Chapter 30
Deep-rooted doubt
Minju managed to put her hand between the closing elevator doors and squeezed her body in. There were only Sang-yeon and Minju in the elevator.
“Aren’t you always like this? You don’t listen to what people say, doubt them and make you own conclusions?”
Who was talking to whom? Doubting and making her own conclusions was in fact what Minju was doing the best right now.
“Even if I ask you, you won’t tell the truth anyway, so don’t you need to relax?”
Sang-yeon said cynically.
“What do you mean…”
Minju, who opened her mouth angrily, lowered her eyes.
Because Sang-yeon’s words were not wrong. Just because he asked, she could not tell him straightforwardly that she met a man and had a drink with him to investigate her husband last night.
‘But, does it mean that Sang-yeon knows who I met? How would he know? How?’
There were many more things she wanted to ask, but Minju could not. The fact that Sang-yeon said he would not ask meant that she did not have to explain anything, but it also meant that she would not get any answer from him either.
Sang-yeon was himself refusing to talk to Minju.
“If you’re not testing my patience, you’d better go home calmly.”
Sang-yeon was really doing his best to suppress his anger. Minju did not see it because she was a little ahead of Sang-yeon, but she could feel it. It was a feeling so terrifyingly cold that it seemed that her skin would stick to it if she touched it a little.
After a while, the elevator door opened on the fifth floor and a couple entered. Minju and Sang-yeon bowed their heads to greet them and ignored each other regardless of who started first. Minju could not stand the pity of her situation as she looked at another couple.
Just then, the button on the first floor of the elevator lit up. It was not Minju nor the newly boarded couple who pressed the button, but Sang-yeon. When Minju looked back at him, Sang-yeon said with his eyes.
‘We are strangers. You get off on the first floor.’
The door opened on the first floor. Minju stared at Sang-yeon with a sorrow rising from inside, but there was no mercy in his eyes.
He just looked forward like a cold mannequin that didn’t feel any emotion. Minju got out of the elevator alone, pushed by Sang-yeon’s cold eyes. A woman screaming at a second generation chaebol ‘Why can’t you say that you are my man?!’ was only in dramas. Who was she to Park Sang-yeon?
The promises of marriage, of which she thought too easily, returned to Minju like a dagger.
Minju left the motel and headed to a soup restaurant to relieve her stomach. Sitting down, she was about to drink a cup of water after finishing ordering, but she got a text message from Sang-yeon.
Just eat and go straight home.
Minju was so surprised that she spilled some water.
“Oh, are you okay?”
The owner ran with a dishcloth. There were only a few customers inside the restaurant, and they all glanced at Minju.
‘Why the hell are they looking at me?’
Minju suffered the illusion that everyone looking at her looked like Sang-yeon. Sang-yeon was nowhere to be seen, but he now existed everywhere Minju breathed.
Why aren’t you answering? If you see a message, you have to respond.
Minju-ssi?
Minju was frightened by the sound of notifications that arrived one after another.
Yes, I’ll go home right away.
She barely replied with trembling fingers.
When you get home, take a proof shot with the kitchen in the background.
Yes.
Delicious soup with steam came out. But Minju had already lost her appetite.
“I’m sorry, but let me pay for it.”
“Why aren’t you eating?
Do you want me to pack it for you?”
“No, thanks. I’m sorry.”
Minju barely left the store after paying with a bloodless face. She felt like she would collapse under the bright sun, but she managed to catch a taxi.
“Where should I take you?”
When asked about her destination, Minju hesitated for a while. But soon, she said as if she had given up.
“Please go to Pyeongchang.”
If he was watching her, he would follow her wherever the taxi was headed. It would be difficult to run away without any preparation.
‘For now, let’s do what he tells me to do. That’s safer.’
Sang-yeon’s powerful dominance began to control Minju.
After returning home, Minju took a selfie in the kitchen and sent it as proof as Sang-yeon requested. She did not have to, but she even smiled. Only then did he seem to be satisfied.
It’s good that you arrived safely. Get some rest.
After receiving Sang-yeon’s reply, Minju entered two words in the search engine on her phone, recalling what Dr. Kim had said yesterday.
Pathological jealousy.
From psychological treatment and family counseling centers to tarot cards and fortune-telling, sites related to this pathology appeared one after another.
To summarize the content, pathological jealousy was a delusional disorder because of which one would suspect their spouse’s fidelity, and would use means such as eavesdropping, CCTV installation, location tracking, follow-up, violence, and intimidation to find evidence of an affair. However, it was a disease difficult to diagnose because such a person would act relatively well in other aspects of their daily life.
A man sprayed hydrochloric acid on his girlfriend’s face when she broke up with him, another one cut off his wife’s hands when she asked for divorce. Brutal crimes that were hard to speak of were proving how terrifying this disease was.
