It wasn't just a script.
It was us.
Or… something terrifyingly close.
Same premise. Secret marriage. Contract terms. Public lives and private strangers. Different names, different details—but every beat felt like something stolen from the hours I hadn't even lived yet.
Except it was written months ago.
Dated. Drafted. Watermarked under Ji-eun's pen name—one she hadn't mentioned.
I didn't know how long I sat there staring at it. My heart wasn't racing. It wasn't even moving. Just hovering in my chest like it was waiting for permission to react.
Ji-eun stood a few steps behind me, still wrapped in the blanket like it was armor. She was watching me too carefully.
"You got the message, didn't you?" she said.
I turned in my chair.
"What is this?" My voice didn't rise. It dropped. The weight did the work.
Her lips parted, then closed.
Then, soft: "You weren't supposed to see it like this."
"But I was supposed to see it eventually?"
She didn't answer.
"You wrote our lives before they happened."
"No," she said quickly. "Not our lives. It was fiction. I wrote it before the marriage. Before you. I just—it was an idea."
"And it just happens to match exactly what we're living now?"
"It was coincidence."
"Ji-eun."
Her jaw flexed. She crossed her arms.
"Fine," she said. "I started it before we met. But I finished it after. I thought maybe if I wrote it out—if I could put it into someone else's voice—I'd stop feeling like I was drowning in it."
I stared at her.
"You wrote the whole thing."
"Yes."
"And never told me."
"No."
"And now someone else has it."
That stopped her cold.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"What?"
"I didn't get it from you," I said, turning the screen toward her. "It was sent to me. Anonymously. The message said: She's not the only one lying."
She moved slowly to the screen. Sat beside me. Scrolled.
I watched her eyes track every line of dialogue like they were made of razors.
"Who sent it?" she asked, barely above a whisper.
"You tell me."
She looked up at me—and for the first time in a while, she looked small again. Exposed. Like someone stripped of every version of herself she'd spent years perfecting.
"I only ever shared this with one person," she said.
I didn't have to ask who.
I already knew.
"Jun-woo."
She nodded.
"How the hell does he still have it?"
"I emailed it to myself once. In draft form. I wanted to reread it later. I didn't think—I didn't know—he had access."
"And now he's leaking it to me?"
She didn't respond.
I stood up.
Paced the room once. Twice.
I couldn't breathe properly. Couldn't think without circling back to the same terrifying conclusion: I'm not in control of any of this.
Not the story.
Not the secrets.
Not even my own damn marriage.
She stood too.
"Yoon Jae—"
"Do you realize what this looks like?" I turned to her. "It looks like you planned all of this. Like I was cast in a part I didn't audition for."
"I didn't."
"But you didn't stop it, either."
She froze.
"Did you write me in?" I asked.
The question hung like smoke.
She looked away.
I stepped closer. "Did you imagine me before we ever met? Did you pull me into this because I matched the story you already had in your head?"
"No," she whispered. "I didn't know you."
"But you wrote someone like me."
"I write characters. I wrote someone—not you."
"But you picked me."
"Because you were safe."
That hit harder than it should have.
"Safe?" I echoed. "You think this is what safety looks like?"
She winced.
"I didn't mean—"
"Yes, you did," I said, quieter now. "You picked me because I was small. Quiet. Convenient. Someone who wouldn't fight back."
She looked up. "You think I used you?"
"I don't know what to think."
We stood there, staring at each other like the story between us had shifted shape—become something we couldn't read anymore.
And the scariest part?
She looked just as lost as I felt.
I moved to the window.
Pulled the curtain back an inch.
Still no one outside.
Still quiet.
But the quiet felt loaded now.
And my phone buzzed again.
Another message.
No text this time.
Just an audio file.
I didn't play it.
Not yet.
Not with her standing there, arms crossed, defenses rising again like she knew what I'd just gotten.
"Do you want me to go?" she asked finally.
"No."
"Then what do you want?"
I didn't know.
So I said the only thing that felt true:
"I want you to tell me the ending of your story."
She hesitated.
Then said: "I never wrote one."
Of course she didn't.
Because endings meant closure.
And nothing about this was finished.
I waited until she went into the bathroom.
She didn't say where she was going, but she carried her makeup pouch with her and closed the door without looking back. I counted ten seconds. Then another twenty. Then opened the message.
