MFYBS 01

Chapter: 01

“I only did it because I loved you! You know that!”

As the sun was setting, the man’s loud excuse rang painfully in her ears. His voice echoed along the quiet riverside.

The man knelt on the ground with his hands clasped in front of his face, rubbing them together over and over as he pleaded.

Watching the crimson sunset, Hae-ru let out a long sigh.

“Ha…”

“I mean it! I did it because I loved you!”

As if he couldn’t bear to wait, the man rushed to explain himself before she could even respond.

Hae-ru placed one hand on her waist and slowly lowered the head that had been tilted toward the sky.

Suppressing the anger that threatened to burst out, she spoke in an even colder voice.

“If you loved me, you should have told me.”

“I didn’t because I was afraid you’d leave me! I…”

It seemed he still had more excuses to make, but she had no desire to hear another word.

“You’re saying you hid the fact that you were married for three years because you loved me? Do you honestly think that makes any sense? Mr. Kim Tae-jun, does love normally turn you into someone this selfish and despicable?”

Faced with her sharp, methodical accusations, Tae-jun pressed his lips together in panic, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched desperately for another excuse.

To Hae-ru, there were some things that deserved absolute moral condemnation, and adultery was at the very top of that list.

She had been deceived, but the truth remained that she had unknowingly dated a married man for three years and had even started living with him.

It had been less than a week since they moved in together, but they had already talked about marriage and had even visited each other’s families to exchange greetings.

Realizing that every bit of it had been a lie made a raging fire erupt inside her. Her clenched fists trembled uncontrollably.

“Because I loved you!”

Even now, Tae-jun shamelessly insisted on his excuse, as though he had done nothing wrong.

“Ha… You have a son, and you’re telling me you love a woman who isn’t your wife? Are you joking?”

She was so dumbfounded that she almost lost the ability to speak.

A few days ago, she’d found a white envelope in her mailbox. The moment she looked inside, her legs had given out beneath her.

In the photograph was Tae-jun.

He was holding a little boy who looked just like him, while beside him stood a beautiful woman with silky waist-length hair, smiling warmly as she leaned close against him.

The photo alone had been enough to make her suspicious, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it.

So she hired someone to investigate.

The results confirmed everything.

The documents she received clearly stated that Tae-jun was a married man. Then, that very morning, she watched him leave a house, accompanied by the same beautiful woman and a five-year-old child who came outside to see him off.

There was no longer any room for doubt.

Hidden inside her car, she let go of the steering wheel she’d been gripping with all her strength.

All the strength drained from her body.

Tears welled up in resentment.

How could he have looked her in the eyes every single day for three years without ever telling her the truth?

Kim Tae-jun, the man who had deceived her, worked at the same company as she did—Seongju.

According to company policy, employees were forbidden from discussing their personal lives.

That meant it was entirely possible for him to hide the fact that he was married.

Although they worked in different departments, they had met during a company workshop.

Hae-ru had been the president’s secretary, while Tae-jun was the head of the Public Relations Team.

He had been the one to approach her first.

They were compatible in every way and spent three years together without any major fights.

Even so, Hae-ru was a woman who valued honesty and principles.

The instant Tae-jun admitted with his own mouth that he was married, she immediately told him they were over.

Apparently, Tae-jun had other ideas.

He clung desperately to the leg of her pants like the dramatic lead of a television drama.

“You know how much I love you! How can we break up?”

Hae-ru sharply kicked her leg upward, shaking off the hand gripping her pants.

“That’s enough. We’re done.”

She turned to leave without another glance, but Tae-jun hurriedly stood up and grabbed her wrist.

It had rained the day before, so his hands were covered in dirt from kneeling on the ground. The mud smeared roughly across her wrist.

“No. I can’t end things with you.”

She whipped her head around, exhaled deeply, and stared directly at him.

“You said you have a son. Then you need to take responsibility for your son.”

“I’ll get divorced. If you don’t want my son, I’ll even give him up!”

Her breath caught in her throat.

Hearing him say he would abandon his own child brought back memories she’d buried long ago.

She thought of her mother, Kim Jang-mi, who had run away with an employee from her father Yoon Hae-seok’s company, abandoning Hae-ru without a second thought.

With every word Tae-jun spoke, her expression twisted further in disgust.

“Do you really think that’s something a person should say? If you brought a child into this world, you have a responsibility to raise him.”

“But you’re more important to me!”

“Ha… I’m so speechless I don’t even know what to say. Let’s just go back to being strangers. That’s for the best. Mr. Kim Tae-jun, don’t ever contact me again.”

