Chapter 4
As mentioned before, my husband’s cause of death was a helicopter accident. He had been returning from a business trip abroad in his private helicopter when an engine malfunction caused it to crash.
When her mind, which had gone numb with shock, finally returned to her, Sua found herself at the funeral home, dressed in mourning clothes. She received visitors who came to offer their formal condolences.
“It’s such a shame. He was still so young. But you have to keep living, even after losing someone.”
“ā¦Thank you.”
During the early hours of the morning, when the stream of visitors finally thinned, Sua would stare blankly at Hajin’s photograph, her face haggard from exhaustion.
Ironically, the ID photo he’d had taken for his passport had become his funeral portrait.
He was only thirty-two years old.
It was far too young to have his life cut short like this.
Especially for someone like Hajin, whose life should have only grown more brilliant with each passing year.
A silent tear rolled down her cheek.
Sua’s grief was immense, as though she’d lost the love of her life.
It felt as if a huge, unfillable hole had opened in the very center of her chest.
The truth was, nothing could have been further from reality.
Aside from a handful of incidents during their one year of marriage, their relationship had been closer to estranged than affectionate.
I suppose I really thought you were some kind of god.
The fact that I still can’t believe you’re gone must mean something.
By the final day of the funeral, her mother-in-law had cried so much that she was rushed to the emergency room.
Her father-in-law, who had been so indifferent to his son’s death that he occasionally even laughed heartily in front of the mourners, was nowhere to be seen.
Even more incomprehensible to Sua was the behavior of her brother-in-law.
That man hadn’t shown so much as the tip of his nose at his own brother’s funeral throughout the entire three days.
No matter how poor the relationship between the brothers had been, Sua simply couldn’t understand it.
She even hated herself for having once thought of him as a kind and generous man.
“Then what happens to Hajin’s estate?”
“What do you think? It all goes to his wife.”
Behind her, relatives chattered without the slightest consideration for her feelings.
Their interest was focused far more on the fortune left behind than on the man who had died.
“Talk about hitting the jackpot. She’s incredibly lucky. Didn’t I hear her family is some penniless military household?”
“Keep your voice down. She’ll hear you.”
“So what? Did I say anything untrue?”
Their thoughtlessness only made Sua’s grief deepen.
She even felt sorry for Hajin, who must have grown up in a family like this.
If I’d knownā¦ I would have treated him more warmly.
There was still so much she didn’t know about Hajin.
“But is Woojin not even coming on the day of the funeral procession?”
“Who knows? Apparently they can’t get in touch with him. I wonder if he even knows his brother died.”
“Honestly, what a dysfunctional family.”
And so Sua endured those hellish moments and sent her husband off.
The year that had passed since their marriage had truly flown by.
By the time their first wedding anniversary arrived, Sua had grown somewhat accustomed to no longer being a soldier.
She had also accepted the fact that, legally speaking, she was a married woman with a husband.
“ā¦You’re home?”
Yet even after a year, there was one thing she still hadn’t grown accustomed to.
Her relationship with her husband.
After their conversation beneath the umbrella that day, the two of them had remained awkward around each other.
Hajin, in particular, had made no effort whatsoever to close the distance between them.
At some point, Sua had become aware of the man’s presence lingering in her subconscious, and little by little, she’d begun to think more consciously about her husband.
But Hajin never gave her an opening.
That was why she’d even wondered if perhaps he didn’t remember that today was their wedding anniversary.
“Would you sit down for a moment?”
Sua made the awkward suggestion.
On the table sat an expensive, rare bottle of wine, accompanied by an extravagant bouquet of flowers.
“What’s all this?”
Hajin stared at the scene for a moment before asking.
“I didn’t buy them. The young master sent them.”
The words came out sounding almost like an excuse.
“Woojin?”
The moment Hajin heard his younger brother’s name, his brows furrowed. He made no effort to conceal his displeasure.
There was another unusual fact about her husband besides being the heir to an enormous weapons company.
He was an identical twin.
Hajin had been born exactly five minutes before his brother.
The two were so alike in face, height, build, and even voice that anyone could have mistaken them for doppelgangers.
Still, it wasn’t particularly difficult to tell them apart, because the atmosphere they gave off was completely different.
His younger brother, Woojin, was gentler and more approachable than Hajin.
“Yes. Someone hired by the young master delivered them personally.”
Aside from seeing Woojin briefly at the wedding, however, Sua had only encountered Hajin’s twin brother a few times at family events.
Even then, she’d merely watched him from a distance. They’d never had a proper conversation or any real interaction.
For one thing, Woojin primarily handled the overseas business operations of LOW and spent most of his time abroad.
He rarely returned to Korea unless something important required his presence.
And since her husband, Hajin, particularly disliked the idea of his wife having anything to do with his younger brother, Sua had deliberately avoided running into Woojin whenever possible.
She had vaguely known that the brothers weren’t on good terms.
So she hadn’t made any effort to become close to Woojin either, which meant she knew very little about him.
Other than the fact that, unlike his older brother, he was gentle and kind, which made the rest of the family feel more comfortable around him than Hajin, and that he was generous enough to remember even the wedding anniversary of the brother he didn’t get along with.
“He said he wanted to congratulate us on our first wedding anniversaryā¦”
Sua subtly reminded him that today was their anniversary.
“What an amusing little stunt.”
Yet Hajin showed no surprise whatsoever at the mention of their anniversary. Instead, he scoffed at his brother’s gesture.
“ā¦You knew?”
“Knew what? Our wedding anniversary?”
