“Why have you been like this lately? What’s going on?”
Yeongju bit her lip before speaking.
“……It’s too hard.”
Her voice trembled pitifully.
“It’s too heavy… I can’t bear it.”
“What’s heavy?”
“Everything.”
Everything was heavy and hard to endure.
The constant inquiring about pregnancy news from her mother-in-law,
The occasional sighs of her husband at home,
Her father and grandmother who considered marriage as business,
Her mother, whose awakening was uncertain,
It was all too heavy to bear.
Her wounds had festered to the point of rotting, and now even her body had been ruined.
She had no more strength to endure.
As despair shook her eyes,
“What’s making you so troubled?”
His cold voice pierced her ears.
Her trembling eyes looked up at Jinwook. He continued with an indifferent face,
“Spending all day sitting at home?”
“…….”
“Attending events, smiling for pictures, eating when it’s time, sleeping when it’s time?”
Each word struck her heart like an arrow.
“People exist who haven’t slept a wink from yesterday till now.”
Busy with one task after another, scrutinized by hundreds of eyes, maintaining perfection every day in a world where every word and action is judged.
“People are out there, struggling to meet everyone’s demands every day, feeling like their heads are going to explode.”
Jinwook’s voice grew thicker.
“If they can endure, what’s so hard for you?”
Jinwook, too, was at his limit. But he never expressed it to anyone.
This was his chosen path. Whatever the journey entailed, he believed it was his responsibility to endure.
The same applied to Yeonju. She chose this marriage. And he had never asked her for anything difficult.
“I only ever wanted you to quietly be my wife by my side.”
Jinwook’s cold gaze met Yeonju.
“Is that such a hard task?”
Gazing into his icy eyes, Yeonju found herself speechless.
Her heart ached. It was so cold and painful, yet she could express nothing.
Knowing that whatever she said wouldn’t reach him, Yeonju slowly erased his image from her dry eyes. The tears that seemed about to burst withdrew.
“Right,” she said, lowering her gaze and slowly nodding her head.
“You’re right.”
Her voice, dry and calm, resonated.
“I was shortsighted.”
It was worse than complaining to a blocked wall. Truly a foolish act.
She should have closed her ears, shut her eyes, and sealed her lips. She momentarily forgot that this was the way to survive in this house.
Jinwook, looking at Yeonju who wouldn’t face him, let out a long sigh.
“Hah.”
It was a sigh of frustration. Tiredly leaning his forehead on his hand, he said,
“Go in and sleep.”
Then he turned around and headed for the entrance. Not long after entering the house, he opened the door and left again.
Bang. The sound of the door closing spread throughout the silent house. And Yeonju was alone again.
At the LM Group headquarters, an emergency strategy meeting was in progress from early morning in the second-floor conference room.
Amidst the tense atmosphere of the meeting room, Jinwook, dressed in a suit, sat in the middle. Opposite him, employees sat with stern faces.
“Currently, the branches of the Ready-Mix Concrete Council are staging strikes in succession. With some sites completely halting construction, a total of 20 sites nationwide have shut down,” reported a team leader, glancing cautiously at Jinwook. Usually cold, his iciness felt especially more pronounced today. It was an atmosphere where one wrong move could lead to trouble.
My Step-brother Is Obsessed With Me (Female-dominant)
A gentle female protagonist vs pitiful in the early stage, and a sick male protagonist in the later stage
Cheng Songer transmigrated into the body of a vicious cannon fodder female supporting character with the same name as her in a female-dominant novel.
In the original story, the cannon fodder female supporting character was inhumane, committing domestic violence, gambling excessively, being lustful, and even wanting to sell her stepbrother to a brothel for money.
As luck would have it, she just happened to transmigrate at this time.
Seeing Cheng Qingzhi biting his lip, enduring the tears in his eyes, looking pitiful, her heart softened.
She stuffed the money back into the Madam’s hand and reached out to him.
“Brother, come home with me.”
