Minji's pov)
I smoothed the front of my coat in the taxi mirror until the crease was gone. I rehearsed the face I would wear when I stepped back into our apartment: untroubled, efficient, bored of the banalities of a rich man's wife. Boredness was the safest lie. It kept questions from multiplying.
My phone buzzed once in my glove; a message from Kang Taejun: Working late tonight. Don't be out after ten. The words felt like a knuckle against my throat. I thumbed a reply that said, Understood, and dropped the phone into my bag. I would be home before he wanted me. I would have the smudge of normal on me when I opened his door.
At the building entrance the doorman gave me the practiced nod of someone who lives off routine. I gave a softer nod back and let him hold the elevator for me. Up and up — ten floors of glass and chrome — until the world narrowed to our corridor and the heavy weight of the door I had to open.
Inside, the apartment smelled faintly of lemon polish and last night's wine, the tiny staged comforts of a household that's never been lived in. I paused on the threshold and ran my fingers along the banister as if checking for splinters. Old habit—comfort. I rehearsed my voice in my head. Calm. Light. No tremor.
He was in the study when I stepped in, as expected, back to me, the blue of the monitors casting his silhouette into clean lines. Taejun always made a perfect picture: jacket draped over the chair, cufflinks placed like punctuation, the world around him ordered into neat segments.
"Back early," he said without looking up.
"Yes," I answered. Clean, steady. "Traffic was—slower than I thought." I set my bag down with the casualness of someone who wants nothing to crack.
He turned then, slow and deliberate, the expression trained into that even calm that kills: "Were you at a client event?"
"Yeah." I saw in a low calm voice.
"What was the event?" He stared at as he raises his left eyebrow.
"Charity board," I said. "Just paperwork." The lie slid out soft. He watched me as if cataloguing how well I could perform it.
He smiled — a small, thin calculation. "Bring me the Q3 projections when you come in. The board wants numbers."
I nodded. "Of course."
He studied my wrists with the faint, casual curiosity that had become one of the worst things. Men like him inspect without seeming to. My sleeve edged down a fraction; the faint shadow of a bruise showed — yellow, fading — and my heart jumped to a place I didn't want it to. He noticed. He would always notice. I kept my face still. I had to.
"The bruise is still there?" He questioned.
"Yes." I said in a calm low voice.
Dinner was an exercise in neutral conversation: talk of mundane things, the occasional corporate anecdote, the radio in the background playing something bland and safe. I answered in clipped, competent phrases. When I poured the wine, I took the time to move deliberately, ceremonially. The more ordinary the motion, the less likely the night would escalate.
He asked about details I'd told him in my call: Did you get the drafts? Did you speak to the director? My answers were precise and dry. He nodded, satisfied. He wants certainty; I gave him it. A man ruled by certainty does not look for threats in small things.
At one point, midway through a paragraph about tax schedules, he smiled and reached across the table as if to touch my hand. My skin prickled at the closeness. I let him — a small, safe contact that said the dance continued as always.
After dinner, he excused himself to work again. The door closed behind him with such finality I felt audible relief like a held breath leaving my chest. I walked into the living room and shut the blinds. The apartment seemed to exhale around me.
Only then did the mask crack. I pressed my palms flat to the window, palms slick, and slid down until I sat on the hardwood. My body that had been ferried through the evening on autopilot finally registered the weight of the bruise, the sting of it, the way it returned memory. I let myself feel precisely for a second — the small, controlled grief of an omega who has long ago learned the difference between survival and surrender.
My hand found my phone. I could have called Seojoon, asked him to tell me what he remembered, and begged for help. But the plan required sharp edges and patient hands; I could not be reckless. I scrolled instead, breathed deep, and then made the call I had rehearsed in the park.
"Taejun?" I said when he answered. The word was measured, casual. "I'm going to be home later than planned. There's some board stuff — bring the figures to the office, please."
He paused. "At home, later than planned. You're eager to roam."
My throat closed. I smoothed my tone into something boring. "I had to meet someone about the charity. I'll be back immediately after."
He made a small, disbelieving sound — a sound I'd learned means he wanted to press. "Do not be late."
"I won't," I said.
"What will be your punishment if you are late?"
What.
"I won't be."
"Are you sure?" His voice dropped with venom.
"Trust me."
I ended the call and set the phone face down, cooling.
Out of habit I checked the living room again, flattening a cushion, straightening a frame. That's the silliness you keep when you're training yourself to be invisible: making the world tidy so the man you live with doesn't find a reason to be angry.
Then the key turned in the door.
He came in without warning, not the slow, measured arrival I'd expected, but with the sharpness of a man who had changed his mind about something and wanted to change it loudly. He took in the room at a glance, then looked at me. His gaze was an inspection. Not a question — an evaluation.
"Where were you?" he asked softly, dangerously calm.
I answered the rehearsed line. "Charity work. I told you."
He laughed — not kindly. "Charity work. How… noble." He stepped closer, too close. "You're lying, Minji."
There it was: the look that always came before the hand. My stomach flipped to a remembered hollow. I'd rehearsed this moment a hundred times — rehearsed the smallness, the apology, the cringing, the smoothing. I had fail-safes for everything. But practice doesn't keep your skin from remembering.
"Not everything is an interrogation, Taejun," I said, my voice steady on the surface. Inside it trembled.
He reached for my wrist, lightly at first, fingers closing as if to check a pulse. I did not pull away. I did not give him the script of humiliation he wanted. I let him feel the cold, the silence. My silence. He seemed to like the control. He tightened, his thumb pressing against the pale bruise over my wrist. For a flash there was the possibility of rage — a small flare that I deflected with the practiced softness of my answer.
"You will not go out late again," he said.
"No," I agreed, soft. "I won't."
He watched me a moment longer, then turned away, walking stiffly back toward his study. The door clicked shut. The sound reverberated like a verdict.
I breathed out slowly. The shape of my shoulder slumped. The apartment filled again with the ordinary noises of a home — the fridge humming, the distant taxi horns. I moved to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I cataloged what I'd learned at the park and how to make it useful: which names Seojoon would call, which accounts to prod. I ran through the sheet of projected damage in my head and rehearsed the lies I would tell him if he asked about the late meeting. I had to be precise and boring. Boring was armor.
I dressed my sleeve over the bruise again and sat down to write a short note for Seojoon later: Plan tonight confirmed. Be careful. I didn't sign it. I slid it into my bag instead.
I almost laughed at myself for still being startled by the small violences — a touch, a comment — and at the way my body catalogued every one of them as if making a tally. The city moves; lives go on. People in our building argued about the best sushi, the newest gym. I lived in that stream and carried a line of private maintenance with me: wounds that needed tending, plans that needed patience.
When I finally went to the study to lay down the papers I would "forget" to bring to Taejun in the morning's file, I paused at the doorway. He was bent over his desk, unreadable, hands folded. On instinct, I stepped back and let the door close a hair's breadth.
Tonight, secrecy and calm had to coexist. If either frayed — if anyone saw even a sliver of the thing I was setting in motion — we would both be washed away by his retribution. I felt no courage or righteousness in my chest — only a cold, clear focus.
I whispered to the empty room, to the bruise under my sleeve, to the night outside, "Soon."
Outside, the city seemed oblivious. Inside, I readied to play my part until the moment came when I would not have to play anymore.