Work Text:
moth to a flame
like smoke, prequel
"Bow your head for the final blessing.”
There’s an audible hush that befalls the whole church before the priest speaks again, “The Lord be with you.”
She responds, “And with your spirit,” sneaking a glance at Jungkook.
“May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
“Amen.”
She may have been looking at him. It might not have been just a glance. But she’s always done this at the end of the mass, every Sunday when they go as husband and wife. One thing she always notices is that Jungkook never responds, only mouths the words and then opens his eyes to look reverently at the cross.
Devout is what Jungkook has always been. She takes pride in this quality of him among others such as his kindness and chivalry, especially a show when he keeps an arm around her waist at all times as if it brings him much pride that she’s his wife. Well, it’s the same for her. She takes a lot of pride in the fact that Jungkook is her husband.
In her eyes, there’s no man quite like him. They’d met when they were in college, and though the story she tells most people is that Jungkook had fallen in love with her at first sight, the truth is actually a little… different. For one, he was extremely shy. He didn’t often speak to those who weren’t his friends, reserved and closed off until she wedged her way in. She was the one who had been smitten from the start.
The mere fact that he’d given her a chance and then fallen in love all on his own after that to pursue her later is another story entirely. One that involves both their parents and the church. So she’s thankful that they get to be here every Sunday to celebrate the life God has given them, though in a way, there’s still something missing.
She prays for it after communion.
She prays for a child. Every single prayer, every single mass.
They've been married for four years. Despite all that time, they still haven’t conceived. Worse yet, they haven’t really had sex since the day of their honeymoon. She always owes it to the fact that Jungkook is busy, and when asked, he always says that it’s only like this because he’s still relatively new at the company he works at. There’s no time, he says, but that when time does come, he says he wants them to start a proper family.
She hopes for that. There’s nothing more she could want as his wife. The thought of it tethers her to the ground and reminds her of the family they can be, and for that reason alone, she lives every second of her day with only one obligation that might reward her what she wants. She embodies a perfect wife, supportive and understanding.
Especially since Jungkook’s job at his company, barely a year in, life has been even more hectic. His good salary comes with a price on top of all the hours—and extra hours—he has to dedicate to work. She takes it upon herself to tend to everything at home so that it can be a place of relaxation for her husband and nothing else. She wants to alleviate the stress he experiences at work, attending to everything from cooking his meals and doing the laundry to ironing his suits so they’re all pressed and pristine come Sunday morning. Some might say she doesn't have to do so much, but she wants his clothes hanging in their closet before Monday. It's so that she can spend the rest of what little hours she has left enjoying the Sunday evening with her husband over television and good conversations before work consumes him again for a whole week.
A relaxing night is as much as she gets, sometimes with wine and music on the record player as she makes Jungkook dance with her, hoping it would make the mood better, perhaps lead them to bed.
And yet it never happens. They never fuck.
Is it because he’s so conservative? That he always holds her like a gentleman and never touches her inappropriately even though they’re husband and wife? The pregnant housewives she’d overhear in their neighborhood even gossip about their husbands, the way they’re insatiable in bed. But it can’t be anything all too good is what she thinks, because if they’re so loved, shouldn’t their husbands dote on them the way Jungkook does with her? They probably don’t have it better.
Even so, she can’t help it. All they’ve done since their honeymoon is make out.
“I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back,” Jungkook often tells him after he breaks off a kiss, telling her right to her face after she’s moaned and soaked his slacks with her cunt, just from his tongue in her mouth.
Meekly, she’d let it go every time. If she's honest with herself, it's gotten worse lately, but she chooses to think of all the good parts.
After all, he’s such a good husband in every other way.
“Jungkook-ah!” She calls from the dining room.
It’s almost 6 a.m.
Her husband has only just told her last night that he has to leave so much earlier from now on, which would’ve had her by surprise if he had told her so much earlier rather than speaking of it right before bed. She hadn’t been able to even react to it, simply setting her alarm for the morning at 5 a.m. since she has to cook his breakfast and packed lunch, which for now is much simpler than what she usually makes.
Before today, her routine would be to get up at 6 a.m., rather than be ready for him to leave on the dot.
She doesn’t know what’s caused this change. He hasn’t told her anything new about work over the weekend, just the same old rants and jokes about his colleagues. Then again, there really isn’t much that she knows. She doesn’t even know the names of his workmates, not even the closest ones from his department.
“I don’t want to worry you with small details,” he’d often tell her.
“Jungkook-ah!” She calls again, huffing frustratedly.
She glances at the dining table, hearing his hurried footsteps down the stairs. She sighs.
His hair is still damp, his necktie untied. He seems to be in a hurry today, when usually he’d sit down for breakfast for at least twenty minutes. She’s made it easier for him, looking at the sandwich ready to be eaten on the go sitting atop the table.
“Why are you in such a hurry today?” She sighs again while doing his necktie for him. He's never learned, and she likes to do it for him.
“Well, it’s not just today, babe,” he laughs, though she can tell that it’s not supposed to be funny. “I know I haven’t told you but they transferred me to a different office. It didn’t cross my mind yesterday, I know I should’ve asked for your permission first—”
“A different office?” She asks. She swallows down the grumbling of her stomach, hopefully not audible. His words wear her down and she now feels the past two hours of drowsy cooking and tending to what he needs just to make sure he's on time for work.
“Yes,” he says, voice clipped. “It’s a bit farther.”
She chuckles, trying to sound casual. He should have told her.
“How far?”
Jungkook looks at her. “An hour and a half.”
She closes her eyes, turning away for a bit.
Gentle, gentle, gentle.
When she opens her eyes again, she avoids his gaze. She picks up the sandwich instead and hands it to him together with his lunch that she’s wrapped in a cloth neatly.
“Babe, I’m sorry,” Jungkook tells her. “I promise it’s only for a while then maybe I can come in a bit later once I’ve settled.”
He's said that so many times and it's been so many months already. How much more until he's been an employee long enough? How new is relatively new which seems to be his buzz phrase?
He hugs her from behind, caressing her stomach. Unknowingly, she breathes in and she holds it. She wishes she could be mad. They’ve moved to this house because of his work, which would have been the same long drive of an hour and a half—without traffic—if they’d stayed at the house their parents gifted them for their wedding. Parting with that place had been painful for her as it was the house she helped design the interiors, but she accepted the change for him, thinking it would make everything better.
Yet here they are and Jungkook would have to drive for just as long now that he’s been transferred to a different office. It’s frustrating, but what can she do?
She closes her eyes when she feels the touch of his lips on her nape.
“Jungkook—”
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
I promise.
And then he’s gone.
She barely hears his footsteps once the front door closes, the heavy mahogany door of their home sealing shut and turning the world quiet now that she’s alone. The sigh that leaves her mouth sounds so loud in the still dining room, a table of four chairs as if anyone eats there regularly. When she’s alone, she eats in the living room, sometimes dozing off to her noontime TV shows until she wakes up with a jump and goes about her day. She can’t be still for too long anyway, feeling like she has to create purpose within the walls of their home.
There are things she has to do. Like doing their groceries. Her mind slips and unpacks a mental note from weeks ago about how she needs to buy lentils and the frustration is suddenly gone. For dinner, maybe she can cook something hearty. Jungkook will be very busy today, so she hopes that when he comes back from work, he doesn’t have anything to think about other than good food.
As always, she manages to make things work. By the second week, they’ve already settled into a routine, and as the weeks go on and more changes are made, she adjusts and adjusts. At first, it starts with waking up at 4 a.m. in spite of going to bed at nearly 10 p.m. doing the dishes. She makes breakfast and lunch for Jungkook with no delay, laying out his clothes on the bed while he showers and gets ready for a work day.
After he leaves, it’s a game of waiting for him while fitting as many tasks as she can in her day. She pays for their bills and does the groceries on days she’s mainly out of the house, but if she’s only at home, she tidies every nook and cranny until her nails are blunt and worn. On days like that, she makes sure to finish everything by 6 p.m. so that she can take a bath and look her best when Jungkook comes home. No more blunt, dry nails as she spends the remaining hours before his arrival painting them a nude shade. No more greasy hair after scrubbing down her scalp until her arms are tired. She likes to think it’s one of the best parts of being a stay-at-home wife, when she can take as long as she wants just to make herself beautiful.
Once Jungkook’s home, it’s all worth it anyway. Though he’s been coming home later and later each time, she can’t find it in herself to be mad. Not when he comes in through the door looking exhausted but immediately brightening up when he sees her by the dining table.
His tiredness shows on his face often, is what she knows for sure. It’s why she can’t spare a moment to drone on this new change for the two of them that has lessened their already-sparse hours together. His necktie is always undone, his suit jacket hanging off an arm while he carries a few folders worth of paperwork in the other.
Recently though, it’s even worse. It starts from him failing to take his packed lunch that she’s so carefully placed right by the doorway because he’d almost forgotten it the day before. And then it starts happening every other day, until he begins apologizing, saying that upper management keeps pressuring him to go out for lunch with them so his packed food goes bad before he can eat it as an afternoon snack.
She laughs it off although she’s hurt, because she’s been trying. As hard as she can. Each time she cooks him food, she makes it better, and more presentable. She’s even thought that maybe he’s embarrassed to be bringing food to work, but Jungkook only chuckles at that when she brings it up, saying that most of them are jealous that he has a wife who cares so much about him.
Nevertheless, his attempts at praise don’t help alleviate the worry she feels. It doesn’t help that one night when he comes home completely spent, his shoulders slouched and his dress shirt not even tucked in. He doesn’t have his bundle of paperwork with him, probably having done them all to avoid overtime. He walks sluggishly to the living room instead of making his way straight to the dining table like always.
Her immediate reaction is to fiddle with her fingers behind her back, unknowingly picking at the burn-turned-scab from the cooking oil being too hot that morning.
“Love, are you sure you’re fine?” She asks as she stands behind the couch, Jungkook’s head almost hanging off it as she moves to stroke a hand through his slightly sweaty hair.
His eyes are closed and he doesn’t answer. For a while, she wonders if he might finally open up about work because he opens his mouth with that facial expression he always makes when he’s about to talk about something serious. But instead, he offers her a dazzling smile and he says one thing that makes her heart sink.
“I’m too tired to eat. Let’s turn in for the night.”
“I don’t know, Mom. What do you think I should do?” She sighs exasperatedly on the phone, leaning back in her seat as the traffic holds her back from getting to church on time.
It’s a Wednesday and her usual routine mid-week involves a wellness shot at her favorite clinic with some shopping on the side for home decor, something she can never get enough of. She has to make a house pretty after all if she’s there almost twenty-four-seven.
But after that night with Jungkook, she’s been unable to get her mind off it and the tranquility of their home just makes more space for heavy thoughts. She doesn’t want to think things but the housewives in her neighborhood gossip and she knows what they would have said if she’d had the gall to ask for their advice. They’ve all been married for far longer than her, and while she doesn’t think that constitutes wisdom, they have more experience up their sleeves.
He’s cheating. He’s cheating. That’s what her brain tells her.
“Darling, you know how hard he works to make enough for the both of you. How could you ever think he’d have the time for anything else?” That’s what her mother tells her instead.
She’s been so hellbent on her nervous thoughts that she’s driving to church rather than her favorite clinic for an appointment if only to pray.
“It’s not just that, Mom. I know, I know he works hard, I just,” she takes a deep breath, trying to find the words, “No matter the changes, I feel like I’m not keeping up. And I barely even know what he’s doing. Just that he’s busy. Too busy for dinner. And he doesn’t even bring the food I cook him for lunch anymore.”
She doesn’t mean for it to come out bitter. She’s never told anyone any of their issues, if there are any that are tangible. She prefers to always be perfect in the eyes of others. She likes to believe that they are, so they have to be exactly that to everyone else. All of her married friends speak of their lives at home with children, and while she’s jealous, she always feels as if she has to prove to them that they have enough, that for now, they’re enough as husband and wife. All the things she’s thought of and worried about are swept under the rug, never spoken of until now.
It’s shameful to tell her mother but she has no one.
“How were you when the two of you had just gotten married?” The old woman asks all of a sudden and she has to blink away impending tears when the stoplight turns green.
“What?”
She makes a left turn.
“Don’t you remember, dear? You barely eat two meals because you were so worried you’d get fat,” her mother chuckles. “Did Jungkook ever say a single thing?”
She sighs.
“He let that pass, didn’t he? So why would you think too much about him not eating dinner? Sometimes you have to make those adjustments as your life changes—”
“But it’s our only time together,” She tries to reason.
Her mother chuckles again and she only speaks up after a while.
“Well, you can change that.”
When she makes another left turn, she realizes it’s the way to her husband’s old office, having gone the wrong way.
“What do you mean?”
