Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 133

“Do you have eyes on your feet?!”

At the sudden outburst, Yiyeon, who had been frantically fleeing, snapped her head around.

She didn’t know how she had managed to escape the main house. Her lips, drained of moisture, were pale and parched, and her heart had been pounding wildly since a moment she couldn’t even recall.

There was no time to gauge whether Kwon Giseok’s threats or Kwon Chaewoo’s pleas were more shocking. Only the fear of falling into the same pit again propelled her legs forward.

Yiyeon clutched her crumpled clothes and moved towards the source of the commotion. Hiding among the crowd was an unconscious choice.

“Why aren’t you catching them quickly?!”

The once verdant garden was unsightly, dug up and ruined. The ground beneath the trees was deeply gouged, pillars were scratched, and the flowerbeds were utterly devastated. Seeing the heads of all the flowers snapped, Yiyeon’s eyes subtly creased.

Watching the security team staff in fluorescent vests frantically chasing dogs through the garden, Yiyeon roughly understood what had happened.

It was the work of someone’s negligence and out-of-control dogs.

“Looks like they were frustrated, huh?”

The now familiar facility management staff sighed, pressing his foot firmly into the uneven ground.

“Haa… This, we have to clean it up by today, right? Oh, I really hate this…”

Dark brown soil, churned up as if in reflux, covered the green lawn.

“Oh, by the way, the Miraehoe charity auction is scheduled here outdoors next week. Did you confirm the schedule?”

“Miraehoe?”

As Yiyeon asked, bewildered, the staff scratched his forehead with his thumbnail.

“It’s a charity auction held by women in the political and business circles, and their tastes are a bit picky. So there’s a mountain of things to prepare, and these damn dogs are driving me crazy.”

“It’s better this way.”

“Huh?”

“No, no.”

She meant it was good to be able to forcibly push away thoughts of Kwon Chaewoo, but the words came out carelessly.

Soon, the dog, covered in dirt, was being led away by the trainer she had seen last time, now muzzled. The man, whose eyes met Yiyeon’s, let out a hearty laugh, as if embarrassed.

“See? That’s why training is important.”

Yiyeon subtly distanced herself, afraid of the teeth visible through the muzzle, and offered an awkward smile.

“By the way, is that house’s dog being trained well?”

“Huh? Oh…”

As Yiyeon’s expression stiffened, the trainer nodded as if he understood.

“It’s alright, surprisingly many guardians get soft-hearted midway. They usually whine like crazy at first. But ignore them. If you don’t get them under control now, your daily life will only get harder.”

Yiyeon couldn’t understand why she was so focused on a dog she wasn’t even raising.

She fidgeted, feeling as if she was deceiving someone, yet her ears kept perking up.

“The important thing is to persistently tame them. Play with them a lot. Aggressive ones must be taken for walks. Ignore and encourage, and reward appropriately. Also, let them smell humans often.”

Yiyeon unconsciously looked back at the main house. Her startled heart was still pounding fiercely.

Every time he passed through the narrow corridor, the old light flickered. Each time the light fell, Kwon Chaewoo’s face, covered by a black mask, would be revealed only to be swallowed by darkness again.

He turned corners without hesitation, his neck slightly bent due to the low ceiling, yet his posture remained undisturbed.

The musty smell of mold stung his nose, but compared to the black, burnt-out insides of himself, it was rather clean.

Even at this moment, after two days without rest, wandering only at night, his heart trembled ceaselessly, yearning for Yiyeon.

Currently, she is allowed only two things. First, not to touch her body carelessly. Second, not to follow her.

Then how exactly can I hold you? How can I hold you in my arms like before?

‘Would others, not me, have found a way more skillfully? If they were inherently kind and gentle types—’

He had no idea how to find a solution, feeling only lost, but he desperately and urgently chewed on those words that held a faint possibility.

Extreme sleep deprivation and eating problems made his nerves increasingly sensitive. The more so, Kwon Chaewoo’s thoughts changed every second, like the flickering light.

Should he confine Yiyeon to a remote mountain village, or perhaps buy and renovate an uninhabited island?

But even as his mind raged wildly, a minimum of reason, the thought of not following in the footsteps of Kwon Giseok and Yoon Jooha, stopped him.

Since he had promised never to act coercively, should he go to the hospital first to check the condition of his organs, then hand Yiyeon the results? It didn’t seem bad to pick out something useful for Yiyeon whenever she needed it.

Pondering all sorts of things, he eventually pulled down his mask to his chin and asked huskily.

“Where did you stash him?”

“That way.”

A few days ago, a civilian got into a fight at Club Luna and was assaulted.

The victim, Jang Min-soo, immediately reported it to 112, but instead, the responding police officers assaulted, arrested, and even illegally detained Mr. Jang, escalating the situation.

These absurd circumstances spread in real-time through a live broadcast Mr. Jang had secretly turned on, and thus suspicions of collusion between Club Luna and law enforcement erupted. This was because the names of various high-ranking individuals were mentioned during the process of ridiculing and assaulting ordinary Mr. Jang. The entire country was in an uproar.

What was a simple assault case grew in size, becoming a major crime encompassing police collusion, drugs, sexual offenses, and tax evasion, with all sorts of chaotic speculation about the true mastermind behind it.

Meanwhile, new suspicions arose that Club Luna was connected not just anywhere, but to the current government, heating up the internet day after day.

The forces behind it were, of course, the Kwon family, who held real power in the shadows, and Kwon Chaewoo had personally stepped forward, instructed to quietly deal with Mr. Jang, the civilian who was the seed of all these events.