In fact, Minju knew more about pathological jealousy than anyone else.
Her father, who thought that her mother had a hidden man, forced her to quit her job and stay home. Even that was not enough, and young Minju was asked to monitor her mother’s every move.
However, when none of the evidence of the affair he wanted came out of his daughter’s mouth, the man despaired that his wife and daughter were on the same side and were deceiving him, and eventually started to drink every day.
Depression, alcoholism and violence were a perfect package.
The drunken man hit his wife and daughter every night, and the mother always protected her daughter with her whole body, fearing that her daughter, who played the piano, would hurt her hands. Since it was a marriage that should not last anymore, the woman asked the man for divorce, but he did not accept it.
And after a while, Minju, who returned from school, had to clearly witness the scene of a murder with her eyes, in the living room full of blood.
If Park Sang-yeon was really suffering from pathological jealousy, then this was not a simple problem. Even without Dr. Kim’s warning, Minju knew that a crisis with her survival directly at stake was approaching. She became impatient.
‘I need to find evidence. Evidence that he is obsessive…’
She thought of her father, who made her monitor her mother. Then, someone in this house might be telling Sang-yeon everything about her.
‘Why didn’t I think of that? Yes, the helper lady who deliberately emphasized only the good sides of Sang-yeon while saying that she was on my side… She must be the watcher that Sang-yeon planted!’
Minju’s brain circuit flashed at the speed of light.
Sang-yeon pretended not to know even though he knew that she was going out secretly. Instead, he got rid of Jerry as a punishment and showed Jerry’s body to her through the helper. To warn her not to disobey his words again!
Minju realized that she had been acting too complacent.
Even if he was monitoring her through the helper’s eyes and ears at home, what about when she went outside? She had erased the car’s black box, so she was sure that he had followed her in a different way.
Minju hurried to the garage. And she found a small recorder hidden by Sang-yeon in the glove box of Hye-ryeong’s white Mercedes-Benz that she rode.
As long as evidence was found, Sang-yeon’s possible pathological jealousy was no longer a hypothesis. When an ominous feeling came like a ghost, Minju felt a strange pleasure. She felt engulfed in it.
She would not find anything by looking at the helper. Minju was now bent on finding evidence about Sang-yeon’s disease.
First, she took off the necklace she was wearing around her neck. Maybe there was a GPS for location tracking in the pendant.
Now that she thought about it, there was no item of hers in the house. All of them were new ones that Sang-yeon had bought for her.
Minju was Sang-yeon’s Maron Doll. Only the things that went through his hands were allowed to Minju. Minju began to break down the things that Sang-yeon bought one by one. She broke the heels of the shoes and pulled out the insole. She took off all the buttons on the clothes, and ripped the leather of the bag, making it look like it was in a pre-designed state before the finished product.
Nevertheless, she was not satisfied with this, so she explored the house. She opened all the cupboards and closets, searched through the drawers, and took out the stuff from them.
While Minju flipped things over and messed up the house, the helper did not say a word. She did not ask anything and did not try to stop her. She just followed Minju silently and cleaned up the mess she had made, all too familiar.
The last place Minju’s crazy tsunami, which swept through the living room, bedroom, and study, headed was a room full of exercise equipment.
Minju went to the place where the flying yoga hammock used to be, where Hye-ryeong had tried to hang herself. She put a box on a Pilates reformer, climbed on top of it, tilted her head back and barely put her finger into the hole in the ceiling that was barely reachable.
And after trying hard, she succeeded in finding a small lens that looked like a camera.
Her ridiculous appearance of sweating and cramping calf muscles was reflected on a mirror installed on one wall of the room.
Minju felt ashamed when she saw herself rummaging through the house abnormally to reveal that Sang-yeon was not normal.
She barely came down from the box limping her cramped leg, but Minju in the mirror was still staring at the ceiling. That was not Minju.
Hye-ryeong, superimposed on Minju, put her neck in a rope that came down from the hole in the ceiling and laughed at Minju. As if she was going to be like this soon.
Minju, who could not stand the cursed image of Hye-ryeong, grabbed a dumbbell rolling on the floor and threw it into the mirror as hard as she could. Crash! Hye-ryeong, who was mocking Minju, disappeared with the shattered mirror.
“Madam, are you okay?”
The helper ran after hearing the sound and looked at Minju’s state.
“…Madam.”
Minju, whose legs were loosened, collapsed holding her.
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“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to the conductor. If I call the store, the mirror will be replaced within an hour. Nothing happened.”
The lady stroked Minju’s back and said in a warm voice.
“You should rest for a bit. It will get better.”
Minju moved to the bedroom with her help. Even though she knew she was her watcher, she had no choice but to rely on her.
Perhaps for Minju, Sang-yeon was becoming an omnipotent god.