Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 89

“Chooja, give me that!”

Yiyeon moved without stopping. The acrid smell at the tip of her nose lingered like the afterimage of the accident.

The sliding fuselage, the green trees sweeping through the broken cabin, the people who fell after hitting the pine trees. Where the center of the forest had been swept away, only reddish-brown loess was exposed.

“Chooja, please apply the coating agent to this cut, and I’ll make a hole here!”

“What should I do with this…”

Yiyeon swallowed Chooja’s lament but steadfastly continued her work. She treated or cut down the stumps, boldly distinguishing between recoverable and non-recoverable trees.

In this way, Yiyeon gradually cleared the messy area for the young bereaved trees that would grow there.

“But why can’t I see Kwon Son-in-law anywhere?”

Just then, Chooja let out a groan and straightened her back.

There were two types of center staff around the forest: one group was searching for and moving injured animals, and the other was carefully observing Yiyeon, who was being assessed. However, Kwon Chaewoo was nowhere to be seen.

“Chaewoo must be working hard too.”

“Director So. Has Kwon Son-in-law been acting strange lately?”

“Huh?”

“It’s nothing else…”

Chooja paused, then stared intently at Yiyeon as if interrogating her.

“Like conversations cutting off sometimes, or less affection, or a chilling distance.”

“Uh…”

“When was the last time you two kissed?”

As Yiyeon pondered, Chooja hit her chest and got angry.

“Hey, hey! Even I, a sixty-year-old, did it yesterday, and you have to search your brain for it!”

“N-no, Chooja, where on earth did you—”

“That’s not important, Kwon Son-in-law might be in a rut!”

“……A rut?”

Yiyeon fumbled with the word she had never used in her life.

“Why isn’t that guy, who used to lick your tail like a Jindo dog, nowhere to be seen? I loved him so much because he was handsome and reliable, unlike guys these days. Is he already bored? This is definitely a rut!”

Despite wearing work gloves, her hands and shoes were already dirty. Cleaning up the black, slippery aviation fuel, all sorts of dust, and stones mixed with blood and ash, Yiyeon’s face had become grimy.

Yiyeon offered an awkward smile to Chooja, whose nostrils flared.

“Does a rut… usually come without warning?”

“It can happen if you get bored. It happened to me often.”

“……What did you do then, Chooja?”

“They just died on their own.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t I say the old men were old?”

“……”

“It always ended when one of us died.”

Chooja looked up at the sky with a new realization, and Yiyeon’s face darkened.

‘Could he be… bored?’

Her heart began to beat heavily, out of sync.

Meanwhile, Kwon Chaewoo, on his way down from searching the mountain, saw Yiyeon struggling to hug a tree that had been split in two.

She seemed hot, having taken off her straw hat, and mercilessly let sweat drip down, sometimes sighing. Even in her exhausted state, she bustled around, standing out as if her colors were different from everyone else.

Just then, Joo Dongmi, who was ahead, declared in a resolute voice.

“I’m definitely going with our director as my top pick.”

Then other team members, watching Kwon Chaewoo’s reaction, also chimed in one by one. Kwon Chaewoo simply followed Yiyeon’s movements with his eyes, without any particular response. Seeing his serious expression, Joo Dongmi grinned and began to tease him.

“Do you want to run over and help right now?”

“……”

Kwon Chaewoo merely twitched an eyebrow, and Joo Dongmi smiled again and muttered to herself.

“Director looks strangely prettier when she’s with the trees.”

“That woman has always been like that.”

Joo Dongmi turned her head towards the source of the indifferent voice. Startled by the stiff, hardened face for a moment, the seemingly cold lips uttered the exact opposite words.

“Her face when she fell asleep under the tree was the prettiest. It’s funny how she still can’t leave the vicinity of the tree.”

He smiled faintly for a fleeting moment, then quickly erased it.

Joo Dongmi, who had been listening quietly, shuddered and rubbed her arm, saying, “They’re a couple, so it’s sickening.” Kwon Chaewoo’s eyes became clear as if he had woken up. The moment he realized the thoughtless words he had blurted out, his brows furrowed sharply.

Yiyeon sent Chooja, who seemed exhausted, away first, and only came down from the mountain after the sun had completely set.

She led her hungry and worn-out body into the motel she had been assigned. Many people were already lined up to check in, and their soiled clothes immediately showed that they were personnel dispatched in connection with the Mt. Motdae accident. Firefighters, police, military personnel, civil servants—everyone looked exhausted.

