Chapter 2: The First Act of Vengeance.

Sayoung parked her car a little distance away and watched Yoojun enter the cafe. She took a deep breath with a tense expression on her face.

Today, right now, Yoojun was supposed to get hit by a motorcycle that swerved onto the sidewalk due to an inexperienced driver as he was leaving the cafe with his coffee, injuring his leg.
It wasn’t a severe injury, but the problem was that he was in the middle of filming a movie with a lot of action scenes.

Sayoung clearly remembered how the shoot, which had been nearing its end, was inevitably delayed until Yoojun’s injury healed, and how all sorts of media outlets had made a fuss about it.

Kim Yoojun was the most important person in Sayoung’s second life.

He was the very person who had acted as the catalyst that made Sayoung’s ex-husband, Han Jaewoo, fall so helplessly for him and ultimately abandon her so cruelly—the actor Kim Yoojun, currently considered the top star in South Korea.

Sayoung, who had arrived nearby earlier and had been waiting for him, gripped the steering wheel with a nervous expression.

This was a crossroads.
It was clear that once she took this step, finding her way back would become incredibly difficult.
Sayoung bit her lip, staring straight into her own eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.

She could just turn back now, pretending not to know anything.
She could just consider it all a terrible nightmare, close her eyes once and open them, and then she could live a new life, relaxed and joyful, different from before.

The path of a wise choice was waiting right in front of her.

‘Please… Jaewoo, please don’t do this to me…. I’ll do… whatever you say. I can do anything well…! So… so please don’t leave me, Jaewoo….’

‘But could those miserable tears, that desperate heart that had wanted to hold onto love even by begging, truly become something that had never existed?’

‘If I just close my eyes and pretend not to know, will I really be able to forget this as just a nightmare for one night?’

‘Oh? I can do anything I want? Then let’s get a divorce. That’s the only thing I want from you.’

That voice, so terribly cruel only to her until the very end.
The countless insults and contempt she had to endure alone throughout their marriage.
Could she really forget it all and be okay?

Sayoung slowly opened the car door and got out.
The cold, early-winter wind brushed sharply against her cheek.
Only then did her dazed mind seem to return.

Sayoung’s steps began to move toward the cafe Yoojun had just entered.

Even if she could forget, it didn’t matter anymore.
Even if she could live the rest of her life truly happily by turning back now, that wasn’t what Sayoung wanted.

What Sayoung desired was a petty revenge that would offer no solace.
She wanted him to know, at least once, what kind of pain she had suffered.

And just as she had begged.

Just as she had knelt and pleaded for love, a sliver of a heart that might have meant nothing to someone else.

She wanted Han Jaewoo to kneel before her and beg with the same desperate heart.
For that moment, she could sell her soul to the devil, or throw herself into the fiery pits of hell.

Perhaps she had already sold her soul to the devil without remembering.
Who knows, perhaps she’s still alive today thanks to the pact he made with the devil at the moment of death for revenge?

Sayoung, her mind racing with such ridiculous thoughts, approached Yoojun as he came out of the cafe.
Just then, she saw a large motorcycle behind Yoojun, making a loud noise and approaching quickly.

Sayoung threw herself toward Yoojun without a hint of hesitation.

It was the first step toward her revenge.

****

“Is that person awake?”

Arriving in front of the hospital room, Yoojun met his manager, Jeongmin, in the hallway, whom he had sent ahead to monitor the situation.
Jeongmin answered his question.

“Yes. A fracture in the right ankle, a small cut on the forehead from the fall, and minor bruises otherwise. Four weeks for a full recovery. Fortunately, they said no surgery is needed.”

Like the quick-witted manager he was, Jeongmin answered everything, even what Yoojun hadn’t asked.
Listening quietly, Yoojun let out a deep sigh and ran a hand through his hair.

He couldn’t even properly remember how he had finished filming today.
All he needed was a cup of coffee to wake up, but when he came to his senses, a woman who had been hit by a motorcycle in his place was lying on the ground.

The coffee he had dropped when the man pushed him had stained the ground, and it all looked like blood; he truly thought his heart was going to stop.

Moreover, the person lying on the ground was someone Yoojun already knew by face.

