Chapter 18 - His Lovers Husband (1/2)

Yunjae woke up with nausea ȧssailing her, and she rolled off the bed with a groan. Her hands feeling cold and clammy, she opened her eyes, only to stop.

Jinho loomed over her with a worried expression. ”Are you okay?” he asked as he helped her up.

”Y-yeah…” she answered as he left her side to get her a glass of water.

She drank, conscious of the pair of eyes watching her.

”Jae…” Jinho called, and she turned to him with a questioning look. ”I will not bother you anymore,” he stated softly and her eyes widened in shock. Before she protested, however, Jinho placed a finger against her lips.

”Don't worry about your job. You can still keep it,” he ȧssured her. ”I was thinking of going on an extended business trip. We have a branch in Japan anyway, so I can go there.”

”But…” Jae started. She felt like crying again, and she could see that Jinho was the same. But somehow, she couldn't ask him why. She had no right.

With a defeated look, she let herself be guided towards the bathroom where she started taking a shower alone.

Was this goodbye? Was this how Jinho would end her punishment?

Her nausea returning with a vengeance, Yunjae started sobbing again. No, she didn't want this to end. Even when she was being punished, she bore with it not just because of her sin. She endured because it was the only way she could be with Jinho again.

Now that things seemed to improve between them, she couldn't bear to lose him a second time. Even after two years, the once magnificent buŧŧerfly, no matter how broken it had become still owned her heart.

A sharp pain sliced through her body and she cried as she dropped the soap. Her eyes widening, she watched as the wet tiles stained with blood. ”Oh…” she whispered as she realized the pool of red warmth was coming from her and she screamed.

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Jinho stood inside the hospital room feeling stiff as ice. The clock ticked audibly from the far side of the wall, and he watched each second as it passed by. His hands balled into fists on his side, he waited in tensed silence for Yunjae's husband to arrive.

Half an hour ago, when he heard his lover scream, he rushed towards the bathroom and found her there in a pool of blood, her face devoid of any color. Without thinking, he wrapped her up in a towel and brought her here.

In those thirty minutes, as he watched the doctors fuss over her, Jinho feared the worst. He also blamed himself, thinking that the pressure he'd put on his lover was the reason she got sick. It was his fault, and he prayed that whatever Jae's condition was, it wasn't grave.

What she had wasn't something life-threatening, though it would make their lives more complicated than they already were.

”Are you her husband?” the doctor asked him earlier, and Jinho didn't think. He just nodded. It was the only way he'd know her condition, and he did.