The Husband Who Notices Everything Except His Heart

Click.

Haejin, who had been sobbing in the room for a long time, hastily buried his face in the pillow at the sound of the door opening.

The only person who would open this door without knocking was Beomwoo.

He had received an infertility diagnosis, and his depression and the fact he had cried a lot… Even Beomwoo, who claimed to have no interest in him, would have to be blind not to have noticed.

Even if they weren’t close, they were a couple sharing a home and a bedroom.

Still, he didn’t want to show a puffy face that blatantly declared, ‘I’ve been crying.’

No matter that theirs was a business marriage, Haejin’s heart was in a different place than his.

And above all, crying in front of Beomwoo, who had said he never expected a child anyway, would probably only irritate him.

Even if Haejin tried his best to look good, Beomwoo never looked his way, but he at least didn’t want to make an even worse impression.

As Haejin decided to just pretend to be asleep and stayed still, he heard the sound of footsteps trudging toward him.

“Mr. Jeong Haejin.”

“……”

If he pretended to be asleep, Beomwoo would normally assume he was sleeping, turn off the light quietly, and leave.

But for some reason, this time Beomwoo didn’t pass by and instead spoke to him.

The only things he wanted to hide from Beomwoo were his depression and sorrow, but under his gaze, Haejin’s heart pounded as if he were hiding a tremendous secret.

Yet, no matter what Beomwoo wanted to say, he didn’t want to show his tear-streaked face.

So Haejin kept his face buried in the pillow, pretending not to hear, until he heard a soft sigh from above.

“I know you’re not asleep.”

“……”

“Or are you doing this because you don’t want to talk to me?”

“……”

He had stayed as still as a dead mouse, so how had Beomwoo known?

He had seen through the act immediately and was now speaking seriously.

It could have been a simple probe, but if it was truly obvious he wasn’t sleeping, continuing the charade might worsen the rift between them.

Beomwoo might misunderstand that he genuinely didn’t want to talk.

‘What should I do?’

Haejin worried for a moment before finally deciding to sit up, his movements clumsy.

There was nothing worse than being a spouse caught in a lie.

Although he had scrambled up, now that he was upright, he felt awkward for being caught trying to avoid him.

Haejin hid his face as much as possible and offered a feeble excuse.

“I-I wasn’t asleep, I was just… t-tired and dozing off.”

“……”

“Was there… something you needed?”

Haejin pressed his eyelids firmly, doing his best to act tired.

But he was naturally bad at lying, so every movement felt unbearably awkward.

He could feel his own awkwardness, making it worse, and his mouth went completely dry.

Under the stifling, awkward silence and Beomwoo’s piercing gaze, Haejin couldn’t even bring himself to look up at his face.

But… what could the reason be?

They weren’t a couple that talked much, unlike others.

Moreover, it was rare for Beomwoo to initiate conversation.

Why was he seeking Haejin out?

Even if he had noticed the pretense, he could have just let it slide.

The fact he was trying this hard to talk must mean he had something important to say.

‘Don’t tell me… does he want to talk about divorce?’

Earlier, when he had unintentionally overheard their conversation, his mother-in-law had been pressuring Beomwoo to end the marriage.

At the time, he had retorted, asking if she was now telling him to divorce after being the one who arranged the marriage, but he and his mother had never been on good terms.

He might have just been resisting her fickle demands out of anger and could actually agree with her.

Their marriage had been a condition for Beomwoo to inherit the company.

Now that the company was formally his, Beomwoo had no reason to continue a marriage that had lost its nominal purpose.

Frankly, even Haejin thought so.

But… a divorce wouldn’t do.

If they divorced, the one who would regret it was, of course, Haejin.

In this day and age, divorce wasn’t a scandal, and he hadn’t married Beomwoo for his money, so it wasn’t about that.

What he feared was that if this marriage ended, they would become people who would never see each other again.

They would become strangers who wouldn’t even meet by chance on the street.

Their married life would become like a midsummer night’s dream, and they would live completely separate lives.

Even though he knew deep down that Beomwoo wasn’t a man who would reciprocate his long-held one-sided love, he didn’t want to become someone he could never see again.

