Chapter 10 — Are You a Pervert?

Damn it. What the hell am I doing?

I barely managed to suppress the urge to throw my phone away before putting my daughter to bed.

It was already past ten.

My wife and I had never been the type to contact each other constantly. But for some reason, it was impossible to calm the suspicions that kept racing through my mind.

“Yeah, honey. Is something wrong?”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

Lee Jin-ho spoke in a slightly angry voice, and Park Na-young answered.

“You had so many missed calls that I was surprised… I just finished work, and I’m in the hotel lobby. I didn’t realize you’d called.”

It was well past eleven by the time I finally heard my wife’s voice.

She answered so naturally, as if she had no idea what was going on inside my head.

And to my unusually sensitive ears tonight, I could make out the commotion and the laughter of people in the background.

At this late hour, Park Na-young was not in a hotel lobby.

The pleasant voice I had once loved, and even the loyalty we had shared for a little over ten years, began collapsing like a sandcastle.

My wife’s obvious lie.

A week passed after that.

During that time, several things happened that I couldn’t forget.

For example—

When she returned from her business trip, she came at me with unusually intense affection, saying she had missed me.

And there was the necklace dangling between the folds of her loosened shirt.

“What’s that necklace?”

“This? The director of the new center gave it to me as a gift.”

Then there was the time I pushed her away with a flimsy excuse.

The days when I ignored my wife even though she kept asking what was wrong and whether she had done something wrong.

And then—

“Excuse me. Do we know each other?”

“Me? No.”

One day, when I made time to pick up my daughter from school, I encountered a man who stared intently at both me and my daughter.

“Then why are you staring at us like that?”

The man didn’t answer my question.

He was dressed impeccably, with an inexplicable smile on his face as he looked at me.

I don’t know whether the expression I saw would have looked like mockery to anyone else.

I was overwhelmed by my own subjective emotions at the time.

“So you’re Min-hee.”

“Huh? Who are you, mister?”

“Mister? Haha. You’ve grown up nicely.”

The bastard approached and reached toward my daughter’s head.

I had become extremely sensitive lately, and I immediately grabbed the hand of the strange man and twisted it.

“Argh…”

“What the hell are you?”

“Let go of this.”

“First tell me who you are. And how do you know Min-hee’s name? Who are you?”

The man’s face, twisted in pain, suddenly changed back into a mocking smile.

That was when I could no longer hold myself back.

“You! Are you a pervert?”

Lee Jin-ho swung his fist hard into the man’s face.

Blood streamed from the nose of the man sprawled on the ground.

My daughter burst into tears in confusion at the sight of the red blood, and the pedestrians who had been watching our altercation eventually called the police.

One ridiculous thing I noticed in the middle of all this was the man’s shoes.

For some reason, my eyes were drawn to them.

They were exactly the same model as the shoes my wife had bought for me.

“Ha. You bastard. What the hell are you?”

“You think it’s okay to throw punches in front of your child?”

“What? You son of a—”

I wanted to smash that bastard’s sneering mouth again.

But I had to take care of Min-hee.

I couldn’t leave my crying daughter alone.

“Hey! What’s going on here?”

While I was calming my daughter, a patrol car arrived with a loud siren.

Two police officers got out.

“Good thing you’re here. That man tried to touch my daughter.”

“What do you mean, he tried to touch her?”

The two officers separated the suspicious man and me, listening to each of our sides.

One was the man with blood running from his nose, desperately trying to explain himself.

The other was me, standing beside my crying daughter, still worked up.

Judging from the way both of us were dressed, neither of us looked like the sort of person who would commit some disgraceful act.

“He kept staring at my daughter and me strangely. I asked him if he knew us, and instead of answering, he called my daughter by her name and tried to touch her head.”

“Hmm… And that’s why you assaulted him?”

“I had no choice. How was I supposed to know whether that bastard was a pervert or not?”

The officer taking my statement wrote several things down in his notebook.

