Chapter 164.1

Chapter 164.1

Seoryeong squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. At his words, countless memories unraveled like tangled threads.

Their cozy newlywed life.

That last night, when they had made love with a roughness unlike anything before, leaving marks all over each other.

The day he’d stubbornly insisted, even in his half-conscious state, that he had to call his wife.

But the moment she faced the wounded Lee Woo-shin, a tightness pressed beneath her heart. It felt as though even her share of anger and sorrow had been stolen away by this man.

“Does it feel as unfair to you as it does to me?”

Seoryeong’s face hardened as she spat the words at him.

“I was the one deceived. I was the one driven to madness. And yet, you never said a word. If I hadn’t found out, were you planning to keep lying to me forever?”

“….”

“You approached me, disappeared without a word! Then came back with a different face! You showed me my husband’s corpse, spent the night with me, even remarried me, and still, not a single word!”

Her voice cracked, raw with emotion.

“You never said anything to me!”

“Even now, it’s the same. You don’t feel the slightest bit sorry for me. Why should I accept a man who won’t even apologize with empty words? Do you feel any remorse for deceiving me all this time?”

Wooshin’s expression twisted, agitated, furious, yet laid bare in its raw, unfiltered confusion.

“I had Kim Hyun right in front of me and still couldn’t recognize him.”

She pressed the gun barrel harder against his chest.

“What were you thinking when I was searching for you right under your nose?”

Seoryeong gritted her teeth, forcing back the blur in her vision. She refused to cry in front of Wooshin, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“While I was desperately looking for my husband! You just stood there and watched. Even though you were Kim Hyun, even though you were my husband!”

Her breath came in ragged gasps. Every word she forced out felt like peeling off her own skin, leaving her whole body aching.

“You looked down on me from above! You had the audacity to walk into our newlywed home, into our bedroom! Was there ever a moment when I wasn’t just work to you?”

Their marital home had been nothing more than a set. Every move she made to find Kim Hyun had been under Wooshin’s control all along.

When she finally spoke to the husband she thought was dead, when she kidnapped the deputy director, even then, Wooshin, the man she thought was on her side, had been an NIS agent to the bone.

Kim Hyun had approached her to get close to Rigay’s daughter. Wooshin had stayed to monitor his former target, now a liability. The deeper she dug, the heavier the betrayal weighed on her, draining her strength.

“I was always just a target under your surveillance, wasn’t I?”

Wooshin stood motionless in the dark, like a man who had lost his voice. Rotten blood, wet in his hair, dripped from the bridge of his nose.

“Does that mission of yours ever end?”

“Where’s the end between us, Seoryeong?”

His weary words stole the breath from her lungs. Even though she was the one holding the gun, it felt like she was the one being executed.

Wooshin stared at her, battered but relentless.

“You’re my mission. The heaviest burden I’ve ever carried.”

His grip tightened around the long barrel as he spoke through gritted teeth. His gaze consumed her, relentless from head to toe.

Yet, the deep crease between his brows betrayed desperation.

“Even so…”

Seoryeong let out a hollow laugh, closing her eyes against the tears.

“The same person… twice.”

“….”

“How could you make me fall in love with you twice?”

Her heart had already been barren and starved. Still, she had clawed at the hard earth with her bare hands, trying to make space for him.

She had loved him with every scrap of her being, even the parts she didn’t have.

The truth was, she didn’t even know how to love properly except in the ways he had taught her.

Her first love had been a lie. Her second love had been a lie. Had any person ever been reduced to something so pitiful?

“That’s why… you should lose me too, just once.”

The cold wind whipped at her thin slip, leaving it fluttering helplessly. With all the old resentments spilled out, exhaustion crashed over her.

Even her boiling anger seemed to flicker and fade.

When warmth felt too desperate, it seemed like that alone would be enough, but it wasn’t.

The world couldn’t be conquered with just love. More than anything, a child who grew up without love never learned to distinguish between what was real and what was fake.

And so, she ruined every relationship.

“I’m sick of you. Sick of this place. I’m going somewhere where neither Kim Hyun nor Lee Wooshin exists.”

“I’m done living as Han Seoryeong.”