Flowers Are Bait Novel - Chapter 9

She immediately called someone on her phone. Ring, ring. As the dial tone rang, tears surprisingly fell.

The two years of suffering melted away. Her foolishness finally recognized its mistake and knelt.

—Why are you calling on the weekend?

“Chooja-ssi! H-h-hoo……”

—What is it? Did you drink?

“What do I do……! The vegetables might come to work at our hospital!”

‘Did that kid dry opium poppies and do drugs?’

Yiyeon’s story, which continued at length like a confession, was worryingly messy. There was no such nonsense.

And so Chooja, who had rushed over, even forgetting to finish her makeup, suddenly backed away.

It was because of Yiyeon’s appearance: bloodshot eyes, a reddish nose, lips swollen like a goldfish. Tissues piled high on the table, blowing her nose loudly, utterly unpresentable.

So, to summarize—

She witnessed a live burial, the murderer chased her, an accident happened, and he became a vegetable? And she just took him in?

Instead of getting a huge loan to expand, she just took on a burden?

Chooja checked under the sofa, just in case Yiyeon had hidden any liquor bottles.

“Chooja-ssi……”

However, the sofa was clean, and at Yiyeon’s rare tears, Chooja couldn’t help but harden her face.

She was a child who didn’t cry even when people threw stones at her. Doesn’t this really make it seem like she’s involved in something bad?

“If you saw a criminal, you should have reported it to the police, what is this!”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Oh my goodness. He’s not a stray dog, I’ve never in my life heard of someone bringing home a vegetable! I knew it from the moment that penniless girl was being a pushover, sprinkling nutrients on the mountain behind her house. But now, she’s even got a vegetable! Truly excellent!”

Chooja scoffed, her neck veins bulging.

“Why are you only telling me this important thing now!”

“Well……”

As Yiyeon mumbled, unable to say anything, Chooja felt a pang in her stomach.

So Yiyeon hadn’t changed, then or now. No matter how long she had known someone, she didn’t easily open her heart. Only plants managed to squeeze through that stubborn wall.

A girl who grew up in solitude her whole life had parts that hadn’t fully matured, and such children usually have weak roots.

Recalling that point, Chooja’s anger fizzled out as if on cue. She slumped onto the sofa and muttered despondently.

“So you really were hiding a bachelor, huh.”

“Not a bachelor, a vegetable……”

Yiyeon dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

“So. How can I help you?”

“Chooja-ssi……”

As she whimpered again, Chooja rubbed her knee for no reason.

“Enough with the flattery.”

“……First, I lied and said I was that person’s wife.”

“What?!”

Yiyeon flinched as Chooja’s single eyeliner-drawn eye came close to her face.

“This is crazy! She’s lost her mind!”

Chooja slapped Yiyeon’s back hard with her strong hand. Yiyeon then jumped up and started playing tag, circling the table.

“He’s someone with no memory anyway! As soon as he woke up, he was pressing me, so what else could I do but try to get away from it!”

“Where in the world is there a secret that can be hidden forever!”

“You really don’t know, Chooja-ssi. That man, he buried people on the left, and on the right, he had another bloody person stashed away! Just brushing against their clothes is enough to destroy human morality, that’s exactly the kind of people they are!”

Yiyeon panted, as if the thought was still horrifying.

“Such a dangerous person woke up, and you just let yourself be dragged along?”

“Oh, you child.”

“I had to put a bridle on him when he didn’t know anything. Especially an animal like that.”

Yiyeon, who had paused, hands on her hips, looked resolute. Her wet eyes gleamed strangely.

“I just want to get my daily life back as soon as possible.”

That wasn’t the look of a fool who had been foolishly tricked into taking in a vegetable.

“How much effort have I put in to survive, to live on, all this time?”

Her voice trembled like a thin string. Chooja nodded, as if she understood everything.

Though timid, So Yiyeon was not one to give up easily. She was quiet, but she wanted to stretch far. So, she had no intention of losing control over her life here.

“What if that guy finds out everything later……!”

“We just need to catch the real culprit, don’t we?”

Chooja subtly furrowed her brows. Her words were subtly off.

“Then everything will go back to its place.”

Her posture, mumbling with long, flowing hair like a virgin ghost, seemed somehow eerie.

Yiyeon’s obsessive thought was entirely focused on the saw she had wielded, the single action that might have contributed to making the man a vegetable.

