The Way I Loved You

Betrayal

"Wait here, I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

"Okay." She nodded, smiling softly, amused by his earnestness. Ever since she'd gotten lost, he'd been extra careful not to let her out of his sight, his hand constantly searching for hers whenever they were in a crowd. It touched her heart that he was going to such lengths to keep her safe.

Little did she know, it was her last moment of bliss before everything was painfully ripped away from her.

She should have known. It had all been too good to be true. Since when has life been kind to her? Why was it that when she was the happiest did fate have to snatch the joy right out of her hands and shove her into a bottomless chasm?

She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe the words she saw when she opened the file that her mother sent her. For a moment, she wondered if it was all a cruel trick. Maybe her mother fabricated divorce papers in an attempt to split them up so that she would lose her resolve to fight Soocheol's attempts to be successful. Maybe it was all just a nightmare, her fears materialising in a horrible dream that she would soon wake up from, cuddled in the arms of the man she loved.

If he simply denied it, she would accept his words as the truth no matter what her mother tried to prove otherwise. It didn't matter anyway since she was less than three months away from death, was it so wrong for her to cling desperately to the last semblance of a happy life before she left this world?

Silently, she begged for it to be a lie. She begged him to tell her that he hadn't written it himself and printed it out in the room where she'd found him asleep after looking up so many articles on miraculous cancer survivors. But in her heart, she knew that he never would. She'd seen this coming a mile away, knowing that there was only this long that he could survive under one roof with her and her family. Even the strongest building in the world could collapse with an earthquake, why would he continue to stand when they'd never stopped pushing him to his limits?

Perhaps she had been torturing herself when she asked anyway, clinging on to the last shred of hope that it wasn't the case.

"Tell me this isn't true." She demanded, holding her phone out for him to see what she was referring to. She swallowed, trying her hardest not to let her voice tremble with grief.

"Say it. Deny it." She tried to keep her voice harsh, but he could hear the tears in her voice.

"Haein..." His heart dropped to his stomach, the guilt overwhelming as he saw the traitorous document that he had written with his own two hands.

"Say it. Tell me it's not true. Tell me it wasn't you." She tried to be angry, she tried to lash out at him to protect herself like she always did, but she simply... couldn't. She didn't have the energy anymore, she didn't have the energy to fight the hopeless situation that was their marriage. It had gone beyond the point of no repair, she knew that nothing in the world could fix them anymore. She'd known this a long time ago, but she was faced with the cold hard truth today, that her husband had planned to divorce her but had kept it from her after finding out that she was dying.

It was all a lie then. She'd recognised the date on the agreement, the day before she received the earth shattering news that she had three months to live. He'd told her that he needed to talk to her about something, but she'd unknowingly saved herself from receiving bad news twice in one day by interrupting him and telling him first. In her desperation to gain some semblance of concern from him, she'd stopped him in his plans, giving him an opportunity to escape scott free like the idiot she was.

She remembered the way he'd said he loved her the moment he received the news, tears welling up in his eyes at the thought of having three months left with her. He'd hugged her and for a moment, she felt fine. She remembered the way her heart fluttered and she thanked the gods for giving her one last excuse to ask for affection from her husband for she knew that he never would have said any of that if it wasn't for her tumour.