1440 - Chapter 47
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Chapter 47
“Hey, hey, you’re going to set off the fire alarm.”
At Yeonsu’s words, Deokwoo hurriedly covered the Talisman with a bowl, irritated.
“Shut up!”
Yeonsu quickly closed his mouth before Deokwoo’s suddenly sharp nerves. Sanghyeong silently opened a window to let out the acrid smell of burnt offerings. In the meantime, Yeonsu looked at the Protective Talisman written on his own palm and asked.
“Doesn’t that wash off when you clean it?”
When he suggested that he’d have to avoid washing, Deokwoo answered with confidence.
“That’s Tattoo Brow. It doesn’t wash off for several days even if you try.”
“Oh. That’s interesting. You really are a makeup artist.”
To Yeonsu’s casual remark, Deokwoo gently folded that finger away. As he did, a long sigh escaped him—as though he’d resigned himself to tolerating the annoyance.
Sanghyeong, who had been informing Detective Kang that Yeonsu had awakened, asked a question.
“The detective said how fortunate it is that you’re awake, and he’s asking about the Talisman you promised him. What exactly happened?”
Yeonsu’s eyes closed as he said, “Oh, right!” He looked somewhat tired, and Sanghyeong hung up the call and returned.
Just then, dinner arrived. After a tray was placed in front of Yeonsu, the two men sat around him as if watching him eat.
“Your father doesn’t know you came to Seoul, does he?”
“Of course he doesn’t. He’s not particularly interested in me anyway, and he seemed busy enough with his own affairs.”
With that, Yeonsu roughly explained to Detective Kang what had happened—how his father and Stepbrother had been handling a request that came to the family without his knowledge. As he spoke, he worked his chopsticks.
45
As he picked through the side dishes and selected only the meat, Deokwoo, seeing this, asked with a disgusted face.
“You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, and now you’re not eating meat either? Are you a monk? Are you a priest?”
“Ah, he doesn’t eat meat either. I’m trying to match his way.”
Yeonsu’s face looked genuinely joyful as he said this, and both Deokwoo and Sanghyeong fell silent, simply staring at him.
Lovesick bastard, Deokwoo cursed with his eyes.
“Leaving that precious person behind to end up admitted here—what are we going to do? Your brother’s been waiting to strike.”
Yeonsu’s face crumpled as though his appetite had vanished. Leaving the last bite on his tray, he set down his spoon and gestured for his Smartphone. While Sanghyeong rose to search through Yeonsu’s belongings for his phone, Yeonsu explained to Deokwoo.
“I already asked a trustworthy person to look after things. It seems like I won’t be able to protect him myself anymore.”
Deokwoo answered with a look of disgust at those words.
“Right. Your brother really does seem insane. How could he put a curse on his own brother just because he stopped him from doing something?”
“It’s because I’m the one who prevented him from doing what he wants. He thinks: me, lowborn and of tainted blood—how dare I? That’s his logic.”
When Sanghyeong handed him the Smartphone, Yeonsu opened the screen as if by habit, then stopped mid-sentence.
“.…Damn.”
Panic and fury blazed across his face as he stared at the screen. At once, he roughly swept aside the table placed on the bed and tried to rise.
“Ugh!”
But he could only curl inward at the sharp pain radiating through his chest. Deokwoo and Sanghyeong startled, pressing down on Yeonsu’s shoulders and forcing him back onto the bed.
“What is it, you lunatic! Why are you like this all of a sudden?!”
“I have to go, ungh. I have to go back to him right now—let go of me!”
“How are you going anywhere in this condition! You still need to be monitored for Brain Concussion aftereffects!”
At the sudden commotion, nurses rushed in to restrain Yeonsu.
“Patient, why are you doing this! You can’t move around like that right now!”
“I have to go, now! I have to go!”
But he was unyielding. Insisting he had to leave immediately, Yeonsu’s voice dropped to an angry rasp, his eyes bloodshot—and even Deokwoo, his close friend, felt chills run down his spine.
The medical staff seemed to judge that something was not right with Yeonsu. Only after he signed a Consent Form stating he would not hold the hospital liable for any aftereffects that might occur was he permitted to leave.