What her mother says next genuinely has her thinking for the rest of the day, mulling over the possibilities it could entail and the doors it would open up for both her and her husband. Their little life together has been nothing short of reserved thus far. She’s always been somewhat quiet too, and since marrying Jungkook, that hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s pushed her into a practice of near isolation she’s never put herself through before marriage. She’s lived within their home with barely any friends and only the guidance of her mother in times like this. At first, she'd been lonely, but her married friends were mostly the same. It almost feels like a rite of passage as a wife to feel this way.
You can drop by his office and give him his food if you’re so concerned.
She drives back home not too long after her clinic appointment that she ends up going to anyway now that she has a new action plan to ponder on.
With his new position, he might have some freedom to see you if he wants, at least during his break.
If she’s being honest with herself, she’s never been a people person. She’s been called an introvert since college, a place where the quiet fade into the shadows, and even more so since marriage, now that her life revolves around her family. If she goes to Jungkook’s office, what are the odds that she’ll meet his colleagues? Would anybody take kindly to her?
She thinks about it until Jungkook comes home, eagerly anticipating the screeching of tires on the driveway and the turning of the door lock. Their dinner sits fresh on the dining table, kimchi jjigae and some yakgwa she’s bought for dessert, two of Jungkook’s favorite things.
“You’re home,” is the first thing she says when he walks in past 10 p.m.
He’s late. Even later than the night before.
She looks at him in the doorway and the sigh he heaves makes her swallow the lump in her throat. He gives her a smile, the same kind that night she began to question things. Very easily, she smiles back. There’s a feeling in the pit of her stomach that feels as though it’s getting bigger as Jungkook walks over, kissing her on the cheek.
The action makes his head turn to the right ever so slightly.
“Kimchi jjigae, huh?” He asks with an even brighter smile.
Since getting dinner ready, she’s been sitting on the couch, at the exact spot with a full view into the arched entrance of the dining room. She gets the reaction she’s wanted from Jungkook, and it’s even more rewarding when he decides to eat that night to his heart’s desire. She’s amiable throughout their late dinner, making small talk about what good could have happened at work for her husband to eat so enthusiastically.
“This is my favorite, babe, you know that,” Jungkook says after swallowing a spoonful. “It’s been so busy with the new project. This is perfect after a long long day.”
Her heart swells at that.
This is the part where she would have said that she wants to visit his office, that she’d like to see what’s been keeping him on his haunches. She’s rehearsed the lines so many times in her head, in front of the mirror, by the French doors to their garden, in the living room as she paces back and forth while waiting for him to come home.
But ultimately, she decides to make it a surprise.
The day comes the following week. She specifically picks Thursday, as it’s the day she’s noticed he comes home a bit earlier, a little less exhausted, most likely the buffer before a last hectic work day before the weekend.
From the moment Jungkook leaves in the morning, she goes about her plan meticulously. Her usual Wednesday schedule of wellness shots and a facial at the clinic she’s done two days early to give way for her skin to recover so that it’s perfect come Thursday. She’s also gotten a professional manicure that makes her feel less like herself but she wants to make a good impression on her husband’s coworkers so she goes out of her way to make her appearance more presentable.
She does her makeup lightly and dresses accordingly in what would usually be her Sunday dress. And then she’s off in her car, belatedly realizing that she hasn’t gone on a drive any longer than an hour. With her routines as a stay-at-home wife, it’s inconvenient to seek out things and places that would have her far from home, so she’s always preferred to do everything where it’s a thirty-minute drive.
Jungkook’s office is a bit of a ways away but for him, she’d do it. The drive goes by quickly somehow, feeling at first as if the anxiety would eat her alive for an hour and thirty minutes and then coming to her senses that she’s already pulled up in a parking spot right by the entrance.
She’s never been to his office. This building is so much more daunting than the previous one, with more employees and foreign clientele walking in and out of the lobby. It’s so much bigger too, right in the heart of Yongsan, close to busy establishments and an active park. It’s such a stark difference from her daily scenery that it has her feeling even more nervous as she stands in a queue in the lobby, waiting for the receptionist to attend to her while she fidgets with the packed lunch in her hands.
She doesn’t realize it’s her turn until the woman at the desk waves a hand at her, and then she’s looking up and awkwardly moving forward.
“Hi Miss, how can I—” The woman, Gaeul as her name tag reads, starts but the phone by her left hand rings. She asks, “Can I answer this first, Miss?”
A nod.
“Wait a minute, Mr. Jeon’s wife?” Someone suddenly says from her peripheral and it startles her to the point that she almost drops the packed lunch. “Sorry to surprise you, we didn’t think we were right!”
They’re a group of four men, all dressed in suits in the same shade of gray that Jungkook wears. Their IDs have the same details as Jungkook’s too, the same department and color code. They all look relatively young but she wouldn't assume that they're younger than her husband, so the formal way they address him gives her a sense of pride.
She smiles at them, her heart easing at the sight of people Jungkook is familiar with.
“Uhm, hi, I didn’t think I would have run into my husband’s coworkers,” she chuckles.
She lets them usher her out of the line and to the elevators.
“Sorry you had to stand by in the lobby,” One of them, Hanseul, tells her as she gets in the elevator ahead of them. “You do need a visitor’s pass, but if you’re an immediate family member—more importantly the wife—of a Senior employee like Mr. Jeon, they kind of overlook it.”
“Yeah, it’s actually surprising you’re only coming by now," Another says. His ID reads Junhyeong. He’s one of the two guys Jungkook has mentioned at dinner. “Usually, the wives drop by within a week.”
“You do know what we mean, right?” Hanseul adds, chuckling a little.
She doesn’t know how to respond to that. The fact that Jungkook hasn’t initiated anything of the sort is something she doesn’t want to mention. She doesn't want to think of what they're hinting at either.
“But you don’t have to worry about that. We know you in the department as the beautiful wife. Everyone’s kinda jealous of Mr. Jeon’s wife.”
They all nod at that, glancing at each other as they smile at her.
“Is that lunch for him?” Hanseul asks.
She looks at the floor number above the door. A few more floors as the elevator opens and a janitor gets on. “Yes, he’s been really busy and he’s forgetting his lunch so often that I figured I’d bring it to him today.”
The four guys look at her.
And then one of them chuckles. Not Hanseul. Taehyung, as his ID reads. He looks a bit younger than all the other three. He's the other guy Jungkook has mentioned.
“Yeah that happens often to a lot of us. Missing lunch and all that. Even worse for the newbies but Mr. Jeon’s not a shocker either. He’s really hardworking,” he says.
They finally reach the floor of what she assumes is Jungkook’s office.
“But you don’t have to worry about it,” Hanseul adds just as she’s getting out of the elevator. They don’t follow. “Work wife’s got it all covered.”
She doesn’t register what he’s said until she’s past the doors, looking back at them when the words sink in. Her own voice sounds hollow to her ears when she says, “Come again?”
The rest of them hit Hanseul playfully, except Taehyung. “Dude, what the fuck?”
She chuckles though it comes out nervous. “What does he mean work wife?”
They end up having to exit the elevator even though it seems like they’ve come up to assist her. It’s Taehyung who speaks.
“Don’t mind him. It’s not Mr. Jeon with another woman—”
“Yeah, I meant Jimin,” Hanseul chuckles but her expression doesn’t change, “Name’s kind of gender-neutral, but he’s a he. Mr. Jeon’s secretary, got hired just before he transferred here. He’s been a great help.”
“A ball of sunshine,” the quieter guy, Namjoon as his ID reads, even adds, “Kinda brought back the spirit to the department and Mr. Jeon hasn’t had a bad day since.”
They all nod in affirmation.
She tries to laugh if only not to seem awkward. “Well, I guess, it’s, uhm, great that my husband gets along so well with his secretary. I’ll be going now.”
It’s Junhyeong who claps his hands as they get back in the elevator, saying, “ Oh! Forgot to say where his office is. It’s at the end of the hallway to the right. But he’s probably in the meeting room still. You can just wait for him if you want—”
And then Hanseul interrupts, saying, "Make sure you knock first."
“Thank you,” she says with a bow as the elevator doors close.
That’s weird, she thinks with a sigh, walking in the direction of his office, thankful it's easy to distinguish. She’s almost had her whole marriage flashback in front of her eyes at the mention of a work wife, which isn’t a new thing to her. She knows what it means, has heard stories on the radio, and even old friends.
Rather than thinking about it too much, she decides to focus on lunch instead, about to text Jungkook that she’s in her office but ultimately choosing not to. She wants this to be as much of a surprise as it can be.
She unwraps his lunch, unassembling the layers of steelware that she’s chosen to keep the food warm, creating a nice setup on his desk mat. And then she sits on the chair right in front of the desk, leaning back and scanning the room.
It’s quite a big office. It makes her proud to know that her husband is important to the company and that he even has his own spacious office, the room obstructed from outside with frosted, soundproofed glass walls. It’s complete with a big table right by the floor-to-ceiling window, some bookshelves and file cabinets, even a matching chaise and coffee table. Her husband has never liked coffee to her knowledge, so she raises an eyebrow at the French press and small jar of ground coffee right in the middle.
When she looks to her left, she sees another desk that’s next to the door.
Must be his secretary, she thinks, standing up to take a look at it.
It’s a bit smaller than Jungkook’s table but of the same rubberwood, medium walnut just like her husband’s. Just like he likes their furniture. Apart from what she would guess is a company-owned computer, there are very few things on the table that would tell her who Jimin is. There’s but one two-tiered organizer on the left-hand side, so small it could probably only hold a few post-its and some tape.
Though there’s no one in here except her, she feels like she’ll get caught, a little nervous as she pulls on the small handle with a finger to open it. And she snickers, closing it again.
Lip gloss.
She decides to walk out of her husband’s office, now intent on looking for him.
Name’s kind of gender-neutral, but he’s a he, Hanseul’s words echo in her mind as she reaches the opposite end of the hallway, having passed the elevator now. There’s no one else on the floor besides her, she realizes as she peers into the glass-partitioned offices with multiple desks. They must all be at lunch, she figures, until she spots one room that has full, solid walls, not the frosted glass kind that's everywhere.
According to the four men, Jungkook’s likely still in the meeting room, which must mean he hasn’t had lunch yet. Her heart picks up when she gathers the courage to knock on the door, just two knocks with the lightest hand.
A few seconds.
No one opens.
Her heart beats even faster as she snocks again, breathing in sharply out of surprise when the door is opened just before she can knock a third time. She gasps at the person in front of him, her hand against her chest as she ends up looking him from head to toe despite her usual manners of bowing when meeting someone new.
He’s blonde, she notes. He’s got a white silk blouse on, tucked into a good pair of form-fitting slacks that sit high on his hips. Her eyes travel back up and she notices he’s blinking owlishly at her.
Lip gloss. He’s wearing lip gloss.
His plump lips stretch into a smile once their eyes meet. “Miss, who are you here for?”
She can’t bring herself to speak. She smiles back—tries to—and then she points inside, attempting to look past him but he follows her hand, blocking her view.
“Miss, I asked you—”
“Jimin-ah, what are you doing by the door? And who’s that?”
The guy, Jimin, she learns, glances behind himself only to open the door wider, and there she sees him, her husband. Jungkook’s sitting at a desk in the far end of the room, folder in one hand as he types with the other. He doesn’t look up, obviously busy.
“Do you know her, Jungkookie?” Jimin asks.
It takes her aback to the point of her jaw dropping ever so slightly. She can’t even admonish him for responding so carelessly to her, to the wife of his superior. She simply stands there gaping like a fish while Jungkook’s secretary props a hand on his waist, glancing at her like she’s a bother.
He does smile sweetly when Jungkook finally looks in their direction, though it’s more sickening than it is lovely.
“Babe, what are—” Jungkook says in surprise, walking the length of the room to meet her at the doorway. He laughs, though there’s no joy in his voice. “You’re here!”
Jimin, still rooted to his spot, maintains his smile as he brings his hands together, saying, “Oh, she’s your wife! Where were my manners?”
He chuckles then, “Pleased to meet you, I’m Park Jimin, Mr. Jeon’s secretary.”
His greeting is warm and kind, like he hasn’t been raising an eyebrow at her for the past minute until her husband. He stands prim and proper, hands together in front of him while she doesn’t spare his words any attention and simply glances at her husband instead. Then she notices he has an arm around Jimin’s back.
Admittedly, this would mean nothing to anyone seeing it out of context. They’re both men after all. But what makes it different is their demeanor, especially Jimin. If she doesn’t know her husband, she’d wonder if it means anything, but in all the years she’s known him, he hasn’t shown a single sign. Before her, he’s only ever had one girlfriend, and no other flings she’s known of. The textbook straight man, and from a conservative family too.
