---
That Friday, when I got home, only my dinner wasn't ready.
"Oh, sorry, I got the day wrong. If you don't mind, I can make you something like ochazuke (rice with tea) right away…" my wife said.
"That's fine, I'll go out to eat. Can I borrow your car?" I replied and headed out the door. I was annoyed, but I didn't show it. I was so angry it was ridiculous to even put it into words. Was she mad because I didn't allow her to go on a trip? That's why I hate women. They're such selfish creatures.
I unlocked the car and got in. Suddenly, I felt something was off. Usually, the driver's seat is close to mine, so I move it a little, but today it was farther apart. My wife was driving for work today. Was another man driving? Could it be she was cheating? No way…
Worried, I had dinner at a restaurant and got back in the car. No matter what I said, I couldn't help but be worried. I should calm down somewhere before going home. I was daydreaming in the car and turned on the radio, but the reception was poor. I decided to listen to a CD instead. Thinking this, I opened the CD case. There were about ten CDs inside.
My wife has always loved music. Perhaps, despite her age, she'd put in some recent popular songs. I squinted to see if there was any artist's name written on the CDs, but it was too dark to see clearly. However, there wasn't anything I wanted to listen to that would warrant turning on the light. I put in the top CD labeled "1" and tried to play it. I waited for a while, but it didn't play. Maybe there was nothing on the CDs. Thinking that there was nothing on them, I tried putting in the second one. But it still didn't play.
Finally, getting tired of this, I turned on the light in the car. "Ah, I see," I said to myself. I looked closely at the CDs and, with the exception of a couple, most were DVD-Rs. But why were DVD-Rs in the car? Inside the car, and hidden away at that? What were they? Maybe they were hiding porn DVDs? My wife's secret… I wanted to see it. They might be copies of regular movies, but the DVDs had no titles. I was somehow intrigued. That's how I felt.
And so, I headed home. While my wife was taking a bath, I went to the car to get DVD number 1 and inserted it into my computer in the bedroom. My heart was pounding. One reason was the anxiety that if I didn't hurry, my wife would find it when she got out of the bath. The other was the contents of the DVD. If it had been a regular movie, it would have been a huge disappointment. But what if it was an erotic DVD?
I pressed the play button. It turned out to be an image file, not a video. I selected one and played it. The image that played was a photo of a woman. She was fully clothed, posing like a model. The incomprehensible image made me even more intrigued. I looked at image after image, and there were close-ups of her waist, legs, and even breasts. Of course, she was clothed. There were full-body shots, but she wasn't beautiful enough to be a model.
She looked like an ordinary housewife. There were nearly 100 photos like that. Were they images she used for work? But why were they there? I wondered if the other DVDs contained the same images. I wanted to check out the other DVDs. But nearly 15 minutes had already passed since I started watching the DVD. She'll probably be out of the bath soon. That's all for today…
I quickly put the DVD back in the car, sat on the sofa in the living room, and watched TV. I wondered what the images were. Were they for work? Since I watched it without her permission, I couldn't bring myself to ask my wife. I'll just watch another DVD for now. That day, I went to sleep with a feeling of excitement that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
---