Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 146

Creak—.

As she stepped on the old wooden floor, the grain twisted and cracked.

Was it because of the mention that Kwon Chaewoo had lived there as a child?

From the moment she arrived at the quaint detached house, Yiyeon was drawn by an inexplicable curiosity.

Unlike the other mansions of the Kwon family, this one was small in scale, but it had a charming atmosphere thanks to the azaleas that lined the hillside path.

While the staff adjusted their goggles and prepared for work, Yiyeon, as if enchanted, stepped on the square stepping stones and approached the main hall.

Kwon Chaewoo’s new facets—that he had graduated from college at a young age and was good at German—had been stirring within her lately. Her curiosity about the unknown person was another form of interest, and questions she had forcibly buried popped up like soap bubbles over the past few days. Thus, she stepped into the strangely eerie detached house.

Creak, creak.

The hallway, chillingly cold from lack of human touch. Suddenly, someone’s silhouette appeared.

“…!”

Yiyeon held her breath, seeing the familiar profile, and at that moment, their eyes met.

The man, impeccably dressed in a suit, recognized her but turned his back and opened a sliding door. Seeing the open door, as if inviting her in, Yiyeon’s legs moved without her realizing it.

Anyway, the one-month contract will be fulfilled tomorrow. She planned to leave this place as soon as morning came, and she thought it would be better to inform Kwon Giseok of the contract termination while she had the chance to meet him.

Yiyeon didn’t lower her guard and just poked her head over the threshold. Past a small bed and desk that seemed a bit too small for an adult man, her gaze fixed somewhere in the center. On Kwon Giseok’s long, distorted shadow.

“This is the basement where Yoon Jooha was imprisoned.”

“…What?”

Yiyeon stiffened at the sudden remark. Outside the window, a steady autumn rain was falling.

“Weren’t you resentful and hateful towards Chaewoo?”

With Kwon Giseok still turned away, there was no way to gauge his expression.

“Didn’t you want to hurt Chaewoo?”

“…”

“You’re not the only one who lied to Chaewoo, Ms. So Yiyeon. That’s why I thought we were on the same side. All this time, how much effort I put into making the thoughtless lies you utter come true.”

…On the same side? Yiyeon repeated the words to herself. A clear sense of repulsion made her frown.

“I just wanted to go my own way. Not to hurt Mr. Kwon Chaewoo.”

“Are those two different?”

“…”

Suddenly, Yiyeon closed her lips, thinking that from Kwon Chaewoo’s perspective, they might not be so different.

Kwon Giseok blended into the young boy’s room like wallpaper, without any sense of incongruity. It wasn’t that he fit in here, but his unhesitating actions, leaving footprints, suggested he had visited more than once or twice.

Instead of looking around the room like Yiyeon, he was staring intently at the floor. His deeply bowed head was strangely chilling.

“It was I who called Chaewoo back from overseas as soon as he became an adult. I lied that Yoon Jooha had died.”

“…!”

Yiyeon’s face visibly stiffened. Her eye pressure surged as if her eyes would pop out at any moment.

“In fact, Yoon Jooha was perfectly alive until then.”

A strange laugh, like soot, clung to the end of his words.

“At the time, Chaewoo must have thought Yoon Jooha was caught because she died. That she had an accident, and just died so meaninglessly, which is how they got a tail on her.”

“…”

“Then, suffering from a terrible slump, he quit music and began to learn the Kwon family’s business, eventually discovering the truth himself. Later, when he found out about the confinement, he went wild as if he had been betrayed—”

Suddenly, Kwon Giseok burst into laughter.

Yiyeon suddenly felt a bad premonition and wanted to step back, but her body was frozen and wouldn’t budge. The sound of rain hitting the window grew heavier.

“Could he ever have imagined? That he himself killed Yoon Jooha.”

“…!”

Her shoulder bumped against the sliding door with a thud. What… what did he just say? Yiyeon held her breath. Her palms were already slick with cold sweat.

“I, I don’t quite understand…”

The day she broke up with Kwon Chaewoo, Yiyeon, even as she was hit by the full force of his hatred, understood his deep-seated resentment.

She could comprehend the destructive self-reproach and self-loathing he felt for not recognizing his mother, separated by just a thin layer of concrete.

She had secretly understood that he had cut her off and hated her with that resentful heart.

Kwon Giseok continued speaking, his voice still tinged with laughter.

“I called Chaewoo back and made a final bet with that woman. That I would give her food every time the sound of a cello was heard in this house.”

It was when Kwon Chaewoo had lost his genius and instead fallen into violence, triggered by the fake death of his mother. At the time, Kwon Giseok, fueled by hatred for Yoon Jooha who wouldn’t yield even after years, deliberately set such a bet.

Beg once. Beg to live, plead because you’re hungry. Show some vitality.