She smiles at Jimin. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Of course, how great is it to finally meet Mr. Jeon’s wife,” Jimin says with his ever-present smile, glossed lips gleaming the kind of nude pink she loves for going out to the mall.
She can’t get past his face, how it’s the kind you’d never see day-to-day. A blonde man, dressed in the kind of outfit she’d wear if she’s working corporate. The secretary of her husband.
She stands tall as she says, “You might see me around more often, actually.”
Jungkook raises an eyebrow. “Babe?”
Before he can ask what she means, she raises a hand, gesturing in the direction of his office. “I brought you lunch. I thought you’d appreciate a nice, home-cooked meal for the first time in weeks since you were so exhausted last night and you left early today, too.”
Jimin giggles. “Wow, I’m jealous—”
“Jimin,” Jungkook says monotonously, and she can see how he chastises him with a light slap on his back. She raises an eyebrow at that but she doesn’t comment on it, sighing once Jimin stalks back into the meeting room, out of sight.
It’s Jungkook’s turn to sigh once they’re alone by the door.
“You really didn’t have to, babe,” he says apologetically, leaning in to kiss her on the forehead.
“I wanted to. It feels like you haven’t had a good meal in forever, at least at work.”
Jungkook smiles at her, though it looks clipped, as if he doesn’t know how to truly feel about the gesture. She can’t tell if he’s happy about it. It’s not the same smile when she’d packed him his first lunch many months ago when he’d just started working at this company.
“Thank you for doing this, really, I appreciate it.”
She leans into his touch, as brief as it is, and she’s about to speak when he beats her to it.
“You should probably get going now. It’s a long drive back and the traffic will be terrible later.”
She tries not to show disappointment. She’s been thinking since before getting here that they can chat over lunch, maybe have him give her a tour of the office, figuring after her arrival that it would be perfect if everyone else is on lunch break. But alas.
“Your secretary,” she chooses to say, watching for any change in Jungkook’s expression, “Isn’t he heading out for lunch? Maybe we can have some privacy in your office.”
Jungkook sighs again, “I’d really love to, babe, but I unfortunately have another meeting in a few minutes, actually.”
She wants to laugh. “During lunch break?”
“Yeah,” he bemoans. “My boss is in a different timezone because of a conference in New York. He doesn’t care about our breaks, not even when he’s here.”
She glances over his shoulder, standing on her tiptoes as she peeks into the room. She sees Jimin sitting in the swivel chair right in front of the desk, legs crossed as he types.
“There’s a lot of space here, maybe I can bring your lunch here? If you’re still waiting for that meeting, we can just eat here—”
“Jungkook—I mean, Mr. Jeon, Ms. Kang has an email she needs your response to,” Jimin calls. Both of them look at him. “Says she needs it before the meeting in a bit.”
She tries not to show it but she deflates when Jungkook walks over to Jimin.
“B-babe, I’m really sorry, I appreciate it, it’s just—” And then she’s lost his attention once he’s in front of the computer, standing behind Jimin who’s still seated in the swivel chair. The blonde secretary even leans back against him, saying something that she can’t hear from where she stands. “I promise I’ll eat it! Is it in my office?”
She nods meekly. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Before she can even close the door, she hears Jimin again.
“Jungkookie, Ms. Kang says Mr. Lim says he has to meet you, not me.”
And then it’s closed shut, and now she can’t hear them.
Absentmindedly, she goes to the restroom after having a bit of trouble finding it as it’s down a narrow hallway. With how she’s barely acting like herself, she even makes the mistake of entering the men’s restroom as it’s right across from the women’s.
As she looks at herself in the mirror, she thinks of a few things. She can go back to his office and maybe keep waiting there, but with how little of his time she’s entitled to, there’s no point. She runs her hands under the water despite not using any soap, just staring blankly at the reflection of the opposite wall in the restroom mirror. She feels odd about everything that’s happened since walking into this building, right from being told her husband has a work wife to seeing said work wife.
She’d thought she’d see Jungkook acting like a buddy with some man, but Jimin is another deal entirely.
Turning off the faucet, she moves to the hand drier, stopping when she hears the door next to the restroom open. The men’s restroom.
“There you are,” comes the voice. She shrinks back where she won’t be seen, standing right behind the door, closest to the other restroom but obstructed from outside. “I thought you’d stormed off again.”
It’s her husband.
Her heart hammers through her chest in time with leather shoes tapping on the tiled floor.
“You okay, baby?”
She hears some rustling, like makeup in a pouch.
“I am, I’m just touching up my concealer. You didn’t think about it, didn’t you? That your wife could’ve seen the marks you left on me?” It’s Jimin. “But well, she wouldn't have known they were from you.”
She can barely register the sound of her own heartbeat anymore, can stare holes into the wall of the first cubicle from where she’s standing, feeling like her feet are off the ground. What am I hearing?
“How do I look?” Asks Jimin.
She hears a small, wet smack, the sound so undeniable she could recognize what it is with her eyes closed.
“Beautiful as always,” Jungkook whispers. “How about me? How do I look? Meeting’s in fifteen and I don’t want to be haggard, do I?”
Jimin giggles. “Of course, you look good. Are you going to need me on standby with the files?”
“No, it’s okay, you’re so good to me, huh, Minie?”
Another wet smack.
“Duh,” a soft moan, “Jungkook, oh, God, stop—now who said the meeting’s in fifteen?”
A chuckle. It’s Jungkook.
“Okay, fine.”
There’s silence for a few seconds and it’s only then that she registers how shallow she’s been breathing, how her fingers tremble on the door. She feels like crying but no tears are coming out, only a fight against the impulse to just open the door and enter the men’s restroom to see what they’ll do.
She hears a zipper. Probably the makeup bag. “All done! No more kissing, okay? You’ll mess it up!”
A laugh, and then Jungkook’s saying, “Can you order from that Thai place across the street? The one we got yesterday? It’s so good.”
Her heart drops.
“What about your darling wife’s lunch, huh?”
“Jimin-ah, are you jealous?” Another laugh, the kind she’s heard so many times when she’d act pissed or wants his comfort. “Why don’t I take you out later, hmm?”
“And you’ll come home late again? She’ll be suspicious. She’s already met me,” a sigh, “And you know what the others have been saying. I feel like they know.”
“They don’t matter, baby, they’d never know,” Jungkook says, and she hears a kiss again as they walk out of the restroom. They're right by the door, so much closer now. “Don’t you want to go out later?”
“Jungkookie,” Jimin whines, “I do, duh.”
“Then it’s settled. Now come on, let’s get to that meeting. I hope it’s not longer than thirty minutes,” Jungkook says, and Jimin yelps.
“Why do you have to squeeze my ass?” He says while laughing, presumably slapping Jungkook’s chest from the sound she hears.
“Sorry, you’re just kind of irresistible.”
“You’re annoying. You know your wife could’ve walked in on you groping my ass earlier,” Jimin chuckles, squealing again. “Jungkook! Stop it!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll go now,” her husband says.
She holds her breath, her chest caving as she stays rooted to her position behind the door.
“I left the files on the desk already. I’ll go to the restaurant now. You want the same thing from yesterday?”
“Mhm.”
“‘Kay, just leave the door unlocked for me,” is the last thing Jimin says before she hears their footsteps fading down the hallway.
She barely remembers her drive back home. The moment she leaves the restroom until she gets in her car, it’s like she can only hear a ringing sound in her ears, her entire body buzzing with static, all the way down to her scalp. Her fingers tremble on the stirring wheel as she navigates Seoul with tears in her eyes, wiping them constantly to keep them at bay.
The dam breaks when she reaches their home, haphazardly parking her car in the driveway. She’s barely able to shut the door behind her before she’s falling apart, crawling from the doorway to the nearest bathroom as she retches into the toilet. Only when she’s emptied her guts does she feel some form of clarity, laughing while staring at the ceiling of the bathroom.
In her whole life, she’s never reached a point where she’s sat on the bathroom floor, crying and begging to God, but that’s exactly what she’s doing now. The silence in their house is deafening, the kind that makes every worry and angry thought seep out of the nooks and crannies and into her brain. She closes her eyes, inhaling and exhaling breath after breath while her heart beats so loudly in her chest.
A cry rips out of her throat then, thinking of everything. They were going to eat lunch alone, with food that bitch bought from a restaurant, instead of what I cooked. They’d kiss in his office. They probably have already.
All things she’s never done with him.
Her own sobbing deafens her, and she clutches at the rim of the toilet bowl again, trying to vomit but there’s nothing. She wants to pour out everything inside her and flush it down the drain, if only to make space for her lungs and her heart that feels like it’s about to burst.
Is her husband gay? Is that it?
“It can’t be,” she laughs, watching her saliva pool in the toilet water. “He can’t do this to me.”
What is it about that blonde bitch that could have made him turn all of a sudden? Or has he been gay all along?
She gets up from the floor, staring at herself in the mirror. She lifts up her dress, standing back a little just so she can see her body better. She gropes at her ass, unfastens her bra, and checks if her breasts are lopsided. It just isn’t possible, she thinks to herself while wiping away her tears, laughing at how her dress is bunched up around her chest, a body part that used to be her best asset when she hadn’t been married yet, dressing in the most form-flattering clothes that hugged her boobs. Now, she feels stupid looking at them, as if they’re heavy on her and don’t belong there.
“It doesn’t mean shit,” she says to no one as she pulls her dress back down, not bothering to fasten her bra anymore. “It doesn’t matter.”
It doesn’t. It can’t.
So long as she hasn’t seen it with her own eyes, she’ll forget everything she’s heard.
That’s right. That’s what she’ll do.
She’ll ignore the part of her that wants to ask Jungkook. Instead, she’ll focus on what she can do as his wife, and how she can do things better. Isn’t that what it boils down to, anyway? How one keeps a man.
So she pays no mind to it.
Or more like, she tries. She tries to turn a blind eye to it, but throughout the day as she does chores around the house, every moment spent staring blankly at the wall leads her back to that restroom. It’s the only thing she thinks of as well when her husband comes back later that night, praising her home-cooked lunch, even apologizing for getting the fabric wrap dirty with the soup.
She almost laughs when she hears it, thinking they must have spilled it while throwing it away.
She can’t help the bitter thoughts. It consumes her.
It gets even worse as the days go by, rolling by like film that never stops and she’s paralyzed, unable to reach for the remote. She thinks she’s moving on autopilot as she does her same routine with half a mind for the same impeccable standards she’s set for herself. She gets the measurements for certain ingredients wrong while cooking, sometimes salty, sometimes too sweet. She misses spots when she vacuums the house. Sometimes leaves the front door unlocked. And so on. The kinds of accidents that would make her mom say she’s letting herself go.
But it’s inevitable.
Everything she hasn’t noticed before eventually becomes painstakingly obvious. Everything now has a reason.
Jimin. Jimin. Jimin.
It’s all her mind echoes when she finds things like it’s a game, puzzle pieces fitting together. Why Jungkook leaves early, why he comes home late, doesn’t ask her about lunch anymore. She connects it all to Jimin. Every crinkle in his suit, every little hint of a scent she picks up on him in the brief moments that they cuddle before bed. Worst of all, why they’ve never done anything more than kissing.
When her doubts in him get to that point, her mind creates the worst scenarios. One of the worst has her standing in the bathroom at random times throughout the day, just staring at her reflection and nitpicking details she’s never noticed before.
It has her putting on lingerie at night, sitting in bed and then lying down, imagining her husband walking through the door and kissing her and fucking her. But it never happens. She always takes off the lingerie an hour before he arrives, feeling all too foolish in the skimpy amount of cloth.
It backfires when he arrives home one night earlier than she expects, walking in on her while she’s wearing it. Oddly enough, she feels more ashamed with him seeing her like this, not the kind of sexy she’s imagined for a few nights already. It feels right to be ashamed though, because Jungkook looks at her like there’s nothing about her body that entices him.
He simply walks over to her, past her rather, as he lays his blazer on the chaise in front of their bed.
“Babe, what are you doing?” He asks when their eyes meet again.
She stands there like an idiot, not even registering how all this has happened. Before he’d walked in, she’d spent a good two hours trying to feel herself in the mirror, sitting in different ways on the bed that would’ve made her confident on other occasions.
He can’t possibly deny me when I look like this, right? She thinks as he walks closer now. So she puts on an act, the kind that’s never been expected of her by any man that liked her before, the kind that would have her mother saying she’s trying too hard.
She keeps her smile on her face for dear life. “I want to have sex.”
“What—”
Her heart starts beating loudly.
“And try for a baby,” she continues, though it’s not what she’s had in mind. She’s blubbering, “I’ve been off birth control for months. Haven’t I told you?”
She fidgets with the lace ribbon on the front of her babydoll negligee, this exact thing she’s worn on their honeymoon, the only time they ever had sex.
Jungkook huffs out a laugh. There’s no attraction from him that she feels as he looks her down, so far removed from any desire he should feel as her husband.
