Chapter 99.2

Chapter 99.2

“By the way, someone seems to be moving out,” Seoryeong informed Wooshin one day.

“Oh? Why?”

“It’s been a bit chaotic. I can hear occasional thuds, maybe from packing things up.”

“Has it been that noisy?”

“I was just curious. Our villa tends to have friendly neighbors.”

“It’ll be quiet soon.” Lee Wooshin murmured, almost to himself.

“What?”

“I’m leaving now.”

But he wanted to ask one last thing.

If I disappear without a trace… will you…

Will you simply go on living, as if waking from a nap, forgetting Kim Hyun?

It was the last day Seoryeong ever heard from her husband.

***

“Please… please save me, Instructor.”

He had thought she would be crying, but actually seeing her face made him feel nauseous. Wooshin froze, enduring the searing pain in his heart.

He had seen her endure stubbornly many times, but never had he seen her break down like this.

Embracing her decayed memories instead of discarding them, her emotions seemed so deep that he couldn’t even begin to fathom them.

He had underestimated his wife’s sincerity. He had closed his eyes to his prejudices, and now, the result of his arrogance stood before him.

That single plea to be saved shattered the wall he had built for so long.

“Please… Save me. I… I can’t breathe.”

“…!”

In that moment of greatest shame, a name carved itself into his heart like a nail driven deep. His shameless feelings felt as if they would spill out, so he bit down on his tongue to hold them back.

If I say everything… If I teel you the truth, Seoryeong…

He wanted to cut off Kim Hyun, even if it meant killing him. It infuriated him to see her still searching for that unresolved relationship. This time, he wanted to put a definitive end to it and restore Han Seoryeong’s life to the way it was.

But at the very moment he witnessed how completely she crumbled after losing her husband, he painfully recognized the full extent of his recklessness.

Yet, there was no way he could tell her the truth.

Seoryeong, I know your birth father. I know what he did. I remember the moments when everything was engulfed in flames.

By the time I stood up, clearing away the fragments of bodies scattered like tiles, my family had already burned to ashes. So I hope you’ll never touch or open this charred door. I hope you’ll never even look at this side of me.

This wasn’t about any National Intelligence Service creed or sense of duty.

If I could just bury the fact that I was Kim Hyun—if you could abandon your husband, and I could give up the classified documents… If we could conceal everything deep underground, could we live like everyone else, worrying about money and carrying on like any other man and woman?

His tightly closed lips stretched with tension.

“Please… save me from here…”

The man, suppressing an expression close to convulsing, extended his pale hand. When all her hope had faded, this time, it would be Wooshin who appears.

He would blind her once again, resolve to become an eternal liar, and live by her side, bearing the guilt but continuing an endless mission.

The stench of rotting flesh clung to him, as if it suited him perfectly.

***

The scent pricking her nose felt unfamiliar. Seoryeong held an unclaimed death certificate issued by the National Intelligence Service, but she didn’t even know whose body lay stripped of Kim Hyun’s identity. She went to the crematorium.

Thankfully, no one else was around to cry. Before the body entered the incinerator, she tossed in their wedding photo.

For some reason, she thought she heard Chief Joo’s voice echoing like an illusion, mocking that this wasn’t nearly enough, that she wouldn’t give up Kim Hyun so easily.

Wiping away the tears she regretted shedding, she cleared her eyes.

“Instructor, do you remember what I once told you?”

Her voice, rough and hoarse, was low.

“I said every time I fail, I have to do something even more dangerous.”

“…!”

“I guess the deputy chief wasn’t good enough.”

“Han Seoryeong.”

Wooshin interjected abruptly, as if to stop her twisted thoughts. But she continued, her gaze somewhere distant and hazy.

“Do I need to make an even bigger mess than this? What do I have to do for Kim Hyun to come find me?”

“….”

“What will make him desperate to hold me, to reproach and condemn me? Should I throw a homemade bomb at the National Intelligence Service?”

“…!”

“And after that, maybe it’s this country Kim Hyun is so loyal to?”

Suddenly, his gaze hardened.

“Just how far are they trying to push me?” Seoryeong finally rose from where she had been sitting, motionless. The foul stench of the corpse and the crematorium’s acrid odor clung stubbornly to the lining of her nose.

She stood up firmly, wanting to escape this awful smell and resist sinking into despair.

She couldn’t sit quietly like the dead, allowing herself to be toyed with again and again. She couldn’t just close her eyes, keep silent, and live as they wanted her to.

Her resentment toward the NIS, fueled by her pain over Kim Hyun, finally consumed her.

“I’m going to start acting like a madwoman now.”

“…!”

“Otherwise, I feel like I’ll suffocate…”

Her pupils, wide and unnervingly dilated, focused on Wooshin. Nearby, the scent of smoke from the burning body filled the air.

“You said it was truly wrong if I slept with another man, didn’t you?”

Her heart, twisted with betrayal, had reached its breaking point.

“My thoughts spiral endlessly. I can’t stop these dark thoughts… My mind feels sticky, filled with something foul that won’t wash away. I just want it to go blank for even a moment. So please…”

She took in the acrid smell, inhaling deeply, and pleaded.

“Let’s do it together. Let me feel alive.”