A Story of Buying a Tower Mansion with a Joint Loan and Getting Divorced: The 'Luxurious Hell' That Awaited

I previously wrote a novel titled "A Story of Buying a Tower Mansion with a Joint Loan and Getting Divorced: A 'Completely Different Hell' from the One I Read About Online," and it was read by many people (7.51 million impressions, 4,921 likes). Thank you so much...

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https://x.com/PageTurner_and/status/2048182109903454378

However, that was a "joint loan divorce" depicted from the husband's perspective. It was only the "truth" as seen from one side.

I believe that in a divorce, it's never just one person who is unilaterally at fault.

The husband believes he is the victim, but is that the whole truth?

So, I wrote a story from the wife's perspective. I think you'll see a different landscape than the husband's version.

(I think it's profound regardless of which version, the wife's or the husband's, you read first.)

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"A Story of Buying a Tower Mansion with a Joint Loan and Getting Divorced: The 'Luxurious Hell' That Awaited (Wife's Version)"

I think buying a condo is an act based on the premise that there is a future.

Waking up in this room. Boiling pasta in this kitchen. Watching The Bachelor with my husband in this living room. Placing a Cybex stroller in this entryway. Maybe sticking an alphabet chart on the wall.

In that way, you sign an expensive contract while imagining the future of your family. Believing there is happiness ahead, you make the most expensive purchase of your life.

Except, we aren't the ones actually paying. The bank temporarily shoulders the dream for us and then bills us for the reality over the next 35 years.

But that was fine. Both my husband and I were 27. A newlywed couple working at an IT company in Roppongi, each earning 7 million yen. A household income of 140 million yen. For a couple in their 20s, weren't we doing pretty well?

Now, what kind of condo should we buy?

While looking at SUUMO at our favorite bistro, the purchase plan my husband proposed was simple.

Buy a tower mansion in the bay area we both longed for with a single loan. A spacious 1LDK of about 45㎡, second-hand for 50 million yen. It was plenty of space for a newlywed couple. Then, when we have a child, we'd trade up to a 2LDK. He proudly said it was a strategy unique to tower mansions with high liquidity.

But isn't that a bit strange?

I earn as much as my husband. If he can take out a loan, I can take out the same amount.

So I made this proposal.

"If we're planning on having kids anyway, wouldn't a 2LDK be better from the start?"

"No, but 90 million is expensive."

My husband had a face like he was saying something sensible.

"But we can do it with a joint loan," I replied.

A joint loan. A system where a couple mutually guarantees the debt, allowing them to borrow more money. If one can't pay, the other must. It's a contract you absolutely cannot enter unless you trust your partner.

That's why I felt it was perfect for us.

Building a life together. I thought it was a much more concrete proof of love than vows at a wedding or exchanging rings. Because there was nothing but a bright future ahead of us.

"Sounds good. Let's do that."

My husband said it with the smile I loved most.

*

On the day of the viewing for the 2LDK room, the real estate agent stopped in front of the window and said,

"This view doesn't come around often."

Real estate agents always say that. It doesn't come around often. It's now or never. There are others considering the purchase. It'll be gone while you're hesitating. In their world, every property is rare, every buyer is late, and every view out the window is a once-in-a-lifetime encounter.

In the bay area where the view is the main attraction, "doesn't come around often" is surely an exaggeration. That said, no agent says, "This is a commonplace view."

If such an agent existed, I might actually trust them, but they probably wouldn't survive long in the company. "Honest Real Estate" only works as fiction because it doesn't exist in reality.

The view actually was wonderful, so I just said, "Wow."

My husband smiled happily when he heard that.

When I'm happy, my husband is happy seeing that. So I made sure to react with exaggerated joy. Because it made him smile.

Was that a sense of service, or love, or just wanting to see his smile? Thinking about it now, I'm not sure. It was probably all of them.

"This would be perfect for an office," I said, looking at the spare room.

"Until we have a kid."

"Right. Usually my remote work room. I have some work-from-home days."

"We'll share the bedroom."

"Of course."

*

The joint loan application naturally had a signature line. My husband wrote first, and I followed.

"It reminds me of when we did the marriage registration."