“Look, babe, you’re really gorgeous in this, but we also really need to sleep, don’t you think? It’s past ten now.”
He says it so apologetically that she feels as if she’s the one in the wrong, and the way her heart sinks to her stomach makes her want to burn her lingerie and claw at her skin until it frays off the bone. She feels too exposed in such little clothes though this specific one should’ve meant so much to her. Jungkook had called her beautiful in this before, and he’d truly meant it back then. Now, he’s turning his back on her and going to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
Her mood sours before she can help it, but as a wife, she knows not to show when she’s upset. It’s what she’s learned from her mother after all, the behavior she’s observed growing up. It’s what holds down the house. She puts on a smile just like any other time she’s felt ticked off by something Jungkook does that she’d rather not talk about to keep her peace.
“O-okay then, I’ll just, take this off,” she laughs awkwardly as she goes the opposite direction to the adjacent walk-in closet of their bedroom.
The entire time she gets undressed, her mind goes on overdrive, thinking what she can do. For some reason, it feels like she’s running out of time, as if she has to meet a mark every day he leaves for work to be able to keep their marriage afloat. Or her sanity at least, because Jungkook looks perfectly fine living like this, with a double life.
Maybe it’s why he hasn’t asked if we should try for a baby, she thinks to herself one time at church, having headed there after Jungkook had left for work. It’s been her only solace, sitting there in the front row while there’s no mass going on, staring up at the Lord and asking over and over what wrong she’s done.
Maybe he’s planning to divorce me.
She wipes away her tears. She’s crying for the first time in days.
“God,” she whispers, getting down on her knees.
—
If there’s one thing being her mother’s daughter has taught her, it’s that love comes at the expense of servitude.
I’ll do it. I’m going to do it. I have to do it.
Those are words she’s thought to herself countless times since Jungkook. From the very first day until marriage, she’s embodied action and intention. She takes pride in it too, parades it around like a trophy that other girls don’t have. Since the beginning anyway, Jungkook has always been a target for many. So she’s grown to prove that she’s the only one deserving of him.
In college, Jungkook had many girls writing confession letters to him, some asking to take photos with him on White Day, some going as far as asking if he can be their boyfriend. Jungkook had never cared for them. None of them were like her, persistent and truthful about her feelings every single time their paths crossed.
She’s carried that mentality with her into their marriage, and she’ll keep it even now. Even if Jimin isn’t a woman, even if there’s nothing in him she can compare herself to, she’ll still win against him. In a way, it should be funny that she even thinks it should be a competition. She's the wife while he's barely known her husband for months.
You can say her change of heart came to her as an epiphany in confession, trying her hardest to leave as few details as possible all while remaining honest about her feelings while talking to the attending priest. As much as she wants to seek refuge in God and His words, she still doesn't want to taint the image of her husband to a priest, especially the parish priest of their church. The priests rarely come and go and have already become part of the community, staying for years at a time. She wouldn't want her husband to be seen any differently by the same priests who have blessed them after mass countless times.
In the name of their marriage, she might have toned it down, might have said her plight comes from his lack of attention, nothing more.
"Child, remember your study. Your husband, with all his faults, loves you," the priest told her. "Ephesians 5:25. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. As your husband has for you."
"Yes, father," she'd said at the time, trying, instead, to find faith in God that her own faithfulness in her husband might fix it.
"So let love and faithfulness never leave you, child. Bind it around your home and write it deep in your heart," the priest had said, and with her tears falling came the words that changed it all for her. "And then you will win."
It's what drives her to keep going, holding on to words that would never fail her.
She doesn’t stop waking up early in the morning to cook both Jungkook’s breakfast and lunch. She makes sure he takes the packed lunch no matter how much he hurries in the morning. Some nights, she even stays up just to check if he’s already asleep, waking up ahead of him just to see if he’ll check his phone when he wakes up. She does it all so that in the morning, she’s awake before he can leave.
She tiptoes out of the bedroom when the sun’s up, rubbing tired eyes as she looks at the woman in the mirror, the persevering wife she’s become, determined to make things work. Every single day, she doesn’t tire of it.
She doesn’t know if Jungkook eats any of the food she makes. At first, she attaches small notes with different messages each day, asking her husband what he thinks of them come evening. Now, she ceases to care. If at dinner he says the lunch was really good, babe, then she’ll choose to believe it. No questions asked.
Some weeks later, she decides to give him another surprise visit.
Unlike the first time, she intends to put her best foot forward, walking steadfastly and with confidence. She’s all done up that day, clad in a nice dress, nails manicured and her hair straightened. The truth is, she hasn’t thought of this day coming again. All this time, her plan of action has been to stay ignorant to what happens at his office, but her stark realization has been that her home isn’t the playing field. There, all Jungkook does is eat and sleep. His office is where he spends most of his days, where he has all the freedom in the world with Jimin, no wife to account for.
She walks past the receptionist unlike her first visit, heading straight for the elevators. She doesn’t see any of the four men this time around, which she’s almost thankful for as her nerves somewhat come back once she’s on his floor. She’d rather not have anyone mention her husband’s work wife again, even if it’s true. She doesn’t know how much they’re aware of. She has no idea if, to them, it’s simply a joke. Or if, God forbid, one of them has seen Jungkook with Jimin in a compromising position.
Nevertheless, she tries not to think of it as she heads straight for his office, not even bothering to check herself in the restroom because she knows she looks good.
Here goes nothing, she thinks with a deep breath, putting on her best smile as she knocks on the door.
One second.
Two.
Three.
She knocks again, and the door opens. Unlike last time, she stares at Jimin, meeting his smile with her own. As expected, he’s dressed to the nines again, wearing a boat neck sweater with the same form-fitting slacks. Ever so pristine, his face looks bathed in a glow. She can’t tell how much makeup he’s wearing, but the mere show of the freckles on his cheeks must mean he naturally doesn’t have dark under eyes.
His eyebrows furrow for a split second when he sees who she is, before his eyelids lower to look at her with a dead stare.
No more acting?
“Mr. Jeon, your wife’s here,” Jimin says in such a monotonous voice that she almost forgets how flirty he’s been with her husband behind closed doors.
No more Jungkookie?
Her lips twitch in a sneer but she walks into Jungkook’s office anyway.
“Babe!” Jungkook exclaims. He’s definitely surprised but she’s not sure it’s in the way she wants. “Another surprise, huh?”
“Of course, just wanted to see how my husband’s doing at work,” she chimes, watching Jimin in her peripheral vision.
He’s taken his seat at his own desk, acting much differently than he had the first time. He’s a different person as she sits comfortably in the chair in front of her husband’s desk. She makes her presence in the room obvious, chatting up a conversation with Jungkook on the traffic on her way to the building, rounding the table and preparing his lunch for him, even trying to offer some to Jimin as she says he might be hungry.
“No thank you, I’ve eaten lunch,” Jimin answers with that signature eye smile of his. “Mr. Jeon even treated me to coffee, right, sir?”
Jungkook looks like he’s about to choke on air as they both look at him. She doesn’t even allow him time to think about what to answer before she’s saying, “I thought you didn’t like coffee?”
“He likes it sweet,” Jimin says at the same time that Jungkook answers, “I don’t, babe.”
And then it’s the two of them looking at each other. It’s almost funny but it shouldn’t be. Jungkook’s eyes are firm on Jimin, and she knows that look. She knows how he is when he’s angry, because it takes everything in him to hold back. He hasn’t been angry at her often, but it’s so distinct compared to any other expression on his face that she recognizes it in an instant. The deep set of his eyebrows, the pointed stare, the locked jaw. She feels triumphant that her husband is angry at his little mistress.
He probably thinks she’s not looking because she’s arranging the food on the table.
She speaks on his behalf, addressing Jimin, “Would it be okay to ask if you can give us some privacy?”
That shakes Jungkook out of his stupor, looking at her instead. “Babe, he’s working—”
“No, it’s fine,” Jimin cuts him off, standing ever gracefully from his chair, iced coffee in hand. “It’s your little bonding time, I understand.”
And she feels like she’s won.
She probably overstays her welcome after that. She knows it because she can see it on Jungkook’s face. He has a habit of tapping his foot when he’s getting impatient, wanting to be done with something. He’s fidgety, probably thinks she doesn’t notice it but she does. She recognizes every little thing about him, even more so now because of his affair with his secretary. It should hurt her to see him like that but she feels happy instead, like a cat that got the cream. She loves that she’s the wife and her husband can do nothing about it, smiling and laughing along throughout lunch time.
She glances at her watch, just right on time for the end of lunch break before she goes through with the final thing she wants to commit to. It’s not common for her, especially not outside of the house, to ask for a kiss from him, much less initiate one. The shock is prominent on Jungkook’s face when she strides up toward him, holding on to the armrests of his swivel chair as she leans down for a kiss.
It’s brave. It’s scandalous. Who is she, really? She doesn’t think she would’ve done this if she wasn’t so desperate. Even so, it’s worth it. She’ll never be able to forget the look on Jimin’s face when he walks in on them kissing, Jungkook sitting still in his chair, having to kiss her back even when his secretary's already standing in the doorway. Granted, he doesn’t want it and only does it to appease her, maybe he can tell that she knows, but she’ll consider it a win.
It’s rewarding when she sees how Jimin has no choice but to keep a darling smile when she acts surprised and finally pulls away from her husband, mumbling, “Oh, I’m sorry we didn’t notice the time.”
It’s just the first of the next few times she tries to get a leg over Jimin, making her surprise visits more frequent until it becomes less of a surprise and more of a punishment for him.
“How’s it going with your husband?”
She sighs. “It’s fine, mom. We’re okay now.”
“Are you really, honey? I haven’t heard from you since that call.”
She looks at the rearview mirror when the car behind her honks so loudly, impatient at the intersection.
It’s another day of coming to Jungkook’s office. The traffic is bad today, what with it being the day of the first snow. It’s usually not a heavy snowfall, but this year it seems like winter is unforgiving. It’s also been too cold to wear anything nice to Jungkook’s office since she prefers not to freeze from her car to the entrance even if it’s just a bit of walking.
It’s also been weeks, and quite a few things have changed.
“Yes, mom, I promise we’re good,” she says as an answer to assure her mom.
Since that time she called, she’s regretted it. She’s not used to divulging information on her marriage with anyone, only wanting to show the highs of their relationship even to her parents, most especially her mother. She understands it might have been a shock to the her old mom what she’d told her that day, and she figures it might have been better if she’s kept her completely in the dark. It wouldn’t have helped their situation anyway. She couldn’t have stopped Jungkook from cheating on her with his secretary even if she wanted to. The only thing telling her mother has done is make her look like a pitiful wife who can’t keep her husband satisfied.
Well, at least, her husband and his secretary have less time to consider making out and fucking in his office now that she’s there more frequently at lunch time. With how hectic work is at their office, the only time they can possibly sneak in some privacy is during their hour-long break, but she’s well taken over that. She realizes it’s really the only time they have to each other if it’s true that Jimin comes in much later than Jungkook in the morning and leaves much earlier in the afternoon because of his commute during the rush hour. That makes her feel better, though God would most likely frown upon her for looking down on Jimin because of his financial status.
“Make sure to tell him you’re spending Christmas Eve here okay?” Her mom reminds her just before ending the call.
She chuckles. “Of course, of course, we’ll see you in a week. Don’t forget our coffee date this Friday, bye, mom.”
She sighs, putting her phone down in the passenger’s seat.
Unable to have some privacy now, Jungkook has resorted to asking her if she’ll come during lunch, probably so he can sneak in something with Jimin if she says she’ll be a little late. Except she never is. She’s always on time, arriving at their building right on the dot at noon. If not, she's earlier, choosing to sit in the car, retouching her lipstick so it's the perfect shade of nude pink she loves. And when the clock strikes twelve, she's passing the revolving door at the entrance. Her punctuality has made her easily recognizable to most of the staff in the lobby, having become acquaintances with the receptionist and the security guards.
Apart from having Jungkook’s time, this is also one of the good things brought about by her commitment to visiting her husband. She’s no longer nervous coming here, no longer doubtful of herself. If anything, she’s more confident now, knowing that she’s earned a reputation as the beautiful wife of one of the senior employees. She comes so often that they know her name now, the guard even ushering her to the elevator sometimes. It’s given her a sense of security in the sense that she knows how highly they regard her, that they’d be shocked to know her husband’s cheating on her if it ever comes down to their secret coming out.
How could Mr. Jeon cheat on his wife? Something like that.
