the neck and the phrase "At six o'clock?" was stuck in her throat. It was just unbearable.

The scary silence lingered on both ends of the phone.

After just two seconds, Park Jimin hang up.

Rose Jang continued to clutch the handset. Her stiffened body relaxed gradually after a long while. She slowly put the handset back down, laid down on the bed, covered herself with the blanket, and closed her eyes. She looked like she had drifted off peacefully, but the corners of her eyes sparkled with the beginnings of tears, and her hand, which was clutching onto the blanket, trembled terribly.

Rose Jang hadn't managed to make an agreement with Park Jimin about the time to go to the Park Mansion during the phone call earlier that morning, and since Park Jimin had ended the call on such a humiliating note, Rose Jang knew better than to call him again.

Though Rose Jang didn't know what time Park Jimin would go to the Park Mansion, she knew that he would leave work at half past five.

So, minutes before the clock hit half past five in the afternoon, Rose Jang arrived at the small alley near the entrance of the Park Mansion.

It wasn't until half past six that a shrill honk sounded on the streets nearby. Rose Jang turned her head to see Park Jimin's car parked by the roadside with its emergency flashers blinking in the distance.