CHAPTER 55………………………………….
Hyunha lowered his head. Their lips met. A kiss he had shared hundreds of times before now sent heat racing down his neck. Blood surged through his entire body, making his hands and feet throb.
The mechanical hum of machines and the whir of the humidifier floated through the hospital room. Hyunha pressed his ear to Yeongin’s chest. Thump-thump. He could hear a clear heartbeat—one that beat in a completely different rhythm from his own. If you were to slice through the flesh and crack the bones, you would find entirely different contents inside. He was certain. Baek Yeongin’s heart was shaped differently from his own. Hyunha closed his eyes. The sound continued—thump, thump. Like music.
The rippling current of sensation embraced Hyunha and sank him into a swamp of sleep.
And so, Hyunha fell in love for the first time in his life.
He didn’t stay in the hospital long.
After the kidnapping, all it took was Hyunha’s simple remark that he didn’t want to be in a hospital frequented by others, and everything fell into place seamlessly.
As soon as they heard what had happened at the mansion, Hyunha’s grandparents dropped everything and rushed to their grandson. It was quick work to move both the grandson and the patient under his care to their villa.
“After all, that woman Suhyuk got herself involved with… she’s going after you too… We should’ve driven her away long ago.”
His grandmother, who rarely spoke about maintaining decorum, shivered with anger as she stroked Hyunha’s back. Hyunha, in turn, soothed her.
“Calm down. She’ll be caught soon.”
“Of course she must be caught. She must pay for what she’s done!”
It was as if Seok Juran had committed some unforgivable act toward both Hyunha and Choi Suhyuk—his grandmother’s anger was palpable.
“What crime did my child commit that such things keep happening? Hyunha, come here. Until dirt enters my eyes, no one will ever lay a hand on my child again. Understand?”
As his grandmother continued stroking his back, Hyunha felt no particular emotion despite the tearful consolation.
The one injured was Yeongin; no one had dared touch him. He hadn’t expected her to reach a state where she would suddenly charge in with a knife.
During the chase along the mountain path, before Juran could use Yeongin as a hostage to make demands, Hyunha had spotted her. Juran had a breakdown in the passenger seat of her sports car. If Hyunha hadn’t been so focused on Baek Yeongin, he would have sensed Juran’s concentrated presence even more acutely.
“This damn woman. How could she do this to her own child?”
It was because she was his child, he muttered to himself, watching his grandmother wipe her tears.
Hyunha, of course, knew exactly what Juran had intended in trying to use Yeongin as leverage.
Juran was after evidence from a past incident. Evidence that only Hyunha possessed. A fuse that could destroy Juran in an instant. If she could eliminate it, she would have been capable of acts far worse than murder.
“If she’s caught… make sure to tell me.”
Hyunha whispered quietly to his grandmother.
“I have something to discuss with her.”
Now that Baek Yeongin was injured, there was a conversation that absolutely had to be completed.
From a distance, his grandfather was making call after call. Furious shouts echoed.
Unlike Hyunha’s own kidnapping, this situation had yet to be publicly revealed. Blocking witnesses, pushing the investigation—Chairman Choi was busy beyond belief.
After finishing a call, the chairman met Hyunha’s gaze.
“Why are you crying?”
Having reprimanded his grandmother, the chairman stood beside Hyunha.
“Did the calls go well?”
Hyunha only nodded. The grandfather, pretending to survey the vast villa grounds, finally took out a cigarette.
“As you know, eventually all of this will be yours.”
He was referring to the personnel he had just spoken with—the prosecutors, politicians, and people who acted as his grandfather’s hands and feet.
“And here too.”
With a gesture toward the surroundings, the chairman encompassed even beyond the horizon.
“All of it will be yours.”
Like the master of a vast empire, he spoke. Indeed, he was a king who had built a fortress of gold amid a chaotic world, using others’ corpses as beams and tears as mortar.
It was no wonder, then, that in this lineage, a father—and Hyunha himself—was born.
“You’re no longer a child.”
“That’s true.”
The young man, soon to be emperor, acknowledged this.
Relatives, including his aunt, had long tried to occupy Hyunha’s place. When Choi Suhyuk fell away, they must have quietly celebrated, hoping Hyunha would never return from the kidnapping. And when the kidnapping ultimately reinforced the grandparents’ favor, they were undoubtedly frustrated.
Suhyuk had been the beloved heir. When he died, Hyunha received all the love Suhyuk should have received.
The fact that Suhyuk had been involved with some unknown woman did not undermine Hyunha’s legitimacy.
“Hyunha’s is yours, no one should touch it.”
His grandmother added firmly.
The family had long awaited the day Hyunha would become an adult. Once legally an adult, he could claim many things without resorting to tricks. From now on, everything would fall into Hyunha’s hands.
The grandparents united in their desire to protect him. Hyunha simply observed them, untouched and unscathed.
They imagined the injury Juran had inflicted and the potential emotional damage to Hyunha. From Hyunha’s perspective, Seok Juran had merely made a final desperate struggle.
“Tell me if you need anything.”
“Pass it straight to this manager. Even if Grandma comes down herself, she’ll fix it.”
The grandparents repeatedly glanced at Hyunha before getting into the car. Hyunha waved at the departing vehicle, climbing the cursed family tree he was born into.
Grandfather and grandmother resembled each other—greedy and calculating. It was clear why they had chosen one another. They were more allies than spouses.
Why had his father chosen a woman like Seok Juran?
Ever since he could think logically, Hyunha had pondered this question. Many had criticized his father for choosing a woman who had nothing beyond her appearance, while eligible young ladies were waiting to form alliances with Suhyuk. Hyunha’s question was different.
He could never understand sexual desire. What did it feel like to be captivated by another? How was it possible? How could someone fall so completely for another? Humans were insignificant, he thought, observing them as if they were not even human.
Too trivial to love, too minor to hate.
Was his father like this?
The one who felt most like him was his father. At least they were of the same kind, thinking similarly.
But this he could not understand. As a child, he had asked a similar question.
“There’s a moment when you’re captivated.”
On a white cruiser, watching Juran sunbathe, his father had replied:
“When your blood reacts.”
He remembered the fingers dancing near his heart. At the time, he didn’t understand what his father meant.
Now he did.
“After that, there’s nothing you can do if it takes your whole life. That’s…”
In his memory, his father had written a Chinese character on young Hyunha’s palm: the character for luck in fortune and misfortune, combined with the character for life.
What is destiny?
Hyunha walked toward the villa. The building, far more modern than the mansion, had glass walls that made it look like an aquarium.
Destiny… perhaps a delicate beast that sings beautifully, yet stubborn and full of life. Something that, when approached, screams in pain while still weeping sweetly.
Like a half-human, half-fish perched on seaside rocks, it drags the entranced to ruin.
With that thought, Hyunha approached her.
“How’s your body?”
On the terrace, Yeongin sat gauntly in a chair with a thick shawl, glaring at Hyunha. Her already frail frame seemed ready to be blown away by the wind. She looked unmistakably ill.
Even after leaving the hospital, getting checked at the villa, and being attended by caretakers, she remained withdrawn, refusing to react, sinking inward.
“How do you think it is?”
Today too, she had sat in the garden since morning, unmoving, basking in wind and sun. Like a fish dragged onto dry land, she finally straightened her upper body.
Anger, Hyunha realized, is also a form of vitality.
“You have professional caregivers, your primary doctor comes by, you even have all the hospital test records. You probably know my body better than I do, don’t you?”
“That’s true too,” she admitted, and her eyes trembled slightly. If she derived pleasure from that, was her sense of touch distorted?
Hyunha’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he spoke.
