The Day I Quit Being a Wife (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 3
Eun Soo left the hospital building and headed toward a bench.
In winter, the wisteria, its leaves all gone, looked hideous—like a withered, dead thing.
But when spring comes, tender green buds will sprout from those dry branches, flowers will bloom, and leaves will turn lush again.
Eun Soo stood still for a moment, gazing at the wisteria, then walked over to the bench.
Sitting on the bench, Eun Soo fiddled with her phone.
“…….”
She wondered whether she should call Hyuk Joo to thank him for arranging special care for Madam Sang Joo, or if it would be better to wait until after he got off work.
From the bench next to hers, she heard a woman’s voice on a call.
“I called you because I couldn’t decide what to eat—so I wanted you to choose for me.”
The woman chuckled warmly, her voice brimming with affection. Though she covered her mouth with her hand, her joyful laughter slipped merrily through her fingers.
“Just telling me to eat rice? But I really want tteokbokki.”
For a moment, Eun Soo envied the woman.
She was on the phone over something trivial—deciding what to have for dinner.
Eun Soo envied her deeply—someone who could call over such an ordinary matter without hesitation, unlike herself, who always agonized over whether it was right to call at all.
Perhaps sensing Eun Soo’s gaze as strange,
the woman on the call looked Eun Soo up and down, then quickly got up and moved away.
Left alone on the bench, Eun Soo stared only at her own toes.
“Huh…….”
She let out a deep sigh, then picked up her phone.
She stared at the contact saved under “husband”—Hyuk Joo’s number—and finally pressed the call button.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
A hollow laugh escaped her lips.
What kind of wife finds calling her husband so difficult?
The ringing tone seemed unusually long, though it had only been a few seconds.
He must be busy.
She probably should just hang up.
Just as she was about to pull the phone away from her cheek—
“Hey, Eun Soo.”
Hyuk Joo answered.
Caught off guard—since she hadn’t expected him to pick up—Eun Soo swallowed hard. From the other end of the line, she heard him giving orders to someone.
“Eun Soo?”
“……Hyuk Joo.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s just…….”
The words “I just wanted to hear your voice” rose to the very tip of her throat.
If she actually said it, how would her husband react?
He’d probably call the family doctor right away, worried something was wrong, and tell her to get a checkup.
A phrase so ordinary between normal couples had become an explosive bomb between Moon Hyuk Joo and Oh Eun Soo.
That was their marriage.
A marriage fulfilling only its public duties.
With her free hand, Eun Soo clenched her fist tightly.
“I called because I wanted to know when you’d be home today.”
“……I’m not sure. Eun Soo, I’m kind of busy right now. I’ll hang up.”
“Yes, Hyuk Joo—I’m sorry…….”
Sorry for taking your time when you’re busy.
She wanted to say those words, but couldn’t bring herself to finish them.
Hyuk Joo had already ended the call. Eun Soo kept the phone pressed against her cheek and spoke anyway.
“No matter how busy you are, can’t you spare even a quick minute to talk to me? I’m not asking for an hour—just five minutes, no, even one minute of your time to talk……. Huh.”
As if Hyuk Joo were still listening, Eun Soo poured out her feelings—until her tears finally spilled over.
She set her phone on the bench and covered her face with both palms.
She’d thought she’d be fine.
Though hearing that woman had returned stirred her emotions, she’d told herself it was just a brief, violent storm passing through—nothing more. But now, without even realizing it, surges of feeling kept welling up inside her.
It felt as if, all of a sudden, she’d turned into a crybaby who only knew how to weep.
Ever since a few days ago.
No—ever since the day her husband’s woman reappeared.
“As soon as the design files are ready, report directly to me—no intermediaries.”
“Yes, Vice President.”
“You may go.”
“Yes.”
Without even glancing at Director Kim, who bowed his head, Hyuk Joo turned to another set of documents.
This was a familiar scenario, so Director Kim left the vice president’s office as if nothing were unusual.
Click.
At the sound of the door closing, Hyuk Joo looked up. He removed his glasses and set them on the desk, then massaged his temples with his fingertips.
Back-to-back meetings and reports had left him deeply fatigued.
As he reached for a glass of water, his eyes fell on his phone lying at the edge of his desk.
He picked it up and checked the screen.
The sender was one person. Hyuk Joo skimmed the pop-up message with indifferent eyes, then scrolled through his call log.
‘Wife’
Seeing the call record from 30 minutes earlier, he fiddled with his phone.
It was rare for his wife to call first. She usually contacted him only when it was something important.
Her hesitant voice—like someone with something to say but holding back—lingered in his mind.
He pressed the call button.
If his wife was still at her mother’s hospital, he thought it might be a good idea to ask her to dinner.
But only the ringing sound came through—his wife didn’t answer. It was the first time she hadn’t picked up his call, and Hyuk Joo felt strangely unsettled.
Had something happened?
The image of his wife’s exhausted face—worn down by his aunt’s constant pressure about having a child—kept floating before his eyes.
