Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 147

“—Yiyeon.”

The voice from beyond the receiver was a signal. Though she couldn’t run fast due to a discomfort in her lower abdomen, Yiyeon’s strides gradually lengthened.

The staff had seemingly retreated earlier due to the sudden downpour, and she, for now, shielded her eyes with her palm, pushing through the rain.

—There’s something I want to show you, Yiyeon.

“…”

—I found a way to fill five hundred years.

“Where are you now?”

Yiyeon asked, already heading towards him, concealing her choked emotions.

—I’m coming to you, Yiyeon. Wait there.

“No, I’m coming, so—”

Then, her legs stopped abruptly.

At the end of the garden, Kwon Chaewoo was walking towards her, holding an umbrella. He limped slightly, and in one hand, he held a cello she had never seen before.

Yiyeon had seen him grab people by the neck, but she was unaccustomed to the sight of him holding an instrument and bow so naturally.

She had a premonition ever since Kwon Giseok had mentioned playing or the cello, but for Yiyeon, the image of Kwon Chaewoo smashing the instrument felt more real. However, the combination of him and the red cello she now saw in person was somehow extraordinary.

“Yiyeon, this is the answer I found.”

Their gazes met in the air.

Kwon Chaewoo held the umbrella over her drenched head. He firmly placed the umbrella in Yiyeon’s hand, tightly gripped the back of her hand, then moved away.

He then pulled up a chair, spread his legs, and sat down. He plunged the endpin deep into the muddy ground to secure the cello.

Surely, surely…

Kwon Chaewoo embraced the cello in a perfectly picturesque posture. But suddenly, the hand holding the bow began to tremble violently.

“…”

“…”

At the visibly abnormal trembling, Yiyeon froze, as if she herself was tensing up.

A faint fear, like a shimmering heat haze, emanated from the man who had abruptly walked into the rain and gotten soaked in an instant. Kwon Chaewoo squeezed his eyes shut, his face more rigid than ever. His deeply bowed head and heavily soaked white shirt somehow looked burdensome.

According to the information Kwon Giseok had given, he had quit music after Yoon Jooha died and he experienced a long slump.

Perhaps he felt as if he had been exiled from the place he had lived his entire life. And now, this man was trying to bring out the music he had been forced to bury after being abandoned.

In this moment, Yiyeon felt a strange kinship with him, who seemed no different from herself.

Unconsciously, Yiyeon found herself anxiously waiting for him to produce the first note.

But Kwon Chaewoo couldn’t move easily. It looked as if tenacious vines were tightly wrapping around his limbs and restraining him, so Yiyeon’s body moved before she even thought.

She approached Kwon Chaewoo and brushed his wrist, as if removing the Sicyos angulatus.

“There’s nothing there.”

Kwon Chaewoo flinched at her touch.

“Don’t look back.”

It was a feeling that had pooled up like a well after encountering Kwon Giseok’s twisted malice.

“You said so yourself, Mr. Kwon Chaewoo.”

She lightly touched Kwon Chaewoo’s fingers, the back of his hand, and his wrist, as if to say Kwon Giseok’s attempts to defile them were futile.

Kwon Chaewoo could only watch her, who had arrived like light, helplessly. The thorny vines, which had been entangled like a brand for a long time, gradually began to disappear.

The moment Kwon Chaewoo’s breath hitched unsteadily, a low, deep sound cut through the rain.

“…!”

He moved his fingers up and down the familiar fingerboard, producing sound.

Long fingers pressing down each thin string and violently shaking them, sharp protruding knuckles. The moment the sound, buried for years, sprouted, an intense melody bloomed from his fingertips.

The heavy, bursting beginning of the cello subtly harmonized with the pouring rain.

He clenched his jaw, yet his bow roamed freely over the long fingerboard, scraping the depths. A sorrowful melody pressed down on her chest.

Chaconne, said to be the saddest music in the world.

From then on, Yiyeon couldn’t take her eyes off Kwon Chaewoo and the cello that resembled his irises, as if she were being controlled. All the dams she had built up until then were helplessly crumbling. The notes he poured out like a downpour instantly engulfed her.

Was he not a cruel man who subdued people from behind and easily broke their joints, but rather someone who created unparalleled sounds with such delicate strings?

He changed techniques without hesitation—legato, marcato, glissando, tremolo—improvising the piece as he went.

It was the sound of a child with entirely black eyes scratching a wall, the long scar etched on a naked boy’s back, the rotten fingers chasing a young man, and the rope an old man was tying to the ceiling.

Four strings, four times. Four sounds.

That was the sorrowful story Kwon Chaewoo created. A piece that felt even more desperate and steep than the original Chaconne. Kwon Chaewoo was monstrous in another sense.

Like a blind beast instinctively following a scent, his head too often twisted sharply.