I felt a ticklish sensation. A debt that felt like love. Or love wearing the face of debt.

If the marriage registration is what binds two people legally, perhaps the joint loan is what binds them financially.

Both are chains that restrict freedom, but love itself is a rather violent, exclusive contract where you declare, "I will love no one but you."

We signed that contract. We wore Boucheron wedding rings on our ring fingers and matching collars from au Jibun Bank around our necks.

*

We bought the dining table at a small furniture store in Meguro. I persuaded my husband, who said "Nitori is fine," and we toured the Meguro furniture district as a date.

Then we found a Nitori at the edge of the furniture district and both chuckled. "Impressive marketing. President Nitori is good," my husband said, trying to go in, but I stopped him and pulled him toward the furniture store I had my eye on.

We both chipped in to buy a light gray dining table that matched the greige flooring perfectly.

On the day we moved in, things were so hectic we couldn't assemble the dining table, so we sat on the floor and ate convenience store rice balls. The salmon rice balls eaten while sitting on the floor tasted like happiness.

"This is the office."

I pointed to the spare room. It was perfect for remote work.

"And when we have a kid, it's the kid's room," my husband said with a laugh.

"Yeah. Well, it's a bit luxurious for one kid to use at first."

"We don't even have one yet."

"Be quiet."

I said that and laughed.

I will probably never forget this conversation. I never doubted that we would be together forever or that we would have children. And I never imagined that neither would come true.

At night, I could see the lights of the bay area through the window without curtains. Tower mansions stood far and near, and I could feel that different lives were contained in each window. I somehow felt that we had become a part of that.

Inside the reflection of the large glass windows, I felt like we could build a proper family.

To put it bluntly, I was a fool.

*

The first sign of things breaking was work.

I started enjoying work.

I had always worked hard. But from a certain point, my decisions started directly affecting the team's results. I was entrusted with big jobs. The numbers followed. I began to be evaluated highly by my superiors.

I was happier about that than I thought I would be.

Being recognized. Being entrusted. Being treated as an irreplaceable person. It was like a drug. A legal drug that even paid a salary. My brain was hooked.

From that time, the meaning of having a child changed. Until then, a child was the very image of future happiness. A bright plan written into that one room of the 2LDK.

But the moment work became interesting, pregnancy and childbirth began to look like an "interruption" rather than a plan.

Only I would stop. Only I would be sidelined. Only I would be taken off the ship I had finally managed to board. Only women are forced into this interruption. Biologically.

My husband is the same age, has the same income, and works the same way. But when it comes to having a child, I am the one who takes it on with my whole body.

I'm sure my husband would take childcare leave. However, I am the one who would have a longer gap in my career. I am the one who might be put on the mommy track.

It wasn't my husband's fault. But it seemed very, very unreasonable.

Once I started thinking that, I began to dislike it when my husband innocently said, "I want a kid soon."

Right now, I don't want to interrupt my work—that feeling grew stronger. I know now that I should have spoken honestly about those feelings. But at the time, I couldn't say it.

Because I was the one who proposed the 2LDK. I was the one who said, "If we're planning on having kids anyway."

For me to now say, "Work has become interesting, so please wait," felt incredibly selfish.

I didn't want to disappoint my husband. My husband, who wanted a child so straightforwardly.

So I dodged it. So I stayed silent. Naturally, my husband didn't stay silent.

Do you want a boy or a girl? Have you thought of names? What kind of lessons should they take?

Since we had both undergone bridal checks, we knew there were no physical issues. That's why my husband spoke of future hopes so innocently.

Pure, white hope.

But for me, it was an annoying whiteness.

Whenever he opened his mouth, it was about children. About the future. I gradually began to avoid talking to my husband. And of course, sex too.

*

It was true that my husband was a light sleeper.

He would wake up just from me going to the bathroom. I tried to be as quiet as possible, not even turning on the lights, using only the light from my smartphone to do my business.

It's not that my husband asked me to do that, but seeing him look like a sick little bird when he lacked sleep, I naturally started doing it.

