Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 139

As the smoke from the smoke grenade dissipated with the wind, Yiyeon moved as if only reacting to his falling body.

Dragging her stiff body on all fours, she came out and embraced the collapsing Kwon Chaewoo. Until the very end, he kept his hand to one ear, persistently muttering, “Target eliminated.”

Even though they tumbled down entangled, Yiyeon felt no pain at all. It was because Kwon Chaewoo had changed direction at the last moment, embracing her and letting himself hit the ground first. As their bodies overlapped, thick blood soaked Yiyeon.

“Kwon Chaewoo… The blood… The blood…”

“Ugh…”

“Kwon Chaewoo, Kwon Chaewoo! Open your eyes. Come to your senses!”

“…I regret it.”

Kwon Chaewoo slowly continued speaking, his eyes dim.

“That butterfly back then… I couldn’t answer…”

He had turned his head towards Yiyeon, but his gaze was strangely unfocused. Yiyeon held his face and met his eyes directly. But his limp head would immediately tilt loosely if Yiyeon relaxed her grip even slightly. At the sight of his broken core, Yiyeon’s heart sank.

“Kwon Chaewoo!”

“It seems that butterflies won’t come to me anymore…”

He frowned, as if enduring pain.

Yiyeon, with trembling arms, re-embraced the man, and re-embraced him again. It was still midday, but seeing her disheveled clothes, she suddenly found it hard to breathe. Her mind felt empty, unable to think of anything.

Kwon Chaewoo was too, too red.

“Please…!”

Yiyeon pressed his arm, from which blood was gushing like a clogged drainpipe, with both hands. Crimson liquid quickly covered her hands.

Yiyeon babbled whatever came to her mind, not knowing what she was saying, just letting her mouth open and sounds come out.

“How can this be…? I didn’t bury you, Kwon Chaewoo, for this. I…! I just didn’t want to get hurt again. Kwon Chaewoo, heugh, no matter what I do, he somehow manages to hurt me. He drives people crazy!”

She strained her blood vessels, pressing hard on his wound. As tears streamed down, a black vest showed through his tattered shirt. Yiyeon immediately recognized it as a bulletproof vest.

It’s okay, you can live. You can live.

You won’t die.

That won’t happen.

Nevertheless, the blood flowing from his limbs was unusual. Even if his heart was fine, it was too much for her alone to stop such a large amount of bleeding. Again, her hands trembled with bad thoughts.

“Kwon Chaewoo, I…”

“Don’t go.”

He closed his eyes and buried his head in Yiyeon’s elbow like a child.

“When I had no memories, there was only one woman in my head.”

“…”

“Now that all my memories are back, only you are gone.”

He coughed with a harsh, grating breath, and blood gushed from his mouth.

“If I can get you back… I’m willing to abandon everything else.”

“…!”

“I want to go back to that time.”

He grabbed Yiyeon’s neck and pulled her down, pressing his forehead against hers.

“We can go back.”

In an instant, Yiyeon’s mouth contorted and her chin trembled. Kkeuk, kkeuk, unwanted sobs escaped. What should she call this intense resentment and surging affection?

In reality, what she had cut off and buried was not Kwon Chaewoo, but her own heart. What should she call this man who stubbornly dug it up again, picked it up, and finally embraced her with it?

She then took the in-ear monitor Kwon Chaewoo was wearing and put it in her own ear. Yiyeon, writhing alone in the completely ravaged garden, cried out desperately.

—Please save this person, someone please come quickly…!

She wiped her hands, and wiped them again, but the smell of blood from that day did not fade even a little.

It was a new habit Yiyeon had developed after the shooting incident. Ever since Kwon Chaewoo disappeared from the mansion, the sensation of his warm blood covering her hands clung to her like a nightmare. She had heard nothing from him yet.

『Breaking news: Rubina Basharat, the wife of the Pakistani Ambassador, who attended an art museum event, was attacked by rebels with whom she had religious conflicts. …The suspect was immediately arrested by the police, but fear of threats to resident diplomats is spreading.』

Yiyeon watched the news, which obfuscated the truth and glossed over the essence, then turned her gaze to the empty office. The scattered empty seats felt chilling. It was a terrible reality.

It had only been just over three weeks since she came to work as a gardener for the Kwon family. Taking charge of the garden of a chaebol, no, a family that wielded illegal power, Yiyeon was seeing and experiencing their true faces unfiltered.

It was starkly different from the environment she had lived in, but this was Kwon Chaewoo’s real world, which she had been unaware of until now.

How did she, who had lived on a peaceful island treating trees, end up stepping into a place where people died so casually? Was all of this truly a bad fate? Yiyeon worriedly caressed her stomach, embracing unanswered questions.

Were we never meant to meet in the first place—?

“Director, are you all packed?”

“Ah, yes.”

Yiyeon picked up her work bag and stood up.

It was ultimately up to Yiyeon and the surviving staff to clean up the outdoor garden, which had become a scene of disaster.

They were busy restoring the bullet-riddled garden. They meticulously filled the ugly, ant-hole-like craters in the ground and re-laid the turf. Whenever Yiyeon happened to see scattered blood, she would feel dizzy.

“Is Ms. So Yiyeon here?”

Just then, someone urgently called for her. A premonition quickly burned up her spine. Yiyeon, who had been silently filling the ground with a shadowed face, suddenly stood up.

“He was wearing a bulletproof vest, so other than the gunshot wounds to his limbs, he’s fine. Fortunately, all his major blood vessels were avoided. However, nine bullets hit the bulletproof vest… so his ribs were broken. The broken ribs caused significant internal bleeding by piercing his organs, but now it’s cleanly sutured, and his vitals are stable.”

The doctor coughed a couple of times, then passed by the dazed Yiyeon and went outside.