She violently shook his hand off.

Then she turned around without a trace of hesitation.

Although every step felt unbearably heavy, she clenched her fists tightly and forced herself to keep walking.

Part of the reason she was able to cut him out of her life so decisively was simply her personality.

But an even greater reason was what had happened when she was in elementary school.

Back then, her mother, Kim Jang-mi, had had an affair with one of her father Yoon Hae-seok’s coworkers. After embezzling the company’s money, she ran away with him.

After her mother disappeared, her father’s company inevitably collapsed.

The once-happy family was destroyed overnight, and her father struggled alone to raise Hae-ru.

Growing up watching his hardships, she had come to loathe adultery with every fiber of her being.

Perhaps that was why she could turn away so coldly.

Hae-ru was often called cold-hearted because she rarely cried.

But this shock was too much.

Once she had put enough distance between herself and Tae-jun, the tears she had been desperately holding back finally spilled over.

Covering her face with both hands, she collapsed behind a large pine tree.

She remained there for a long time, unable to stand.

The next morning, Friday, she went to work as though nothing had happened.

Normally, on a warm spring morning filled with gentle sunshine, she would have hummed happily while driving.

But today, it felt as though the rainy season had settled inside her heart.

An endless drizzle of sadness refused to stop.

Her emotions were written plainly across her face.

The corners of her mouth drooped, and her eyes were as lifeless as those of a dead fish.

She felt drained throughout her commute, arriving at the company’s underground parking garage with her shoulders slumped.

After parking, she opened the car door and stepped out.

As she shut it, her reflection in the window caught her eye.

Seeing her own defeated posture, she shook her head.

“Nothing happened.”

She repeated the same words several times, forcing herself to believe them.

Straightening both her shoulders and back, she put on a faint smile and walked toward the elevator.

Passing through the automatic doors on Basement Level Two, Hae-ru stopped near the elevator and pulled out her phone.

It was her long-standing habit to check her schedule for the day before starting work.

She had been doing it ever since shortly after joining the company.

The day’s schedule looked fairly simple.

Even so, she couldn’t stop sighing.

It wasn’t because of her appointments.

It was because of the belongings still packed inside her car.

Thinking about them only made her sigh again.

Since the apartment they had shared was registered under Tae-jun’s name, she had loaded all of her belongings into her SUV before leaving that morning.

But she had nowhere to go.

Her father ran a small restaurant in the countryside, and she had already given him the deposit money she’d received from moving out so he could pay for expanding the restaurant.

She couldn’t afford another place.

Worse, if her father found out that Tae-jun—the man he’d recently met—was actually married, his already high blood pressure might cause him to collapse.

Unable to think of anywhere to take all her belongings, her head throbbed.

The appointments displayed on her phone blurred into nothing more than black shadows.

“Ha…”

She sighed deeply.

Just then, she heard footsteps.

Employees arriving for work gathered in front of the elevator.

Normally, they would greet her first.

Instead, today they glanced at her strangely before huddling together in groups of two or three, whispering among themselves.

“How can she be so shameless?”

Their malicious gossip reached her ears clearly.

She turned toward the two women who had spoken loudly enough for everyone to hear.

The moment they met her icy gaze, both women awkwardly looked away and nervously pressed their lips together.

Turning to face them completely, she asked,

“Were you talking about me?”

She pointed a finger at her own chin.

Whenever she had questions, she confronted people directly instead of talking behind their backs.

Perhaps that was why no one in the company ever gossiped about her.

She had joined the company straight out of high school and had become the Chief Secretary at a remarkably young age.

Her straightforward personality had certainly played a part in that achievement.

Faced with her confident attitude, some people awkwardly cleared their throats with a fist covering their mouths, while others simply looked away.

The woman Hae-ru had confronted hesitated, opening and closing her mouth without speaking before biting her lower lip.

Hae-ru stepped even closer.

“What is it? Why exactly am I the topic of your conversation?”

She had experienced countless hardships since graduating from high school and entering the workforce.

Because of that, mere rumors no longer fazed her.

She had always faced everything head-on.

At that moment, Kim Ja-ryeon, the division director’s secretary—someone who never missed an opportunity to antagonize Hae-ru—appeared from somewhere.

As the elevator doors opened, Kim Ja-ryeon stepped inside and said with a sneer,

“You seduced a married man. What’s there to be so confident about?”

Smiling mockingly at Hae-ru, she watched as everyone else hurried into the elevator as though Hae-ru were carrying a contagious disease.