At one point, I was chosen as a member of a large project related to the Digital Agency. It was a promotion. I was happy that my abilities were recognized, but to handle the massive amount of work, I had to start going to the office at 7 AM.

I started waking up before 6 AM, but my husband would wake up at that time too. Now he wasn't just a sick little bird; he was a dying little bird.

"I'll sleep in this room so I don't wake you up in the morning."

I told my husband that and decided to sleep in the other room. Saying it was because I felt bad was my true feeling. However, it would be a lie to say that other feelings weren't mixed in with that truth.

The hand reaching out at night.

There was definitely a joy in being liberated from that.

When I ordered the new bed, there was guilt. I didn't have time to go to Meguro, so I bought it from Nitori's online shop.

*

The relationship between us began to get completely awkward, and my husband tried to get back into my good graces.

He went all the way to À Tes Souhaits to buy cake.

"You liked this, right?" he said. I did like it. I certainly did. But I felt like the cake he bought had a little tag stuck in it saying, "I remember properly," "I'm doing this much."

À Tes Souhaits is far from both Nishi-Ogikubo and Kichijoji stations. I felt like I was being made to eat the distance between the bay area and the shop rather than the cake.

Another time, he invited me to a French course at L'AS in Omotesando.

L'AS is the restaurant we went to for my first birthday after we started dating. The specialty foie gras crispy sandwich was so delicious that I remember like it was yesterday joking, "Is there no second helping?"

However, a restaurant of memories is not an emergency room for a broken relationship. I didn't want our current, tattered relationship to be placed on top of beautiful memories.

Objectively speaking, I think he was a good husband. But all of those things seemed like he was just trying out articles from third-rate web media on "how to make your wife fall for you again."

Everything my husband did was annoying to me.

*

I thought things couldn't go on like this. So I decided to talk to my husband about my feelings.

That work is fun. That I want to see the current project through. That I want to wait a little longer for children.

My husband put on an understanding face. But he still didn't understand.

"Mommy tracks aren't really a thing in our company these days, are they?" "I'll do my part too." "I can take three months of childcare leave." "Various risks go up, so it's better to have them early."

He had a face like everything he said was right. That was what was infuriating. If it were wrong, I could argue. But my husband's words were always half-right. Half-right words are more troublesome than words that are completely wrong.

I'll do my part too. The career of the husband who says that won't stop.

While I get pregnant, give birth, take a break, return, and possibly fall behind, my husband will steadily accumulate achievements. And yet, he says, "I'll do it too." The premise of "doing it" is different. I'm talking about offering up my whole body, while he's talking about a division of labor chart.

I couldn't explain that gap well. It's my fault for not being able to explain it. But I was also angry at my husband for not understanding without an explanation.

I gave up on getting my husband to understand. Every day, I slept in a room alone and woke up in a room alone. While steadily nurturing the seeds of collapse.

*

That day, my husband was very drunk.

Late at night, after the date had changed, there was a loud noise at the entrance. It was a sound like something falling, something breaking, or perhaps a sound that came to inform me that something had already long since broken.

My husband, slumped at the entrance, looked up at me with unfocused eyes. Then he began to criticize my usual attitude.

Cold. He doesn't know what I'm thinking. He's the only one trying. Why won't I talk to him normally? Why won't I come back to the bedroom?

I think it couldn't be helped. Even from my perspective, my attitude was terrible. So I listened in silence. Occasionally nodding.

My husband was heavily drunk that day. That's probably why he could say those words.

"If you're not going to try to have children, what did I marry you for?"

My husband was drunk.

That's why it was his true feeling. He probably let slip the true feelings he had been suppressing by paralyzing his frontal lobe with the drug called alcohol and turning off his self-restraint.

In that moment, I ceased to be a wife. I was no longer a lover or a partner to share a life with. I became a person scheduled to give birth. A future womb. A body to justify a 2LDK.

I left the entrance without saying a word.

I heard my husband's crying in the distance.

I pulled the cold doorknob and entered the room. The room that was supposed to be the "child's room."

*

What welled up in my chest was neither anger nor sadness.

It was just a great loneliness. It had been lying there before I knew it.

