Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 12

It was a tough day. Only old wounds remained in the jumbled day.

Yiyeon sat on the sofa, holding a cherished potted plant in her arms. She wanted to be comforted by the static demeanor unique to plants—they didn’t bite, didn’t rub against her, and didn’t even talk back.

Unconsciously, she looked up at the second floor and flinched.

“You startled me……!”

Yiyeon shook her head, as if scolding herself.

What concerns me is that vegetable, ominously.

It had been a peaceful week. The daily life Yiyeon had so desperately wanted, where nothing happened. However, the more Kwon Chaewoo slept, the more strangely Yiyeon had sleepless nights.

After all the fuss for a short period, how silent this peaceful night felt. She was simply overwhelmed by growing stray thoughts.

She didn’t want to admit it, but two years was a time when a strange cohabitation between a person and a plant maintained a certain balance and coexisted.

Perhaps it was destined from the moment Yiyeon, overly frightened, began checking on the vegetable every night, wondering if he was truly a vegetable.

“Ugh, no. No. Don’t think about anything……”

It was when Yiyeon was frowning and burying her nose in a herb leaf.

Huh?

She sensitively lifted her head.

“――!”

A faint sound of a young animal was heard somewhere. She craned her neck, her face full of vigilance. Then, the stairs that immediately came into view seemed particularly suspicious today.

Her hesitation was brief. Yiyeon strode up the stairs and then unhesitatingly opened the door, which was gaping open where the door lock had been torn off.

The soft light on the bedside.

The man was motionless, to the point where he could be believed to be a stuffed model.

‘……There was definitely a sound.’

Yiyeon placed her finger on Kwon Chaewoo’s philtrum. His neat breathing touched her skin.

Is this not the place?

It was when she scratched her head and looked around.

The man’s tightly closed lips slowly parted before her eyes. Yiyeon instinctively stiffened her entire body. But what she saw beyond his lips were not teeth, but sobs.

“Hoo……”

Yiyeon’s feet were frozen. Kwon Chaewoo was crying. A large tear dropped from the corner of his eye, where a subtle curve ended.

“—Ma……”

He mumbled something. His dry, chapped lips continuously spewed something out.

“……Go. Go quickly……”

He was contorting his entire face as if in pain. Was he having a nightmare? Yiyeon’s eyes wavered.

What would a murderer have nightmares about?

If he had lived doing bad things all this time, it makes sense he’d have nightmares.

It’s all karma.

She looked down at him with a twisted, somewhat satisfying feeling.

But even if she looked at him coldly, Yiyeon’s gaze was fixed on the man’s tears. He was now even gasping for breath.

“Hide me……”

“…….”

“—Forget……”

The man spoke in disjointed, incomprehensible words, but his emotions were strangely vivid. He seemed desperate, and sad.

“Hide me……!”

His sculpted, handsome features distorted painfully. Yiyeon, at a loss, repeatedly raised and lowered her arms.

‘Chooja-ssi, doesn’t he look more like a roe deer than a good man?’

When Chooja clapped, calling Kwon Chaewoo a good man after seeing his appearance. Yiyeon nodded somewhat. However, he was not a fairy who had lost her clothes and was weeping sadly, but rather one who would break the neck of anyone who dared to peek.

But doesn’t he look like someone desperately fleeing right now?

“—Live……”

Yiyeon hesitated, feeling very disinclined. She turned away as if to ignore him, then glanced back. She clenched and unclenched her hands, groaning, and finally wiped his tear-soaked eyes.

The moment she touched the man’s feverish skin, static electricity crackled. She flinched, pulled her hand away, and said with a slightly softened face.

“Mr. Kwon Chaewoo seems to dislike sleeping.”

“…….”

“I don’t like you waking up.”

“……Must —.”

Thinking about it, she had always only seen his deathly sleeping face or his memory-lost, hollow eyes. But seeing the man suddenly spewing out sorrow, she felt strange. She quickly rubbed the tears from her fingertips onto her pajamas.

So you were human after all. I wished you weren’t.

“I wouldn’t feel guilty even if Mr. Kwon Chaewoo never woke up forever, well, a little, no, almost not at all.”

Yiyeon busily brushed away her stray thoughts.

