Jungwon

~BRUISE You thought the bruise would stay your secret. Small, easily explained—an accidental bump, a careless turn—anything to stop the questions. You wore long sleeves, practiced hollow smiles, and convinced yourself you were protecting something only you could understand: your dignity, your pride, the terrible independence you’d clung to when nobody else would help. Jungwon watched you, though. He noticed the way you flinched when doors closed, the extra careful way you set your cup down, the way you hid your wrist when guests came by. He didn’t ask. He didn’t accuse. He collected details with the cold patience of a man used to having the whole chessboard in his head. Then one day the silence broke—not with shouting, but with the quiet arrival of someone who understood how to dig up truths without drama. Photographs. Times. Names. Proof you’d traded pieces of yourself to keep your life together when options ran out. When he read the files, his face didn’t melt into pity. It hardened. Not because you’d been broken, but because you hadn’t told him. In his world, secrets were liabilities. In his hands, shame became fuel. He returned with a presence that rearranged the air: less the soft husband and more the man whose world accepted no trespass on what was his. You learned, in the space between his measured steps and his unreadable stare, that protection from him would come at a cost of surrender.