Chapter 0: Prologue

“Let’s get a divorce.”

Sayoung gazed impassively at her husband’s face. She had never once imagined a day would come when she would be the first to say such words to him.

That is, not until before she died.

Han Jaewoo, the husband Sayoung had loved with all her being, wore a rare look of bewilderment upon being told about the divorce.
Just as Sayoung herself had never imagined it, Jaewoo too must have never guessed that she would be the one to bring up divorce first.

“What are you talking about…”

Jaewoo spoke with an expression that seemed to doubt his own ears, as if questioning what he had just heard.

Sayoung could tell what emotion lay beneath Jaewoo’s bewilderment.
He wasn’t shocked by the ‘divorce’.
After all, Jaewoo had already been dreaming of divorcing Sayoung for a long time.

The shock was merely that the word had come from Yoon Sayoung’s mouth, not his own.

He was astonished that Yoon Sayoung, who had loved Han Jaewoo enough to lay down her life for him, who had thrown away all her pride to cling to him so pathetically, was the one to ask for a divorce first.
His pride was wounded.
He was angry.

That was why Han Jaewoo was now revealing his emotions so nakedly in front of her.

Rather than finding it amusing, the fact was simply sorrowful.
Sayoung let out a short sigh instead of tears and continued speaking.

“I said, let’s get a divorce. It’s what you wanted anyway, isn’t it?”

“……”

“Did you really… really think I was just okay with it all?”

Between each syllable of her question, the past memories she had always swallowed alone bled through like blood.

Even while enduring Jaewoo’s blatant contempt and heartlessness.
Even while living a daily life so disrespectful it was impossible to consider it the way one treated a spouse, Sayoung acted as if love still existed between her and Jaewoo.
She ignored all his deceptions as if she couldn’t see them.

If she showed even the slightest sign.
If she showed that she was hurt and breaking down from the fact that Han Jaewoo had never loved Yoon Sayoung from the start.

Then she was terrified that he would actually leave her.
She was afraid he would say, ‘I don’t want to see you in pain, so let’s just end it here.’

The pain of being abandoned by him seemed harder to bear than the pain from the fact that Jaewoo had approached her from the beginning only to use her.

So Sayoung had pretended to be unfazed, enduring Han Jaewoo’s insults, betrayals, and mistreatment.

Right up until the very day she had died.

“…Alright. Well, I was wondering when and how to bring it up anyway, so thanks for saying it first.”

Han Jaewoo quickly regained his composure.
His usual ease returned to his face, and a smile touched the corners of his mouth as he readily thanked her.

He had been flustered because he hadn’t expected Sayoung to say it first, but from Jaewoo’s perspective, there was nothing bad about it.
It felt a bit early, but Jaewoo had been preparing for his divorce from Sayoung for a long time anyway.

He was no longer the unknown actor Han Jaewoo, who had gained attention by riding on Yoon Sayoung’s popularity.
The tide had already turned more favorably for Han Jaewoo.

Sitting there, Sayoung blankly watched the smile of the lover, the husband, she had loved so dearly.

Perhaps a tiny bit of hope had remained.
Even after being so cruelly abandoned, even after embracing that pain until she met her death, it was clear that a lingering attachment she couldn’t discard still remained in Sayoung’s heart.

Because she had returned to the past.
She didn’t know how this had happened, but time had been turned back to before everything spiraled into the worst-case scenario.

‘If I change from now on, if I treat him differently than before… maybe in this second life I’ve been given, I could win his heart. Maybe I could find a way not to be abandoned.’

But even though Sayoung had demanded a divorce, she couldn’t feel a single grain of lingering affection or regret from Jaewoo.
Instead, as she faced him with his look of welcome relief, Sayoung became certain that her choice to ask for a divorce was not wrong.

Barely unclenching the fist she had held so tightly that her nails dug into her palm, Sayoung was the first to rise from her seat.
She felt like crying but held it back.
Even though her legs trembled, she endured.

The present Han Jaewoo wouldn’t remember, but in Sayoung’s mind, every memory of how miserably and wretchedly she had clung to him before her death remained vivid.
She didn’t want to show such a pathetic side of herself in front of him again.

“Since we’re in agreement, this should be simple. Let’s discuss the details through our lawyers.”

“……”

“I’ll be leaving first.”

‘I’m so sick and tired of you now, Yoon Sayoung.’

‘Can you please just disappear from my life? Isn’t this enough?’

As Sayoung walked across the cafe, the last words she had heard from Jaewoo before her death cast a shadow over her steps.

‘Did you ever think about wanting to die? Because it was so painful. Because it was so miserable and scary. Did you ever think it would be better to just die? Of course, now it’s a pointless memory.’

When she opened the cafe door and stepped out, the brilliant midday sun poured down.
Sayoung stopped in her tracks for a moment.
It was hard to distinguish the blinding sensation from the pain.

Turning her head, she could see Jaewoo still sitting inside, beyond the cafe’s glass wall.
He was smiling, talking to someone on the phone.
His face was gleeful, as if he had won an unexpected lottery.

She couldn’t tell if that was truly the case or if it just seemed that way because of her own insecurities.
‘Whatever the reality was, it no longer mattered.’
Sayoung faced forward again and resumed her paused steps.

He would probably think that all the tiresome business was finally over.
That since Sayoung, who had clung to him like a leech no matter how hard he struggled to shake her off, had taken it upon herself to fall away, all his troubles were now over.

Sayoung, too, could have let it end like this.
It was a second life, a new opportunity miraculously gained.

Sayoung had gained the chance to finally shake off her feelings for Han Jaewoo, which had eaten away at her entire life, and be reborn as a new person to live for her own happiness.

The only problem was, Sayoung had absolutely no intention of letting him go just like that.

The reason Sayoung had silently endured all that pain was because she believed that someday, her day to be rewarded would come.

She believed in Han Jaewoo.
Even if the love he whispered wasn’t entirely sincere, she thought that since they had gone as far as to marry, he must have at least some affection for her.

So, she had endured, believing that if she did better, if she tried harder to win his favor, someday he would see her.

Consoling herself that the one who loves more is always the one to lose.

‘But how did it end?’
‘What had come back to me in return?’
‘Even if there had been no love from the start, if you’re a human being, shouldn’t there be a line you don’t cross with another person?’

If only Han Jaewoo had possessed the bare minimum of respect for Yoon Sayoung as a fellow human being.
‘How?’
‘How could he have gone that far?’

Sayoung clenched her fists tightly again.

She could start a new life just like this.
She could have chosen to become happy, mending her once-broken life while believing that true revenge was to push aside the likes of Han Jaewoo so he no longer held any meaning, and living so well and happily for him to see.

But Sayoung decided not to take that path.
She wanted to return to its owner the pain of a heart that was never, in the end, reciprocated.

A person can never fully understand the pain of another that they have not experienced themselves.
So, Sayoung decided to use the second chance she was given to deliver that pain to Han Jaewoo.

Whether this was a hallucination, a parallel universe, or truly a return to the past—whatever it was.
She would make the Han Jaewoo of this world thoroughly understand the pain that Yoon Sayoung had suffered.

That was the choice of the regressor, Yoon Sayoung.