Yiyeon couldn’t help but step back, pushed by the charisma emanating from his notes.

This was a man Yiyeon had never seen, never known. His drenched white shirt clung to his skin, translucent, and raindrops fell from his occasionally shaking hair. Yiyeon felt hot all over, as if she had swallowed a ball of fire.

The perfectly trained Guarneri gradually began to absorb moisture, but Kwon Chaewoo accepted even the cracking sounds as part of the melody. He skillfully tied and connected the metallic, eerie tones, leading them into a passionate plea.

Yiyeon was a novice in music, but she could tell that he was truly extraordinary.

If this was his true self, not the comatose man who lost his memory, nor the violent hunting dog…

As he reached the extreme ridge, his hands began to move faster. The bow leaped to high registers, and his brow furrowed, then deepened repeatedly.

As Kwon Chaewoo slashed at the strings, Yiyeon felt as if she was being peeled layer by layer. Her innermost self was peeled away repeatedly.

The vibrato, which had reached its climax, lingered long, leaving an aftertaste. And when the sound completely stopped—.

#Kwon Chaewoo collapsed, embracing the body of the cello, and began to shed old tears.

A sound of stifled sobs, like pain, was heard. He coughed roughly, exhaling the breath he had held back.

“Ugh… H-hic…”

“…!”

Yiyeon froze at the sight of a man’s tears, which she was witnessing for the first time in her life.

“…With you, Yiyeon, even broken sounds become music.”

He lifted his reddened eyes. More emotion was conveyed in that single gaze than in the harsh, sorrowful melody.

“I have nothing left to show you now.”

He hugged the cello again and bowed his head.

What am I going to do with this man?

Yiyeon couldn’t fully comprehend his feelings, but she knew that he had gone to rock bottom to retrieve something he had once abandoned.

From a boy who sent his cello on the wind to a cruel man who buried people, Kwon Chaewoo must have had to retrace and dig through that entire path to find his lost music again.

Pity and affection, and a new flutter of excitement, sprouted for Kwon Chaewoo. Yiyeon finally felt as if she had glimpsed his true nature.

He was not the darkness of the Kwon family, but someone who deserved brilliant applause under a spotlight.

She bit her lower lip with inexpressible regret, and just then, he looked directly at her, tears streaming down his face.

Her heart ached as she met his tear-filled eyes again.

“There’s an old instrument, over five hundred years old, at a foreign villa.”

“…”

“I’ll bring that cello and become the spruce tree of Hwaido. I’ll stand in the place where the sacred tree was and play old music. Until I die, until I become the legacy of that island.”

Yiyeon felt as if one side of her head went blank.

Kwon Chaewoo had finally found his own answer and even broke down the last fortress Yiyeon had proudly erected.

“Do you still dislike me? Is it still impossible?”

His face, wet with rain, looked pale as he gazed up at her. Yiyeon slowly took a step closer.

“…Are you really Mr. Kwon Chaewoo? Were you… the singing tree? Did we meet when we were little…?”

Her last words were almost a murmur to herself.

“I love you, Yiyeon.”

“…!”

She stopped walking and froze. Her entire body throbbed wildly with a heavy heartbeat.

Kwon Chaewoo, his fierce eyes brimming with tears, still stared strongly at her.

The rain gradually weakened. Yiyeon, strangely, could clearly distinguish between his tears and the raindrops mixed with them. The moment she realized this, she felt helpless and threw the umbrella she was holding onto the ground.

“Let’s go to Hwaido together.”

Yiyeon stepped into the house of the young boy she had never visited. The child who had scratched the walls in madness was captivated by the sunlight that drove away the darkness.

The scratch marks from his fingernails were merely grotesque with crumbling cement. But suddenly, the wall, illuminated by light, sparkled like the Milky Way. The girl reached out her hand.

“Let’s leave here together.”

Kwon Chaewoo lost his answer, choked by the sorrow that rose to his throat. Yiyeon carefully moved the cello aside and sat on his lap.

Realizing it was an unspoken permission, Kwon Chaewoo crushed Yiyeon in his embrace. He sobbed, his shoulders heaving. Yiyeon, her eyes also reddening, looked up at the sky.

“Let’s be happy for all to see.”

“…”

“…Yes, let’s do that. Let’s not be afraid of anything.”

Yiyeon kissed his hair.

More terrifying than the resolve to live alone was taking another step into the emotional whirlwind, knowing she would suffer the same wounds again.

Yiyeon had vowed to love her surroundings and her life in front of a grave, but it seemed she couldn’t leave Kwon Chaewoo behind.

If so, she would embrace him.

Chaconne is a song of death and resurrection.

New sprouts bloomed from his grave, and Yiyeon’s heart began to pound fiercely, so she hugged the man, who was pouring out his emotions, with all her might.