Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 65

Yiyeon stammered, her words rambling, at his murderous gaze.

“Just, just faint again.”

“What?”

“This, this isn’t right. Something’s wrong with this… This isn’t right…! This really can’t be happening. Not yet, not like this…”

She bit her fingernails, and the dry taste of dirt spread on her tongue. Kwon Chaewoo, with an ashen complexion, stared intently at her, who was endlessly muttering.

“You…”

Just as a strange light gathered in his hazy eyes, a small woman’s hand blocked his vision. It was a ridiculously ticklish palm, but suddenly, with the sensation of a circuit breaker shutting off, the strength drained from his body. Kwon Chaewoo, who had tried to open his eyes wider, felt his already hazy, half-conscious awareness sink again.

Before he could resist, his knees gave out first. Yiyeon instinctively hugged the collapsing man and, seizing the opportunity, patted his head.

“…W-we’ll meet again, not like this. You’ll come back as my husband.”

Her pupils, shrunken and cornered, trembled finely from side to side.

After the rescue team arrived, the situation was quickly brought under control.

The faint sound of helicopter propellers could be heard, and the orange uniforms of the rescue workers entering through the black debris were visible. However, Yiyeon felt no emotion. Even when she was safely transported on a stretcher to the flat ground below the mountain, she remained blank and dazed.

The second tournament was temporarily suspended due to the unexpected landslide, and fortunately, there were no casualties. While the Forest Service officials frantically ran around the scene with pale faces, Yiyeon only stared blankly at Kwon Chaewoo, who had just been loaded into an ambulance.

“Guardian, aren’t you getting in?”

A rescue worker asked Yiyeon, holding the ambulance’s back door. But strangely, her body wouldn’t move. She stood like a stone statue, looking like she had just emerged from being face down in a mudflat up to her head, so the rescue worker let go of the door and took a step closer.

“Guardian? Are you okay?”

“…”

What went wrong?

‘I asked you. Who are you?’

That rough voice left a deep wound in her mind. Each time those unfamiliar words, as if they were meeting for the first time, repeated, Yiyeon’s heart pounded as if it would burst, and her fingertips trembled.

What happens now? What should I do…?

His cold, bitter gaze instantly pushed Yiyeon off the edge of a cliff. After being struck by his indifference, like seeing a dead mouse, she became afraid to get into the ambulance with him.

Perhaps it was because she had been so deeply immersed in his blind affection, but she felt a sorrowful and bewildered sensation, like having cold water dumped on her.

“—you? Guardian!”

“Oh, yes!”

Snapping back to reality, she hastily got into the car, avoiding the paramedic’s suspicious gaze.

She was currently Kwon Chaewoo’s guardian.

She wasn’t ready for anything yet, but Yiyeon hadn’t truly met Kwon Chaewoo yet. She hadn’t confirmed the man she had so desperately yearned for in the narrow cave.

“Mr. Kwon Chaewoo… Please come back.”

The ambulance door closed.

“There are no particular issues. The wound is well stitched, and he will regain consciousness soon.”

“…Thank you.”

As the attending physician nodded and left, Yiyeon slumped down.

As soon as they arrived at the hospital, the doctor who moved Kwon Chaewoo to the emergency bed first headed to the morgue. Although a doctor, he was also a caregiver for a comatose patient, so he first cleaned Kwon Chaewoo thoroughly with a hose.

While he was receiving treatment, Yiyeon also finished showering in the VIP room. After discarding her mud-soaked clothes and changing into a patient gown, she emerged to find Kwon Chaewoo lying before her like a painting.

“…”

What if she got too close and he pinned her to the bed again like before?

Yiyeon sat on a sofa far from the bed and just squeezed her wet hair with a towel. Nevertheless, she couldn’t stop glancing at him.

Unlike when his face was so smeared with black earth that he was unrecognizable, now every feature was the Kwon Chaewoo she knew.

She cautiously approached, then moved away again, pacing the hospital room for several hours.

Suddenly, a rustle of the thin blanket accompanied a stirring movement.

“…!”

Yiyeon flinched and immediately froze. Below the man’s quietly closed eyelids, his eyes moved. This was a hospital room, yet it felt as if the swamp water was rising to her waist. It was the same reaction as in the forest.

