Hello. Today is the final chapter of 'My Wife's Affair. So I Stood in Court.' It turned out much longer than I expected... Thank you for reading all this time. Since so many people followed along, I feel it's only right to say a proper goodbye. Around this time tomorrow, I'll post a short epilogue about why I started writing this, what I felt while writing, what remains at the end of the story, and what this process meant to me. Thank you again for reading, and I hope you all have a great end of the year.
Ep. 45 I Hope You'll Be Happy I took a half-day off on Friday and left the office. The sky outside was so clear. As if proving that spring is the start of the four seasons, the fresh breeze and the scent of blooming flowers made my heart flutter. The cherry blossoms will be out soon. Every year, I used to go see them with my wife and kid, but I guess thatโs not happening this year. Neither she nor I filed for an appeal. Legally, the trial is officially over. I took today off to stop by the lawyer's office and then head to the district office. In a trial divorce, the plaintiff is responsible for reporting the divorce. I thanked my lawyer, got the certified copy of the judgment and the certificate of finality. I have my ID in my wallet; I just need to submit the judgment as proof. I don't need my wifeโs ID or stamp at all. Arriving at the district office entrance, I remembered coming here to file our marriage registration, holding her hand before the wedding. We held hands with such excitement, promising never to let go. Why did it end like this? Thereโs no point in thinking about it now. I double-checked my documents, pulled a number, and it was soon my turn. The clerk didn't ask much. They just checked if I had everything and said it would be processed within two weeks at the latest. That was the end of the divorce report. All that's left is finalizing the apartment lease.
Saturday morning. I headed to the realtorโs office. Today was the day the new tenants were paying the balance. Since the contract was signed while we were still under joint ownership before the divorce, we proceeded as is. I had already notified the tenants that the ownership would be fully transferred to me within a few weeks. โWhere are you?โ โIโm inside the realtorโs office.โ I hung up and waited for her. Meanwhile, the realtor checked the utility bills with the management office. Soon, she walked in. She looked like sheโd lost some weight. The realtor pulled out the paperwork, checked our IDs and the tenants', and we stamped the contract. โYou must be happy. The kid is going at a perfect age, so theyโll pick up English in no time.โ โHaha.. yeah.โ After some awkward small talk, the tenants left to meet their wallpaper contractors, and the judicial scrivener arrived shortly after. I didn't think it was strictly necessary, but since the property was joint and the process involved property division and ownership transfer due to divorce, I thought it was safer to go through a professional. The scrivener checked her ID and handed her the documents for the transfer of title. Once they got everything, they left, and we said goodbye to the realtor.
โWant to talk for a second?โ I agreed to her suggestion. I had to stop by the management office to pay the remaining utilities, so she headed to the cafe first. After finishing up everything related to the apartment, I walked toward the cafe. It was a local hotspot near the house with big floor-to-ceiling windows and a unique interior. She was sitting by the window. I ordered a coffee and sat across from her. โIโve wanted to come here with you since it opened, and now we finally did.โ I didnโt answer. I had wanted to come here with her too, but I never imagined it would be like this. โWhenโs your flight?โ โThe 25th.โ โThatโs soon. Get ready well and stay healthy.โ There was a hint of warmth in her voice. โThanks for putting up with me all these years.โ I donโt know why, but thinking that our 12-year bond was over, those words just came out. Her 20s were so bright, and at our wedding, I vowed never to let her spring end... I probably wasn't a perfect husband either. Regardless of what happened, I wanted to acknowledge her hard work. She looked down for a moment and said, โIโm sorry. Youโre a good person, so I hope you meet someone good and live well. You deserve it.โ I just nodded. It wasnโt that I agreed or disagreed; I just had nothing left to say. We didnโt talk about the past or the future. โIโll get going first.โ She grabbed her bag and walked out. I watched her back as she moved away for a long time, then stood up, leaving my coffee after only two sips.
I spent the day before they left with my child. We didn't have any special plans. We just had a normal day before our short goodbye. We walked in the park, played at the playground, and ate the burgers my kid loves. My kid was the same as usualโtalking about kindergarten, friends, and random stuff. But since this time was so precious to me, I imagined my eyes were camera lenses and pressed 'record' on every moment. I listened to my kidโs stories longer than usual. I nodded and let them say everything they wanted without interrupting. What the kid needed wasn't a goodbye, but the belief that tomorrow would be just the same. My kid fell asleep in the car on the way back. I carefully carried the sleeping child and handed them over to her. She told me to call whenever I wanted to video chat. I wanted to say, โDadโs going now. Iโll see you soon,โ but I thought it was better to let the day end while they were still asleep. I watched her carry our child into the bedroom and closed the door to my in-laws' place. Before getting on the elevator, I looked back one last time. I hope you'll be happy. Truly, I hope you'll be happy.
