Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 144

Yiyeon was witnessing Summer’s power vividly before her eyes.

“The house right below the mountain is that noona’s house. Go to that house first, not anywhere else. If noona pretends not to know, tell her to pay for all the music I’ve let her hear so far…!”

“Kwon Chae—!”

“I buried my favorite CD under the tree. That’s my singing tree, that’s the proof! Go quickly, I’ll see you again in a bit…!”

Suddenly, her shoulder twitched.

Did I hear wrong?

A singing tree? Why is that story coming up now?

Kwon Chaewoo was clearly wandering in the past, and Yiyeon, seeing his blurred pupils, was also lost in thought.

Kwon Chaewoo kept muttering incomprehensible words, but surprisingly, she felt as if she was sharing the same vision he was seeing. Her heart had been pounding like crazy, she didn’t know since when.

Kwon Chaewoo’s expression, voice, and steps were free, but only she was stiff and frozen.

“Yiyeon, have you ever sucked a dick?”

Even when he just casually threw out a phrase, she automatically recalled what moment it was.

Summer was supposed to reproduce exactly what one wanted, what one wanted to see.

“…This isn’t it. This isn’t what I wanted.”

“…!”

“I was wrong. I’m sorry for being scared.”

Watching the man, nakedly colliding with the past again, Yiyeon helplessly clutched her innocent skirt.

He was passing through his childhood, through their first night, and even through that day Yiyeon never wanted to see even in her dreams.

Days when she was anxious every day, like standing on an ice lake, not knowing when it would break. Kwon Chaewoo had returned to the time when they deceived each other.

Why are you there? What do you want to see there? Wasn’t Summer supposed to show only good things? Why, of all places, did you go to that most miserable one and…

‘But I didn’t even take Summer.’

Every word from Kwon Chaewoo led her back to the past. When Yiyeon was beaten by her cousin, when she was left alone on Mount Motdae, when she harmed the butterfly and was held in his arms to make a vow, when they were completely broken.

Kwon Chaewoo seemed to linger longer on the moments they clawed at each other than on the happy days.

Yiyeon strangely found herself crying as she listened to the man’s clumsy sincerity. She wiped away the tears with her palm as if it were nothing.

She herself didn’t know the reason for the tears that fell silently, like rain. Even amidst that, Kwon Chaewoo tirelessly comforted and apologized to Yiyeon.

In the middle, Jang Beomhee and the doctor came in to check on the patient, Kwon Chaewoo, but he still hadn’t regained consciousness and was merely wandering beyond the hallucination.

Moreover, because he wouldn’t let go of Yiyeon, she couldn’t even change her clothes and was repeatedly pricked and filled by fragments of the past.

Then, suddenly, he woke up.

“…”

“…”

The moment their slightly narrowed pupils met, Yiyeon quickly turned her head, avoiding his gaze.

The first thought that came to her mind when she saw him was—

‘The contract is only a few days away from ending now.’

—that she could soon return to Hwaido.

In a situation where everything could be put back in its place, she was afraid of stirring up his intimate confession and re-stimulating the buried past.

If she could just get through this crisis, she could return to Hwaido safely. The fear that she might never escape this house if she mishandled things buzzed like a warning light.

And if Kwon Chaewoo was really the singing tree…

No, don’t think about it.

Her collarbone deeply indented as she took a breath.

She just needed to endure a few more days. She just needed to keep quiet and let it pass. She just needed to quietly leave the Kwon family like this.

“…Are you feeling a little better?”

So she spoke calmly, as if she hadn’t heard anything.

Kwon Chaewoo slowly blinked his handsome eyes a few times, then curved the corners of his lips.

“Ah, ah—. I like it better here after all.”

Yiyeon squeezed her eyes shut and pressed down on her churning stomach as if she were seasick. There was a lot she wanted to ask, but she felt she shouldn’t bring it up.

“Kwon Chaewoo, don’t drink. You talk way too much.”

“…”

“Your drunken habits are so loud that I couldn’t even change my clothes.”

She shook her skirt as if to say, Look at this, and it rustled. Yiyeon pushed his chest, which she was touching, with an awkward smile, and the arms that had held her for hours slowly loosened.

“Yiyeon.”

At his low call, Yiyeon’s unfocused gaze trembled. Her heart had been pounding rapidly for a while now. She couldn’t even look him in the eye, afraid that if she did, all the agitation she had painstakingly hidden would be revealed.

“Ugh…!”

The man, who had been staring blankly at Yiyeon until then, belatedly frowned at the surging pain.

“Does it hurt? The secretary is waiting outside. I’ll call them right away…!”

Yiyeon’s anxious gaze fell on the bandage peeking out from under his clothes. Just thinking about him blocking her path made her dizzy and nauseous. Feeling her breath quicken again, Yiyeon quickly turned her back.

“…Can I?”

Then, abruptly, her white skirt was held.

“I…—”

His words, muffled by his heaving breath, were barely audible. Perhaps because of the stark bones on the back of his hand, it looked less like he was holding her skirt and more like he was crushing it, which made her tense up.

