The New Groom Chapter 11

However, once one had realized it, there was no way to return to the state before that realization. Consequently, Lee Jeongrok lost everything. Not only his fortune, but he was also in danger of forever losing the childhood life he had so longed to return to.

It was for that very reason that a young master from the Seoul upper class had married into a family of nouveau riche, a family he would never have looked at twice in his entire life.

For Lee Jeongrok, who had ruined his business and lost all his assets, the only remaining means was marriage. However, a woman who matched his “class” was completely out of his reach. He had no choice but to lower his sights and look for a bride primarily from abroad or from the provinces, rather than Seoul. If necessary, he met two or three at the same time. Since they were all daughters raised delicately like precious jewels at home, they could not even imagine Lee Jeongrok’s dirty, calculating nature.

His current wife, Hwang Imin, was someone he wouldn’t have even exchanged a word with in the past. She was three years his senior, and she belonged to a family with no foundation, having started the business only in her father’s generation. There was even a rumor that her father, Representative Hwang Bosik, was a former gangster.

However, she had the advantage of being from Jangchang, Gyeonggi-do, a hometown relatively close to Seoul, and above all, Hanyang Construction, run by her father, was rising fiercely in the industry. During a recession like these days, they were succeeding regardless of domestic or international boundaries, such as signing a road construction contract with the Australian government. Furthermore, unlike the rumors about being a gangster’s daughter, Hwang Imin was from a prestigious university and had excellent breeding. Despite her age of thirty-three, she was a quite naive and demure lady.

Above all, Hwang Imin wanted nothing from Lee Jeongrok. She, who had vaguely longed for life in Seoul, became extremely excited just by Lee Jeongrok taking her to social gatherings. Excited by the life of the Seoul upper class, she followed Lee Jeongrok wherever he took her and got along well with his friends. Lee Jeongrok did not have a preference for glamorous beauties like Hwang Imin, but when she laughed purely, his chest seemed to flutter a little.

Lee Jeongrok proposed before even half a year had passed since they started meeting. Hwang Imin accepted happily. When he partially opened up about his asset situation, she actually comforted Lee Jeongrok. She offered warm consolation, asking how hard it must have been for him to act as the head of the household all alone. Lee Jeongrok resolved to ensure the marriage would go through, moved by her reaction—which was mature to the point of being touching—as she told him to let go of his past hardships while receiving successor training at her father’s company.

Even when he went to greet them for the first time, his first impression of Hwang Bosik was not bad, either. Although he seemed somewhat reckless, his hearty and manly demeanor was likable. No, he believed it was likable. Above all, the Hwang family had a seductive merit that could steal Lee Jeongrok’s soul. A wealth that was certain, crystal clear, and greedy in its endless proliferation, enough to make him endure the humiliating position of a matrilocal son-in-law.

However, he did not realize at the time that marriage meant a complete severance from the past days he had dreamed of and missed.

The one remark Hwang Bosik made on the day of the wedding, “I wonder if that pretty boy even has his man-parts,” was a short and intense piece of foreshadowing that predicted his future married life. Hwang Bosik, whose attitude had changed strangely since the wedding, was ready to show his true colors as soon as they returned from their honeymoon.

Once the rumors about him being a former gangster proved true, Lee Jeongrok spent a full week wide awake with a troubled heart. He was too embarrassed to confide in any of his friends. No, rather, he was afraid of being found out, so he cut off his visits to Seoul entirely after the wedding.

The problem was not just his father-in-law. Because Hwang Bosik revealed such an intense presence, the issues regarding Hwang Imin were merely pushed to the back; in reality, the couple was not on good terms at all.

The two, who had not had a physical relationship before marriage, finally came to have one on the first night of their honeymoon. To be exact, they almost did. Hwang Imin, being a demure lady, was so naive that she even refused on the first night. After holding out for three hours in the bathroom, she came out and wept, saying she could not go through with the first night because she could not bring herself to be mentally prepared.

Lee Jeongrok played the role of a generous husband and promised he would wait as long as it took. He thought it would only take a few days at most. That wait had continued until now, nearly three months after the wedding. In other words, Lee Jeongrok and Hwang Imin had not yet had sex even once.