“Are you okay, hyung? Now that some time has passed, are you sure you don’t feel any pain?”

“Pain? What pain? I wasn’t even hit.”

“Still, you were startled, so you never know.”

Yoojun pushed away Jeongmin, who was clinging to him and patting his shoulders and back here and there in annoyance, and turned his head.
The door to the hospital room where the man was lying was visible.

Outside, the world was already abuzz with the story of the nation’s top actor who had nearly been in a major accident and the woman who had saved him and gotten injured instead, but the VIP room, inaccessible to just anyone, was utterly silent.

“But hyung…”

Just then, Jeongmin lowered his voice and spoke seriously.
Yoojun just looked at Jeongmin without answering.
Jeongmin, too, didn’t wait for Yoojun’s reply and continued right away.

“Isn’t it a bit strange?”

“……”

“That this person, of all people, was there at that exact time, on that morning, and saved you…”

The reason Yoojun’s mind had been so cluttered throughout the filming was, in fact, for the same reason.

If it had been a simple case of a random passerby saving Yoojun, there would have been nothing strange about it.
In any case, it was a good thing that Yoojun wasn’t hurt, and it was a great relief that the other person didn’t sustain any life-threatening injuries.

Furthermore, if Yoojun were to show himself doing his best to help with the person’s treatment along with providing appropriate compensation, it could become an opportunity to create positive public opinion.
From any angle, it was a situation where Yoojun didn’t have much to lose.

If only the person injured in his stead hadn’t been Yoon Sayoung, Han Jaewoo’s spouse.

“You know that person divorced Han Jaewoo, right hyung?”

“…I do.”

“When you think about that, the timing is even stranger. Getting entangled with you like this right after divorcing Han Jaewoo…?”

Jeongmin scowled as if it was all very fishy and glared at the closed hospital room door.
It wasn’t something to say about the person who saved Yoojun, but no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t shake off his suspicion.

The situation was even stranger when one recalled that Han Jaewoo had been quite openly making passes at Yoojun after divorcing that person.
Jeongmin simply couldn’t believe this situation had occurred coincidentally and naturally.

Yoojun, who had been lost in thought for a moment while listening to Jeongmin, opened his mouth.

“Let’s just wait and see for now. If there’s some kind of scheme, it’ll show. I’m just going to go in for a moment to say hello, so you go wait in the car.”

“Does hyung really need to greet her personally…?”

“In any case, it’s true I received a great deal of help, so of course I have to greet her. And if there was some other intention, all the more reason not to give them any unnecessary grounds for complaint.”

“Hmm…”

“I’m not a kid, so don’t worry.”

At Yoojun’s repeated persuasion, Jeongmin finally nodded with a face full of dissatisfaction.

Everything was suspicious, but there was nothing more Jeongmin could do right now, and as he had said, Yoojun was by no means an easy or soft person.

“Then just go say a quick hello and come down. Call me right away if anything seems weird.”

“I got it, so hurry up and go.”

Yoojun waved his hand dismissively to send Jeongmin off and stood once more before the closed hospital room door.

Yoon Sayoung.

He suddenly recalled a memory of exchanging a brief greeting at an after-party for some awards ceremony.
The face, which looked unsettlingly pale even while receiving the affectionate escort of a spouse who was on a fearsome upward trajectory, had been memorable for its striking impression.

It was quite a long time ago, and they hadn’t run into each other since that brief greeting, but the reason he still remembered that day was that every time Han Jaewoo had acted uncomfortably towards him since then, that face kept coming to mind.

On that day, had he been curious about the identity of the strange solitude that cast a shadow over Sayoung, or had he not?

“……”

Yoojun let out a long breath.
He composed his expression so as not to give the person any leverage against him.

Shaking off the unnecessary thoughts, he habitually checked his clothes, then slowly opened the door and entered the hospital room.

On a large bed by the distant window, that person sat, their face pale and bloodless.
She looked faint, as if she didn’t belong to this world.

Yoojun, without realizing it, stopped in his tracks for a moment and just stood there looking at her.

“Hello, Mr. Kim Yoojun.”

Until she spoke first, with an inscrutable smile.