The Second Wife

“I said that kind of bullshit? You’ve finally lost it, haven’t you?”

He raised his voice in disgust. In an instant, the sharp glares of the people in the cafe pierced our direction. Frowning, I tried to calm him down.

“Lower your voice, you prick.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t bark so much. Look, I like women. Did you think I suddenly turned gay just because we haven’t seen each other in a while?”

His reaction was perfectly normal. It was the answer I wanted, delivered with a confidence that suggested it was the only possible option for him. But a week ago, when we sat across from each other for the first time in five years, he had been different.

— Calling me after five years… I really thought you’d forgotten me.

His voice then had been outside the realm of ordinary conversation. If I had to describe it, it was like something from the depths of a moss-covered sewer pipe—viscous, damp, even desperate. That foul filth had stuck to my eardrums as he whispered.

— I don’t even know anymore. I might as well just become your wife.

He was a lightweight. Back in university, he was the guy who would hover near death for a week after being forced to drink by senior students. Maybe it was just a drunk man’s rambling. While my head tried to rationalize it that way, a lingering foulness—like a piece of dried snack wedged deep between my gums—governed my entire body. An irritant that wouldn’t budge no matter how much I poked at it with my tongue. Had I really misheard him? The voice had been too vivid for that.

“I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Maybe I was hearing things.”

“It’s not like this is the first time you’ve tripped out. Fine, whatever. I don’t care,” he laughed.

His magnanimity only made the ‘filth’ in my ear sink deeper. I shouldn’t have called him after five years.

“Are you still taking your meds?”

“I stopped.”

“Stopped? Does that mean you’re better? I guess married life has given you some stability.”

“Something like that,” I replied dryly.

At my answer, his eyes shimmered with an unpleasant gloss.

“Actually, I called you here to give you this.”

He slid a white envelope across the table.

“…A wedding invitation? You’re getting married?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to reach you to give you this, but you ignored my calls for a whole week because of that—what was it—delusion? Misconception? I’m hurt.”

Delusion. He had almost spat out the word before stopping himself. It was clear he had already diagnosed me as a lunatic.

“If I heard something like that, even if it was a mistake, it’s only right to avoid you. Anyway, congrats, man.”

Sure, even a guy like you should do his part for the national birth rate. At least then there’s some point to you being born.

Thinking that to myself, I almost let out a smirk. I didn’t know which woman he had managed to snag, but I felt a wave of pity for her. Whether I’d actually show up at the wedding was a problem for later. Were we even close enough for me to give up a weekend to celebrate him? Honestly, I didn’t think so.

“Hahaha, thanks. I can’t believe you called me first after five years before I could even reach out. I guess it’s fate, in a way.”

“Sure.”

Fate, my ass.

Ignoring his words, I tried to open the envelope right there. But his hand clamped down over mine. It was colder than the iced Americano on the table, yet sickeningly soft. A repulsive shiver ran down my spine, and I reflexively jerked my hand away.

“What the hell?”

“Why so surprised?”

“You startled me, doing that out of nowhere.”

“Don’t be such a coward. Open it when you get home.”

“…?”

“Maybe… it’s what you’ve wanted all along.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up maliciously. He looked at me with an arrogant gaze, as if he already knew exactly what face I would make when I opened that envelope.

After locking the front door, I walked into the living room and tossed my smartwatch onto the sofa. Even in the darkness, the envelope felt different than it had in the cafe. It had a repulsive texture.

It didn’t feel like the texture of crisp, new paper; it felt ‘used,’ stained by hand-grease and the passage of time. Knowing him, he might have used recycled paper, but this didn’t feel ‘eco-friendly.’ It just felt old and contaminated.

The phrase ‘We are getting married’ on the front was written in a generic font, but a strange sense of déjà vu crawled down my neck. Why hadn’t I noticed this earlier? Under my name in the ‘Recipient’ slot, white correction tape had been sloppily smeared. It looked like someone had desperately tried to erase something, leaving jagged, scratched marks.

He’s got no sincerity at all. This guy, then and now….

I decided I wouldn’t attend. As for the gift money… since I was the one who called him out, maybe I’d send half the price of a meal. With those trivial thoughts, I tore the envelope open.