Hwang Imin’s personality, which he had only seen as modest and pure, was different from what he thought the more he saw of it. Hwang Imin obviously knew that he was having trouble adjusting to his new life in Jangchang, away from Seoul, yet she pretended not to. She ignored his father-in-law’s mistreatment as if she couldn’t see or hear it. She didn’t even take her husband’s side regarding the humiliating nickname “Seoul Young Master” coined by his friends, but instead, joined in without hesitation.

The affectionate and devoted wife-to-be he knew before marriage was like a fantasy; she was a stranger. She still treated him with strict formal language as she did during their dating days, but there was a subtle… a feeling that things were off from a subtle part that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Lee Jeongrok sensed that something was going wrong. However, he couldn’t find a way to correct it. As he hesitated in a panic, he found himself isolated before he knew it. Having left his family, friends, acquaintances, social circles, sports clubs, and even his favorite shops back in distant Seoul, he drifted like a buoy without a place to lean on. Swaying greatly even with small waves, feeling that inescapable, ominous premonition that something was wrong, he was, just like that, miserable.

Even without Go Yoongi explicitly provoking him, Lee Jeongrok was sufficiently, painfully miserable.

He was shrunken to a miserable extent, unable to even throw a punch despite being severely insulted.

Without any resolution, Lee Jeongrok approached Go Yoongi blindly. The sensation of taking a step forward was surprisingly vivid, and a thrill ran through his entire body. As the sense of powerlessness that had gripped him ever since his marriage was peeled away layer by layer, Lee Jeongrok was immersed in an ecstatically sweet sense of liberation.

“Big trouble. Today is truly going to be fucked up.”

The advice from Chief Joo, which surfaced like a dissonance, was a step too late. Lee Jeongrok grabbed Go Yoongi, who was lying lazily on a sunbed, by the collar and slapped him with all his might. Go Yoongi, having lost his balance, staggered and splashed into the pool.

It was his first time in his life. Attacking someone.

His heart was beating so hard his chest ached. Blood pumped quickly with excitement, and his legs trembled. It only took a few seconds for Go Yoongi, who had sunk to the bottom of the pool, to shoot up to the surface, but in Lee Jeongrok’s eyes, it looked painfully slow, like slow motion.

Go Yoongi, who crawled up from the pool, grabbed Lee Jeongrok without a word and threw his body into the water. The two men fell to the bottom of the pool tangled together, then struggled to rise. Go Yoongi, panting and wiping his wet face, threw a punch. Lee Jeongrok barely dodged it. The water, surging like waves, swept over his face.

“Hey, you idiot bastard Go Yoongi, you can’t even hit that!”

No one had any intention of stopping the fight. Rather, they splashed water and egged the two on. Cheers and shouts rang out dully in the tiled underground pool. All kinds of sounds collided and shattered, and the water rushed toward the two men like a wave.

Tangled together while grabbing each other by the collars, they fought viciously, choking each other’s necks and crushing their faces. However, compared to the slender Lee Jeongrok, who was barely 180 centimeters tall, Go Yoongi was a tall man nearly 10 centimeters taller than him. Above all, because he was muscular, having polished his body with gym training every day, the physical strength was no match. The advantage quickly tilted to one side.

Lee Jeongrok, who had been slapped twice in a row, was dazed. As it was, people were constantly splashing water, and with water getting into his eyes and nose, he couldn’t come to his senses; then, being hit by a fist like a rock, he almost sank. His cheeks were burning, and there was a fishy taste of blood in his mouth. Lee Jeongrok, having lost his reason to the taste of blood, lunged recklessly.

“You, you fucking, asshole. Wh-who do you think you are, who do you think you are!”

“What, you little shit. What are you going to do, you shitty bastard, huh? Speak clearly, you fucking asshole little shit.”

Fucking asshole. This time, no laughter came out.

Go Yoongi, who had grabbed Lee Jeongrok’s hair with hook-like hands, pressed him down into the water. Lee Jeongrok struggled to escape, but as he was held from behind and pressed down by the neck, there was no way to get away.