Everything started from there.

The opponent’s power, against which self-defense wouldn’t work. Yiyeon had already been severely beaten by it, so she didn’t want to be caught with any more weaknesses.

So, as long as she could stay quiet while Kwon Chaewoo was with her, she was willing to do anything. For him not to suspect this situation of a man and a woman living together in one house, and to handle Kwon Chaewoo as she pleased, pretending to be a married couple was the best option.

But in Chooja’s eyes, it seemed completely wrong.

‘That cannot be the answer.’

Yiyeon didn’t know how quickly male-female relationships ignite and go awry, and how tiring life can become. The important thing wasn’t the relationship of perpetrator and victim, but this situation where they were already bound as a couple.

“I don’t know. I won’t get involved.”

“That’s enough. Just treat me as a married woman.”

Oh dear, she’s really twisting her own fate. Chooja pressed her temples.

Yiyeon, being naive, seemed unable to distinguish right from wrong, but for Chooja, whose husband had changed five times and who had worn mourning clothes three times, something kept nagging her.

Leaving aside the question of whether that man was truly a murderer, as Yiyeon claimed, or if he really lost his memory. The most suspicious thing was the man’s situation.

Why was the son of a family that seemed to have both wealth and power stuck in such a rural corner, leaving behind the big hospitals in Seoul? Why was his brother, not his parents, stepping forward?

“Ms. Yiyeon?”

Just then, an unfamiliar voice came from behind Chooja.

It was a resonance on a different level from the hoarse voices of old men who had lost their elasticity. It was a sound from a human vocal cord, deep and thick like a wooden barrel, that naturally drew one’s ear. Chooja’s head instinctively turned as if someone had pulled her hair.

She thought she had been conned into buying some cheap jade mat from a multi-level marketing scheme, but what was this?

A young man with a face like jade was descending, holding onto the railing of the second floor.

If Yiyeon was faithful to her survival instincts, Chooja couldn’t overcome another instinct.

“……Is that my son-in-law?”

“I’ve never heard of a Tree Hospital before.”

Kwon Chaewoo slowly looked around the interior, where the boundaries between home and office were blurred.

Yiyeon fidgeted on her sofa, unaccustomed to the man sitting there, while Chooja cautiously observed Kwon Chaewoo like an interviewer.

She had decades of data from rolling around in the dirt. Since she had learned physiognomy by assassinating her beloved monk brother back then, her eye for men had never been wrong.

But, that guy buried people alive? He wasn’t a good man who had lost his clothes and wandered in the mountains?

‘He’s unbelievably handsome.’

In his cold but neat impression, there were no signs of any deficiencies. His long, upward-sloping eyes were more profound than cruel, and his pupils were as bright as a blooming fire. Moreover, a noble aura, like that of steel, flowed from him. He had the physiognomy of someone born with gold and an axe in both hands.

‘If he’s only a mere murderer despite all that, it would actually be disappointing.’

At the very least, he should be in a position to manipulate many people for it to be worthwhile. What he could do with an axe was currently unknown.

“Mother-in-law.”

Just then, Kwon Chaewoo lowered his gaze slightly and spoke softly. His mouth was stiff, as if the word felt unfamiliar on his tongue.

“May I come over there? I’d like to sit next to Ms. Yiyeon.”

Chooja’s elaborate eyelashes fluttered. She was rarely flustered, but for some reason, she missed her tempo to react. Yiyeon, who had been fidgeting all along, also stiffened.

When the two women didn’t react, Kwon Chaewoo tilted his head as if urging them. His posture was like an unspoken pressure of ‘How long do I have to wait?’, so Yiyeon quickly moved to the opposite sofa. Only then did a strange sense of relief fill the man’s eyes.

“Um, Mr. Kwon Chaewoo. Ms. Chooja here isn’t actually my mother; she’s a hospital employee. We’ve known each other for about fifteen years, so she calls you her son-in-law out of…… familiarity.”

“Why do you call me by my full name?”

“What?”

“I wish Ms. Yiyeon would also think of me as familiar.”

“…….”

While Yiyeon fumbled through the conversation that wasn’t going her way, Chooja silently pressed her forehead. Perhaps because he had lost his memory, his blank face was focused solely on Yiyeon. And Chooja couldn’t help but feel bothered by it.