Chapter 1

Five years ago, I received a call from my friend David. He told me that he saw my wife heading into a hotel with a man, and that he was keeping an eye downstairs.

I asked him for the specific address and rushed to the scene in rage.

An attendant—a young woman around her twenties—was cowering even as she tried to stop me, and refused to tell me my wife’s room number. Holding back my fury, I whipped out five hundred dollars from my wallet and held it out to her, saying, “Don’t worry. No one is going to bother you. Just give me their key card.”

“Sorry, sir… Our hotel is obliged to protect our guests’ privacy,” she replied, her hands trembling over my shoulder even as she refused to take my money.

On the other hand, David’s patience had run out and he bellowed, “Fuck off! Give it here right now or I’ll call the cops saying that your hotel is involved in prostitution! Don’t test me… I’ll have you know my brother is one of them!”

And with that, the young woman gave me the key card after the brief standoff.

Even so, it felt like I was treading over my own heart on every single step I took upstairs.

My wife and I had been acquainted over a blind date. She was a beautiful woman—fair skin, fine figure—and carried herself with dignity in both action and words. We rarely argued in the years of our marriage, and she would stay at the hospital and take care of my parents whenever they were hospitalized.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the photo David had taken, I would have rather died than believed she had done something like this.

Nonetheless, when we reached their hotel room and David was just about to open the door, I suddenly grabbed him by the hand.

Startled, David exclaimed, “What the hell?”

“You don’t have to do this. Let’s go.”

“And you call yourself a man?! Your wife is fucking some other man in there, and you’re being spineless…”

Even as David, who had been my friend for more than ten years, continued to scold me in disappointment, I said nothing as I dragged him downstairs with me. After all, I had no idea how I should face all this, and I had a feeling that I might fall unconscious if I were to see my wife naked in bed with another man.

Moreover, David was known to get violent. If something were to go awry, I, as his longtime friend, would be the one who had dragged him into this.

Like a snail, I was shrinking back into my shell whenever something unexpected occurred, as if nothing would happen if I kept my whole body inside my shell.

Many had rebuked my self-deceit harshly since I was a child, but I just can’t change it.

I even naively believed that everyone makes mistakes—that everything could return to how it was in the past if I gave her a chance to make amends.

That night, my wife returned home at almost around ten. She looked very tired, and took a bath without having dinner.

Then, as she lay in bed, I tried to make conversation as I usually did. “Aren’t you a little late today?”

She yawned. “Something came up, so I had to work overtime.”

“Is there something on your neck?” I noticed then that there was something very red over her neck—probably a love bite.

She became nervous right then, hastily coming up with an excuse. “Oh, I think that might be my coat. My skin does get sensitive whenever winter arrives.”

An indescribable fury unfurled within me right then, and I was clenching my knuckles so hard they bled. Even so, I decided to give her another chance.

“Scarlet, we’ve been married for three years, and I’ve always believed in you. That’s why I hope you could come clean with me if there’s something you’re hiding. I will forgive you, no matter what it is.”

That was the biggest compromise I was capable of.

“What’s wrong with you? What’s there for me to come clean about? You’re nuts…”

Scarlet Jones impatiently turned over to her side, ignoring me as she fiddled with her phone.

‘You slut—you’re the one who made me do this.’

I chuckled coolly behind her, and left the room with my ashtray to plan my elaborate revenge.