The person I thought I was drawing a bright future with. The person who signed those two important documents, the marriage registration and the joint loan, together. The person who smiled happily hearing my "Wow" in front of that window. The person who talked about the child's room while eating salmon rice balls sitting on the floor.

Was the husband I was looking at an illusion?

I used busyness as an excuse and started leaving the house before my husband woke up and returning after he went to sleep.

*

It was then that my boss invited me out. He was the boss I'd had since I was a new employee, and he even gave a speech at our wedding reception. He is also the project leader for the Digital Agency case.

There was a sense of unease. In the Reiwa era, one usually avoids inviting a female subordinate out one-on-one. Still, I went.

Did I want to be thought well of by my boss? Did I want to be praised for my work? Did I want my work troubles to be heard properly? Or did I want to confirm myself, invited by a man who wasn't my husband, as a woman who wasn't a womb? Or were there other feelings? I still don't know.

A Soba Kappo in Kiyosumi Shirakawa. A shop I had wanted to go to for a while.

The tempura was unbelievably crispy, and the famous mullet roe soba was a taste I had never experienced.

My boss praised my work. Even if there was an ulterior motive, it sounded like exquisite background music.

On the way back, he held my hand.

I didn't shake off that hand. It wasn't affection. It was a feeling like taking revenge on my husband.

Revenge for those words.

...If I say that, it sounds somewhat dignified. But in reality, it was much more pathetic. I think I just wanted to hurt someone back as much as I had been hurt.

The hand of my boss that I squeezed back was lukewarm and disgusting.

That one sentence that stabbed my chest. How heavy is the guilt of those words? Which is more sinful, his words or my actions? Even imagining a scale, I didn't know which way it would tilt.

And my husband saw my selfish revenge.

*

My husband was furious. It couldn't be helped, but he completely misunderstood that I was dating my boss.

I was weary of his refusal to listen to my side at all, and I was angry.

Fine, let's just say I cheated.

"It's your fault I cheated,"

I told him.

When I say I told him, it sounds like I was triumphant, but in reality, there was no victory anywhere.

I just pulled out a blade just as dirty from the place where I thought I had been stabbed and pointed it at him.

The blade was rusted. My hand holding it was also dirty.

"No, what are you talking about?"

"Because, I've been suffering for so long."

"That's separate from an affair."

"It's not separate. You're the one who made me do it."

It's an argument like a victim's. Setting aside the fact that I held hands, I'm just lining up my husband's words and attitudes. It was cowardly.

However, while thinking that, the words didn't stop. Those words had been ringing in my head for a while now.

"If you're not going to try to have children, what did I marry you for?"

I am not a birthing machine. I am not living to give birth to children.

Even if we couldn't have children as a couple, I intended to live my life with my husband.

I intended to build a happy home. But this person has no intention of making a home with me.

Furthermore, he has no intention of recognizing what he broke as something he broke himself. That fact quietly but completely entered into me.

*

It was a weekday night when my husband said, "Let's get a divorce."

Outside the window, the lights of tower mansions were lined up.

I was surprised, but I nodded.

*

Online articles frequently claim that a joint loan divorce is hell.

You fight over whether to sell or not. In the first place, if there's negative equity, you can't sell even if you want to. I also read the laments of people who pay for two people's loans because one partner ran away.

You should stop doing joint loans. Only hell awaits.

So I was quite prepared. I thought a quagmire was about to begin.

However, when we put it up for appraisal, it was different from what I imagined. The room we bought for 90 million yen three years ago had become 140 million yen due to the rising market.

It didn't make sense. Our married life is declining beautifully, but only the room is rising. All that was left was to sell, pay back the loan balance, and split the profit.

Because it's a joint loan, both of us can use the 30 million yen special deduction. The capital gains tax was a surprising zero.

In the end, more than 25 million yen in cash remained in each of our hands. I was surprised. Even though it's called hell in the world.

It was just that the market happened to be good, but if we had made it a 1LDK back then, the profit wouldn't have been this much. What a nasty correct answer.

If we had made it a 1LDK back then.

Physically, we couldn't have had separate bedrooms. In that case, would we have been able to communicate more as a couple?

It was a meaningless imagination. Life doesn't allow for A/B testing.

