It's been a week since that day.
On the train back home to my wife and children, I couldn't see anything outside because of the darkness of the night. Instead, I saw the bright lights of the train's interior reflected in the window, and my own face reflected there. The DVD I had watched that day was what would turn my life upside down.
Normally, I would have returned home to my wife and children, but last weekend, I didn't. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I couldn't return. I don't know if it was because the house felt dirty, or if I felt there was something deeply shocking about it. I threw myself into work to sort out my feelings.
I smashed all the DVDs I'd watched the day before into pieces and threw them in a convenience store trash can. But the DVDs kept coming back to me. Perhaps my wife was being blackmailed, and that was why she was doing what she was doing. But from watching a few DVDs, it was clear she had been subjected to such abuse for a long time. It was my responsibility as her husband to immediately rescue her, but I found myself not doing so. Perhaps it was because the DVDs looked more like adult videos than blackmail. Or perhaps it was my ego, trying to avoid the reality of resignation, fear, and the destruction of my life. Clearing my mind was probably the best excuse. Maybe I just wanted time to pass.
Remembering the DVD I watched last Thursday, emotions I'd never felt before welled up inside me. Everyone faces many hardships in life. How wonderful it would be if my current situation were the same. As time passes, memories become hazy, and the emotions and atmosphere of the time often become fond memories of the past. But this incident was sure to have a major impact on my life going forward. Thinking about it over and over again, I finally felt like I was regaining myself.
My true feelings were that I loved my wife. The best thing to do would be to talk to her directly, but I didn't know what was going on. I worried that telling her would stop her from coming home. Or, at the very least, she wouldn't want me to know about it. But it was the DVD I'd left so openly in my car that made me realize this. Was she purposely showing me the DVD to try to break up? I was worried about everything.
I got off the train platform, and as usual, I would ask my wife to pick me up. Today, I felt depressed. On the one hand, I wanted to be myself as usual. I looked up my wife's name on my cell phone and called her. The phone rang once, twice... No one answered. Why didn't she answer? What was she doing? My mind gradually became confused. Just as I was about to start thinking about other things, my wife answered the phone.
"Hello?"
Her voice was the same as always. Of course. She had no idea I'd watched the DVD.
"Hello? It's me. I've arrived. Can you come pick me up?"
She was just like her usual self. On the way home, we talked as usual, and at home, we finished dinner as usual. We chatted and laughed as usual, watching the same TV shows together. I was the only one who was different, and if I could just go back to my normal self, everything would be as if nothing had happened. These thoughts swirled in my head.
Just after midnight, I headed to bed. Gradually getting used to my normal life at home, I went to the bedroom as usual. My wife was taking a bath. I was alone in the bedroom. Coming here always reminds me of this. Our bedroom. Here, my wife had a mouth full of a man I didn't know, servicing him, being fucked by him, and being made to wear a perverted outfit. Her bra, which was supposed to support her breasts, had a hole where her nipples were, exposing only her nipples. That kind of underwear wasn't something a normal housewife would wear.
I don't know if it was the man's taste, but he made her wear it anyway. She said she wanted to wear fashionable underwear, but she mostly wore demure colors. Thinking this, I found myself opening the drawer where my wife's underwear was kept. I could see her underwear inside. It was neatly arranged. I wondered how long it had been since I'd seen her underwear. Even when we had sex, it was at night. Even when I took off her pajamas, she was braless, so I hadn't seen her bra. What do I know about my wife?
I picked up one of her bras. It was the one she always wore. But I'd never seen any other bras like that before. There were seven or eight bras there, all with beautiful patterns and stylish colors. My wife is not someone who is careless about fashion. Her underwear was modern and appropriate for her age. Didn't I even know what kind of underwear my wife was wearing? I put the underwear I had picked up back in its place. I put the underwear back in order so that she wouldn't notice that I had opened the drawer.
Then I noticed something a little darker at the bottom. With a pounding heart, I put my hand into my wife's underwear and picked it up. It was a purple bra with a slightly flashy pattern. My heart was beating fast, so I looked at the other underwear underneath. I could feel my heart beating faster and faster. There were several pairs of flashy underwear in red and black, the kind of colors that women in the entertainment industry would wear. She was even wearing this... the kind of underwear that made me wonder if she was in the entertainment industry. Maybe she was actually dating a man and he had given her this underwear as a gift because he liked it, or maybe her tastes had become more flashy. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head. I found myself staring intently at the drawer containing my wife's underwear.
Then I came across something rolled up that wasn't underwear. Looking closely, I saw something that looked like cloth rolled up. I unwrapped it and spread it out. It was a thong. Thinking that she definitely wasn't the type of woman who would wear a thong, I dug around in the drawer. I found something hard at the back. I grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a vibrator.
I could feel my heart beating fast. If a husband in a normal marriage found a vibrator in his wife's underwear drawer, he might think she was sexually frustrated. But this was not her hobby. She wasn't hiding something because she was sexually frustrated. There was reason to suspect so. Along with the vibrator were the red bra she wore in the DVD, with holes for her nipples, and a pair of red panties with holes for her private parts, which seemed to be a matching pair. The black string-like panties were paired with a bra that barely supported her breasts, like a cloth bra. The panties were wrapped around the strings, but didn't cover anything else, and the bra barely covered her nipples, with only the string wrapped around them. Or maybe a swimsuit? It was a scene that completely took me back to the world of the DVD.
I sorted out my underwear drawer as if nothing had happened and sat on the bed. I turned on the TV and watched the late-night sports news. Nothing went through my mind. I heard my wife's footsteps coming up the stairs. She opened the door and entered the bedroom, clad in her pajamas.
"Are you still awake?" she asked me, getting into bed and lying on her back.
I lay on top of her, touching and squeezing her breasts through her pajamas. She grabbed my hand, pushed me aside, and said, "Sorry, I'm not really in the mood for that." The atmosphere suddenly became awkward. My wife had seen something like that in the drawer and refused to have sex with me. I felt like she was making fun of me.
"Sorry, I'm a little tired, maybe next time."
I didn't know how to respond to her words. Perhaps out of consideration for me, my wife started talking to me. "You seem to be busy at work lately. You worked without a day off last weekend, right?"
"Yeah, we had a bit of trouble."
I tried to keep my emotions to a minimum.
"Hey, why don't we go to a hot spring next week? Somewhere nearby is fine. Let's relax as a family for once."
I was more pleased by her consideration than by her refusal to have sex with me. I felt like I was being ignored. A hot spring... that might be a good idea. What I needed most right now was some family time. I want to have a time where I can truly feel at ease.