๋ ๋๊ธฐ ์ ๋ ์ ์์ด์ ์๊ฐ์ ๋ณด๋๋ค. ์์ด์์ ํน๋ณํ ๊ณํ์ ์ธ์ฐ์ง๋ ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ์ ํ๋ฒํ ์๊ฐ์ ๋ง์ง๋ง์ผ๋ก ์์ด์ ์งง์ ์ด๋ณ์ ๋ง์๋ค. ์ง ๊ทผ์ฒ ๊ณต์์ ๊ฑท๊ณ , ๋์ดํฐ์์ ๋๊ณ ์์ด๊ฐ ์ข์ํ๋ ํ๋ฒ๊ฑฐ๋ฅผ ๋จน์๋ค. ์์ด๋ ํ์์ ๊ฐ์๋ค. ์ ์น์ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ, ์น๊ตฌ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๋ณ๊ฑฐ ์๋ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ๋ค. ํ์ง๋ง ๋์๊ฒ ์ด ์๊ฐ์ด ๋๋ฌด๋ ์์คํ๊ธฐ์ ๋์ด ์นด๋ฉ๋ผ ๋ ์ฆ๋ผ๊ณ ์๊ฐํ๊ณ ๊พน๊พน ๋๋ฌ ๋ด์๋ค. ์์ด์ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ํ์๋ณด๋ค ์กฐ๊ธ ๋ ์ค๋ ๋ค์๋ค. ๊ณ ๊ฐ๋ฅผ ๋๋์ด๊ณ , ์์ด์ ๋ง์ ๋์ง ์๊ณ ํ๊ณ ์ถ์ ๋ง์ ๋ค ํ๊ฒ ๋์๋ค. ์์ด์๊ฒ ํ์ํ ๊ฑด ์๋ณ ์ธ์ฌ๊ฐ ์๋๋ผ ๋ด์ผ๋ ๋๊ฐ์ ๊ฑฐ๋ผ๋ ๋ฏฟ์์ผ ํ ๋๊น. ์์ด๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๋ ค๋ค ์ฃผ๋ ์ฐจ์์ ์์ด๋ ์ ๋ค์๋ค. ์ ๋ค์ด์๋ ์์ด๋ฅผ ๊นจ์ง ์๊ฒ ์กฐ์ฌ์ค๋ ์์์ ์๋ด์๊ฒ ๋๊ฒผ๋ค. ์๋ด๋ ์์ํตํ ํ๊ณ ์ถ์ผ๋ฉด ์ธ์ ๋ ์ง ๋งํ๋ผ๊ณ ํ๋ค. ์์ด์๊ฒ โ์๋น ์ด์ ๊ฐ๋ค. ๊ธ๋ฐฉ ์ฌ ๊ฒ.โ ๋ผ๋ ๋ง์ ํ๊ณ ์ถ์์ง๋ง ์ด๋ ๊ฒ ๋ณด๋ด๋ ๊ฒ, ์ฐจ๋ผ๋ฆฌ ์ ๋ ์ํ๋ก ํ๋ฃจ๋ฅผ ๋๋ด๋ ๊ฒ ์์ด์๊ฒ ๋ ์ข์ ๊ฒ ๊ฐ์๋ค. ์๋ด๊ฐ ์์ด๋ฅผ ์๊ณ ์นจ์ค๋ก ๋ค์ด๊ฐ๋ ๋ท๋ชจ์ต์ ๋ณด๋ฉฐ ์ฒ๊ฐ์ง ํ๊ด๋ฌธ์ ๋ซ์๋ค. ์๋ฆฌ๋ฒ ์ดํฐ๋ฅผ ํ๊ธฐ ์ ์ ๋ง์ง๋ง์ผ๋ก ๋ค๋ฅผ ํ ๋ฒ ๋์๋ดค๋ค. ๋ค๊ฐ ํ๋ณตํ์ผ๋ฉด ์ข๊ฒ ๋ค. ํ๋ณตํ์ผ๋ฉด ์ข๊ฒ ๋ค.
"While some readers offered a warm 'good job' to the author for finishing his long journey, one legendary hater dropped a massive multi-part essay calling the author a 'cowardly beta' for not getting proper revenge on the cheaters and for using his kid as an excuse to stay a pushover."
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