“Mom was rushed to the ER in an ambulance. She hasn't crossed back into consciousness yet.” “What happened? How?” “She was eating a hard-boiled egg... it lodged in her throat. She couldn’t breathe.”
It was this past July, over the Independence Day weekend. My sister, who lives in Seoul, called me in the dead of night, her voice splintering into sobs. With hands gone cold, I scrambled to book the earliest flight to Seoul. When I was just a college freshman, my father—then a university lecturer—had passed away after a brutal battle with cancer. It was my mother, working tirelessly as a high school teacher, who had single-handedly scraped together the funds for my studies abroad. She deserved a peaceful retirement, a gentle twilight to her life, but instead, Parkinson’s disease had confined her to a bed for years. Hearing that the woman who had spent her entire existence backing my sister and me was now hovering between life and death, I had no choice but to rush to her side.
Yet, tethered to a demanding corporate schedule back in New York, I could only manage a fleeting four days in Seoul before boarding a flight back.
When I unlocked the door to my Manhattan apartment, a suffocating silence greeted me. My husband was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Sophie, our three-month-old puppy whom we cherished like our own flesh and blood. I collapsed onto the bed from sheer exhaustion, only to bolt upright at 3:00 AM. The space beside me was still empty. A cold dread washed over me, chasing away the last remnants of sleep. Then I remembered: right before my trip to Seoul, my husband had bought a new iPhone. I unearthed his old device, tracked his location, and stepped out into the pre-dawn chill to find him.
What awaited me on that street was a scene that defied my wildest imagination. There, at 4:00 AM, inside a parked car, my husband sat holding hands with another woman, their voices murmured in tender intimacy.
The blood froze in my veins. I felt as though I had stepped into a waking nightmare. I refused to believe my own eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing? Holding another woman's hand at this hour?”
I yanked the car door open, dragged my husband out, and slapped him across the face. He stood there, paralyzed with shock and embarrassment. Sensing the escalating confrontation, the woman threw the car into drive and vanished into the darkness.
“Who is she? Who is the woman you were holding hands with in the dead of night?” “I just met her today,” he stammered. “We just clicked so well, we got caught up talking.” “My mother is lying in a coma, fighting for her life, and you do this the moment my back is turned? Where is Sophie?” “I told you before, I never wanted a dog. She only looks for you anyway. I left her with Mark until you got back.”
Despite eleven years of marriage, we had been unable to conceive. We were just in the middle of preparing for IVF—upgrading to better health insurance, nourishing my body, waiting for a miracle. Sophie had come into our lives during this painful wait, filling the void like a child, though my husband had always viewed her as a nuisance.
The next morning, I headed to Brooklyn to retrieve Sophie from Mark, a friend from our graduate school days in Boston. But Mark met me at the door with a face pale with guilt.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say. Sophie isn’t here. Last night, right after our walk, the moment I opened the door, she bolted out into the street. We combed the entire neighborhood but couldn’t find her. I think she was confused by your sudden disappearance and tried to head back to Manhattan to find you. You know how she only has eyes for you. I’m so sorry... she’ll either come back here or find her way to your place. Let’s wait and see.”
I wandered through the park near Mark’s house, crying out Sophie’s name until my throat was raw, but only silence answered. I collapsed onto a park bench, tears blurring my vision. In the distance, a young couple sat tightly entwined, lost in their own world. I tried to swallow the rising sob in my throat, but the weight became too heavy to bear, and I began to weep aloud. My mother was in a coma, my husband was whispering sweet nothings into the hand of a stranger, and my beloved Sophie was wandering somewhere out there, searching for me. Every misery in my life was descending upon me at once, like a sudden torrential downpour in the peak of summer. My anger erupted like a volcano. Returning home at midnight, I screamed at my husband to pack his bags and get out. I demanded a divorce. He spat back that he was suffocated too, and walked out.
In the days that followed, as the jet lag faded and reality set in, my heart grew muddled. I called him several times, swallowing my pride to apologize and ask him to come home, but he refused to answer. I later discovered he had withdrawn $7,700 from our joint bank account—presumably to secure a room in Brooklyn—and was running up our credit cards with reckless abandon.
Amidst this chaos, the hospital in Seoul called: my mother had to be transferred to a long-term care facility. Sophie was still missing, and haunted by the fear that she might be locked in some animal shelter, I boarded another flight to Seoul. My mother had grown agonizingly thin since my last visit. The chest compressions administered when her airway was blocked had fractured six of her ribs. Family acquaintances gently suggested that we honor her wishes and remove the ventilator to let her pass in peace. But I could not let her go like this. My sister and I decided to wait a little longer. If only I could have given her a grandchild to hold, I thought, perhaps she would find the strength to wake up. The thought brought fresh tears to my eyes.