Yiyeon held her breath, despite her uneven breathing.

And the moment Kwon Chaewoo opened his eyes—

“…”

“…”

Blinking precisely twice, the man, now clear-eyed, immediately found Yiyeon standing awkwardly at the edge of the bed.

She tightened her grip on the bed frame, and he watched her silently. His gaze slowly moved, first checking Yiyeon’s upper and lower body, then returning to her face, scanning the small scratches. She swallowed hard. The silence was suffocating.

“Come here.”

Finally breaking the silence, Kwon Chaewoo, with a low, husky voice, immediately demanded. But Yiyeon couldn’t move rashly. Instead, she looked at him warily, and perhaps sensing something unusual in her gaze, Kwon Chaewoo frowned.

“Why are you standing so far away? Like a stranger.”

“…”

Her two legs remained stubbornly rooted.

“Ms. Yiyeon.”

But the moment she heard her name called so gently, as if coaxing, tears suddenly welled up. She collapsed, burying her face in her hands. At that, Kwon Chaewoo, his face hardened, hastily got out of bed. His face contorted, but the pain was fleeting. The man, skillfully composing his expression, approached Yiyeon barefoot.

“Ms. Yiyeon.”

She bit her lip. How desperately she had yearned for that tender call.

“It’s really… It’s really you, right? Mr. Kwon Chaewoo. My, my husband, right?”

Yiyeon weakly lowered her hands and eagerly drank in the affection in Kwon Chaewoo’s eyes. Her vision blurred from the tears that flowed and refilled, but her gaze never left him.

“You’re the one who catches wild boars well, hits people well, and uses a knife well, right?”

Kwon Chaewoo’s eyebrows raised slightly, but Yiyeon was distracted.

“You’re the one who packs lunchboxes well, does flower arranging well, and sucked flower nectar with me, right?”

“If I’m not Ms. Yiyeon’s husband, then who am I?”

His voice, as he frowned and firmly dismissed Yiyeon’s doubts, was subtly sharp.

“Has Ms. Yiyeon ever sucked flowers with someone else besides me?”

“…Huh? Oh, no?”

“Then why do you act like you’re distinguishing between men you’ve met, making my stomach churn?”

A sticky jealousy seeped into his eyes, which held only Yiyeon.

“But…”

You looked at me like a stranger just now… But she didn’t want to voice that fact, so Yiyeon swallowed it down her throat like bitter water.

“How worried I was that Mr. Kwon Chaewoo might have disappeared.”

Yiyeon lifted her arm and roughly rubbed her eyes.

The moment Kwon Chaewoo forcibly pushed her into the cave and was swept away, or the moment another Kwon Chaewoo’s voice emerged from his half-conscious eyes. Either way, it was too much for Yiyeon to bear.

The murderer Kwon Chaewoo was no longer the ‘real’ one. The Kwon Chaewoo in front of her, who gently held her arm and carefully wiped her reddened eyes, had become the ‘real’ one.

“I was so surprised, afraid I’d lose you. I really… I really thought it was all over.”

She clutched Kwon Chaewoo’s sleeve.

“If I tell you not to leave me, regardless of whether it’s dangerous or urgent, do I sound like a naive woman? But… if I ask you to take me wherever it is, can you do that for me?”

“…”

He subtly contorted one eye. As if it was his fault for making her so anxious. He embraced Yiyeon tightly. Her body trembled as if she was cold, making her pitiful. The man roughly wrinkled his nose and pulled her even deeper, intending to convey all his warmth to her.

“Ms. Yiyeon.”

“Answer me. Will you take me?”

“Even if the same thing happens, I’ll act the same way.”

“…!”

Yiyeon squirmed, and he held her down with force. He pressed the back of her head tightly against his chest and whispered as if pleading.

“I’m sorry. Ms. Yiyeon is the only person I want to save.”

“Hmph…”

As Yiyeon gasped, a warm hand suddenly patted her back gently.

“So I can’t grant that request.”

“…Kwon Chaewoo. Chaewoo.”

Yiyeon whimpered and burrowed into his embrace.

“Then take off your clothes and hug me.”

At that moment, his hand patting her back abruptly stopped.