With a light Support Brace wrapped around his chest and waist, Yeonsu was supported by Deokwoo into the back seat of the car, while Sanghyeong drove. Considering Yeonsu’s condition, he drove carefully at first, but Yeonsu grew anxious and asked him to go faster.
“Push it a bit more. More, more.”
“Young master, you’ve gone mad—have you no thought for your own body?!”
Sanghyeong pressed hard on the accelerator while lamenting. Deokwoo, who had been hastily retaping the Support Brace around Yeonsu’s body, nodded in agreement that it was infuriating.
But no matter what either of the two men said to him, Yeonsu heard nothing. All that mattered was rushing to the Cottage right now.
The moment Sanghyeong stopped the car partway down the Forest Path, he got out and walked alone. He didn’t want the household to know of Sanghyeong and Deokwoo’s existence.
As the Pain Medication’s effects wore off, even walking made his chest throb with sharp pain, and breathing became labored. But he could not stop.
His heart was too urgent—so much so that rather than circling around the Main House, he cut straight across its veranda in his shoes. Fortunately, neither Ineumm nor Miju saw him like that.
Then he passed through the Cottage’s wide-open door, and that familiar, head-aching fragrance struck his nose.
Yeonsu strode forward and threw open the sliding door. Contrary to his expectation that Yeonhyeong would be there too, only a man was in the room.
His clothes were completely undone, and he was distressed at the rash beginning to rise in patches across his body. Yeonhyeong had indeed laid hands on the man during Yeonsu’s absence.
The man startled when Yeonsu abruptly opened the door, and hastily pulled his clothes back together. He seemed not to want to show his body, fouled with Yeonhyeong’s drying fluids.
But then he saw the Support Brace around Yeonsu’s torso and the Bandage wrapped around his head, and he rose in alarm.
The man approached with a worried face, asking why he was so badly hurt, and reached out his hand toward Yeonsu. He meant to wipe away the dirt and marks clinging to Yeonsu’s skin.
But Yeonsu refused the man’s hand. He stepped back, dodging the approaching touch.
He could not let the man carry his marks on top of Yeonhyeong’s fluids already seeping into his skin. The skin was already deteriorating, weeping fluid. He could not offer his own filth to someone who looked so wounded merely by sight.
His teeth clenched. That mad bastard kept doing absurd things, keep bringing these terrible corruptions, hurting the man—and Yeonsu’s head burned with fury.
A deeply irrational thought spiraled through his mind: perhaps it would be best to just kill him. And seeing the man’s ruined state, Yeonsu felt a hatred toward himself for not being the one who owned him—a hatred that made him want to kill himself most of all.
“…I’ll take my leave. Rest now.”
Yeonsu couldn’t bring himself to offer treatment to the man. Before his anger spilled over too visibly, he needed to composse himself.
And the man misread Yeonsu’s withdrawal. He thought Yeonsu was keeping his distance because he found him repugnant.
He hadn’t wanted to show this broken side of himself to someone who called him beautiful.
Bitterness settled over him, and for the first time in ages, the man tasted the sting of disappointment. Without thinking, he spoke toward Yeonsu’s retreating figure.
“Don’t suffer.”
Yeonsu’s footsteps froze.
“Don’t accumulate karma through pain. Please—please don’t.”
Yeonsu stopped and turned back toward the man. The man kept his head bowed, unaware that Yeonsu was looking at him.
Yeonsu’s eyes widened in astonishment, round and bright. He closed the distance he’d created, returning to stand directly before the man. Carefully, so as not to touch his wounds, Yeonsu’s hands came to rest on his shoulders.
“Just now—did you just speak to me?”
Joy bloomed slowly across Yeonsu’s face as he asked.
At last—at last he had heard it. That voice he’d longed for so desperately.
The man, too, was reeling. He’d never imagined there could be anyone who could hear him—who could actually hear his voice. For nearly a thousand years, he’d been crying out into the void, alone.
The words he’d spoken to young Yeonsu, coaxing him like a child, had been only habit. He’d closed his mouth, no longer wanting to cling to such meaninglessness. But Yeonsu—this man—he hears me.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————