As Haejin sat with his head hung low, his face pale, Beomwoo, who had been silently watching him, broke the silence.

“I heard you haven’t been eating properly for days. Is there a problem?”

“……”

Haejin couldn’t tell if he was asking out of genuine concern or if this was just an icebreaker before getting to his main point.

He couldn’t bring himself to relax his expression.

A problem… Beomwoo knew better than anyone, so was he pretending not to?

Even if he hadn’t considered divorce, he must have known that receiving an infertility diagnosis would affect Haejin’s mood.

He had plenty he wanted to say, but he wondered if this was a ploy to make him utter the word ‘infertility’ himself.

And even if it wasn’t Beomwoo’s intention, the mere thought of saying the word ‘infertility’ was painful to Haejin.

Just thinking about it made his eyes hot again.

It felt like the tears would gush out at any moment, but Haejin barely managed to rein in his emotions.

If Beom-woo already wanted a divorce, seeing him cry might make him find Haejin even more bothersome and troublesome.

Instead of answering honestly, Haejin dodged the question, talking in circles.

“My appetite has been a little off…”

“Haa, so you’ve been starving yourself for days because your appetite is ‘off’? What kind of foolish behavior is that?”

He had thought it was better than bringing up infertility, but Beomwoo became irritated, asking if that was really the reason he hadn’t been eating.

He was the type of person who tried to eat every meal in the most nutritionally efficient way possible, moving almost inhumanly in that regard.

Naturally, he seemed to find it incomprehensible that Haejin would skip meals for such a trivial reason.

Considering he had lived his whole life prioritizing efficiency over emotion, it was only natural he would find Haejin’s behavior strange.

But Haejin, whose heart was shattered beyond recognition, couldn’t hear Beomwoo’s words as concern.

And did he just say ‘foolish’?

Beomwoo had never directly called Haejin stupid before, but one of the favorite criticisms from his family was that Haejin was uneducated.

Haejin’s academic background was lacking.

It wasn’t that he was terribly bad at studies, but more that there was no one to pay his tuition, and he couldn’t receive benefits, so the financial burden prevented him from attending university.

In contrast, Beomwoo had graduated from a top-tier university abroad, and in his family, no one was academically inferior, making Haejin seem uneducated by comparison.

If Haejin had been in a slightly more rational state of mind, he might have realized Beomwoo’s words were spoken in a moment of heightened emotion.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t in that state.

Wrapped in an inferiority complex fueled by external forces, Haejin bit his lower lip hard.

Unable to stand the churning feeling in his stomach, he finally answered.

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t bother you.”

Even his angry retort was so characteristically ‘Haejin’ that others probably wouldn’t even recognize it as anger.

At Haejin’s response, Beomwoo, who had been questioning him irritably, closed his mouth.

He still seemed uncomfortable, his eyebrows furrowed, creating wrinkles between them, before he spoke in a stiff tone.

“If you don’t eat properly tomorrow either, I will mark it down as a failure to properly fulfill marital obligations.”

“…What?”

Startled by the unexpected words, Haejin’s eyes flew wide open, and he lifted his head.

While ‘marital obligations’ could imply something deep and intimate, it held a different meaning for Haejin and Beomwoo.

Theirs was a business marriage, devoid of love, but there were still rules they had to follow, primarily to avoid any gossip that could tarnish the chaebol family’s image.

One of these rules was ‘to maintain the appearance of a normal married life.’

This included not having affairs and not neglecting their spousal duties, both in private and in public.

If these rules were broken, Beomwoo kept a record.

If the infractions piled up, it would naturally constitute grounds for divorce due to the other party’s fault.

Although they hadn’t married for love, they were still husband and wife, so setting such conditions wasn’t strange.

Knowing that even minor rumors from a chaebol family could affect stock prices, Haejin had complied without complaint until now.

But not eating… that was a completely separate issue, wasn’t it?

“Baek, isn’t that unrelated to whether you eat or not…?”

“It is related. Just hearing about it bothers me.”

When Haejin looked at Beomwoo with a puzzled expression, he replied irritably.

‘I’m already so busy worrying about other things, why bother with such useless things?’

‘As if I’m dying from the hassle.’