Chapter 96.1

Chapter 96.1

How… how could this be Kim Hyun?

Her pale face tilted in disbelief. It couldn’t be. How could this be Kim Hyun? With a sense of reality slipping away, she stared blankly at the decaying corpse.

How could this bloated, putrid mass be the same person who once gave me flowers?

“No! It can’t be. It can’t be.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I even spoke to him on the phone. He was supposed to be an outstanding agent.

She clung to her rising doubts like a lifeline. Yet, as her thumb brushed over an eyebrow and traced downward, ah. A glimmer crossed Seoryeong’s eyes.

Yes, there—where the familiar round scar was, the slightly asymmetrical nostrils, the faintly downturned corners of his lips, the thickness of those lips. Her hands showed no sign of stopping.

“No! This still isn’t! It can’t be!”

But she could only shake her head like a broken puppet.

Desperately, Seoryeong widened her eyes, searching for anything different from Kim Hyun, her hands urgently tracing over the rotting corpse, bruised in dark, sickly hues.

There had to be something different. My husband wasn’t so silent, he wasn’t so tired, he wasn’t so filthy.

But soon her eyes stung as if they would burst, and her vision blurred with tears. No matter how much she looked, no matter how often her fingers traced those features, it was the face she had memorized a hundred times over.

“Instructor!”

In a daze, Seoryeong lifted her gaze as if entranced.

Lee Wooshin stood frozen, neither fully letting go nor entirely holding onto the bag.

Although the zipper was already open, he clutched it with bulging veins, gripping it desperately.

The look in his eyes tore at her heart. With his cheek bruised from a slap and one lens of his glasses missing, his exposed iris trembled with despair.

“Why! Why did you bring this bag?”

“.…”

“We had a different deal. I asked you to bring back Kim Hyun, my husband, not… not something like this. I never asked for this!”

Her voice grew louder with every word.

“This isn’t right. This isn’t what I wanted!”

Seeing his silent expression, an overwhelming sense of sorrow rose up uncontrollably. She didn’t even care if her anger seemed misplaced.

With no one else to vent her near-mad emotions to, she grabbed his collar and shook him violently.

Even her weak hands managed to push Lee Wooshin back a few steps, making him stagger. It was almost laughable—an instructor of his rank, thrown off balance like that.

“Instructor! You! You brought the wrong thing… wrong.”

Seoryeong’s legs finally gave out, and she collapsed onto the riverbank.

“Han Seoryeong!”

Lee Wooshin knelt beside her, steadying her as she fell. She didn’t even cry, just kept hitting the bag in front of her with soft, helpless strikes. Their pants gradually soaked dark in the dampness.

Then, a rustling sound caught their attention. Seoryeong hesitated, then reached into the bag, only to feel something sharp scrape beneath her fingernail.

Grabbing onto it, she pulled out a bundle of papers.

One was an unidentified death report. The other…

“――.”

It felt like her heart stopped. The moment her eyes landed on the black-and-white photo, the world went silent, only for sound to gradually return.

The mournful rustle of the reeds in the wind seeped through her aching eardrums, becoming clearer.

A man awkwardly dressed in a tuxedo stood beside a woman in a sleeveless dress. Holding flowers shyly, his arm had tingled with nerves throughout the photo shoot.

It was the humble wedding photo they’d taken at the local studio, corners worn and creased.

Yes, this is my face. And this.

Seoryeong couldn’t tear her eyes from the unfamiliar wedding photo. Kim Hyun held her hand tightly, while Seoryeong, with her shoulders tense, looked like she didn’t know what to do with herself, her nervousness caught in the image forever.

So, this was us. We were smiling like this, but why is this photo with this corpse?

Seoryeong blinked in a daze. Suddenly, Wooshin next to her snatched the photo away, inspecting it with a cold expression as he turned it back and forth.

His face twisted with bitterness.

Yet, Seoryeong continued to stare down at the corpse. No, it couldn’t be. It truly couldn’t be.

She pressed her forehead and nose into the corpse’s bluish, decomposing skin, as if trying to meld with it. A low, retching groan escaped her lips.

“Ah!”

So it really is you. This is what you look like. She held the decaying body tightly, almost in reverence.

“Hyun! Hyun!”

For the first time, she saw her husband’s face—his face that she had longed to see, to remember fully with her own eyes.

The yearning, which had been simmering since the moment her vision began to fade, now burst like a bud within the decayed remnants of Kim Hyun.

If only you’d stayed alive. I hated you so much. I wanted to pay you back. But still if only you’d stayed alive.

Her last defense crumbled as a searing heat flooded her eyes.

“Hyun!”

How could you show up like this, so that I can’t even follow after you? I thought you were doing well at the National Intelligence Service, so why… why does my husband have to be thrown at me in such a horrid state!