Flowers Are Bait

Chapter 163:

Whenever she feels depressed, she looked at trees.

She sent away Choo-ja who was hanging around at the front door, then started to look at all the record of patients. It was a few years of hard work and now, she even cured the ones that she thought couldn’t be saved.

Starting that day, Lee-yeon started to study again. She opened the books as if to recount the knowledge she lost and read the thesis that was piled up.

She reviewed other hospital’s charts that were being shared and read all kinds of papers to try to recover her root that was shaken.

Then she remembered something—

‘It’s been a while since you became useless.’

‘I told you you’re no longer useful to me.’

She was a fantastic tree doctor that could cut off the branches, cut off the part that was gone, fill the holes, and do a complete makeover.

Even though Kwon Chae-woo scarred her to her core, there were parts that he could never ruin.

Ring, ring.

“….!”

Lee-yeon’s neck became stiff. Until the moment she checked the name on her screen, she didn’t realize she stopped breathing. But the moment she checked who it was, her shoulders slumped.

“… Hello?”

She rubbed her face. And a weak voice came with a sigh.

–Lee-yeon, would it be ok to check the Spirit Tree first and then we’ll have to hand in the document at the Tree Agency.

“….”

She couldn’t answer even at such a simple request.

–We’ve been delaying it using your prescription as an excuse, but this is it.

“…”

–Are you listening?

“Just…”

She stopped her voice from shaking.

“Just a little longer.”

As she thought that she had to check the dead Spirit Tree, her fingers went cold.

The conversation she had with Kwon Chae-woo in front of the tree, the gift she got. It was a wooden flower that will never wither and the red part was his blood.

Looking back, that was the last of the man Lee-yeon loved. After that day, Kwon Chae-woo fell asleep for a long time and got his memory back.

“N, not yet…”

Lee-yeon took a deep breath and wiped her forehead.

The feeling she was having was similar to rejection. The dead Spirit Tree felt like her stomped heart. She couldn’t see that awful sight.

–By the way, Gyu-baek hasn’t been seen lately.

“Pardon?”

–I’ll stop by his place. You just rest.

The moment the phone went silent, the silence hit her. Then she suddenly felt hungry.

She went to the kitchen to start cooking. She opened the fridge and took out all the side dish she could find. It seemed like Choo-ja cooked a new batch of rice as it didn’t smell anymore. She sat at the table.

“Hmph…!”

The side dish was still too salty. It felt like she could smell something weird but she still couldn’t stop eating.

Last time, Choo-ja tasted all the side dish and looked for garbage. But it was Lee-yeon who stopped her from throwing it all away.

‘Yoon Joo-ha.’

“The name of the woman you surrendered for money.”

‘She died in that house.’

Lee-yeon shoved spoonful of rice in her mouth and then the side dish. She didn’t even chew properly and swallowed and then she looked for water to wash it down.

But she had to eat it somehow.

“Mother was held captive in the basement of our hometown for seven years. Right beneath the room where I slept. She never saw the light of day and emerged from there like a lifeless body.”

It was his way of telling her that he wouldn’t listen to Lee-yeon’s claim of innocence, so she had to swallow it all.

To accept, to grasp, to understand, to take in the fate of loving is sinning from her life. To let Kwon Chae-woo find peace. To let him go, to digest this familiar resentment.

She will have to chew it all. She desperately swallowed everything.

‘Why would I have to consider a woman who would lie about everything? You’re telling me to just swallow everything you spit out?’

Even during all of this, his bloodshot eyes were clear to her. His look of contempt opened her stomach and his sharp words became like tattoo.

This might be the ending that was expected since the moment she lied, no, even way before all that.

The relationship between the offender and the victim. The result of the lies she piled up. All the problems that were tangled up like a ball of thread.

“Ugh…!”

Suddenly, she jumped up and ran to the sink, feeling nauseous. She vomited everything she had eaten and turned on the water, continuing to retch.

The reason her eyes were watering was because of this.

It was a night she couldn’t handle yet again.