It’s one of the things she holds on to, fully believing she’s done something that Jimin can never undo. It’s like it’s all over. Each time she comes back, the blonde little bitch is barely the flirty secretary he had been the first time. As good as he can be at his job, no matter how much he makes life better for Jungkook as his secretary, he’s still not his wife. He’s simply a temporary secretary who'll most likely move along to the next job when his paycheck isn't enough. He’s not the one everyone is greeting as she reaches the floor of Jungkook’s department, eyes on her whenever there are still employees who haven’t left for lunch.
On her way to and fro, she sees them sometimes in the parking lot and they ask what lunch she has for Jungkook, joking that they’d like some of it as well. It’s playful small talk that gets her on their good side, but it proves to be more than that when she comes across one of the newer employees in the elevator this time, greeting the younger woman, Hana, with a small bow.
“What’s Mr. Jeon’s lunch today?” Hana asks.
“Oh, just some kimbap for today,” she answers.
And then the conversation just continues naturally. From the elevator to their floor, Hana talks to her about the job, even how she’s helped Jungkook sometimes. She nods along to every anecdote, but she stops when Hana says something along the lines of a company party.
“A party?” She asks.
Hana nods. “Has Mr. Jeon not told you yet? We can bring our partners, they said. Well, not that I have one—”
“When is it?” She asks with a smile.
Another good thing about coming here often and befriending the employees: learning about things her husband would never tell her.
“This Friday. The 22nd.”
Her mother immediately comes to mind. She’s just reminded her not even an hour ago that they have a mother-daughter day together. She decides then, at that moment, that she would have to reschedule with her, knowing her mom would understand if she tells her why she’s cancelling. They’ll be coming home for Christmas after all.
“Is that so?” She hums. “I’ll see if I can go. But I do hope I can.”
“Of course, no pressure!” Hana says with a chuckle, bowing before she leaves.
The party is the first thing she asks about that night, choosing not to bring it up at the office lest Jimin’s there and he hears about it. She doesn’t want him to know how little her husband tells her. It’ll probably get him thinking he still has some sort of edge over her, even though the past weeks have proven that she’s not just some meek, little wife he can walk all over with his Chelsea boots. That annoying thing that gyrates her ears when she hears the sound of it.
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to go,” is what Jungkook tells her when she brings it up at dinner. He doesn’t look at her when he says it, which is exactly what she’s imagined before he’s even walked in through the front door. Of course, she’s pictured every single expression he can enact, every excuse he would’ve come up with.
“Well, I’d love to!” She says excitedly. She’s rehearsed that too. Probably too much, because Jungkook blinks at her in surprise. From her affirmation or her overt enthusiasm, she doesn't know.
“Okay then,” he chuckles, clearing his throat after. He’s barely eaten his food. “The theme is ugly Christmas sweater.”
He says it with no mirth, obviously not having expected the positive reaction instead of a tirade of questions about him being insensitive to her wants. She sees it all on his face.
“We should get matching ones,” she adds before the conversation can die down, and while she can tell that her husband is opposed to it, he agrees anyway.
With how little time they have left until then, she even suggests that she’ll shop for the sweaters by herself. She can already picture the look on Jimin’s face when they walk hand in hand, dressed in matching clothes. Husband and wife. She knows him, knows that he’s single and has never had a serious relationship because their whole department talks about it, especially after she’s mentioned to them once that she’s going with Jungkook and the employees had a headcount of who has a partner coming with them as a plus-one and Jimin’s nowhere to be found.
She’ll rub it in his face all night long.
Jungkook has never liked colorful clothing.
It’s one of the few things that’s been awfully consistent about him ever since they met, his wardrobe consisting of neutrals. Well, mostly black and white. It’s been that way forever, and no matter the attempt at trying to get him to wear anything else, it’s been a fruitless pursuit. So the addition of one bright red sweater for the Christmas party is an eye sore on his side of their walk-in closet.
“Babe, we’re gonna be late!” She shouts while putting on her earrings, the only jewelry she’s wearing besides her wedding ring. The sweater has a mock neckline that's almost itchy, the polyester blend tickling the nape of her neck. Any other time, she would've worn a necklace to complete her jewelry, but it doesn't allow for that.
It’s pretty simple, arguably not the kind of ugly Christmas sweater that lives up to its name. She’s never truly understood the name for it as most sweaters are either red or green with some holiday elements, but maybe that’s the point, because no adult would wear it willingly if it's no Christmas. As is Jungkook who grumbles while she puts it on him.
“Why?” She chuckles as he looks at himself in the mirror. “You look good!”
“If you say so,” he tries to laugh as well.
It’s finally the night of Jungkook’s company Christmas party. She remembers being on the phone with her mom the previous night, apologizing to her profusely that she’ll have to cancel their little mother-daughter date. As much as she’s told her, her mom doesn’t know the gravity of the situation and what’s at stake. All she knows about it is the possibility of her husband cheating and not that it’s an actuality, so she even jokes that they might as well not come home to Gwangju for the holidays.
In the end, she chooses this party because it means a lot for her to be there. If she’s made herself recognizable to enough of the employees, this is the time for her to be in one space with all of them and show them that she’s Jungkook’s darling wife. She’s been thinking of the moment they'd walk in since buying their sweaters, intent on walking through the entrance hand in hand with her husband, showing off their couple attire.
It goes exactly as planned when they arrive, Jungkook appeasing her wants when they get in the elevator and he presses the floor of the company’s main function room with his free hand, the other occupied by their laced fingers. She’s immediately greeted by Christmas decor when the elevator doors open on the eighth floor, leading them down a red carpeted hallway to the giant doors of the function room.
It’s even more decorative inside, extravagant and pompous with all the red and gold, various enlarged ornaments hanging from the high ceiling, a big Christmas tree front and center on the stage. She’s never been to a company party before but she reckons this must be one of the most grand ones. There are a lot of attendees too, the tables full of not only familiar faces but their plus-ones as well. As far as employees are concerned, the only people she outside of Jungkook's department are the receptionists and the guards. They greet her on her way with Jungkook to their table, bowing amiable at those she's meeting for the first time.
“Mr. Jeon!” One of the newbies under Jungkook's supervision greets them once they sit down, immediately handed glasses of wine.
She bows when she’s greeted too, even exchanging brief hugs with the wives at their table.
“Love the sweaters,” Taehyung says from beside her, and it’s then that she realizes he’s even there.
“Thank you, we wanted to match,” she says in response, and Jungkook can only smile tightly before she sees the light in his eyes return at the sight of something else. Or rather, someone by the entrance.
“Oh, it’s Jiminie!” Taehyung calls out, even standing up.
It calls her attention. Begs it, actually.
In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t have been too confident. The glint in Jimin’s eyes as soon as their gazes meet should have been a telltale sign that he considers this night special just like she does, as if it’s a matter of winning or losing. It’s obvious just from the way he looks, amping it up and ditching the ugly in the ugly Christmas sweater theme entirely.
Of course, he’s wearing a sweater, but it’s not ugly by any means. Not even quirky, as most Christmas sweaters are. There's no hint of the holidays; It’s a rich red cashmere knit with a boat neckline, something that seems to be a favorite of his, with batwing sleeves that make the shoulders drop with so much as a high wave to potentially expose his collarbones and decollete if he wants to play it sensually. It stops just shy of his wrists, both adorned with dainty bracelets. He’s dressed so differently from all the men but he looks like he can’t care less, most likely even wants to stand out. The glinting necklace around his neck is enough of a show too.
J in gold cursive, which she hopes is because of his own name with that initial.
“Hello, I was almost late,” is the first thing he says when he reaches their table and she almost scoffs.
Eyeliner, lipstick, and lip gloss too. The whole nine yards.
He sits down to the left of her husband who seems to stare at him so intently. The others don’t notice.
“No plus-one?” Taehyung asks Jimin.
“Nope,” He answers with a smile, and their eyes meet again.
The moment the party starts and the games ensue, she realizes she should’ve known.
All the wives and partners—mostly women, as the company is predominantly men—are resigned to the tables, watching their husbands and boyfriends. The games are fit for men anyway, which is a funny thing to watch when Jimin’s standing amongst them like a fish out of water, would’ve been funnier if he’s not latching onto Jungkook’s arm for help in every single game.
She can’t help but sit in fury silently because, to any other person, it’s perfectly normal. She doesn’t have a say in it, does she? She can’t go up there and try to pry her husband away from another guy because it would just look stupid. Two guys? Everyone else would just see it as friendly even with the way Jimin acts. He might be known as Jungkook’s secretary and his work wife, but in the weeks and months she’s come to know their department, not a single person has badmouthed him or thought weirdly of him being called a work wife. He’s friendly with all of them and has earned their respect and favor as far as being likeable as a secretary goes. It’s like his presence naturally begs attention and everyone will willingly give it to him happily.
“You okay?” Jungkook asks as he sits down after the first two games, seeing that she’s barely moved at all.
“Of course, I love seeing you have fun,” she says with a smile and then he’s getting back up, to her dismay.
She glances at the stage and there’s nothing yet, just the event screensaver playing as the hosts stand off to the side for a bit. She wants him to sit back down.
“I’ll just go to the restroom,” her husband says breathlessly and she hopelessly looks at him jogging out of the function room.
Her eyes inevitably scan the whole place, and when she sees that Jimin is nowhere to be found, she gets up too. She’s not careful, the chair creaking loudly as she stands up, calling the attention of the few people still seated nearby while everyone’s getting snacks from the grazing table. Taehyung’s the only one who looks at her for more than a few seconds though, but she barely notices him until she realizes he’s gotten up too, following her.
She doesn’t make it past the arch at the entrance before he grabs her by the wrist.
“Where are you going?” He asks.
She stops in her tracks, turning around. He lets her go.
“The restroom,” she answers with a smile, trying not to show her shock at being touched by him. Even if they're cordial, she hasn't quite taken to him just like the other three men who were with him in the elevator when she first visited the office. He's nice, she'll give him that, but certainly not enough to have the liberty of putting his hands on her.
She’s thankful the function room is so big that the people are scattered, even more thankful that it’s dimly lit, because no one’s looking at them. She’s especially glad that no one will see the way Taehyung chuckles, hands in his pockets as he says, “You know, don’t you?”
Her heart stills, hands clenching at her sides. She holds back anything that might give her away, but the way her anger consumes her makes it impossible. Her mother has always told her she turns red when angry, after all.
Mr. Jeon’s work wife. Taehyung has called Jimin that before.
“You know,” she says this time, her upper lip curling in a sneer before she copies his tone, “don’t you?”
Despicable, she thinks to herself as she turns back around, ready to find Jungkook but Taehyung holds her back again. Though this time, he doesn't need to do anything, only saying a few words that have her looking at him in a different light.
“Don't do this to him.”
As dark as it is where they are, she can see the earnest look in his eyes. As if he's asking for a favor and not demanding. She chuckles because the realization dawns on her that he's asking her not to confront Jimin, probably thinking she'll humiliate him. Then another epiphany comes, and her eyes widen at the sight of him, the pieces falling into place as she figures it out.
He likes Jimin.
What a wretched world, she thinks to herself, wanting to laugh.
“You really do know about it,” she says.
Taehyung takes a step forward and she takes one step backward toward the doors. The gall he has to ask of her not to reprimand her husband's mistress has her heaving deep breaths.
“What do you think you're asking of me?” She says in disbelief, her tone disappointed, “I'm his wife.”
Taehyung looks like he wants to say something but before he can, she’s already walking out of the door. It’s crazy to think of how Taehyung has known, has probably seen and heard things firsthand and yet he’s done nothing. He’s even joked with her about Jimin being her husband’s work wife a few times in the break room. He could’ve told her the truth that time or any other day since she began to visit more frequently.
And yet, nothing. All because he seems to be wrapped around Jimin’s finger just like her husband.
What kind of person are you? She asks inwardly, thinking of Jimin as she washes her hands in the restroom. There’s really no reason for her to be there. She should be looking for Jungkook, pinning his attention back on her, but her encounter with Taehyung has her baffled, staring blankly at the mirror before she’s walking back out.
I need wine.
She’s sighing at the thought of not surviving the night sober when she runs into someone, bumping into them. She has half a mind to apologize, but when she looks up to see who it is, she almost freezes.
It’s Jimin.
“Oh, why are you out here?” He asks, putting on an act. There are employees coming and passing in the hallway, some even greeting them. She distances herself from him as casually as she can. “Mr. Jeon has just gone back inside.”
“Thank you, I was just waiting for him,” She chimes, choosing to break it off if he’s already saying something that can be her cue to leave. She’d rather not have to listen to him any longer than she has to, because she’s getting a picture of the kind of person Jimin is.
If Taehyung can be so smitten with him to the point of silence even when Jimin’s probably getting fucked by one of their superiors and would never return his feelings should he confess, she can’t imagine how Jimin possibly acts around his coworkers. Does he bat his eyelashes at them like he does with her husband? Does he smile sweetly? Does he lean when he laughs, all starry-eyed?
