09/18/2026
My husband laughed while my seventy-five-year-old mother clutched her stomach in agony.
“She’s pretending. She knows you’ll pay for anything she asks.”
I looked at Kwon Tae-jun.
The man sitting across from me was wearing a custom navy suit, a Swiss watch, and cufflinks that cost more than my mother's monthly living expenses.
Yet somehow, whenever my mother needed help, every won suddenly became “wasteful.”
“She can barely stand.”
I could hear my mother's trembling voice from the next room.
Tae-jun didn't even look up from his phone.
“Then take her to a public clinic.”
“She needs a proper examination.”
He finally put the phone down.
“Listen carefully, Seo-yeon. Don't spend a single won on your mother without telling me first.”
I stared at him.
“My mother's health is not your financial decision.”
His expression hardened.
“As my wife, you don't get to secretly move family money around.”
That sentence stayed with me all night.
My mother, Han Mi-ja, had raised me alone after my father died.
She had never asked me for expensive gifts.
Never demanded luxury.
Even after I married into the powerful Kwon family, she continued living in her modest apartment in Mapo-gu and refused almost everything I offered.
So when she called me the next morning, her voice barely audible, I knew something was seriously wrong.
“Seo-yeon…”
“My stomach feels like it's burning.”
I immediately drove to her apartment.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, pale and shivering, one hand pressed against her abdomen.
“What happened?”
“I don't know.”
I helped her stand.
She nearly collapsed.
I grabbed my purse, hid it inside a grocery bag, and drove her to a private medical center in Gangnam.
I didn't tell Tae-jun.
For hours, doctors ran blood tests, ultrasound scans, and finally a CT scan.
I waited outside the examination room, gripping my mother's handbag.
Then a doctor opened the door.
He was unusually pale.
“Mrs. Kwon.”
I stood.
“Yes?”
“Please come inside.”
The room was silent except for the low hum of the CT scanner.
The doctor switched on the viewbox.
A strange shape appeared deep inside my mother's abdominal cavity.
At first, I thought it was a tumor.
Then I looked closer.
It was perfectly smooth.
Dense.
Clearly defined.
“What is that?”
The doctor hesitated.
“It isn't a tumor.”
He pointed toward the image.
“It's a solid metal capsule.”
My breath stopped.
“A capsule?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me.
“This did not get there naturally.”
I turned toward my mother.
She was crying.
Not shocked.
Not confused.
Crying as if she had been waiting for this moment for years.
“Mom?”
She grabbed my hand.
“Forgive me, Seo-yeon.”
“What are you talking about?”
She squeezed my fingers.
“Your father tried to protect us.”
I stared at her.
“What does that have to do with this?”
Before she could answer, the examination-room door suddenly slammed open.
Kwon Tae-jun stormed inside.
“What is going on here?”
His face was flushed with anger.
Then his eyes landed on the CT scan.
He stopped.
Completely.
The color drained from his face.
He knew exactly what that metal capsule was.
The doctor stepped backward.
Tae-jun stared at the image as though he were looking at a ghost.
My mother slowly raised her head.
She looked directly at my husband.
Then she whispered,
“I told you…”
“One day, my body would speak for me.”
Tae-jun took a step backward.
For the first time since I had married him, I saw genuine fear in his eyes.
And suddenly I understood something terrifying.
My mother's stomach pain wasn't the beginning of this story.
It was the moment the secret finally became impossible to hide.
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