“Hah…….”
Just as he was about to put his glasses back on, Hyuk Joo let out a heavy sigh instead.
His aunt bringing up the topic of children so openly in front of him meant she’d been relentlessly pressuring Eun Soo all this time.
That kind, foolish Oh Eun Soo had probably kept apologizing endlessly, saying she’d try harder.
Hyuk Joo even found himself wishing the problem were with his own body instead.
Then no one in the family could ever say a word to his wife about having a child.
He pressed the intercom and summoned Director Song.
Not long after, Director Song entered.
“Vice President, you called for me?”
“I’d like to leave the office early today.”
“How early, if I may ask?”
Director Song’s voice was cautious.
Because of the new business project, Vice President Moon Hyuk Joo’s schedule had been erratic since last month—never leaving before 10 p.m., and often past midnight.
“Now.”
“Now?”
Director Song’s eyes widened.
It was just past 5 p.m. As far as he remembered, Vice President Moon Hyuk Joo had never left the office before 6 p.m. since he joined the company.
Had something major happened?
Director Song waited for his reply.
“Right now. If the remaining appointments can be moved to tomorrow, do so. If not, reschedule them for another day.”
“Yes, understood.”
This was extraordinary.
Vice President Moon Hyuk Joo was the kind of man who never postponed today’s work to tomorrow. If anything, he’d often pull tomorrow’s tasks forward.
Director Song watched quietly as Moon Hyuk Joo began preparing to leave, puzzled—until he suddenly remembered his own duty.
“I’ll have your car ready.”
“Leave it.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll drive myself.”
“……Yes, understood.”
Just as Director Song was about to leave the vice president’s office, Hyuk Joo—who was buttoning his suit jacket—stopped him.
“Call the hospital and check if Eun Soo—I mean, my wife—is still there.”
“Yes.”
His wife often silenced her phone when she entered her mother’s room, so that was likely why she hadn’t answered his call.
Hyuk Joo left his office.
He got into his car and headed for the hospital.
“Hah…….”
He gripped the steering wheel tightly.
For Hyuk Joo, hospitals stirred up feelings of guilt.
He was always tormented by the remorse of having left his ailing mother alone and lonely.
‘It was you.’
When he met again the child his mother had called for until her final breath, Hyuk Joo was overjoyed. So he never refused any request for help from her—he believed that only by doing so could he be redeemed from the guilt of having abandoned his mother in her loneliness.
What had begun as an effort to ease a deep sense of debt gradually transformed into an arrogant sense of responsibility—that he must save her.
He decided marriage was the right path if he intended to keep her by his side for life, and he declared his intention to marry her in quite an uncompromising manner. As expected, his aunt strongly opposed it.
Rebelling against his aunt—who sought to control both his father and himself—gave Hyuk Joo a strange sense of satisfaction.
‘That child saw the money and left without looking back.’
He deliberately avoided questioning whether she’d been swayed by his aunt’s persuasion—or whether she’d made such demands herself.
He was simply tired—tired of the woman who constantly demanded something from him, and tired of the daily clashes with his sharp-tongued aunt.
And so, time passed with that ticking time bomb carefully covered.
‘She’s exactly the kind of child I wanted.’
That was how his aunt introduced Eun Soo.
How had she managed to win over his aunt—a woman rarely pleased by others?
Even before meeting Eun Soo, Hyuk Joo assumed she was his aunt’s person. In that moment, he impulsively blurted out that he already had someone he loved.
He hadn’t known then how heavily those reckless words would weigh on him later.
He recalled Eun Soo’s calm face when that woman returned and said she wanted his help—and how Eun Soo simply replied, “Go ahead.”
“Should I have stayed silent instead……?”
He muttered to himself, then quickly shook his head.
He didn’t want to keep secrets from Eun Soo.
He feared she’d be upset if she later found out he’d helped that woman.
“What am I to you, I wonder?”
Hyuk Joo gave a bitter smile.
When he’d said he wanted to help her, part of him had secretly hoped Eun Soo would show clear displeasure.
If she had, he would have apologized and declared he’d cut all ties with his past. But Eun Soo had shown no reaction at all.
Her expressionless face seemed to silently remind him: don’t cross the line we drew when we began.
To him, that line had long since blurred into uncertainty. Yet Eun Soo still held firmly to it—
keeping him from drawing closer, yet not allowing him to leap across it either.
Eun Soo gently wiped her mother’s hand with a warm, damp cloth.
She carefully applied her mother’s favorite brand of hand cream to the freshly cleaned hand.
“How could your hands be this soft?”
Eun Soo smiled brightly, whispering affectionately to her mother as if expecting an answer.
“So soft…”
It felt as if her mother would surely scold her for such nonsense. Eun Soo stared fixedly at her mother’s face, afraid she might miss even the faintest whisper if her mother spoke.
But her mother’s lips remained tightly closed, unmoving.
“……If I give up, would you wake up, Mom?”
Eun Soo murmured in a weak voice.
