Cheaters ✓

Part || Jungkook

PRESENT

They say it's important to put every story in context otherwise nobody gets a sense of what's happening and why. The why is especially important. I've thought enough about what I should call this story, so I can give it the right context. And then I arrived at a conclusion. This is the story of my marriage. Though marriage happens between two people, and, ideally, I should say this is the story of our marriage, but that won't be correct. So, this is the story of my marriage. After two and a half years, I'm finally done with my stint at the NGO. And I'm returning to Seoul. To Taehyung. To home. But before that, I need to visit my psychologist, Dr. Kim Seokjin, one last time. I've been his patient from some time now. Nothing is wrong with me. But after what I learnt two years ago about my marriage, I needed someone to talk to. Someone who would not demand anything in return. Someone I could pay to listen. Thus, I chose Dr. Kim Seokjin, who used to be a visiting doctor at our NGO. Let me proceed linearly for it to make better sense. 

Taehyung and I had our doubts when we decided to stay apart. But our love, our trust in each other, played a big role in the decision-making process. In the beginning, I used to fly to Seoul every weekend. Then, because of work pressure, it reduced to twice a month and then became once a month; either he would fly to Gwangju or I went to Seoul. Something happened in the fifth month, I remember clearly, after we started living apart. He had flown to Gwangju for the weekend. While he was in the shower, his phone beeped. He had got a new notification. Simply out of curiosity, I tried to unlock his phone, but realized he had changed his lock pattern. This had never happened before. We always knew each other's passwords. Not out of mistrust. That's the thing, it was from the beginning and neither of us had questioned it. I kept an eye on him and by night I knew what the new pattern was. Once he was asleep, I checked his phone, and it didn't take me long to find a couple of dating apps. I spent I the entire night reading his chats on the apps. Surprisingly, he wasn't on social media. He had a Instagram account but never used it. I now know why he didn't, the same reason why he never enjoyed movies, but I'll come to that later. As I said, let's go linearly.

I was heartbroken because all the chats were with men, and were sex chats, full of explicit language and sexual content. I didn't know Taehyung had this side to him even though we had been together for so long. Perhaps we had become like those books we bought intending to read, but they remained on our bookshelves for years. We took our own sweet time to read them. Sometimes we never did. Taehyung and I had become such books for each other.

It was clear from the chats that he had even met a few of them. He'd cheated on me, though it was impossible to tell if he had slept with any of the men. You know how dangerous such information can be for the mind. It starts churning out bad thoughts and images that haunt you. I wanted to kill him that night for destroying my trust. I had been proud of us till then. Proud of our marriage. But the chats were proof of the fact that he had made a mockery of it. Why? Because I was not physically present in Seoul? He could have told me. I would have resigned from the NGO to be with him. Or was this an opportunity for him to fulfil his sexual fantasies, knowing well that I would never come to know about it? Was my marriage, an institution to which I had given days, weeks, months and years of my life, over? Was it over just like that because sexting men on dating apps was more liberating? I simply couldn't come to terms with it. I knew if I confronted him my rage wouldn't let me hear him out. And I wanted to give him a chance. My love for him wanted to give him a chance. So, in the dead of the night, I went and sat on a bench in the colony park to clear my mind. In the morning, I saw a few missed calls from him. I didn't care to respond. Then I saw him coming down from the building and running helter-skelter, asking the guards if they had seen me. He looked worried. It seemed like he cared. Then why was he sexting and meeting men? I swear I felt like burning all those men to ashes. I have a history of being jealous, possessive of my things, but why not? When they are mine, they are mine. If someone tries to toy with them, they better have my permission or be ready for the consequences.