Then he took down my resident registration number and phone number.

“Yes, yes. I understand your side, sir. But please understand that we’re remaining neutral here… Hey, Officer Park.”

“Yes, Sergeant Kim.”

“When you’re finished talking, come over here.”

Officer Park hurried over at Sergeant Kim’s gesture.

The two of them whispered to each other.

“Hey, is this guy really insisting on filing a complaint? Can’t you do something? We’ve already got a mountain of reports today. Try to handle this somehow.”

“He says he wants to do it himself. What am I supposed to do, stop him? Then you go over there and try.”

I could hear their whispered conversation.

Then Sergeant Kim walked over to the man wiping the blood from his nose and said something to him.

“Sir, the victim over there wants to file a complaint, so… it looks like we’re going to have to register this as a case.”

“A complaint? Ha. I’ll file one too. For child molestation.”

Sergeant Kim sighed and exchanged a troubled look with Officer Park.

“Um… sir, given the circumstances, this doesn’t constitute child molestation. And that man says he doesn’t know your daughter’s name… He says he wasn’t even trying to touch her head. There’s also a witness who recorded the incident, and the video doesn’t show him touching or trying to touch your daughter’s head. Simply raising his hand isn’t enough to…”

“I saw it right in front of me! I saw it myself!!!”

My reason was boiling away like heat haze rising from asphalt in midsummer.

My rationality was growing thinner and thinner.

This must have been anger.

It had been a long time since I had felt something like this.

“This is ridiculous. There’s no talking to this man…”

Sergeant Kim briefly scratched inside his ear with his pinky.

Then he looked at the fingertip and blew on it.

Behind him, the strange man continued to smirk.

His lips were moving, saying something I couldn’t hear.

Even though I couldn’t hear him, it made me furious.

“You crazy bastard…!!!”

I shook off the police officers trying to restrain me.

I had to know how that bastard knew Min-hee’s name and why he had stared at us like that.

But the officers kept getting in the way as they actively tried to separate us.

“I told you, that bastard definitely knew my daughter’s name. I just want to find out how he knew it. Or you can ask him for me.”

I tried to push past the police officers restraining me and move toward him.

It was a fierce struggle.

“Whoa, whoa! This is obstruction of official duties. Take your hands off me and step back.”

“That’s not the issue! How the hell does that bastard know my daughter’s name?”

“Hey! He says he doesn’t know her. There are no witnesses! Keep acting like this and we’ll arrest you. Touch us one more time and you’ll be arrested on the spot for obstructing official duties!”

Their words finally brought me back to my senses.

It was incredibly unfair.

But there was nothing I could do.

This was a country ruled by law.

My suspicions weren’t evidence.

The bastard’s mocking smile wasn’t grounds for assault.

I slowly stepped backward with both palms raised where they could clearly see them.

My daughter blinked at me with frightened eyes.

“Listen, sir. You can file the child molestation complaint if you want. As for the assault, unless that gentleman changes his mind, the police station will contact you within a few days. Talk to them then. There’s nothing else we can do here.”

This had turned into a complete mess.

Until now, I had never even had an encounter with the police in my entire life.

“Damn it…”

It was a memory that made me shudder.

And there was one final event.

In the end, it was something I had done because I needed to confirm my suspicions.

“Three… four…”

Specifically, I had secretly gathered Min-hee’s hair and sent it to a paternity-testing company along with my own hair.

Sneaking around like a thief, collecting strands from her hairbrush, made me feel terrible.

“Damn it…”

Every time I saw my daughter’s adorable smile, I prayed that everything was simply the result of my own narrow-minded suspicions.

Several times a day, I prayed to a God I had never even seen.

Dozens of times, I held back tears in my heart.

I was being eaten alive by anxiety.

Regardless of how much my insides were burning, I still had to work.

Looking back on that morning, my wife had awkwardly seen me off, while my daughter had been as warm as ever.

I felt nothing but sorry for my child.