Unlike the envelope, the invitation inside was freakishly white. It was a blinding, chemical white, as if the truth had been bleached away with harsh toxins—a white so ominous it felt like it would give me radiation burns just by touching it. There was no information, no text. Frowning, I flipped the paper over.

My breath hitched.

There, printed on the back, was my own wedding photo from five years ago. My face, smiling happily in a tuxedo, was there. And beside me, the bride. But the bride’s face did not exist. Someone had scratched it out with a black ballpoint pen so violently that the paper was mangled. It was a miracle the paper hadn’t torn through; the sheer, brutal force used was evident.

A wave of nausea hit me, as if sewer filth was surging back up my throat. Before running to the bathroom, I became obsessively fixated on the correction tape on the envelope.

I slumped onto the living room floor and began scratching at the white tape with my fingernail. Scritch. Scritch-tch. A dry friction sound filled the air as white flakes scattered onto the floor. The sticky residue jammed under my fingernails, turning black and messy, but I couldn’t stop. As the envelope became tattered, the blue ink hidden beneath began to reveal itself. The letters were crushed, but I recognized them instantly.

Because I was the one who wrote them.

This was the exact wedding invitation I had handed him five years ago, mocking him to ‘come and bless me.’ After brushing away the white powder, his name stood there, defiant.

PARK GEON-WOO.

He hadn’t thrown it away. He had preserved it intentionally. Erasing his own name and writing mine in its place, he had been waiting for the day this invitation would return to me.

I had dug my own grave.

— Maybe it’s what you’ve wanted all along.

“Fuck! What does this have to do with me? What the hell does it matter?!”

I screamed, looking down at our names, mangled together in the white sticky residue. The fragments of my name on top and his name embedded below were grotesquely mixed in the white powder. My voice cracked and tore with that single shriek. My brain felt like it was burning at his twisted, inventive malice.

The piece of a prank I had created five years ago to humiliate him had traveled back through time to crawl onto my living room floor. I had to call him right now and demand to know the intention behind this insane joke.

Just as I stepped on the white flakes and grabbed my phone, it vibrated, as if waiting for my finger to touch the screen.

The name [Geon-der-gi] flashed clearly on the display.

‘Geon-deo-gi’—it was a cruel nickname I’d given him, a pun on his name ‘Geon-woo’ that meant the vile dregs left at the bottom of a bowl of soup. Usually, I’d toss out the slop and only eat the noodles, but this time, I couldn’t ignore this persistent piece of waste. No, it was already clogging my throat.

A tremor—whether from rage or a fear I refused to acknowledge—flowed through my fingertips. I hated that cowardly trembling so much I wanted to snap my own fingers. I bit my lip and swiped the 'Accept' button.

The moment I answered, his voice flowed into my ear. It wasn’t the voice from the cafe—the voice of an ordinary man in his 30s. The damp sewer filth from a week ago was finally crawling into my skull.

— “So, how do we look? Our names… don’t they make a lovely pair? Just like that photo you gave me five years ago.”

“You piece of shit. What kind of prank is this? Do you have a death wish?”

— “Wow. Can’t you speak more kindly? I didn’t say a single curse word to you back then.”

His voice sounded pathetic and affected, like a frail, wronged wife. It was sickening.

“Did you even have the balls to curse? You were just a pathetic loser who couldn’t say a word and just sat there smiling.”

— “I didn’t have the courage, that’s true. But hiding behind the name of a ‘friend’ to play petty pranks with someone’s weakness… if you call that ‘courage’ I’d rather not have it.”

His voice was calm, but there was the feel of a blade within it—one that had been sharpened for a very long time.

“Hey, you’ve gotten quite talkative. You said you didn't remember anything earlier. What’s the point of sending this? Go ahead, spit it out.”

— “Honestly, I thought you might not remember… or if you did, that you’d keep your mouth shut. Seeing how you brought it up first, maybe you’re interested? Maybe you actually want to be a 'pair' with me.”

“Stop screwing around. Before I come over there and crush that pretty face of yours.”

— “Oh my. How scary.”

He didn’t sound scared at all. Then, he dropped his voice into a tone that didn’t suit him.

