Chapter 11

‘InterContinental.’

Ayeon’s heart began to pound rapidly.

Her hands trembled as she carefully examined the receipt.

At the bottom, she spotted Jooheon’s signature in his own handwriting.

She scanned further down and found the checkout time.

“Morning of the 13th… That’s this morning.”

Just earlier, Jooheon had said he’d spent the night working at an office he had rented outside the city.

He’d claimed he’d been up all night working there.

The InterContinental was a hotel in the middle of Seoul.

There was no way anyone would use a hotel like that as an art storage facility.

The calm that had returned to her heart just moments ago froze over in an instant.

Then her heartbeat quickened with unease.

She tried to think of a good explanation. She tried to understand.

She wanted to believe every word he had said.

Even so, intuition wasn’t something that could be ignored.

Jooheon had spent the night at the InterContinental.

Not at some warehouse outside the city.

He hadn’t been working all night either.

This little piece of paper proved it.

She had told herself over and over that it was nothing.

That even if she felt a sliver of suspicion, it was just that, suspicion.

She had believed that Jooheon wasn’t like those other men she and Heesoo had seen in the café.

She had truly believed that.

She had thought that everything was really okay now. But what was this.

Once again, things and feelings began to unravel one by one.

And now, she was face to face with a truth that left her nowhere to retreat.

Goosebumps spread over her entire body.

Her knees buckled and she sank down onto the sofa, bracing herself with one hand.

Not knowing where the lies began and ended wrapped her entire being in confusion.

“No, there might be some explanation.”

Her hands still shaking, Ayeon picked up her phone.

She needed to confirm this properly.

Just then, a vibration sounded somewhere nearby.

She glanced around and saw Jooheon’s phone lying on the living room table.

She frowned.

Could it be a call from the woman he was seeing.

She found herself quietly approaching the phone.

One step. Two steps.

The phone that had been ringing insistently was now right in front of her.

‘Eunji.’

Eunji was the name of Assistant Manager Joo.

The phone rang for a while before going silent. A message popped up.

[We couldn’t reach you… Please call me back. I’ll be waiting.]

She frowned again.

It wasn’t anything particularly revealing, but why would a subordinate contact him privately at this hour.

Suddenly, she remembered Eunji’s voice from their last phone call.

‘Madam, you should come by the office sometime. It’s been so long since we’ve seen you.’

There had definitely been something in her tone, as if she had something to say.

What had she wanted to talk about back then.

Heesoo’s words flashed through her mind.

‘These days everyone has an office wife or office husband. It’s ridiculous. They get sick of wives who stay home with the kids, so they look for colleagues they can talk to easily and bond with emotionally. If they love romance so much, why did they even get married. There are so many scumbags out there these days.’

Could it be that Jooheon and Assistant Manager Joo had a relationship beyond boss and subordinate.

Ayeon shook her head.

Eunji was already married and had a child.

She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would get involved in something inappropriate.

But she also knew that this was only her assumption, which made her uneasy.

She exhaled a shaky breath and, after a brief moment of hesitation, picked up the phone.

If she wanted to clear up her suspicions about the receipt in Jooheon’s jacket, she had no choice but to find out the facts herself.

After a short ring, someone answered.

“Hello?”

“Assistant Manager Joo? I’m sorry for calling so late.”

Ayeon steadied her racing heart and spoke calmly.

“Oh, it’s fine, ma’am. What’s the matter?”

Eunji’s voice was bright, nothing like someone frantically trying to reach her boss over something urgent.

She sounded exactly as Ayeon remembered her.

“You’ve been busy with work lately, right?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Well.”

“I just wanted to ask you something. Do you still have company meetings at the InterContinental these days?”

“InterContinental Hotel?”

“Yes. I think you used to. I was just curious because we’re looking for a place for overseas researchers to stay for an upcoming conference. I wanted to know what the hotel’s like.”

“Oh, actually, we don’t hold meetings there anymore, ma’am.”

She had hoped for some explanation, but Eunji’s words struck like a thunderbolt. Ayeon pressed a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes.