*

I decided to leave first. Because I couldn't stand to look at the carcass of our home any longer.

I left the packing to the movers. On a weekday while my husband was at work. My room became empty in an instant with incredibly efficient handiwork.

The room that was supposed to be the child's room. It became an office, a bedroom, a shelter, and finally, just an empty room.

"Let's put the kid's bed here. Maybe the desk is over here."

Suddenly, my husband's words came back to me. And suddenly, I saw a vision.

My husband is there, and there's a young child. My husband is teaching the child, and I've just brought snacks there.

"Why do you keep making the same mistake?" my husband scolds the child, and the child pouts, saying, "I want to play games already."

I tell my husband he's scolding too much. My husband gets a little defensive, saying but this part is important. The child squirms on the chair. On the snack plate are cream puffs we bought.

That kind of noisy, troublesome, happy holiday that you can find anywhere.

That vision of something that seemed like nothing hit me the hardest.

The future my husband wanted, that I hesitated over, and that vanished. No, the future I made vanish.

Why didn't I talk more about my feelings to my husband? Why didn't I accept my husband's kindness straightforwardly? Why didn't I get angry directly when my husband said those terrible things? Why didn't I deny the affair? Why did I nod when he brought up the divorce?

Why.

Every choice was wrong. However, I feel like even if I had made the right choices, the result would have been the same.

Outside the window, I could see the group of tower mansions in the bay area. As the dishonest real estate agent said, the view is good.

There are hundreds of rooms in a tower mansion. From a distance, it looks like every family is doing well. It's unfair. Inside each one, someone might be fighting, or there might be a couple who no longer sleep in the same bed. In a room that was supposed to be a child's room, a wife might be crying alone. You can't tell at all from the outside.

More than 25 million yen had been deposited into my account. Divorced, losing my home, and yet 2500 million yen remains. It's a very luxurious hell.

But I didn't want 25 million yen.

God, won't you turn back time in exchange for this?

Sentimental, foolish, and irredeemable self-pity.

*

I locked the door. All that's left is to put this key in the mailbox.

I walk down the inner corridor with blue carpet. There are no footsteps. No matter how much force I put into my walk, the cool, hotel-like inner corridor accepts it.

It should be written in SUUMO's recommended points too.

"Hotel-like inner corridor. Footsteps won't echo even if your life collapses."

This town looked like it was filled with hope. But in reality, hope is something humans have to make inside their rooms.

I couldn't make it. I was in hell without being able to make it. While clutching 25 million yen.

I pressed the elevator button that I would never press again.

Down.

Only the price of the room kept going up. We might have been going down the whole time.

There was no one in the elevator. The doors closed silently.

The luxurious elevator hall we both longed for disappeared from view.

All that's left is to go down toward the ground.

(The End)

How was it? I think the way it looks changes from the husband's version just by having a different perspective on the same scene.

I wrote scenes where the couple was thinking the same thing and scenes where they were thinking completely different things. I think you'll find various things if you compare them.

And my husband doesn't remember that decisive scene...

■ Click here for the husband's version ■

https://x.com/PageTurner_and/status/2048182109903454378

I have published various other "mansion literature." Each story takes about 5 minutes to read, so please take a look if you like!

🔴 The story of going to a model room of a mansion that was beyond my means

https://x.com/pageturner_and/status/2029827228226441355?s=46

🔴 Renters dream of a market crash

https://x.com/pageturner_and/status/2032801910647087239?s=46

🔴 The story of meeting a woman on a matching app who said her "hobby is real estate," getting excited, and then realizing I was the target of a deal

https://x.com/pageturner_and/status/2044726309717463088?s=46

🔴 The story of realizing after selling my home that strangers on X were getting excited saying "HURRY!" and "Too cheap"

https://x.com/pageturner_and/status/2046205880811872569?s=46

🔴 The story of going to a model room of a new tower mansion with excitement and suddenly being punched

https://x.com/PageTurner_and/status/2047302433555239192?s=20

🔴 The story of my life almost ending after applying for a lottery for a super popular tower mansion without telling my wife

https://x.com/PageTurner_and/status/2053051909251203511