The audio file was titled: _ScriptBoy_001.mp3
Whoever named it was either cruel, clever, or both.
I slipped in my earbuds. Pressed play.
The recording started mid-sentence.
> JI-EUN (on the tape): "...Because I'm tired of pretending like I don't need anyone."
The words hit me like ice down my spine.
It was last night.
Her voice—quiet, vulnerable, curled into that blanket on my couch.
My voice answered, crackly but distinct.
> ME: "You're not going to get normal from me."
JI-EUN: "No. But I might get truth."
The recording played on.
Unedited. Unfiltered. Word for word.
I gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening.
Whoever sent this… they hadn't just watched us.
They'd heard us.
Recorded us.
Inside my apartment.
Inside my home.
I paused the playback. Yanked out the earbuds. Suddenly, the room was too quiet. Too sharp. I could hear the refrigerator hum. The creak of floorboards above us. The faint trickle of water from the bathroom pipe.
Someone had been listening.
And they'd picked that moment.
That conversation.
I didn't know which part terrified me more: that someone had the tech to pull this off… or that they knew exactly which moment to choose to shake me.
I looked around my apartment like I'd never seen it before.
The vent above the fridge.
The light fixture over the table.
The bookshelf I hadn't dusted in months.
It could be anywhere.
I moved through the kitchen with my breath held, searching corners, unplugging anything I didn't remember plugging in. I opened cabinets. Checked under the lip of the counter.
Nothing obvious.
But that didn't mean it wasn't there.
I was still hunched beneath the sink when the bathroom door opened.
I jerked upright.
Ji-eun was wiping moisturizer across her jawline, hair twisted up with a clip. She paused mid-step when she saw me, her eyes narrowing.
"You okay?"
I nodded too fast. "Yeah. Just… needed something."
She didn't buy it.
But she didn't push.
Instead, she stepped around me, opened the fridge, and pulled out a bottle of water. Twisted the cap like she was trying to pretend nothing was off.
"How long have you had that script?" I asked quietly.
She blinked. "The one you saw?"
"The one I wasn't supposed to."
She leaned back against the counter, unspeaking.
"How long, Ji-eun?"
"A few months. Maybe longer. I stopped counting."
"You started it before the marriage."
She nodded.
"But it's about the marriage."
"Only because everything in my life eventually ends up in fiction."
"No," I said. "This was different. This wasn't fiction. It was premonition."
"You think I planned this?"
I held her gaze. "I think you saw it coming before it happened."
She didn't deny it.
Didn't say a word.
And that silence—more than anything—confirmed it.
"You told him about it, didn't you?" I asked. "Jun-woo. He read it."
She closed her eyes. "I wanted someone to read it who didn't know me. I needed to know if it felt real."
"And now he's using it."
She didn't respond.
I leaned back against the opposite wall, every part of my skin crawling.
"Someone's been recording us," I said.
Her head snapped up. "What?"
"The message I got? It was a clip of last night. Our conversation. Word for word."
She paled.
"No one else could've heard that, Ji-eun."
"Are you sure?"
"It was here. Inside these walls."
She dropped the water bottle. It rolled across the floor.
I crossed to her.
"Hey."
She didn't look at me.
"We're not safe," she whispered.
"No."
"What do we do?"
"We stop pretending this is still about keeping secrets."
She looked up, eyes full of fire and something else—fear, maybe, or fury too long contained.
"You want to go public?"
I shook my head. "I want to go honest. With each other, at least."
She breathed in deep.
Nodded once.
And then said the last thing I expected:
"I think I know who installed the device."
I froze. "What?"
She stepped past me, toward the bookshelf.
"Back when Jun-woo was still working for us," she said, voice shaking, "he gave me a speaker. Said it was for ambient noise. Helped him sleep."
She pulled it from the shelf. A small gray cube. Sleek. Innocent.
"This one?"
She nodded.
I flipped it over.
There, inside a seam near the rubber base—a slit barely big enough for a SIM card.
"This isn't a speaker," I muttered. "This is a listening tool."
Ji-eun's face crumpled.
And before I could say anything else—before either of us could process what it meant—her phone buzzed again.
Another message.
She read it.
And her entire body went still.
