Chapter 6: To Ruin You as You Ruined Me.

It had been quite a long time since she realized that Han Jaewoo had never truly loved her.
The higher his fame rose, the more honest Jaewoo became in front of Sayoung.

What he needed wasn’t Sayoung’s sincerity, but merely her popularity, which would serve as kindling to help the unknown actor Han Jaewoo get noticed.

‘I should have stopped when I first realized it.’
‘I should have slapped him across the face and turned my back.

What on earth was love, that Sayoung had so miserably clung and clung to him until the very last moment?

“Please stop acting so innocent, Ms. Yoon Sayoung. That expression of yours that makes me out to be the bad guy, I’m so sick of seeing it every time.”

Jaewoo’s sharp sneers, like a honed blade, and his harsh words sliced through Sayoung’s chest and pierced her heart.
It was a pain so terrible it was hard to recall again.

Even after they had grown distant, she was hurt all the same by Jaewoo’s fake displays of affection in front of others, but it couldn’t even compare to the pain she felt in the face of words that blatantly ignored and insulted her.

What hurt Sayoung the most was her own heart, which still wouldn’t let go, even while receiving such treatment.

It must have all been a lie from the start, yet it was a desperation that didn’t want to let go, clinging to all his tender gazes and touches that had poured down on her.

‘Because I didn’t want to completely break up with Jaewoo.’
‘Because that was the one thing I wanted to prevent, no matter what.’
‘Because I thought that if they we were bound within the institution of marriage, under the name of husband and wife, someday he would accept my sincere heart.’

So Sayoung endured and endured the pain of walking barefoot on a path of thorns every day.

It is often said that love makes a person strong.
But Sayoung’s love did not.
The reason she could endure that harsh time was not because love had made her strong.

It was merely the struggle of a trivial and weak human being.
Even as she experienced it firsthand, Sayoung couldn’t believe that someone in love could become so weak.

‘Han Jaewoo, the husband of Yoon Sayoung. The unknown actor Han Jaewoo, who luckily rode on Yoon Sayoung’s name to become a star overnight. No matter how much I wanted it, when you hear that for a long time… it feels really damn dirty.’

Why on earth had she loved him so blindly? On what grounds had she been unable to let go of hope?

‘Sayoung. You and I, we’ve both done enough now. Let’s not be so pathetic.’

‘It’s okay. I’m still that person’s one and only spouse, and no one can take that position away.’
What on earth did her past self believe in, and for what reason had she endured all those things?

Love, what the hell was it anyway?

“……”

Sayoung slowly opened her eyes, as if emerging from a deep swamp.
It was unclear whether she had a nightmare, or had simply recalled a past day.
No, to be more precise, a memory of a day in the future.

She had pretended to be fine, but it seemed that talking with Yoojun with an injured body had been quite difficult.

Feeling the gravity heavily pressing down on her entire body, Sayoung managed to sit up from her lying position.
The hospital room, with its blackout curtains drawn, was as dark as midnight, making it impossible to gauge the time.

She remembered briefly greeting the caregiver Yoojun had supposedly sent before she fell asleep.
It seemed he had been the one to draw the curtains.

Staring blankly into the air until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Sayoung soon grabbed the phone she had placed on the bedside table.
The screen was cracked from the impact of falling when she was hit by the motorcycle, but it was still usable.

When she activated the phone, there were notifications of several missed calls and messages from her mother.
After divorcing Jaewoo, Sayoung had been receiving more frequent calls from her mother.

Her mother was her only family, a woman who had single-handedly raised Sayoung through all sorts of hardships after losing her husband in an accident when Sayoung was just an infant.

Her mother, who had always prioritized Sayoung’s wishes, had not said a word even when her daughter suddenly announced her divorce.
She had only said that no matter what choice she made, she would always be on her side.

Her mother, who knew better than anyone how much Sayoung liked Jaewoo, had wanted to spend at least a little time with her daughter after the divorce, but Sayoung had immediately found a house and moved her belongings there.
Even then, her mother had only quietly swallowed her many worries and disappointments.

Sayoung was suddenly reminded of her mother, who would have had to face her only daughter at her funeral.

Sayoung had no way of knowing what had become of the world she had originally lived in.

Whether the world had stopped forever at the moment of Sayoung’s death, or if the world had also turned back to the past along with Sayoung’s life, or if that world was just flowing on without Sayoung.
As a dead person.
She would probably never know.