Yiyeon surveyed the fairly clean motel interior and stood at the very end of the line. Various people came and went in front of her, but Yiyeon didn’t see the logo she was looking for.

‘Should I call Chaewoo?’

It was the moment she took out her phone and turned on the screen.

“……!”

Just then, someone roughly grabbed Yiyeon by the nape of her neck and spun her around. Her collar was seized in the blink of an eye, and she stumbled, unable to keep her balance, but before she could react, she was pulled in close.

“You bitch, long time no see?”

The moment she faced the person, her whole body froze. Her ominously pounding heart echoed in her ears, and her mind went blank. Her knees, barely supporting her on her tiptoes, lost all strength.

“I wondered where you were hiding, and it was here?”

Her feeble attempt to remove the rough grip lost its will before it even began. Her hands trembled violently.

It was her cousin, whom she was facing for the first time since she left the mainland and hid on Hwaido. Her father’s biological child. Her cousin, and also her half-sibling.

The man, who seemed to be on the phone, gripped his phone tighter to his ear and said,

“Wow—hyung, do you know who I just met?”

It was both welcome and malice. A gaze that instantly crushed the hope she had secretly held, that their resentment would wear away with time. The subtle joy blooming in his dark eyes was the same as before.

“I caught an unexpected big fish, didn’t I?”

“……”

“Hyung, did you have a good dream last night?”

Yiyeon couldn’t breathe, but her cousin in front of her openly sneered and raised his voice. As always, it was meant to humiliate Yiyeon, so everyone could hear. The place just changed—a playground, a school hallway, downtown, a workplace—but it was no different from before.

“Hyung, you were right, she’s a tough bitch. The one who changed her address and ran away, looks like she’s living shamelessly well. There’s a limit to ingratitude, abandoning the family who raised her, yet she looks so good.”

“……”

“If you made others shed tears of blood, you should at least live with your head bowed.”

He suddenly hardened his expression and roughly shook Yiyeon’s collar back and forth.

“Isn’t that what decency is?”

Each word, painfully piercing, felt like flesh being torn from Yiyeon. Suddenly, people’s gazes converged on the commotion. However, perhaps because of the orange uniform her cousin was wearing, no one dared to intervene.

“The world must be easy for you, Yiyeon.”

“……Let go.”

Yiyeon pressed her fingernails hard into her cousin’s hand and glared at him. Unlike before, her gaze did not easily submit. At her pathetic resistance, the man’s eyebrows shot up.

“……Hyung, hang up for a moment. I’ll call you back later.”

As soon as he shoved his phone into his pocket, slap! Yiyeon’s head snapped to the side. Scattered gasps were heard from around them. The man had just slapped Yiyeon’s cheek without warning.

Her lip must have burst, as she tasted blood. Yiyeon couldn’t even touch her burning cheek, which felt like it was on fire.

While a ringing sound filled one ear, endless moments from her childhood, when she had to be the scapegoat for her cousins, flooded back.

She felt the people in the lobby whispering through her skin. It was a terrifyingly identical repetition of events. And this assessment was already heavily influenced by people’s opinions.

Again and again, Yiyeon was caught by an insurmountable sense of defeat.

“Oppa, move. You’re blocking the line.”

Yiyeon clenched her cold hands with all her might.

“Yiyeon, did you eat something wrong?”

“No, maybe I’m just hungry. You look like a rude old man who doesn’t act his age.”

“……!”

“Long time no see, Oppa. You’ve gotten much older since I last saw you.”

“You, you—”

“It’s okay, tree rings are charming.”

Yiyeon’s childhood was by no means smooth.

However, having witnessed being buried alive, having lost consciousness from drugs and being dragged to a slaughterhouse, and having almost had her head smashed in a drug field, she had an absurd confidence that she, who had survived intact, was superior to her cousin in front of her.

“You’re not human, Oppa.”

Slap! No sooner had she finished speaking than her cheek was slapped once more.

“You crazy bitch, are you happy to see me today? Is that why your body is itching?”

Yiyeon let out a helpless scoff. The truly scary one wasn’t her cousin, who bullied the physically weaker Yiyeon. Anyone strong could do that.

But the man she lived with was different. A man who could beat up gangsters and wild boars with his bare hands, yet gently brush away Yiyeon’s stray hairs. That man, who already loomed large, was the one she truly feared.

“My blood may be dirty, but your vulgar mouth and bad habits are dirtier.”

Therefore, the accusations poured out by her cousins no longer affected Yiyeon in the slightest.