As she’d once told Hyuk Joo, nothing she’d ever desperately wished for had come true.
Her mother waking up, Moon Hyuk Joo loving her, that woman never returning—
everything she’d yearned for had happened in reverse.
So maybe, if she wished for the opposite now, it might come true?
“Mom, don’t I seem silly?”
Eun Soo gave a dry laugh.
Still gazing blankly at her mother’s face, she suddenly turned to check the time.
“It’s already this late.”
She rose from her chair. Just then, Madam Sang Joo entered the room.
“I thought it might be time for you to leave, so I came in.”
“Yes, thank you for taking care of things.”
Eun Soo bowed to Madam Sang Joo and picked up her bag from the table. She looked for her phone to check for any messages from home, but it was nowhere to be found.
“Where did I put it?”
“What’s wrong?”
“My phone isn’t here.”
“You came in empty-handed earlier—maybe you left it somewhere?”
“Oh…….”
Eun Soo pressed a hand to her forehead.
She remembered leaving her phone on the bench after calling Hyuk Joo. She considered calling the hospital’s front desk to check for lost items—but then realized she could just call her own number.
“Could I borrow your phone for a moment?”
“Go ahead and call quickly.”
Madam Sang Joo pulled out her phone and handed it to Eun Soo. Eun Soo dialed her own number.
After a short ring, a man’s voice answered.
“Yes, I’ve got your phone.”
“Ah, I’m the owner.”
“Oh! Where are you right now?”
“I’m at the VIP ward.”
“Perfect. I’m heading there now—let’s meet at the VIP ward entrance in five minutes.”
“……Okay.”
Eun Soo ended the call.
She’d need to go down quickly to meet him in five minutes. After bowing to Madam Sang Joo, she hurried into the elevator.
As she stepped out of the elevator and headed for the entrance, she suddenly felt bad about taking the phone back empty-handed. So she stopped at the mini café right by the entrance and bought a juice.
“I don’t even know who he is…….”
She realized she hadn’t even asked for his name or description. Stepping outside, she looked around.
“Are you the owner of this phone?”
A young man in a white coat approached and asked. Eun Soo slowly nodded.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you. Oh, here—this is for you…….”
“What’s this?”
The man took the juice she offered, looking puzzled.
“It’s just to say thank you.”
“It was only in my hands for a moment. Anyway, I’ll drink it gladly. But, um… do I know you…?”
Just as the man was about to say more—
“Eun Soo.”
Startled by the sudden call of her name, Eun Soo turned her head.
Through the car window parked in front of the VIP ward, she saw Hyuk Joo’s face.
What was Hyuk Joo doing here?
Puzzled, Eun Soo walked toward the car. She gave a quick bow of thanks to the man who’d found her phone, then got into the vehicle.
In her surprise at Hyuk Joo’s unexpected appearance, Eun Soo didn’t notice the name “Hwang In Woo” on the nametag hanging around the man’s neck.
After fastening her seatbelt, Eun Soo turned to Hyuk Joo.
“What brings you here, Hyuk Joo?”
“I came because you didn’t answer my call.”
“Did something happen?”
“No.”
His reply—that nothing was wrong—left Eun Soo staring at his profile.
She was astonished that he’d come all the way to the hospital at this hour for no particular reason.
‘This morning, the vice president gave me a bonus.’
Madam Sang Joo’s words came back to her.
As Eun Soo recalled Hyuk Joo’s recent unusual actions one by one, her heart began to race.
Could it be…?
Was this a sign that he was slowly starting to give her his heart?
But as always, his profile remained expressionless.
Just as they were about to leave the hospital, a call came in to Hyuk Joo. Only a number showed—no name.
It must be from the office.
Eun Soo dismissed it as nothing important.
Noticing Hyuk Joo hesitating to answer, she carefully said,
“……You should take it.”
“Yeah.”
Eun Soo kept her eyes forward. The traffic light was red.
She decided she’d speak to him as soon as it turned green.
Watching the signal intently, she waited.
“Oppa.”
A stranger’s voice—female.
It was her.
In an instant, Eun Soo bit down hard on her lip.
Male lead says he’s pregnant — and it’s female lead’s child
Something seems a bit off about this world.
Wang Zhao thought as she watched a pregnant man walking towards her…
Intro
Female lead finds herself in a world where the men who possess the ability to bear children.
As she navigates this unfamiliar reality, she is caught off guard by the sudden appearance of her boyfriend, who reveals that he is pregnant.
Is this truly her boyfriend?
Why can’t she recall any details about their time together?
She begins to doubt whether the child her boyfriend is carrying is even hers.
Is there a hidden reason behind her amnesia, or could it be a side effect of her sudden arrival in this strange new world?
Just when it seems the protagonist’s life couldn’t become any more entangled, her ex-boyfriend makes an unexpected appearance, raising questions about the protagonist’s past.
__________
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The extreme miscommunication is getting on my nerves now.
I wish he could actually say what he fully means for once
Hyuk Joo does not mess around. When dealing with someone like this you have to be direct!