Inside the solitary cell he entered, a bloodied man lay tied with ropes.

Kwon Chaewoo gestured to the hunting dog that had followed him to leave, then remained alone, tilting his head crookedly.

“Get up.”

His impassive voice cut through the silence, and the man, who had been lying as if dead, slowly rose, spitting.

“Fuck, that hurts like hell.”

“…”

“This is why I hate the damn dogs in our house. The reason you guys turned out like this is because of the lack of public education. They should have taught you wisdom and morality when you were young, instead of tying you up with chains, you motherfuckers.”

Despite the scathing criticism, Kwon Chaewoo’s expression remained unchanged. The man, who had casually sat down on one knee, pulled up the corners of his lips with a messed-up face.

“Long time no see, youngest. I heard you were in a vegetative state?”

It was Kwon Yijoon, the second son of the Kwon family who had abandoned the household, now working as an elementary school teacher.

His features were too swollen to be recognizable from the brutal beating, but his eyes, a darker reddish-brown than Kwon Chaewoo’s, flashed with familiarity.

His curly hair fell below his eyebrows, and a piercing mark, unbefitting a teacher, was clear on one ear. As if his T-shirt had stretched during the struggle, dark tattoos were subtly visible beneath it.

Kwon Yijoon playfully contorted one side of his face and smiled chillingly.

“You know how much trouble your brother went through because of you, right?”

“A teacher like you should watch your language.”

“When did you ever care about my kids?”

“I’m going to try to care from now on.”

“Bullshit. If you suddenly act like that, it’ll seem like you’re trying to wring the necks of my little chicks, so stop it.”

And Kwon Yijoon’s true identity was a black hacker who served as the focal point for anti-Kwon family forces.

To completely sever ties with his family, he had been draining the Kwon family’s hidden overseas funds, buried in places like the Bahamas, San Marino, Samoa, and the Cayman Islands, one by one every 24 hours. His parents completely gave up on their second son after the fourth attempt, though there were dozens more such secret accounts.

Kwon Yijoon stared intently at his youngest brother’s impassive face for the first time in a long while.

“Things are going to explode one after another from now on, so stay sharp.”

Kwon Yijoon, who had intended to leave home as soon as he became an adult, stayed a little longer in the Kwon family when his kidnapped younger brother returned. However, the neatly grown Chaewoo never let his guard down with his brothers, and Kwon Yijoon felt disgusted by his parents’ actions of sending such a child overseas, treating him as a nuisance rather than embracing him warmly.

“You’re the only one living with Kwon Giseok in the main house right now.”

“Not living, but monitoring.”

“That bastard, he doesn’t even trust his hunting dogs anymore. Recently, he’s been buying up Syrian murderers one after another.”

“I know, I dealt with a few of them yesterday.”

At that, Kwon Yijoon sent a sharp warning glance.

“Assume Kwon Giseok is two or three steps ahead and act accordingly.”

“…”

“You know, right? If anything goes wrong, your neck will be the first to be cut. Your brothers are lacking, so they left you alone in the main house and rely only on you, but no matter how much you fly and crawl, you’re just a hunting dog right now. When your usefulness runs out, you’ll be dealt with first.”

At those words, Kwon Chaewoo let out a snort. It was a rare smile from the youngest, but Kwon Yijoon felt no joy. He shuddered at the cruelty contained within that smile. Yet, he couldn’t deny that he too had staked all his cards on this harsh temperament.

“Rather, I wish for it. Kwon Giseok keeps poking around my vicinity, and it’s getting more boring than I thought.”

Kwon Chaewoo cut the rope binding his second brother with a short dagger and said.

“Kwon Giseok can die tonight.”

“Hey, Chaewoo.”

“It’s troublesome because the Kwon family won’t disappear just like that. And right now—”

Kwon Chaewoo hesitated for a moment before continuing.

“He also has something of mine.”

Following that, a voice laced with curses was terrifyingly brutal.

Kwon Yijoon alternately rolled his freed wrists, sighing.

As a child, after witnessing the dog kennels where young children were confined and raised as pawns of the Kwon family, his way of thinking completely changed. Moreover, seeing his parents, who were similar to him in that they had their youngest stolen but never changed, his disgust grew even stronger.

Perhaps because of the shocking dog kennels and the kidnapping of his youngest brother, Kwon Yijoon was particularly soft-hearted towards children. Even during the raw fish incident, when he was decisively deemed weak, he actually couldn’t touch the fish because its belly was full of roe.

After that, Kwon Yijoon consistently worked to rescue all the children held by the Kwon family and to break the cycle of their evil deeds.

Just as the hunting dog, whose interests aligned, joined them, the plan gained momentum. This was before Kwon Chaewoo, who had grown up quickly and became the body and terror of the Kwon family, contacted him. It was before he fell into a vegetative state.

Kwon Yijoon touched his red and bluish lips, frowning.

“Next week, there’s a Miraehoe charity auction at home.”

“I know.”

“She’s not on the list, but the Pakistani ambassador’s wife will also attend.”

Miraehoe was a volunteer group for women in political and business circles, such as the wives, daughters, or daughters-in-law of politicians and corporate executives. And quarterly, the Kwon family opened their outdoor garden to lend the venue.

“It’s a chance for Kwon Giseok to get screwed for the first time in a long time.”

Kwon Yijoon unwrapped a strawberry-flavored candy from his pants pocket and grinned.

“You don’t have any important items at home, do you? If so, put them away in advance.”