His room was already perfectly set up like a VIP hospital room, and Yiyeon was quite familiar with such interiors. The room of the patient in a vegetative state she had cared for two years had been exactly like this. A strange memory suddenly pierced her.

‘Anyway, he was a bastard, so if you don’t like it, be a plant. Yiyeon, you’re good at pruning branches, aren’t you? Keep adding restrictions, first, second, third, cutting off all my limbs. Then, when I can’t do anything, you can just water me little by little every time.’

Yiyeon just stared blankly at Kwon Chaewoo, who lay like a corpse on the hospital bed. She sat on the chair by the bedside, trying to suppress the emotions that surged within her, as if about to overflow. When she lightly touched his dry fingers, something welled up.

“Never again… mention the word ‘plant.’ Why are you so extreme?”

Just then, the door opened without warning, and Kwon Giseok burst in. He stood outside the door, seemingly staring at the lying Kwon Chaewoo, then slowly walked in. Yiyeon stiffened, on guard.

“This won’t do, Chaewoo.”

However, Kwon Giseok merely spread his arms, gripped the bed rails, and bowed his head.

“If you stand with your back to them there—”

He loosened his tie, as if frustrated.

Kwon Giseok’s expression, glimpsed briefly, was difficult for Yiyeon to interpret with her usual understanding. He was very displeased, gritted his teeth as if jealous of something, and wore a stern face as if scolding a misbehaving child.

“It spoils the fun, doesn’t it?”

But when all those complex emotions combined, they couldn’t be easily put into a single name.

Suddenly, Kwon Giseok’s gaze turned to Yiyeon. Facing his raw, unsettled eyes directly, Yiyeon felt nauseous.

“Tomorrow is the Hwaidom Commemoration Ceremony. Ms. So Yiyeon must attend as my partner, so I will send someone to assist you. Please follow the schedule without complaint.”

Yiyeon felt a physiological aversion looking at the man who calmly spoke of a schedule with his brother, who had almost died, lying before him. His well-sculpted face, like it was carved from ice, was even more repulsive today.

Yiyeon pressed her lips together, as if to say she wouldn’t answer, and glared at him. Kwon Giseok, tilting his head loosely, then added silent pressure by alternating his gaze between her eyes and her stomach.

“If you need some compensation for accompanying me as a partner—”

His mouth suddenly curved unnaturally upwards.

“I will let you escape.”

“…Pardon?”

“Because you look like you desperately want to escape from here.”

“…!”

“Do you have the confidence to be entangled for life with a man raised in a place like this, with a family tradition like this?”

It was a dark whisper that touched Yiyeon’s underlying fear. Kwon Giseok was now offering a poisoned chalice.

“There’s not much time left until the promised month is over. I can safely and abundantly support you so you can live well with your child for the rest of your life. If Ms. So Yiyeon wishes, Kwon Chaewoo will never find you. For five, ten years, no, even longer…!”

His crooked lips were trembling for some reason. His breathing became rough, as if agitated.

“…I can support you so he can never find you.”

Kwon Giseok gripped the bed frame again and bent his waist, as if catching his breath.

“And seeing Chaewoo bleed dry, unable to do anything—”

Just then, Kwon Chaewoo, who had been lying as if dead, suddenly gripped Yiyeon’s wrist tightly, as if by a spinal reflex.

His vital signs were calm and unwavering, and his eyelids were still, without the slightest tremor.

However, Yiyeon’s heart began to pound wildly, like someone caught in a mistake. Don’t go, the man’s whispered voice echoed in her ears.

“So just say the word. Whether you disappear without a trace before Chaewoo wakes up, or not.”

“Why on earth are you…?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I want Chaewoo to be like me.”

Suddenly, Kwon Giseok’s deeply sunken gaze touched Yiyeon’s stomach and then fell away.

That night, Yiyeon received a call from Chooja, her first in a long time. The moment she saw her name on the screen, a warm sensation welled up in her eyes.

Yiyeon bit her lower lip once, then forced a smile as practice. Fortunately, she didn’t burst into tears.

“Hello?”

—Oh my, why does your voice sound like that? Are you having a hard time?

“No, no.”

Yiyeon shook her head at the unseen person.

—It’s not that… I have something urgent to show you.

“What is it?”

—In the front yard, where we buried Mr. Kwon…

Chooja spoke slowly, with a strange hesitation.

“What about it?”

—Well, it’s… it’s unsightly… I just sent a picture…

Yiyeon’s face also grew serious at the sigh heard through the receiver. She immediately took the phone from her ear and clicked on the picture in her messages.

The screen was then filled with the small mound where they had buried Kwon Chaewoo, thinking it was a funeral.

Yiyeon’s eyes trembled uncontrollably.

—I don’t know if we buried Mr. Kwon, or if we planted him.

Ridiculously, a tender sprout had bloomed on that grave.

—Whether a seed landed there, or if a seed was buried in the cracks of the sculpture from the beginning.

Yiyeon’s hand, holding the phone, clenched tightly.

—Something… grew, Yiyeon.

You were hurting too. You were hurt and tormented by me. But how can you be like this? How did you find the courage to choose me again? I found it so hard to mend a relationship that had gone awry. I never learned how to do that in my life.

—’Yiyeon, no matter what kind of person you are, I want to embrace all of you. If there’s a sin, I’ll take the sin, if there’s a debt, I’ll take the debt, I’ll take all those wrinkles.’

Why didn’t you just hate me?

Why didn’t you just give up?

But just like trees, those trees that regenerate as if they were never hurt, no matter how much you cut them. You, who even broke through the grave, look so strong.

Yiyeon rubbed the tiny sprout, no bigger than a fingernail, on the screen.

For some reason, she wanted to cry her eyes out.