Sigh.

“Huh? Mr. Lee, do you smoke?”

It was Choi Moon-young.

He approached me curiously and took a cigarette out.

It was unusual for the smoking area to be completely empty.

But today, of all days, it was.

Just the two of us.

I sincerely hoped Choi Moon-young would quietly do whatever he had come to do and leave.

“What happened? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smoke in the ten-plus years I’ve known you.”

“I guess not.”

How long had it been since I’d last smoked?

When I passed the CPA exam, I had sworn that I would never smoke again for the rest of my life.

But today, I wanted a cigarette.

Today was the day the paternity test results were supposed to arrive.

There was no way I could endure it sober.

At the same time, I couldn’t leave work at such a crucial moment, with my promotion on the line.

So, reluctantly, I had come to work and was forced to soothe my burning insides with cigarettes.

“What the hell is going on? It doesn’t seem like an ordinary problem.”

“I’d rather not talk about it. I’m sorry, Senior.”

There was curiosity in his eyes as he looked at me.

Despite my firm declaration that I didn’t want to talk, his questions didn’t stop.

“It’s a marital fight, isn’t it? I know, brother. Today, I’ll talk to you casually as an older brother. What do you think, Mr. Lee? Doesn’t it get exhausting constantly keeping each other in check? We used to get along pretty well, didn’t we?”

For a moment, I had the urge to smash his face.

But at the same time, I wanted to hear what he was going to say, and how far he would go.

Looking back, our relationship had once been fairly decent, despite how long ago it was.

I even remembered us greeting each other warmly from time to time.

So I decided to lower my guard a little.

“Things have just been a little rough between us lately. So what exactly did you want to talk about?”

Only then did his face brighten.

He began pouring out his story.

“Sigh… I’m practically at the point of divorcing my wife. Apparently, she’s been having an affair. I’d get divorced right away if I could, but I can’t because of the kids…”

“The kids… Right… What fault do the children have…”

“Yeah… At least they’re my kids, so that’s a relief…”

Even so, his troubles seemed better than mine.

I sincerely hoped this nightmare would pass and happy days would return once again.

“You too… If you can, try to let go. A man and a woman got together, after all. Looking back, I’ve done plenty wrong myself, so I don’t really have the right to get angry at my wife…”

He had no right to criticize his wife.

Ever since our early days at the firm, I had witnessed his shameless behavior more times than I could count.

Back then, his wife had almost seemed saintly to me.

The one remotely human thing about him was that at least he knew he was in the wrong.

“Yes. I understand what you’re saying, Senior. Let’s go back inside.”

I couldn’t concentrate on my work.

I had no desire to run into Choi Moon-young again, so I stayed away from the smoking area he had occupied.

I crushed my cigarette and threw it into the trash.

Then I paced back and forth in the break room until I nearly wore down the threshold.

The coffee tasted bitter.

“Mr. Lee, there was a courier downstairs. The front desk on the first floor called.”

Kim Anna told me with a smile, apparently unaware of what I was going through.

But I didn’t have the energy to smile back.

I simply nodded and walked away.

I could hear her voice behind me, asking if something was wrong, but I kept my eyes straight ahead.

It had to be the piece of paper I’d been waiting for.

I wanted to know the truth as soon as possible.

“Please sign here.”

When I reached the lobby, I quietly nodded and signed.

Cold sweat began beading across my forehead.

“Stay strong.”

The courier had probably seen deliveries like this countless times.

His expression suggested that he understood the situation well enough, and after offering me a brief word of encouragement, he quickly left.

And finally, I was able to confirm whether my daughter was really my child.

Dear God… please…

The instant I tore open the small envelope felt like a lifetime flashing before my eyes.

The overwhelming moment when my tiny baby had first rolled over.

The day her little wriggling hand had grasped my finger.

The day she had given me that tiny, precious call—

Daddy.

All those memories rushed through my mind in an instant, bringing tears to my eyes.