"What?" I asked.
She handed me the screen.
One photo.
Taken from across the street.
A long lens.
It was me.
Holding the cube.
Looking right into it.
With the caption:
> Nice find. Want to know what else I heard?
I don't remember moving.
I only remember the cold feel of the speaker in my hand and the pulse in my jaw. The beat of my heart stuttering between what the hell is this and what if I can't un-hear it?
Ji-eun sat on the floor now, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around herself like her own skin wasn't safe anymore.
I stood at the table, phone in hand, staring at the new message.
An audio file.
002.mp3
Just that.
No words.
No threats.
Because it didn't need them anymore.
I didn't ask her permission.
I just plugged in the earbuds, sat down, and pressed play.
Static.
Then:
> JI-EUN (on tape): "Do you think he'll ever find out?"
A pause.
> UNKNOWN MALE VOICE: "Not if you're careful."
Jun-woo. Younger, cockier. That cruel smile in his tone. I'd never heard him speak before, but I knew it was him. You feel people like that in your gut.
> JI-EUN: "He's just a writer. Nobody famous. He keeps to himself. That's what I like about him."
That hit me like a punch.
I didn't stop the audio.
> JUN-WOO: "Then why marry him?"
> JI-EUN: "Because I need someone quiet. Someone who won't ask questions. Someone I can disappear behind."
> JUN-WOO: "You're using him."
> JI-EUN: "No. I'm paying him."
My stomach turned.
> JI-EUN (continued): "And I'll give him something to believe in. Let him think this means something. For a while."
I pulled the earbuds out like they burned me.
Set the phone on the table.
Stared at nothing.
Ji-eun hadn't moved.
But she was watching me.
Carefully.
Like she already knew what I'd heard.
Like she'd been waiting.
"How old is that recording?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
I looked at her. "Say it."
Her voice barely came out. "Three months."
"Before we signed the contract?"
"Yes."
"So that entire night. When we met. When you asked me to marry you." I laughed—sharp and hollow. "You already knew what you were doing."
"I didn't know you yet."
"But you picked me because I wouldn't fight back."
She flinched.
I stood and backed away from her, as if the space might make it easier to breathe.
"You told him you'd make me think it meant something."
"I didn't mean that."
"But you said it."
She got to her feet slowly, cautiously.
"Do you remember what my life was like then?" she asked. "I had someone threatening to expose me, tear my career apart, and blackmail me with recordings he already had. I was drowning, Yoon Jae. I was trying to survive."
"And you thought using me was the answer."
"I didn't use you."
"Then what would you call it?"
She went quiet.
Not because she didn't have words.
Because none of them would save her.
I stared down at the phone again, the file still open.
"That wasn't a stranger," I said. "That was you. The real you."
"It was the scared version of me."
"And I'm the idiot who gave her a home."
Her eyes flashed. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't pretend you didn't get something out of this."
"You paid me, Ji-eun. You bought my silence. You bought the life you needed and wrote me into it like a supporting character."
"That's not true."
"It is." I snapped. "You don't love me. You don't even know me. I'm a placeholder. A shield. A footnote in your disaster recovery plan."
She opened her mouth—then stopped.
And I knew I was right.
I moved to the window.
Pulled the curtain aside.
Still empty streets.
Still no one visible.
But we both knew better now.
Even when they're not seen, some people are always watching.
I turned back to her.
And for the first time, she looked like she might break.
"I didn't think I'd start to care," she said.
"Too late."
"I didn't think you'd matter."
"Too bad."
Her voice cracked. "I didn't want this."
"But you wrote it."
Silence.
And then, the softest whisper I'd ever heard from her:
"And now I can't stop."
I froze.
Those words—so small, so broken—echoed louder than anything that had come before.
And I wanted to believe her.
I wanted to.
But something inside me was already starting to calcify.
Whatever was between us—it had never really been clean. But now, it felt poisoned.
The screen on my phone flashed again.
A third message.
From a new number.
No words.
Just a video.
I opened it.
Paused.
Swore.
Because this time, it wasn't just surveillance.
It was me and Ji-eun.
In my apartment.
Last night.
Lights low.
My hand on her wrist.
Her voice in my ear.
And the caption:
> Let's see how long you can lie to each other. Or should I post it first?