It’s all she thinks about when she goes back inside and the rest of the program continues. But the more she observes him as the games go on and Jimin mingles with their colleagues, she finds that there’s nothing special he’s doing. It’s just that he’s… himself.
She hates him. She hates how her brain supplies the word pretty when she tries for an insult, hates how he has an air of confidence and charisma about him that has everyone turning to look and listen. She hates how when he smiles, Jungkook smiles back at him. She hates all of his little behaviors with her husband that have always felt unnatural for her to do, the two of them lost in their bubble as they play a game of Musical Chairs, eyes on each other as they dance around the chairs.
At some point when drinks are passed around, she ends up taking one. She doesn’t have a high tolerance but she’s done toughing out the entire night sober. Everyone’s wives seem to be drinking anyway. They won’t look at her and whisper if they’re doing the same thing she is.
“That’s your third glass!” Laughs Hanseul’s wife who’s moved to sit closer to her while the men begin another game. “You okay?”
She chuckles, dabbing her lips with the back of her hand. She’s thankful she’s wearing only lip gloss tonight so no tint transfers onto the rim of the glass as she drinks.
“Of course! I do drink wine sometimes with Jungkook,” She answers. A fat lie.
What makes it all worse is the final game. A relay. She doesn’t listen to the rules and it doesn’t help that she’s already tipsy. She barely has any idea what’s going on when everyone starts to cheer loudly, looking up from her fifth glass of champagne to see Jungkook carrying Jimin on his back as he runs, high-fiving the next person in line when they reach their team at the starting line again.
“What’s going on?” She asks, words almost slurred.
No one hears her amidst all the noise, and she watches as Jungkook lets Jimin down from his back. His arms never leave his husband’s neck as Jungkook turns around, hugging him briefly with a smile only to keep an arm at his waist still as they laugh at a woman from their team trying to carry their heaviest player. It’s like the world slows down around her. Among everything they’ve done, this is the one that hurts the most, even more than their illicit conversation in the restroom that she’s heard firsthand. Here, in front of everybody, they don’t seem to care at all what they’re doing. They hold hands and hug and laugh, and no one gives a damn either. Even with her there to see them, they have no inhibitions.
When the game ends and they all walk back to their tables, clapping and cheering, she stares daggers at them, silent as Jungkook sits down next to her.
“Babe, why are you drinking?” He asks when he sees the empty champagne glasses in front of her, even counting them and calling for a waiter to take them away.
“It’s just champagne,” she tells him in the most casual way she can, keeping her tipsiness at bay but it’s hard. She almost makes a call to end it since it’s time for them to eat, the waiters already on their way to the tables with entrees. She almost thinks she’s had enough to drink but then Jimin’s whisking away Jungkook again when someone from a nearby table waves at them, calling them over.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” Jungkook tells her and then he’s gone.
Taehyung’s looking at her when the waiter arrives with their table’s food.
“Excuse me,” she tells the young man with a smile. “Can I have another glass of champagne?”
It’s just champagne. What harm can it possibly do? At worst, she’ll fall asleep and the party will be over when she wakes up.
The last—and only—time she was drunk was at a college party.
She’d never really been one to drink, brought up in a conservative Christian family that only ever served sparkling juice even during New Year’s. Their family events were always proper and observed etiquette, sometimes hosted with full programs. Because of her upbringing, she never saw drinking as a social activity and never had to be in situations where it was deemed “natural” to drink, let alone be peer-pressured to.
Until college.
It was the first time she had ever consumed alcohol, let alone take a sip. The taste was immediately repulsive, but everyone at the table had been cheering for her to finish her shot so she drank the rest of it in one go, eyes closed as she braced herself for it.
That night made her realize why she had never tried drinking before and why her parents never encouraged it. On top of the disgusting taste and smell which was an acrid strong scent like rubbing alcohol, she saw firsthand how people acted when drunk.
To some, it only mildly affected them at first, but even if they said they were just tipsy, she could tell the difference. The half-lidded eyes, the flush in their cheeks, how they seemed to giggle at everything. She understood then why people got drunk if it was so easy to be in denial about it. Before she knew it, the ones who had said they were still sober were already dancing blackout drunk, some grinding on strangers they'd never met—a freshman on a senior—while others were emptying their guts in the bathrooms.
There was a third category, the one where they just stared blankly at the wall. She was one of those people, too overwhelmed by her own drunkenness that all she could do was stare at everyone else.
Since then, she never found a reason to drink again. She'd only thought to give in to her college friends if only for the sake of saying she tried it. If she had to do it again, she never would. If not for the parties, there was nowhere else she’d have to drink anyway. She wasn't like her friends who went out on Friday nights to get hammered and make out with men in dingy clubs.
She’d always thought that the act of drinking in itself was improper for a woman, worse yet that it seemed to make them hedonistic. All tongues and grinding with no love to it.
And then Jungkook came along and her belief was further set in stone. With her eyes set on him, she embodied all the values her mother had taught her.
It hasn't changed even now. In fact, it's only strengthened. Drinking means, for a married woman, that she doesn't care to be pregnant. Even though her husband never initiates, it's better for her to think that everyone is under the assumption that they're trying. If she doesn't drink, she's honorable. She's a good wife trying to conceive.
She’s vowed never to drink, and yet it's happened again. She doesn’t have much recollection of her last drunken time, just that at some point, she had fallen asleep and had woken up in the morning on the same couch.
This time, she comes to in a dark room, what would be pitch black if not for the city skyline outside. Her head feels like it’s beating in tandem with her heart as she looks around the dark space, realizing she’s no longer in the function room. With everything barely visible, her mind’s creating shapes in the dark, making her dizzier like she has to vomit.
“Jungkook-ah?” She calls out, noticing that she’s alone.
When she tries to sit upright, she finds that she’s been lying on the chaise in his office. She’s a little sweaty too, the air conditioning no longer running. It makes her wonder what time it is, but with how silent it is that she can hear a pin drop from the other end of the hallway, she guesses it might be midnight. The party must be over now and everyone else must be going home, or already be home if she’s not hearing anyone on this floor of the building.
“Jungkook? Babe?” She speaks with her throat clogged and dehydrated.
No one answers again.
She hasn’t been drunk in a long time and it’s hitting her in full force. She can barely stand up, stumbling on her feet when she tries. Finding the door makes the dull ache in her temples worse, having to reach her hands every which way and hitting things in the process. She nearly falls to her feet but she luckily latches onto a door handle, and with a sigh, she twists it open.
“Finally,” she says with much effort, finding that even breathing is hard.
When she looks up, it’s just as dark. She decides not to turn on any of the lights as that would be another ordeal on its own, trying to sluggishly walk to the elevators instead after taking off her heels, now barefoot. She thinks she might have a better chance of finding Jungkook if she goes back to the function room, but her feet take her to the restroom instead when she feels like she’s about to vomit.
Drunk like this, everything seems far away, worse with the darkness that blends every corner into one another. She can’t run if she wants to, still so lethargic as she walks with a hand on the wall to guide herself. Thankfully, she reaches the restroom, though she doesn’t even get to the toilet, leaning on the sink instead as she tries to poke into her mouth to force herself to vomit. She thinks the headache and the dizziness will go away once she gets the alcohol out of her system, but the more she’s pushing at the back of her throat with her fingers, the worse it gets. All it does is make her salivate all over her fingers, trembling in a cold sweat at how awful she feels.
She eventually stops trying, hanging her head instead as she waits for the waves of pain in her head to subside at least a little bit. When it does, she moves to the door to leave again, but she hears the sounds of footsteps and immediately, her heart seizes. She has half a mind to go behind the door, leaning on the wall by the light switch instead, freezing up and holding her breath.
Funnily enough, this should’ve been her call to go outside and see who it is, perhaps ask if they can help her find her husband. Or if it’s Jungkook himself, she can say thank God you’re here and then they’ll go home.
The thing is that it is Jungkook.
But he’s with Jimin.
She’d recognize the sound of her husband’s footsteps anywhere, the rhythm of his steps and how his feet strike the floor. And with all the months and weeks of coming more frequently to his office, she can tell when Jimin is coming too, from all the times she’d be alone with Jungkook in his office, timing their kisses to Jimin’s arrival after lunch break. It certainly helps that it’s easy to tell him apart from everyone else, since he’s the only one who wears chelsea boots with heels higher than usual for men, such that it’s a distinct clicking sound that differentiates him from the women too.
“She’s not there,” Jungkook says, sounding hurried.
“Relax, she’s probably gone down to the function room.”
Jimin’s voice comes out easily, like the wife of the man he’s having an affair with is barely an afterthought. She hears him with a slight echo, and she closes her eyes at the realization that they're in the restroom, remembering all too well the last time she’s been in this position.
They’ve most likely gone to his office going by their reaction, but she feels that their concern is far from being good-willed if the way that she starts hearing kissing sounds can attest. By the breathiness alone, she guesses it’s Jimin.
“Baby, not now,” Jungkook says, and she hears footsteps backward. She imagines—hopes—that Jungkook has pushed him away, coming to his senses that it’s wrong, that he shouldn’t be cheating on his wife, that he should turn back around and find her so they can go home.
A scoff.
“Really? That’s what you have to say?” Jimin’s tone makes her want to claw at her skin, pure disbelief at the audacity that he has. “I haven't had you for a month and tonight when I thought we could get away with something for once, you push me away?”
“Attitude, baby, you know it’s not like that,” Jungkook says to scold him as if he’s chastising a child rather than an adult.
“I’m the one with an attitude?” Jimin chuckles. “You can’t touch and grope me all night and then want to go look for your wife all of a sudden right when I finally have you for myself.”
“Jimin-ah…” Her husband’s voice comes out so softly that it feels wrong to hear, as if she’s the one who should be careful to eavesdrop when she’s his wife and not his mistress.
“What? Now you feel sorry because you don’t like seeing me cry?” She hears a sniffle, and when Jimin speaks again, he sounds like he’s been wounded. “It’s been months since we started dating, Jungkookie, do I have to remind you that you’re the one who came on to me first?”
She closes her eyes at that, hands balled in fists, biting her bottom lip to stop her own tears. She hopes it’s not the truth. She hopes Jimin had been the one to seduce Jungkook, that her husband had only given in. She can’t bear the thought of him seeking out someone other than her. Worse yet, they're dating, not just fucking behind her back. It's so much more revolting, the thought that what they have isn't just a temporary fling.
“Of course, Jimin-ah, you don’t have to remind me,” Jungkook’s voice is even softer now and she hears footsteps again, followed by a soft, chaste kiss.
Against her wishes, her mind conjures the image of him coming closer to Jimin, consoling him like all the times she’s been mad at him and he’s done the same thing. “And I’m sorry about it, baby, I promise you have me.”
She hears Jimin sigh. “Touch me?”
It sounds like a plea but she knows better than that, knows it's him trying to get his way.
Leave him and look for me, she says in a prayer over and over again as she closes her eyes, trying to drown out the sound of ringing in her ears and the kissing that ensues. It’s soft, it’s slow, it’s the kind that she never gets from him.
“You’re unbelievable,” Jungkook’s voice comes out rough, almost just as wanton as the sigh that leaves Jimin. “I missed this.”
“Are we…” Jimin’s voice drifts off, like what he would’ve said next is already implicit.
And it is, because she understands what he means.
When she hears the rustle of clothes, she doesn’t know what comes over her, but she tiptoes past the door as quietly as she can. She doesn't even have to peek into the men's restroom to see them.. The layout is exactly the same, with a wall right at the entrance to obscure some part of it inside but not enough to hide the line of wall-mounted sinks and the wide mirror. The light is on the far end so that the rest is dimly lit like a club bathroom in its after hours.
That’s where Jimin stands with her husband as if he’s situated them right where they can be seen, as if he knows there’s a chance someone would walk by and look inside, giving them a show. And it might as well truly be one, seared into her memory as the sight that greets her is something she’s sure she’ll never forget.
Her husband has Jimin sitting on the counter, legs wrapped around his hips as the blonde grasps at his sweater—the sweater that she had picked. It makes her so livid that her voice dies inside her throat, her breath coming in short, inaudible gasps once the sweater comes off and Jungkook is left in his undershirt. It’s a sight she’s always imagined, the flex of his muscles as he strains to be patient to fuck her. He’s never been like that with her in all the years they’ve been married and seeing him like this with someone else is quickly becoming a wound, one that might never heal.
The fact that she’s watching her husband kiss someone else in front of her the way she’s always wanted to be kissed feels surreal still somehow, like her mind’s playing tricks on her. She rubs her eyes in spite of her tears, as if she can wake up from reality if she wills herself to.
God, please don’t let this be real, she prays.