Soon, Kwon Chaewoo grimaced, clutching his aching side.

“It would have been better if I had just stolen the bride like this.”

Kwon Chaewoo’s gaze, confronting reality, suddenly covered Yiyeon like an awning. Yiyeon shook off Kwon Chaewoo’s hand and hurried towards the door. For some reason, she couldn’t calm down, and a warm flush rose to her forehead.

A deep sense of melancholy still lingered beneath the mansion that had suffered a major accident, but the empty spaces left by the servants were now perfectly filled with new staff. As a result, a certain stability began to settle over the Kwon household.

Since that day, Kwon Chaewoo had been quietly confined to the annex for recovery and treatment, and Yiyeon acted as if she had heard nothing and seen nothing.

This morning, Kwon Chaewoo came hobbling on one leg, carrying a packed lunch. It was exasperating to see a man who was injured standing at the door with a perfectly normal face, and she felt an undeserved surge of anger.

Yiyeon often clamped her mouth shut like a clam, afraid that unrefined words might spill out, and then she snatched the lunchbox as if to grab it, rushing past him. His persistent gaze clung to her until she turned the corner.

“This is an ecological disturbance species.”

Yiyeon frowned and scratched the bridge of her nose.

The green color around the artificial lake was ominous. At first glance, the lush greenery looked beautiful, but its true identity was ‘Sicyos angulatus,’ a vine that covered and killed other plants.

Yiyeon and the garden management team staff had all gathered with weed whackers to remove this troublesome vine.

“Once a thorn gets stuck, it’s not easily visible to the naked eye. But now, the Sicyos angulatus is all over, and the trees are suffering. The pain will continue. If we leave them like this, they’ll wipe out all the surrounding trees and plants. The Sicyos angulatus climbs quickly and blocks photosynthesis, causing the trees to wither. So—”

‘I was wrong. I’m sorry for being scary.’

Suddenly, a voice pierced through, and Yiyeon’s face hardened, making her flinch.

“…We must eradicate it on a large scale.”

She cleared her throat for no reason and put on her gardening gloves as if nothing was wrong.

Otherwise, the fast-breeding and tenacious Sicyos angulatus would continue to cause damage every year, even with removal efforts. Yiyeon forced her thoughts elsewhere.

She signaled to the staff who followed her to begin. They finished their safety attire and picked up their weed whackers one by one from the ground. Yiyeon, without hesitation, began cutting the Sicyos angulatus.

However, once the voice began to surface, it strung together like beads, making her feel frantic.

‘That lie completely changed my life.’

Yiyeon shook her head violently from side to side, frowning. She clenched her teeth and pulled at the tendril, but the tenacious Sicyos angulatus wouldn’t break easily.

“This is very tough, so everyone be careful with your hands!”

The Sicyos angulatus grew so fast that it could wrap around a tree in just three hours. It spread so quickly that it could cover the entire garden in just a few months, so it had to be removed even faster.

‘You taught me what it’s like to live a normal life, to prepare meals for you with water on my hands instead of blood, to rescue animals instead of harming others, that I too could live like a human being. How amazing those ordinary feelings were.’

Yiyeon groaned and cut the spring-shaped vine attached to the tree with scissors.

‘Keep walking as much as you want, Yiyeon. You can abandon me hundreds, thousands of times along the way. Consider me the most meaningless thing and drop me first. But… please pick me up last. I don’t care when that is.’

She tried to push Kwon Chaewoo’s voice into a corner of her chest and concentrate only on the task at hand. She tightened her grip on the weed whacker.

‘I want to go back to Hwaido. When my life ends, I want to be buried next to you, Yiyeon.’

Wasn’t it her specialty to deceive herself by pretending not to know, even when she did? Since she had done it once, shouldn’t she be more skilled and better at it the second time?

At some point, Yiyeon was working with heavy breaths. Her lips trembled nervously.

The one-month contract ends in just a few days.

The day of liberation is finally near, so why…!

“Ah…!”

Just then, the Sicyos angulatus got tangled in Yiyeon’s glove, and a thorn deeply pierced through the thick fabric. Yiyeon unconsciously clenched her molars. Her breathing became increasingly ragged, and she didn’t know why it hurt so much or why she felt so bad. It was just a trivial wound…! Yet, her emotions were uncontrollable.

“Haa… Really…”

“Are you okay, Director?”

“No.”

“What?”

She wasn’t okay. Not at all.

Because of Kwon Chaewoo’s sincerity, which had appeared belatedly and suddenly, disrupting everything.

Yiyeon threw her safety helmet, gloves, and weed whacker one by one onto the ground. She bit back her fluctuating breaths and turned towards the annex.

“Oh? Director, where are you going? Director…!”

Yiyeon had nowhere left to retreat.

Between Kwon Giseok’s offer to help her escape from Kwon Chaewoo and this tenacious, stinging ecological disturbance species that wrapped around her wrist.

It was time for a showdown.