Without hesitation, he pulled the cork from the bottle of wine Woojin had sent.
A moment later, a liquid as red as blood swayed inside two wineglasses.
“I thought you didn’t know.”
“I thought it might not be a particularly pleasant memory for Lieutenant Chae, so I was going to let the day pass quietly.”
Even though it had been a long time since he’d left the military, Hajin still called Sua Lieutenant Chae.
By now, Sua had grown so accustomed to the title that she no longer bothered correcting him.
“But that idiot Woojin had to go and do something unnecessary.”
Hajin didn’t savor the wine.
He simply gulped it down.
Somehow, he looked angry.
He didn’t stop until he’d emptied more than half the bottle.
Throughout that time, Sua hadn’t even touched her wineglass.
“I’m leaving for Russia on business tomorrow.”
“Yes. I know.”
Their first wedding anniversary dinner was far less romantic than she’d expected, and somehow that made it even lonelier.
Even as she listened to news of his business tripāsomething she already knew aboutāSua could only nod, unable to hide her dejection.
He was making his refusal to grow any closer to her so blatantly clear that there was nothing more she could do.
Even if her feelings toward Hajin had changed, he had no obligation to feel the same way.
“After tonight, everything will change.”
At those unexpected words, Sua looked at him again.
His business trip was only supposed to last five days and four nights.
How much could possibly change in such a short amount of time?
This time, Hajin pulled Sua’s untouched wineglass toward himself.
His unrefined movement caused the wine to spill over the rim and run down his thumb.
Without thinking, Sua pulled out a tissue and gently wrapped it around his thumb.
There was no ulterior motive behind the gesture.
She simply didn’t want his hand to get dirty.
“ā¦”
“ā¦”
But as Sua fumbled awkwardly with Hajin’s thumb in her hand, she suddenly realized that her actions could easily be misunderstood.
She froze in surprise.
“I-I was justā¦”
She hurriedly tried to let go of him.
But this time, Hajin caught her fingers.
An inexplicable tension bound the two of them together.
An unfamiliar atmosphere settled between the husband and wife.
Perhaps it was the scent of the wine spilled across the table, but Sua’s head felt strangely hazy.
Unable to withstand the tension, Sua tried to pull her fingers free from his grasp.
But it wasn’t easy.
He didn’t loosen his grip.
“T-Thisā¦”
At that moment, Hajin’s lips moved as though he were about to say something.
Sua was willing to hear whatever he had to say.
But unfortunately, Hajin never spoke those words.
Instead, he lifted the wineglassāwhose surface was still ripplingāand gulped down the wine.
A moment later, he regained his usual composure with an almost uncanny speed and continued with what he had intended to say.
“I imagine you’re very confused, but don’t panic. Endure it. And no matter what happens, protect this house. Then everything that has been turned upside down will return to where it belongs.”
As Sua listened quietly, she realized that he was desperately trying to hide something.
She knew perfectly well that even if she asked, he wasn’t the kind of man who would answer.
And yet, she couldn’t help revealing her curiosity.
“What are you talking about all of a sudden? You’re scaring me.”
He was acting as though he were about to leave for somewhere very far away.
Sua couldn’t understand a single one of his cryptic remarks.
She had no idea that every word he spoke was foreshadowing what was about to happen.
“This may be the longest business trip of my life.”
Hajin wiped his wine-stained lips with the back of his hand, then slowly took Sua in with his eyes.
As though he were saying a final farewell.
That day, Hajin was red all over.
His lips.
The back of his hand.
His fingertips.
Even Sua herself, wherever Hajin’s gaze fell, seemed to be stained red.
And Sua couldn’t tear her eyes away from him, as though he might fade away before her very eyes.
“I’ll be back.”
At that moment, as always, Sua’s instincts kicked in, desperately urging her to stop him from leaving on that business trip.
But unfortunately, she had no right to do so.
And five days later, the helicopter carrying Hajin crashed from the sky.
The pilot suffered severe injuries in the accident.
Hajin died instantly.
When Sua first heard the news of his death, she simply couldn’t believe it.
It was far too empty a death for a man like him.
In Sua’s mind, her husband had been a man so powerful that even the cruelest misfortune would veer away from him.
A man who stood above all other beings and ruled over everything.
And yet that man had died in something as mundane as a helicopter accident.
She simply couldn’t accept it.
But when she saw the belongings recovered from the crash site, she had no choice but to acknowledge the truth.
Their wedding rings were nowhere to be found, but everything else belonged to Hajin.
His phone.
His identification.
His wallet.
His watch.
Everything.
The most conclusive evidence, however, was the footage from the CCTV camera just before the accident.
It had captured Hajin’s back as he boarded the helicopter.
His build and gait were so remarkably similar that even his fiercely devoted mother could no longer deny that it was her son.
“It’s me.”
After the funeral procession had finally ended, Sua returned home.
She had watched with her own two eyes as her husband was buried in the cold earth.
And yetā¦
The voice coming from beyond the front door belonged to the husband who was supposed to be dead.
But now, her husband had returned.
From Sua’s perspective, perhaps it was only natural that she couldn’t easily accept it.
Warning signals blared wildly inside her head, yet her trembling hand reached toward the door.
Whether it was a ghost, a zombie, or some cruel prank by someone, she wanted to know what was really on the other side.
Click.
The door opened.
Sua was struck by an even greater sense of bewilderment.
A cold breath escaped her lips.
“ā¦!”
Standing there was Hajin.
The man who was supposed to be dead.
Not a ghost.
Not a zombie.
Not someone’s cruel prank.
The real Hajin.