Even in Seoul, I kept tabs on my husband’s movements through his old phone. He and his mistress had already set up a household together. He was using my credit card to buy her lingerie and perfume. My husband, a staunch vegetarian, was suddenly frequenting galbi restaurants, leaving a trail of charges behind. They even went on vacations together to Mexico and Boston. Watching this unfold from afar, choked by anxiety and grief, I couldn’t swallow a single bite of food. My weight plummeted by ten pounds.
Determined to seek justice against their shameless betrayal, I retained a lawyer in Seoul to file for divorce and damages against the mistress. In the process of gathering evidence, I stumbled upon a piece of data that left me utterly speechless: my husband had asked an AI tool about his compatibility with his mistress.
The AI had replied:
'You two are soulmates, a connection that comes once in a lifetime. Your wife will divorce you by the end of this year, and you will marry this woman by late next year and even conceive a son. For now, keep a low profile to avoid public scrutiny.'
My husband believed this absurd prophecy as if it were divine destiny.
A month after he walked out, I contacted him, determined to hear what he wanted. Perhaps missing something from home, he answered almost immediately. When I confronted him about his lies, he swore he was no longer seeing her. He claimed he was losing sleep, agonizing over our marriage. He had no idea I was tracking his every move. When I brought up the Mexico trip, he insisted he went alone because he had always wanted to visit. Realizing there was no shred of truth left in him, I told him to bring the divorce papers.
When we met to sign the documents, I discovered he had been slipping into our apartment while I was away, taking things. I had installed a security camera in the apartment out of caution, and the footage had caught him filling suitcases while on the phone with her, saying, "I’m only packing things your wife won’t easily notice." He was taking my clothes and items I had carefully collected. His mistress was shorter than me; my clothes wouldn't even fit her. They were simply frantic to erase my presence. Only after I threatened legal action did he return the items and sign the asset division clause.
Yet, our divorce at the Korean Consulate in New York was repeatedly delayed due to administrative errors and booking issues. Amidst these bureaucratic hurdles, I continued my desperate search for Sophie. One dawn, under a severe typhoon warning, I walked the paths we used to share, shivering in my short sleeves against the howling wind. Was she out there freezing? Had she been hit by a car while trying to track me down? Or worse, fallen into the hands of someone cruel? I tried to comfort myself with the hollow excuse that I had been too consumed by legal battles to find her.
Lately, my husband had begun showing signs of regret. He approached me with a sorrowful face, complaining that his mistress was loose with money and sharp-tongued. On my birthday, he asked me out to dinner, pouring out his grievances, begging to come back because she was trying to control his every move. He offered no apology for his betrayal, only a selfish plea to return. My sister’s warning echoed in my mind—that this marriage had been built on a foundation of lies regarding his background and education, and that I must never forgive him. Yet, the ghost of an eleven-year bond stirred a pathetic sense of pity within me.
In truth, I had kept a pair of round-trip tickets to Korea—originally bought last year for our annual visit to our parents—un-canceled. I had secretly hoped that if he sincerely knelt before my mother and begged for forgiveness, I might find it in myself to take him back. But it was all a farce. They were still together, even throwing a lavish party to celebrate their 100th day as a couple. Realizing I was watching them, they switched phone carriers to sever my tracking. On October 21, when the signal finally went dead, I officially relinquished all hope and canceled his ticket to Korea.
Before my final departure for Seoul, I hesitated, but ultimately emailed and spoke with the mistress's husband. His voice over the phone sounded like a man drowning in a swamp. He pleaded with me not to divorce, wanting to save his home for the sake of their young daughter.
“I thought about taking him back,” I told him softly, “but his endless lies have made it impossible.” When he realized there was no hope left, he asked in a hollow whisper, “Could you at least give me the address of where they are staying? If you need evidence for your lawsuit, I will give you everything I have collected. And could you introduce me to your lawyer in Seoul?”
Listening to his broken voice, my heart ached with a bitter, shared grief.
Still, there is no word from Sophie. I have filed a report on the NYC Animal Care Centers website, and I frequently return to the park bench where we used to sit, praying for a miracle. I want to put this exhausting war behind me. I want to live a quiet, peaceful life, with only my beloved Sophie by my side. Cutting the final thread of lingering attachment, I step onto the plane to Seoul for the third time.
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