Just as you felt maternal love for Chaewoo, this time, show that devotion for my child. Just once, show me that desperation in front of me.

However, Yoon Jooha, as if she had been waiting, stopped eating and clamped her mouth shut. She was a woman who would not bend even once. In the end, he forcefully opened her mouth and shoved spoonfuls of rice into it. He even mashed handfuls of rice and directly wedged them between her molars.

Along with that, he forcefully closed her jaw with both hands and coldly ordered, Chew, chew and swallow.

Kwon Giseok seemed like he would only be satisfied if he saw the woman choose life for their child.

However, Yoon Jooha thoroughly rejected Kwon Giseok until the moment she starved to death. She absolutely would not forgive him for forcing a relationship and imprisoning her.

She was a woman who would stab herself in the neck with a needle if she was given nutrients intravenously all night. She was that tenacious and heartless.

Then one day, seeing his brother, who had lost his memory and become married to So Yiyeon, Kwon Giseok naturally wished for something.

After Chaewoo found out about So Yiyeon’s lie, he would be cruel to her, crushed by the trauma of ‘fake’ and ‘lie.’

Since killing people was nothing to him, he hoped Chaewoo would bear the same burden as him.

He wished that Chaewoo and he would have at least some similarities. Only then could he somewhat tolerate the existence that Yoon Jooha had held deep in her heart. But Chaewoo always acted differently from Kwon Giseok, and that brought about another sense of defeat.

“…Didn’t you like Yoon Jooha?”

Yiyeon stared at him, her face pale as if she had seen something horrifying.

“Like, huh…”

He let out a hollow laugh, as if he had heard the strangest thing.

“How could that be? I merely did what I had to do as the eldest son of the Kwon family.”

He said, tightening his tie to his throat.

“I received the punishment for kidnapping a Kwon family child and killing another Kwon family child. I won that bet.”

A dry lightning strike flashed, illuminating the surroundings before plunging them into darkness again. His jawline, hidden by the backlight, jutted out defiantly.

Yiyeon felt an inexplicable discomfort from the man whose words and expression didn’t match.

Watching a man who clung to a mistaken belief his entire life, the tightly closed floodgates of her heart seemed to open uselessly. She quickly swallowed dry saliva, wondering if she, too, wore such an expression.

“Yoon Jooha starved to death. Because Chaewoo didn’t play music.”

“What, that’s absurd…!”

No, you’re the bad one, the bad one is obviously Kwon Giseok, the perpetrator. The moment Yiyeon’s eyes blazed—

“I will tell Chaewoo the terms of this bet directly, when he is happiest.”

“…!”

She couldn’t help but flinch.

Facing such absurd malice head-on, Yiyeon clearly saw the color of her own heart.

“The culprit you so desperately sought is yourself, the one who first abandoned Yoon Jooha.”

Yiyeon’s face hardened at his malicious and cruel distortion. Without a doubt, Kwon Giseok was the bad person, but separately, his words were enough to break Kwon Chaewoo.

Yiyeon strangely became anxious. She couldn’t burden the man, who was already crushed by self-reproach, with even more weight.

Yiyeon was someone who had understood and processed the separation and hatred she had experienced. She was someone who had tried to understand him by eating the spoiled side dishes he had left behind.

Even now, she wasn’t resenting or hating Kwon Chaewoo; she was just afraid of being overwhelmed again because his existence was uniquely special to her.

But to be lumped together with Kwon Giseok as being on the same side. Suddenly, the damp smell of rain rushed into her nostrils.

“…Why are you telling me all this?”

At that, Kwon Giseok turned and approached her.

“The contract ends tomorrow, doesn’t it? This will be the last time we see each other. You’ve worked hard.”

The man gave a brief bow and passed Yiyeon with an expressionless face, leaving her with a difficult problem.

“I will be waiting for the day Chaewoo becomes happy by your side, Ms. So Yiyeon.”

That was the terrible dilemma Kwon Giseok presented.

He said he made a bet with Yoon Jooha. To him, all of this seemed nothing more than entertainment.

But if there was one thing Kwon Giseok overlooked, it was that Yiyeon was a tree doctor, and she exerted greater strength for lives that needed her care than she did for herself.

The light rain had now turned into a downpour, pouring heavily. Yiyeon, who had unconsciously clenched her teeth, turned her gaze to her ringing phone.

It was a number that had always shown as disconnected, no matter how many times she called.

The moment that cruel name appeared on the screen.

The hardened earth, drenched in rain, began to fill Yiyeon’s insides tightly.

Chaewoo, don’t stay in a place like this anymore.

Every plant has its proper soil, and Yiyeon wanted to replant Kwon Chaewoo if she could.

Her blocked breath finally secured a new airway, and she ran vigorously.