She hasn’t thought of them doing anything besides kissing, hellbent on keeping the last bits of her sanity. It’s the very thing she knows for sure that happens behind her back; it’s nothing she hasn’t cried herself to sleep over. And yet, it’s so much worse than all the nightmares she’s had of it. Right here, watching them do it, the pain is so palpable that it takes her breath away.
She stands there in the dark, hoping and praying, but she knows that no matter how hard she’s tried not to think of it, they’ve definitely done more than just kiss. The way her husband’s hands roam Jimin’s chest under his sweater is enough to tell. There’s a burgeoning jealousy in the pit of her stomach, knowing he’s never touched her like that while his hands seem to ravish the skin of a guy he’s only known for several months.
“Ngh, Jungkookie,” Jimin moans, and her eyes snap up to where he’s got his hands in her husband’s hair, pulling him close to his chest. “So good, ahh!”
That’s enough for Jungkook to take off Jimin’s sweater, pushing it up and off, leaving his upper body bare. He keens when Jungkook’s nimble fingers find his nipples again, trying to push him away and cowering from his touch.
“So sensitive,” Jungkook chuckles like it pleases him so much. “‘S why I love your nipples, baby.”
“Ahh, stop,” Jimin whines, trying to push him away when he twists one bud between his fingers, the other trapped in his mouth. She closes her eyes at the sound of her husband suckling on it but that worsens it, because then she imagines what if it had been her. If he'd do this to her. “Just fuck me already—”
She opens her eyes again, zeroing in on Jimin’s already fucked out face.
No, she wants to say, but she can see Jungkook’s reflection in the mirror and he’s smirking, his own eyes focused on Jimin.
“Impatient?” He says, raising an eyebrow as he trails his fingers down Jimin’s abdomen, the soft abs caving.
Jimin smiles, coy. “Of course, you know I’ve missed your cock.”
“Hmm,” Jungkook hums, fingers trailing further south, until it reaches his navel and he’s tugging at Jimin’s belt. “Why don’t you show me how much you missed it then?”
That earns him an eye roll with a smile. It’s like they’ve got all the time in the world as they stare at each other, she thinks to herself. Her husband doesn’t look at least a little worried that there’s someplace else he has to be, that he should probably be looking for her instead. There’s no rush in the way they banter and tease. It makes her look away.
“I have a few ways I can show you how much I’ve missed it,” Jimin says and that makes her look again. Immediately, she goes still, leaning on the wall like she wants it to swallow her. “You know, being fucked by your cock.”
Jimin’s looking at her.
The ringing in her ears comes back tenfold, pinning to her spot like Jimin’s eyes on her have rendered her unable to move. She wants to run away. She wants to return to Jungkook’s office, try to sleep again and forget all of this, but now that he’s seen her, it’s become all too real with no way to escape it. Somehow, even though she’s the wife, she feels ashamed that she’s been caught looking, because Jimin smiles instead, and then he’s diverting his attention back to Jungkook again.
There’s a light giggle before he’s inching forward on the counter, her husband groaning and rutting forward. She knows with a glance at Jimin’s hand that he’s palming at Jungkook’s cock through his pants.
“God, fuck,” her husband moans as Jimin slides off the counter. “Jimin, what are you—we don’t have much time, baby let me just—”
“Relax, I just want to get you wet before you fuck me,” Jimin says.
No, no, no.
She feels her blood running cold once Jimin’s knees hit the floor, sitting back on his haunches as his hands reach upward and then—
She closes her eyes. Her tears are hot and they sting with her eyelids pressed so tightly, mascara clumping and adding to the burning sensation. It runs hotly down her face when she opens her eyes only to see Jimin looking at her again, and when she sees his fingers slide down the front of her husband’s pants, she knows what’s coming next. He’s still looking at her when Jungkook groans above him, as if mocking her when his hand begins to pump up and down.
Watch me, Jimin seems to say.
“Fuck, Jimin-ah, baby, you’re so—” Jungkook’s low moan is clipped, his hips thrusting forward erratically when Jimin finally leans in, one hand holding him by the thigh just to turn him slightly toward himself, as if she’s not allowed to see his cock.
All she can see from her vantage point is how Jimin’s jaw falls slack, his eyes half-lidded as he stares up at Jungkook, the perfect image of a slut.
It’s a few pumps of his head up and down, wet and messy with drool dripping from the side of his mouth while Jungkook meets his thrusts. It’s like he’s making a show of it now that he knows she’s watching, even intertwining his hands with her husband’s as he moans around his cock. She slides down the wall, hitting the floor with not a single sound as she looks away.
She doesn’t have to see them to know when’s the exact moment that Jungkook pulls out because there’s a wet pop that’s so obscene coupled with Jimin’s ragged breathing. His giggle is so prominent in the silence as he seems to rise from the floor, the sound of his chelsea boots clicking on the tiles as he says, “You’re so hard for me already, daddy.”
And that makes her look.
Her eyes automatically land where there’s movement. South where Jimin’s hand lazily strokes Jungkook’s cock. The angle is slightly different now so she catches the sight of her husband’s tip dripping with precum, the fall of it to the floor coming in time with his groans.
“Fuck, daddy huh, baby?” Jungkook sounds surprised and aroused all at once.
“Mhm,” Jimin hums, finally letting go of his cock to lick lewdly at his fingers. “Figured you’d like that.”
“God,” Jungkook moans, momentarily closing his eyes as he hugs Jimin’s close. It presses his front entirely flush with Jimin’s pants, making him whine in return. “You know how to press my buttons—”
“Sounds good on my tongue, doesn’t it?” Jimin says with a glance at her.
She can’t move, can’t get herself to move even if she tries. It’s like she’s rooted to where she is even when Jimin pushes her husband away to make a show of unbuckling his own belt, the slim leather coming undone with a few tugs at the gold buckle. She can’t stop looking at him too, somehow more drawn to him than her own husband in the same way one can’t take their eyes away from a fire. It’s like walking toward the spindle of a spinning wheel or being hypnotized by a poisoned apple that will kill her.
He’s a vision that embodies seduction and it makes her self-conscious, every moment Jungkook has denied her pleasure coming back to her in quick succession. And then she asks herself, why?
What is it about Jimin, in all his motions and words, that makes this so natural for him to do?
The way he flaunts his body as he drops his slacks to the floor and how, as a result, his loose sweater pools just a little past his hips to obscure his crotch as if he’s imagined the exact moment when it’s no longer tucked in the front of his pants.
The way he looks half-naked. The way he can smile like a vixen.
As she looks at him, she tries to remind herself that she’s Jungkook's wife.
“Let me guess, you’re not wearing anything under this, aren’t you?” Jungkook asks after the briefest strip tease, right hand trailing upward from Jimin’s thigh and under the sweater, just a little past the hem as if he wants to check without looking.
Jimin chuckles stepping out of his boots and his pants, “If you’re asking about underwear, then no. I’m not wearing one. Not even a thong.”
He smiles. She looks at the mirror to see the glint of lust in her husband’s eyes.
“But, you’re still wrong,” Jimin adds, and then with a tug at Jungkook’s belt loops, he whispers while looking at her, “Why don’t you see for yourself?”
He turns around for good measure, already making it easier for Jungkook as he pretends to check himself out in the mirror. She sees her husband follow like he’s being pulled toward Jimin, eyes on the prize as his line of sight moves downward, past the red sweater that’s slipped off Jimin’s shoulders now, past his bare waist. Down his ass.
Right there, in between his cheeks, a glimmer of pink shines in the low light.
“How’d I get to have you, baby?” Jungkook laughs in utter disbelief at the sight, and she almost doesn’t understand what’s going on until he reaches his hand in between Jimin’s legs. “I’m so lucky, hmm?”
He groans when he pulls his hand back slightly, and she hears a wet sound. And then another as Jungkook leans forward, caging Jimin’s body with his, a rough hand finding its way back to his nipples and tweaking one hardened bud in between his thumb and forefinger. It has Jimin’s back bowing off the counter while his hips twitch forward at the pressure Jungkook’s putting behind him.
She can’t really tell what it is, but it’s almost like her husband has decided to answer her question, pulling out the pink thing in between Jimin’s ass. It has him humming in satisfaction when Jimin’s knees knock together, legs trembling while he stands on his tiptoes like Jungkook’s supposed to put it back in.
She’s never seen something like it, a sort-of pointed thing with a flagged end, the bottom encrusted with a pink gem. Though she doesn’t know it, she can at least put two and two together to guess that it’s a sex toy. Something she’s never had the liberty to use nor the confidence to try and pull off using one with her husband if he's never even asked her for sex.
“I’m so empty, Jungkookie—” Jimin starts, but Jungkook lands a slap on his ass, just enough to surprise him, “Ahh! Daddy, I m-mean, I’m empty, please.”
“Really, baby?” Jungkook asks meanly, setting the toy on the counter before giving Jimin’s ass another slap, immediately soothing the skin. “Is your sweet hole so hungry that you prepped yourself for me already?”
“Mhm,” Jimin moans, “Ahh! ‘S all yours, daddy!”
His calf muscles are straining as he remains on his tiptoes, welcoming the sudden stretch of two fingers in his ass. She looks away, looking down at her hands instead. In all her life, she'd never even fingered herself. The only time she's had the experience was with Jungkook, because it's always felt wrong to do it on her own, as if it's sin.
“Maybe I should fuck you now then, huh? Since you’ve stretched yourself so nicely for daddy.”
“Yes, yes, fuck, please,” comes another moan, voice small and whiny.
When she looks at them again, they’re facing each other now. Jimin sits on the counter with his back to the mirror while Jungkook fits himself in between his open legs. Jimin whines small daddy’s and fuck me’s in a mantra, and she has to briefly close her eyes when she sees the look on his face. How he looks up at her husband like he’s hung the stars in the night sky for him, like he’ll give himself fully for pleasure.
She can’t help but think that he’s every bit as worth of the envy that she feels for him. He’s pretty when his eyes shine with tears, her husband running a hand through his hair to soothe him in middle fucking him on his fingers. The youth is obvious on his face, in the high blush on his cheeks. He falls apart naturally when Jungkook fingers him more. It’s as if it’s second nature to him to spread his legs even wider, hips canting forward.
He’s so much of what she isn’t and her heart clenches when her husband pushes forward with a kiss, drinking in all of Jimin’s little cries. For a moment, it makes her wonder if this is how he would fuck her, if he’d be just as rough yet just as soothing. There’s a sweetness even to how he digs his hands into Jimin’s hips as his cock finally drives home into the tight heat. He moans into the nape of Jimin’s neck, kissing the skin there while they adjust to the feeling and she can’t help but stare.
Her tears get the best of her. The only thing going through her mind is jealousy. Rather than anger or disgust, she feels jealousy so deeply seated in her bones, thinking how it must feel to have her own husband the way Jimin gets to have him. She asks herself if he feels better than her cunt, better than their honeymoon.
I can’t do it, she thinks. She can’t watch them any longer, and yet she can’t get herself to leave.
Not when her husband asks, “You okay now, baby? Can daddy move?”
Not when Jimin pleads for him to fuck him.
She leans her head back against the wall as she listens inevitably to the sounds of their fucking, starting out slow and gaining a steady rhythm. The wet squelch and slap of skin when her husband pistons his hips into Jimin invades her ears, louder than the ringing and echoes of her insecurity. She can hear how much want there is in their voices, how much they love doing this, how they’ve probably missed doing this.
And then she wonders for what foolish reason she’s thought that she’s won all these few months. What even is the point?
“So warm for me, so fucking good for me,” Jungkook tells Jimin in the heat of it all but the other only whines in return, moans punched out of his lungs at the end of every stroke.
With her eyes on them again, she sees them kissing again, though this time it’s softer somehow. Jimin is in tears and her husband is wiping them away, rubbing soft circles into his ruddy cheeks while pecking his lips, letting it linger a few seconds. His doesn't stop fucking his cock in further, but he maintains as much gentleness as he can with holding Jimin, the other having wrapped his arms around his neck.
“Ahh, f-fuck,” Jimin cries. He trembles, toes curling before trying to push Jungkook away, “Jungkookie, s-slow down, please—”
He’s cut off by a bite in the crook of his neck.
“P-please, daddy, I’m—”
“Shh, shh, Jimin-ah,” Jungkook whispers, trying to hush Jimin’s cries.
Weirdly enough, as he keeps getting fucked, he turns into someone else so far removed from the secretary she knows. It’s like he’s coming into a cocooned version of himself, one that’s fragile and vulnerable and only for Jungkook. Jimin doesn’t even look at her anymore, his eyes only seeming to zero in on the man in front of him. He’s biting his lower lip in an attempt to hold back from crying but his body shakes with the force of a cock in himself.
“Doing so good for me, baby, aren’t you?” Jungkook coos, voice so soft it somehow feels more intimate than the debauchery of what they’re doing.