“What can I do if I feel less sympathy for him than for street trees?”

Yiyeon then let out an inexplicable sigh and sat on a chair. With her chin resting on her knees, she began to ramble, just like before.

“They are at least clear and pure. Mr. Kwon Chaewoo belongs to the vicious and murky kind. Do you know how difficult that is to handle? How scary carnivorous plants are.”

And—

“Don’t cry.”

Yiyeon, with a clouded face, continuously wiped his tears.

“You have to wipe your own tears.”

“…….”

“Crying didn’t help me. No one listened.”

Only the trees, only the flowers that smiled with each season, listened to Yiyeon’s stories. For Yiyeon, who had never made a single friend, they were her only affection and promise.

“Today, I tasted the soil under a tree. It was very salty. It shouldn’t taste like that normally.”

“…….”

“Are Mr. Kwon Chaewoo’s tears like that too?”

Whether to pull Kwon Chaewoo out of his nightmare or leave him there was now up to Yiyeon. She leaned forward and whispered to him.

“Who poured seawater on you?”

The man only frowned without answering. Wrinkles formed haphazardly from his forehead down his naturally straight nose. Kwon Chaewoo continued to let out gasping moans like breaths.

Yiyeon pouted and grumbled.

“Today, you look like the ginkgo tree at the fish restaurant.”

Even knowing it was a dangerous illusion, there were times she wanted to be fooled. Yiyeon faced him as if taking stronger medicine to forget the persistent low fever from all day and the meaning of today.

“It’s a birthday present.”

—Actually, today was a day I wanted to cry too.

Yiyeon carefully lay down beside the man.

An inexplicable, sharply twisting sound pierced his brain.

Kwon Chaewoo blinked his stiff eyes and raised his arm against the pouring sunlight. But before he could even cover his eyes, his hand hit something with a thump, and it tingled. He quietly furrowed his brows and turned his head.

“……!”

There, So Yiyeon was sleeping soundly, completely unaware of the world. She was clinging to his inner arm like a barnacle, even wiggling and smacking her lips. At the sight, Kwon Chaewoo was speechless and froze. At the same time, his mind snapped awake as if cold water had been thrown on him.

He had clearly been carrying a painful and difficult dream on his shoulders. But the moment he saw her, it was completely swept away.

Was this ‘Kwon Chaewoo’ person naturally foolish, or did his mind just go blank at even a small stimulus?

So Yiyeon.

Wife.

Tree doctor.

Accident.

Kwon Chaewoo chewed over the few things that came to mind as he looked at the woman in front of him. All of them were ordinary pieces of information he had heard. He clicked his tongue, annoyed by them.

He remembered the beginning.

The moment dormant cells simultaneously awakened and aroused his senses. That first memory was of a woman.

When he pressed against her back and smelled her nape. He couldn’t forget that strange, fishy smell of wet grass and tangled earth.

The moment his memories were completely excised felt heavier and more nauseating than he expected.

Family, friends, memories—everything was gone, and only one person flickered in that sunken place. That was the key, it whispered.

It was a whisper close to instinct. The decision was unbelievably fast. Since only So Yiyeon’s face was lodged in his empty mind, he accepted her as if swallowing her whole.

But the more he saw her, the stranger So Yiyeon became.

‘……An unknown wife suddenly appeared, didn’t she? I was worried about how flustered and uncomfortable this must be for Mr. Kwon Chaewoo……’

No, I knew at first glance. Why were you my wife? Why did you had to be my wife?

It felt like a waste of time to even look away.

‘Mr. Kwon, Kwon Chaewoo. Mr. Kwon Chaewoo.’

But, her trembling body, even while claiming to be his wife.

Eyes consumed by fear.

A smooth ring finger with no trace of a ring.

A house without even a single wedding photo.

There wasn’t even a speck of welcoming joy at her husband waking from a vegetative state. There was only fear, ironically. Sometimes, when she flinched, he wanted to grab her small chin and ask.

You are everything in my empty world.

Why are you afraid of me? Why don’t you smile?

If you were going to be this difficult, why did you nurse me and wait?

“Did you wake up?”

Just then, So Yiyeon rubbed her eyes and greeted him good morning.

As he propped himself up on his elbow and just stared silently, her expression gradually stiffened.