He told her he had taken out a loan of twenty million won. At least he had only “invested” it in his friend’s business and did not put his own name on the business or be a guarantor to his friend’s debts.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to shout. Seven years of her life had been put into repaying her debt, working late into the night and saving her meagre salary, living a humble life—and now, here she was right back where she started. No matter the amount, the word “loan” made her eyes go dark.
Her husband had pursued an “alternative lifestyle” that was “free of the fetters of capitalism.” The woman herself, when she was in college, had considered the conformist pressures of getting good grades, building a resume, and landing a job in some big corporation to be tedious and distasteful and had thought the life her husband wanted dovetailed with hers. They got married as soon as she graduated, and she got a job right after. She learned quickly that an “alternative lifestyle” meant nothing without a detailed, concrete plan, and living “free of the fetters of capitalism” meant working for places that didn’t pay their workers on time. As she worried about realizing this alternative lifestyle in the real world, she crumbled away under the pressures of working at a company in the non-profit sector that was run not by the normal labor of workers, but through their unrequited sacrifices. Meanwhile, her husband, who was her upperclassman in college but graduated later than she did, fiddled around in search of his ideal “alternative lifestyle” without ever settling down on any particular profession—the result being the twenty-million-won loan he had taken out and used up without her knowledge.
Saying he would pay it back, her husband promised he would do whatever it took. She knew he was being sincere. But she also knew that the world was not such an easy place as to hand over twenty million won to anyone based on their sincerity alone.
So she looked into whether her husband could use their mutual assets as collateral to take out any more money without her knowledge. She considered dropping his name from the deed somehow, but the taxes were simply too complicated. Still, it seemed like it was legally impossible for him to put up any shared property as collateral without her consent. But in the worst-case scenario, she would only be able to hold on to half of her property; this frightened her.
Their livelihoods depended on their home. And to her, home meant something far more than just a monthly source of income. The place was everything she had, the only thing to show for years of smashing herself against the world. And during that entire time she had worked herself to the bone, carrying her husband on her back, he had never so much as lifted a finger to help her. In the midst of her anxiety over the twenty million won of debt he had spent without her knowledge, all of these facts were beginning to seem very clear to her now.
When he felt like it, her husband would occasionally go hiking at a nearby foothill. He was never away long enough for her to worry about him, but there was no consistent pattern to his hikes. Sometimes he left early in the morning, sometimes he took days off from his habit before setting off abruptly in the evening. Ever since his friend had run away with his money, he would spend hours on the phone in the office before tiring of it and going for a walk in the hills.
She received the phone call when he was out on one of these hikes. She had gone down to the office to retrieve him for lunch, but there was only his cell phone at his desk. And just as she stepped in the office, it began to ring as if it had been waiting for her.
Was there finally someone who wanted some of the health drink? There was a spark of hope in her heart as she picked up the phone. At the sound of her voice saying, “Hello,” whoever it was on the other end of the line went silent for a moment. The woman repeated her greeting and added, “Please speak up.”
—Is it you, bitch?
The woman was taken aback by the hostility of the female voice on the other end. “Excuse me?”
—Are you that asshole’s wife?
“What?”
The voice on the other end seethed with hate.
—Isn’t it your bastard husband who tricked my husband into selling that bullshit berry drink, before your husband took our money and cut off my husband?
Finally, the call was starting to make sense. And who was accusing whom of being in the wrong! “Now look here. About that business, I—
—You made my husband put the business in his name so he would take all the blame, but you and your despicable man held onto the stock and grabbed the sales money for yourselves, am I right? My husband was the one who brought in all of his connections, but you two just sucked him dry and tossed him over when you were done with him!