— “Hey. You’re the one who needs to stop screwing around.”

He wasn’t backing down easily like the Park Geon-woo who used to crawl at my feet five years ago.

— “…I’m standing right in front of your wife’s office. You’d better start making the right judgment call. Even if you floor it and ignore every red light, it’ll take you thirty minutes to get here. Me? I just have to open this door and I’m in the lobby.”

Son of a bitch.

— “So? Who’s the underdog now?”

The way he used the word ‘underdog’ scraped against my eardrums. It was a position I had never occupied. With that one word, he was trying to shove me beneath his feet.

“…The ‘Dregs’ are finally rising to the surface.”

You’re just the dregs, Geon-deo-gi. How dare you try to form a relationship or take a seat at the table. You’re just the sediment at the bottom of the bowl—something that doesn’t even have the right to exist.

But he, seemingly oblivious to the bite in my sarcasm, replied almost tenderly. His stupidity was almost laughable.

— “That’s right. I’m finally being revealed to the world thanks to you. Since you’re the one who dragged me out, you have to take responsibility for me until the end. Right?”

His voice didn’t feel like sewer filth anymore; it felt like a toxin flowing through my veins.

— “Now, get in the car. Do exactly as I say from now on.”

The moment he hung up, I let out a jagged breath and burst through the front door. I didn’t even have time to wait for the elevator. As I sprinted down the emergency stairs, I tried to measure the depth of the grave I had dug for myself.

This grotesque wedding he had prepared—the processional had only just begun.

Through the glass doors of the office lobby, I saw them. My wife, and Park Geon-woo standing across from her, smiling brightly. My wife was laughing repeatedly, as if their conversation was incredibly pleasant. I saw a hallucination of that five-year-old invitation—the one where I had pasted his face onto my wife’s body—coming to life before my eyes. My throat felt like it was parching; even my saliva wouldn’t go down.

Then, he turned his head and saw me. He smiled softly at my wife as if asking for her understanding, then put his phone to his ear. We were barely two meters apart. While his eyes stared straight at me, the device in my hand vibrated. I slowly raised the phone and answered.

— “You know the ending of the movie ‘The Graduate,’ right?”

When would his voice ever be washed away from me?

— “Now, it’s time for Dustin Hoffman to make his entrance.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. My wife spotted me and waved happily as she approached.

“Oppa! What are you doing here? Oh, and did you know Geon-woo was your classmate? My god, at first, I thought he was a really pretty woman with short hair. His skin is better than mine!”

Yeah, that’s exactly why I have this weakness caught by him.

“Geon-woo told me so many funny stories about you from college. He had me in stitches!”

My wife knew nothing. She didn’t know the obsessive, useless fixation he had maintained to keep that ‘fine skin’ and ‘pretty features.’ She didn't know what kind of monster the hideous prank I committed five years ago had raised in his heart. I walked toward them with heavy steps. My head screamed to grab my wife’s hand and get out of there, but my hand went elsewhere.

I had no other choice. His gaze was alternating between my wife’s neck and my face.

What I grabbed wasn’t my wife’s warm hand. It was Park Geon-woo’s wrist—unnervingly cold, and disgustingly thin and smooth for a man’s.

“Huh? Oppa?”

I heard my wife’s confused voice, but I didn’t look back. No, I couldn’t look back. My hand, gripping Geon-woo’s wrist, trembled ridiculously. He just watched the situation with a satisfied smile, like an audience member watching a rom-com. Then, he slipped his wrist out of my grip and, with a practiced motion, interlaced his fingers with mine, locking our hands together.

“Let’s go, dear.”

He whispered softly in my ear. He smelled like my wife’s hair. Leaving my wife behind, I began to run toward the exit, dragging—or being dragged by—Park Geon-woo, the greatest piece of filth in my life.

Behind us, my wife’s cheerful voice faded into the distance.

“What? Are you guys that happy to see each other? Don’t play too late! See you at home!”

It was infuriating. I had dug my own grave, dragged my wife into the plot beside me, and now I was marching down the aisle with a second wife I had never planned for.

The bride and groom from that invitation I made five years ago had finally become a reality—one reeking of a pungent, fishy stench that could never be washed away.