If they didn’t even hold meetings there anymore, then why was there a hotel receipt in his jacket pocket.

And not just once, but twice.

“But it’s still a hotel the CEO really likes. I’m sure it’s as good as ever. He has great taste.”

“That’s true.”

Ayeon let out a bitter laugh as she barely managed to reply.

“Um, ma’am…”

Eunji’s voice had that same hesitant tone as before, like she had something she wanted to say.

Ayeon’s heart began to pound again.

“Do you have something to tell me…”

“The CEO didn’t come back to the office after an outside appointment the other day. He took a personal day. Said he had personal business. And it just so happened to be the same day I was on leave, so apparently there were a lot of issues at the office that day. Did he go home after that?”

Eunji chose her words carefully.

Now that she thought about it, Eunji had mentioned he’d gone out with another staff member for that appointment.

But the fact that they had both taken leave on the same day nagged at her.

The female employee who had gone with him, and who had also taken leave that day.

Still feeling unsettled about the nature of Jooheon’s relationship with Eunji, Ayeon clenched her eyes shut and bit her lip.

Had Eunji called this late at night because she was curious if Jooheon had gone home after spending their leave together.

And Jooheon hadn’t mentioned anything about taking a personal day to her.

The fact that he had lied, that he was hiding something, was undeniable.

This was as far as she could handle for now.

She needed to end the call quickly.

She didn’t have the strength to hear more.

“Of course. He’s home now. I’m sorry for bothering you so late, Assistant Manager.”

After she barely managed to end the call, she let out a shaky breath.

Her heart pounded with a miserable heaviness.

From the bathroom, she heard Jooheon singing cheerfully in the shower.

She covered one ear.

His singing grated on her nerves like noise.

In truth, she had noticed a subtle change in his expression earlier when she’d mentioned going to his office.

She had dismissed it as nothing.

She realized now that she’d been wrong.

Psychologist Paul Ekman had said that people’s microexpressions were difficult to hide and revealed their true emotions.

There had been a hidden emotion in that moment.

And she had a good idea what it was.

She touched the necklace at her throat as she thought.

‘You have a woman.’

‘A woman who isn’t me.’

‘The one who probably received that bracelet.’

“It was all lies…”

Her heart plummeted to the floor.

She sat on the sofa in silence for a long time, replaying the past two days in her mind.

The InterContinental Hotel receipt.

The Tiffany bracelet.

The call from an unfamiliar number.

The dark, empty office.

His voice telling her he was working late.

Another hotel receipt.

And then, the personal leave.

Something was happening with Jooheon that she didn’t know about.

The evidence and her instincts led her to a simple conclusion, but she still didn’t know who the woman was or how long they had been seeing each other.

All she had were his calm lies that slowly tightened around her like a noose.

What had Yoon Jooheon been thinking as he stayed out all night and lied to her.

“Ha…”

A heavy weight pressed down on her chest, making it hard to breathe.

It felt like being struck in the head with a blunt object in the middle of the street, but not enough to make her lose consciousness.

‘…This isn’t what I got married for.’

Scenes from their wedding day floated up one by one in her mind.

Back then, she had loved studying more than the idea of marriage.

Her mother’s unfulfilled dream had become hers. She had worked toward becoming a psychologist day by day.

Then she had found out she was pregnant after a night she could barely remember.

One unplanned, unexpected event after another had left her shaken, but she had picked herself up and held onto her dream again.

Her chest ached as those memories resurfaced.

When she thought about all the time she had spent with Jooheon, the life she had believed to be peaceful, doubt overwhelmed her once again.

‘This really isn’t what I got married for.’

She had studied psychology to understand other people’s hearts, yet she didn’t know what the person closest to her was thinking or doing.

The irony was almost absurd.

It was unbearably humiliating.

She pressed a hand over her heart and furrowed her brow.

The problem she had been struggling with all this time suddenly surfaced again.

Her gaze cooled as she stared down at her phone.

She scrolled past Jooheon’s messages and found what she was looking for.