APPLE PIE (COMPLETED)

Apple Pie (Epilogue)

Taeyeon closes the door behind her, places the stack of mail on the small table and pauses when she hears noises from somewhere inside the apartment. "Key? You're home?" she calls out as she carefully goes to his room. "What are you doing?"

Key looks up to see Taeyeon standing at his bedroom doorway and stands up. "Packing," he says as he steps over the boxes.

"Why?"

"The apartment across the hall's been vacated and I thought that it would be better for us to try to live apart."

"You're leaving me?" asks Taeyeon, her tone rising involuntarily. It's been almost a year since they left the suburb but the trauma's still there and the last thing she needs is losing another person she holds dear.

"No. I'll just be across the hall." Key places his hands on Taeyeon's shoulders to comfort her. "We can still see each other every day, have meals together and spend time together. It's just... at the end of the day, I'll be sleeping in another apartment," he explains. "With George."

"So I guess you're getting serious, huh?" she asks at the mention of her friend's boyfriend who's none other than the grocer's son.

"Well, it's been a year and his father finally lets him move out so..."

"I see." Taeyeon smiles a little despite the envy in her heart. "I'm happy for you."

"Thank you. I'm not leaving you, Tae. I'll never leave you. We can't get divorced, remember? What will our families say?" he jokes.

She chuckles. "That's true. Thanks for that."

"You're most welcome. Now let's have dinner."

—-

Tiffany does one final meticulous check on her things then closes her suitcase and takes a deep breath as she lifts it off the bed.

She goes downstairs, sets her luggage down near the door and takes a quick look around the house; at the kitchen where she had experienced so much pain and happiness, at the living room where she used to keep the man company and at the dark basement where she spent many hours laboring to make sure he lives a perfect life.

It feels bittersweet to be leaving the house she thought she'd grow old in but ever since she let a certain short blond-haired woman into her life, she knew that things would never be the same again and this change is just one of those things she had to accept and live with.

Divorce is not that common in that era and women who go through it would have to live a harsher life, scrutinized by others. It is even more uncommon for the woman to be the one asking for the divorce because they need their husbands to survive.

Tiffany knows all that yet as she sat down across from her husband and asked him to divorce her, her conviction and determination were never stronger.

She thought she could live without Taeyeon but the emptiness inside couldn't be filled despite her greatest efforts.

Then one day, a letter came with a detailed yet crazy plan which took her days to think through.

At the end of her long contemplation, she decided to go ahead with it.

Thus the request for a divorce and the promise that she would disappear from his life while carrying all the fault and shame. He is free to tell the world of her infidelity and he can choose to edit the details to make him look like the unknowing, innocent victim so that he can easily remarry. She doesn't care. She just wants out.

He refused, at first, but he, too, was growing tired of having to live with a woman who didn't do anything but clean the house and cook like a silent machine. Even in the bedroom, he said it felt like making love to a rock. "A maid would've been better," he had told her one day. "At least she could still talk."