“I am, I am, I love your cock,” Jimin answers like he’s got something to prove, hand fisted at Jungkook’s chest. “‘S good, daddy, so good—”
“Really, baby?” Jungkook chuckles, his pace easing for a bit just to gaze at Jimin’s face.
“Mhm,” Jimin sighs, words a little slurred as he says, “Love your cock, love you—”
She holds in a breath.
“Of course, angel,” Jungkook says as if it’s a universal truth, as if Jimin has said it so many times and this won’t be the last. She sees his fondness in the mirror, how he looks all over Jimin’s face, how even now, he might still find him more beautiful than he has ever thought of her. “I love you, too.”
And she knows, realizes in that moment that her husband means it. She knows he does because he’s never said it to her in that tone, not with that softness. He’s miles different from the man she knows, because he’s not fucking her like this, he’s not loving her like this.
He hikes up Jimin’s leg to fuck him better when he picks up a pace again, resuming their fucking but it’s seemingly not enough time for Jimin to have calmed down because the next thing they know, he’s whining again about how it’s all too much. Jungkook doesn’t relent and she watches how his eyebrows furrow together, eyes deadset on Jimin while his thrusting becomes erratic. Jimin moans high, his cries breaking off when he comes, thrashing a little in her husband’s hold.
He’s trembling hard but Jungkook only gives him a moment of reprieve, the slow swivel of his hips driving forward as Jimin says, “N-no, daddy, I’m sensitive—”
Then his back bows off the counter at a particularly hard thrust, teeth grinding together.
She can’t see her husband’s face where he’s smothering Jimin’s neck with bites, can only focus on how Jimin’s eyes are blown wide at being overstimulated. It’s a sick thought but it’s like the few novels she’s read from a time when they’d only just been married a few months, when her sex drive was high and she’d hoped he’d touch her. She’d read about fucking on tables and by bay windows, in the garden or the car, and in the office. No one had ever known that she ever read those kinds of novels, the spines broken, pages dog-eared, with the covers scuffed and scratched from when she’d have it in her bag throughout the day, running errands for her husband who would never touch her.
She’d imagined Jungkook in those scenarios countless times in those few months but after the hope had died out like the last flame on a candle wick, she’d ceased thinking up which ones would come true. It’s self-fulfilling in a way, she thinks, that her husband does turn out to be wicked in sex, just not with her.
He’s rough with Jimin, keen on making him feel every drag of his cock while he hears nothing but wailing in return. If anything, it just drives him crazier, fucking even deeper, whispering praises while Jimin shakes from the aftershocks of his orgasm, another already impending.
“Ahh, ngh, Jungkookie, no!” Jimin whines, face full of tears.
“Fuck, still so pliant for me, huh?” Jungkook chuckles, breathless as he pulls Jimin down to maneuver him face down into the sink. It seems to hit a deeper spot for Jimin and his legs tremble with the force of Jungkook’s thrusts. “Your hole’s sucking me in, Jimin-ah—”
“Daddy, I just came!” Jimin grits his teeth together, eyes pleading. She can hear the clatter of it in his voice, sees how he’s leaning over the sink, only held up by her husband’s hands on his hips.
“But I haven’t come yet, baby.”
“Too much, ahh!” Jimin whines and a cry is ripped from his throat when Jungkook rolls his hips, his own stilling and then pushing forward as he comes again, dry this time. “‘S too m-much—”
He’s breathing in quick gasps when Jungkook’s cock slips out of him, about to fall to the floor only to be pulled up and held so close.
She looks down instead, but then she still sees their shadows. She can see them in an embrace, her husband holding Jimin tenderly, their lips pressing together in a gentle kiss. Jimin’s little cries die down slowly and she sees his head tilting up, looking up at Jungkook. She looks at him too and her heart aches at the sight of him, watches him when he brushes the blonde hair matted to Jimin’s forehead from his sweat. He laughs a little, kissing his scrunched nose, swaying gently to relax Jimin even more.
“My good baby,” Jungkook tells him and he nods, eyes closed as he rests his head on her husband’s shoulders.
“Who’s my sweetest angel, hmm?” Jungkook asks and Jimin only whines petulantly at being made to talk, grumbling a little as he’s swept off his feet, now wrapped up in strong arms. Jungkook holds him up, his still-hard cock rubbing up and into Jimin’s hole. “Come on, Jimin-ah, answer daddy.”
“Me,” Jimin pants as he’s lowered slowly on the hard cock, and briefly, he glances at her over her husband’s shoulder. “Only me, daddy.”
And then he’s hiding in the crook of Jungkook’s neck like that’s where he’ll stay grounded through the throes of being fucked and manhandled. She laughs, a sound that’s barely there as Jimin’s moans pick up again. She’s sure they don’t even hear her.
She laughs because it’s funny how it’s all real and true, that they’re here right now, in front of her, making love so openly in a way that she’d never had a right to even in private. It’s true, too, that they love each other, that her husband loves Jimin more than he’s ever loved her. Because nothing else can say that better than Jungkook kissing Jimin’s tear-stained cheeks as he finally comes inside of him, arms straining to hold him up. Jimin drips with her husband's come gathering where they're connected and it doesn't seem like it bothers either of them, both taking in the feeling of it.
There’s no denying it. She knows it to be true because he’ll never kiss her the way he does when he’s calming Jimin down, like they’ve done this so many times and this is what he’s learned would work. As if it’s routine. He does it so softly with a voice so tender, face so close as he whispers in a voice she’s never heard him speak to her with. He brings Jimin back down to Earth and maybe that’s how it is. Jimin looks up at him like he’s never going to know anything else, like this will be them for as long as forever.
For as long as she allows it.
She sits there in the dark, watching her husband pepper kisses all over Jimin’s face, setting him down on the sink. She tries not to think of the come that drips from the edge of the counter to the floor, tries not to think of how her husband comes so freely in a man while he’s been evading the prospect of children for years.
“You did so well, Jimin-ah,” He coos and Jimin hisses as he leans back on the mirror, the glass sightly foggy with the heat of their fucking. His legs are spread as his hole is exposed, rimmed pink and dripping still.
He’s obscene, like a whore, her mind supplies.
“Don’t look,” Jimin whines and she’s blinking out of a trance, nails digging into her knees from anger and jealousy.
It’s even worse when her husband still looks so smitten even after sex, as if there’s no clarity to break him out of what he’s done.
Does he love Jimin? Does he really love him? Is not just lust?
“Don’t be shy with daddy,” Jungkook chuckles, hand reaching out to rub slow circles with his thumb on Jimin’s puffy rim, hooking on the muscle before he leans down to lick into it.
“Ahh! Jungkookie, I can’t,” Jimin tries to say, back taut like a bow again, “Please, n-no more—”
“You don’t want me to lick you clean?”
Jimin shakes his head, looking at him in between his legs. “I wanna go home like this.”
Jungkook stands back up, intertwining their hands as he kisses Jimin’s knuckles. “You sure, baby?”
“Mhm.” A hum. Then, “You’ve never come inside of me.”
She closes her eyes, digging her palms into them so hard that it feels warm with her tears and the heat of alcohol still there. She feels hatred so deep in her bones then, and yet she’s jealous more than anything. She blinks blearily at the reflection of her husband, his eyes so earnest.
“Do you want me to? From now on?” He asks Jimin before he leans forward to kiss him, a touch that’s barely there yet it lingers on her mind.
“Yeah,” Jimin breathes. “It feels so good.”
“Really, hmm?” Jungkook laughs and Jimin does too.
“Feels like you’re mine.”
She hears the silence like it’s deafening after those words, but she thinks the sound of her heart shattering beats it.
“Baby, you know you are,” her husband says with full conviction, in a whisper like Jimin’s the only one meant to hear. “You know I’m yours, too.”
“Of course,” Jimin sighs into the kiss that follows. “But it feels more real when you touch me like that. When you’re not afraid to come inside of me.”
“I love it too, you know? I’ve just been holding back. Besides, it’s the first time I get to have you so late at night,” his answer comes with a hum, as if the change in routine is so welcome.
And she might never hear him admit to anything about his affair with Jimin, but she’s already finding out all on her own.
“Oh, yeah, it’s like,” Jimin giggles, “Maybe past one?”
“Mhm,” Jungkook hums, “Wish I could have you in a bed right now.”
Jimin’s giggles turn into a moan and she sees her husband playing with him again.
“Ahh, stop it, will you?”
Jungkook laughs, prodding at his hole with his thumb again, pulling away when Jimin tries to kick him.
“Can’t help it. Feels good knowing that’s my cum.”
He sounds too pleased with himself. She looks away before the smile on his face burns itself in her memory. She hears them kiss once, twice, and then Jimin’s laughing, a sweet sound that grinds her ears.
“You can have me like this again as many times as you want,” Jimin says as if it’s a matter of fact, voice a little quieter like he’s a devil drawing her husband to his demise.
“Is that a promise?” Jungkook asks in a whisper too, full of mirth.
“Mhm,” Jimin hums sweetly, “Just make sure I’m in a bed next time. Just a change of pace, right? So that it’s not just on your desk in the office anymore, or the table in our break room—”
She sees the look on his face. Very briefly, he glances at her, and then he’s lacing his arms around her husband’s neck.
“Or this very counter you’ve fucked me on…” He drawls, “twice.”
Her heart pounds in her chest like it wants to climb up her throat and out onto the floor full of blood, as if there’s no home for it in her hollow body. Even her lungs feel too big for her ribcage when she takes a deep inhale that punches at her diaphragm.
Twice. They’ve fucked at this very spot before. And this is the third time.
I’m his wife, she tries to remind herself as she closes her eyes, unable to consider her insobriety when she gets up and tries to walk away because it’s too much. It’s too much. She barely finds it in herself to care that they might hear her footsteps, but before she can even take a step out of the narrow hallway, she’s already coming back down, sitting on the floor again. It’s like she’s lost all strength in her limbs.
She should run. She really should. She should get up and never look back. There’s a chance they’ll get ready to leave once their little talk is over, and then they’ll find her in his office as if they haven’t just fucked each other. She should, but she can’t get herself to, as if she’s waiting for the final nail in the coffin.
Twice, she hears in her head again. It echoes.
What am I here for? She asks herself. What good is it doing her to torture her heart like this, waiting with bated breath for what her husband has to say?
Twice, among many other times.
She thinks of all the places she’s been on this floor of the building, every desk and chair she’s been, talking to him and his subordinates. She doesn’t welcome the thought of the break room and its silence being tainted by the images of their fucking but it invades her mind anyway. It’s worse than her nightmares, black pooling on the floor and leaking through the ceilings at every place she imagines they might have done it.
“How about next week?”
The question brings her back down to reality. But here, where she sits on the floor, where everything is real and true and not just a nightmare, the black liquid has created a flood that’s reached past her neck. It’s like quicksand. She barely hears her husband’s voice but the black water carries it, rippling with the ringing in her ears.
Next week.
No. That can’t be possible.
She looks at them through blurry vision.
No, she begs in her mind.
But then Jimin’s getting off the counter, dressed in his darling sweater again, only this time he’s not wearing his pants anymore. He’s a vision of every evil in red, glancing at her before smiling at Jungkook.
“Are you sure? Isn’t that Christmas?”
Her heart sinks.
“I’ll have the house to myself,” her husband answers.
Jimin looks at her again, smiling at her while Jungkook fusses over him, pulling his sweater down his shoulders to hide his modesty in between his legs.
“Really?” Jimin hums.
“Yeah,” Jungkook says with a sigh, one that sounds relieved. He’s got his hands in his pockets, his slacks fully done again and his sweater back on. Like nothing ever happened. Like he doesn’t have a wife to think about as he says, “She’s going to Gwangju to see her family.”
Jimin giggles, has the audacity to do it while his and her eyes are locked, her husband kissing him on the forehead while telling him about all the things they’ll do, how they’ll have all the time in the world. “I want to spend my Christmas with you, baby.”
“You’re not going with her?”
“No,” Jungkook says with ease, “She said she wanted to go alone.”
No, don’t lie, don’t fucking lie, she wants to cry. But the deed is done. She sees the days ahead, can imagine how he’ll drive her home tonight and then ask her in the morning if he can stay behind. She remembers every excuse he’s made in the name of this affair, how he’s acted in front of her when he asks if he can come home later, if he can leave earlier, when he apologizes for not giving her much of his time, how he lies every single time. And how that will keep happening and the next would be tomorrow.
She’s thought that it would all be good after today. Her fickle hopes have led her to believe that they’d come home from his party much earlier to spend a romantic late evening at home before they leave this weekend for Gwangju. It all seems ridiculous now. She feels unlike herself, like she’s not his wife and he’s not her husband, especially not when it doesn’t feel like there’s any part of him that she owns the moment that Jimin smiles at him, his answer obvious on his lips.
She’ll never stand a chance.