Revised Edition – 25
“When Ren-san entered his home, he noticed a pair of men’s shoes he didn’t recognize.
In that instant, even though he was exhausted from work, he forced his weary body to move,
gathering the last of his strength as he crept quietly down the long hallway.”
“Then,” she continued,
“from the bathroom, he heard the playful voices of a man and his own wife—voices he knew all too well.
Without hesitation, he opened the bathroom door.”
“And there they were—both completely naked.
The sight drove Ren-san to the brink of madness, trembling with rage.”
Oh no… poor Ren-san.
That’s just too cruel.
While he was working so hard for his family,
his wife had been cheating on him behind his back.
The story hit me so hard I nearly burst into tears.
“After realizing that his beloved wife had been unfaithful,
Ren-san swore he would devote his entire life to destroying the man who’d taken her from him.”
“So,” she said softly,
“he went to his room, grabbed a golf driver,
and returned to the bathroom—where the two were scrambling to get dressed—
and he beat the man mercilessly, nearly to death.”
“And that… was how he ended up being arrested.”
Being arrested…? Just like that?
It was too tragic, too unfair.
My tears overflowed,
a dam breaking loose—my face drenched before I even realized it.
“What about his wife?” I asked through trembling lips.
“She was fine,” the temple master’s wife answered.
“Ren-san never laid a hand on her.”
“He should have!” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
“He should’ve beaten that kind of woman to a pulp with the driver too!”
Even I was startled by how dark my own emotions sounded.
But it was my honest, unfiltered feeling—
directed not only toward Ren-san’s wife,
but toward the man who had once been my own husband.
So that’s why she said “former wife.”
In the end, Ren-san couldn’t forgive her… and divorced her.
I couldn’t help but wonder—
what had been his wife’s feelings through it all?
Somehow, it didn’t feel like someone else’s story anymore.