That was why Sayoung still felt uncomfortable seeing her mother’s face.
If she were to face her, she thought it would be unbearable to be reminded of her mother from her previous life, who would have had to sit in the mourning hall for her only child who had passed away first, dressed in funeral attire, and greet people.

Beneath the contact name saved affectionately as ‘Mom ♡’, several messages were lined up, waiting for Sayoung.

「Why aren’t you answering?」
「Call me as soon as you see this message, Sayoung」
「Sayoung, come over for dinner if you have time」
「I miss you, my daughter」

Below the text, a mother rabbit emoticon, hugging a tiny baby rabbit and showering it with kisses, sparkled brightly.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t join her for dinner.
Sayoung didn’t want to let her mother know she was injured.

She was already worried enough; there was no need to give her another shock.
Her mother, who always thought of Sayoung’s feelings first, would surely understand if she said she wanted to sort out her thoughts alone for a while.

Staring blankly at her mother’s messages, fractured along the cracked screen, Sayoung raised her head again and cast her gaze into the now slightly familiar darkness of the hospital room.

There was another reason why she absolutely had to get her revenge.

Han Jaewoo had not just ruined Yoon Sayoung alone.
While the responsibility for making a mother send off her child first lay with him, Han Jaewoo could not escape that responsibility either.

If he couldn’t love Sayoung in the end, he should have at least shown her a minimum of respect.

It was Han Jaewoo who had decided to use Sayoung, and it was he who had decided to marry her.
If he had achieved what he wanted by using Sayoung’s name and background, and had enjoyed all those benefits, he should have at least shown a minimum of courtesy to Sayoung, who had been used by him.

Isolating a person from the world as if trapping them on a deserted island, subtly breaking their spirit so they couldn’t live a whole life, and on top of his vile machinations behind the scenes, insulting and despising Sayoung’s love to her face, and finally, throwing her away like trash—he shouldn’t have done that.

‘He should have at least kneeled and begged.’

‘He should have told me “I’ve fallen in love with someone else. I want to stand before that person with a sincere heart now. I’m so sorry to you, I have no words.” He should have at least shed some false tears like that.’

If Jaewoo had even put on such a pretense, she wouldn’t have been so out of her mind as to wander the streets, oblivious to the oncoming car.
Then she wouldn’t have met such a futile and miserable death.

Han Jaewoo had done none of the things he should have done, offered no apology, and had shifted all the reasons onto Sayoung’s love.

As if the person who had foolishly fallen in love deserved to bear all the responsibility.

So, in this life, Sayoung planned to return everything to Han Jaewoo’s love.
Just as Yoon Sayoung’s love had completely ruined Yoon Sayoung herself, this time, Han Jaewoo’s love would be the reason that completely ruined him.

****

“Ha, seriously…”

Yoojun, who had been trying to fall asleep for a long time, finally shot up in bed.
Even though he had an early morning filming schedule, he just couldn’t fall asleep.

Filming was nearing its end, and it was a crucial time to manage his condition, but his inability to sleep was making him irritable.

“What kind of crazy bastard did I get tangled up with…”

And that irritation was, of course, directed at Yoon Sayoung, who had bothered him with her nonsense.

He really didn’t want to, but strangely, whenever he closed his eyes, the image of her sitting forlornly in the hospital room kept coming to mind.

Her unsettlingly inhuman appearance.
The way she looked as hazy as a ghost or mist, as if she would scatter into thin air at any moment, flickered beyond his darkened vision.

If it were the crazy talk about dying and coming back to life that was ringing in his ears, he could have dismissed it as the ramblings of a madman, but the face that kept coming to mind was the one that had stared at him with inscrutable eyes without a word, and it was so unsettling that he couldn’t ignore it.

By association, Han Jaewoo, who had been Yoon Sayoung’s husband, came to mind, and his mood soured even further.

He couldn’t help but curse at the memory of him looking him up and down with an ambiguously unpleasant gaze whenever they happened to cross paths.

It wasn’t that he was unpleasant simply because he was an Alpha.
‘I felt an instinctive repulsion from Han Jaewoo.’

Finally, running his hands through his hair in frustration, Yoojun got out of bed completely, went to the kitchen, and hastily drank a bottle of water.
 He emptied half the bottle without stopping, and his stomach felt instantly refreshed, but the tightness in his chest showed no sign of easing.