1440 - Chapter 60

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 60
Being called “Yeonsu” felt strange and wonderful and right all at once, but now he was asking her to give him a name. Yeonsu paused to think. What name could she give that would satisfy them both?
The man seemed unhurried, tapping his fingers lazily against the floor as he gazed out at the peaceful view beyond the veranda. There, in the courtyard, small kittens played in and out of the newly built house.
Watching them, Yeonsu remembered the day she first met him. He had lain sprawled on the broad veranda of the great hall, watching the white snow accumulate gently. Then, like snow but soft and warm in a way snow never could be, his hand had touched her.
“……Onseol.”
Yeonsu covered her mouth with the back of her hand, surprised at the name that had escaped her lips unbidden. Then she glanced nervously at the man’s expression.
“Onseol…… does it mean snow?”
“……Yes. The character for warmth—on—and the character for snow—seol. If it’s too childish, you don’t have to use it. You can reject it.”
“But why would snow be warm?”
The man took her hand and gently lowered it, meeting her eyes. Unable to hide her mouth anymore, Yeonsu found herself explaining that day. About his tender touch, which had made even snow—which should have been cold—feel like the warmth of a quilted comforter.
“……So to me, you are a memory holding both snow and warmth at once. That’s why Onseol. ……How is it?”
“I like it.
“Really?”
“Yes. I like it. I…… love white things. Things as white as snow.”
So he was pleased the name carried snow in it, he said with a gentle smile, and Yeonsu felt relieved. Before she could think, she pulled him close and held him in her embrace.
“……!”
He startled, but he didn’t push her away. Instead, he wrapped his broad back in her arms and patted her gently. It was utterly different from the fumbling way he’d touched her before, searching for the curse mark to remove.
“Onseol.”
“You can just call me Onseol.”
“……Onseol. No, I can’t do that.”
Without that honorific, she feared the boundary between them might shift in a way she wasn’t ready for. So she nestled deeper into his embrace, playing coy, and the man laughed softly and held her close.
He had received a name. It was meaningful precisely because it came from the only man in the world who mattered to him, the only one who treasured him in return.
Onseol. Two characters, warm and white, kindled a gentle heat deep within his chest.
***
Park Myeonghoo—the youngest son of the Wens Group chairman, born late in his parents’ lives—stared blankly up at the pristinely white walls and ceiling.
Whiter than any canvas. Perfect for painting something on it.
An IV line hung from his wrist—dextrose prescribed by the hospital because he’d refused to eat.
His stomach growled. Ugh. It wasn’t that he hated food. He was so hungry he could devour three bowls of plain white rice right now without any side dishes. His appetite had returned. But he couldn’t eat.
“Damn Park Geonhoo. That psychotic bastard Park Geonhoo.”
“You certainly curse with a young master’s delicate touch.”
At the voice from the open doorway, Park Myeonghoo lifted his vacant gaze.
It was a man—less of a psychopath than Park Geonhoo, but equally unhinged. A man who wore a normal face while making people do all sorts of things for him.
Of course, Myeonghoo understood it was all for his own benefit.
“What, are you mocking me? Don’t. I’ve been starving for two days and I’m not in my right mind.”
“Just two days of fasting?”
Yeonsu chuckled and stepped into the hospital room. The nurse and security guard assigned to the Closed Ward, Section A, glanced around nervously before quickly shutting the door and withdrawing.
Seeing this, Park Myeonghoo rolled his body toward Yeonsu.
“Wait, did you just bribe those people? Then get me some food. Get the doctor to let me eat, would you? Stop this insane act.”
Yeonsu, who had to bribe not just those two but security guards, CCTV managers, and many others to move freely through this room, chuckled and approached him.
As the tall man stood over him, Park Myeonghoo felt a subtle pressure bearing down.
“That won’t work. The doctor is too clearly Park Geonhoo’s person.”
At that, the pouting Myeonghoo exhaled a deep sigh. He wondered what kind of mess this all was.
He knew the rumors, of course. The ghost stories about the Wens Group’s heir apparent.
But he’d never truly believed them. Sure, his cousins got into car accidents often, but they drove frequently enough to account for that. Yes, an uncle had suddenly died of a heart attack, but with that workload, any heart could stop at any time.
Even some relatives had developed serious mental illness and gone to the Closed Ward for treatment, but he’d never once thought it was all caused by a curse. And yet, here he was now, lying in that very psychiatric closed ward!
At first, he’d wondered why his mother didn’t stop it. If she’d given him even a hint, he would have run to his brother, fallen on his knees, and begged him to please leave him alone, that he’d go abroad and live far away.
But according to the man before him, the act of cursing another heir was itself like a secret manual passed down only to the Legitimate Heirs of the Wens Group. Only by inheriting it could one know which curses to cast and through whom. So even his mother, the lady of the Wens Group, didn’t know.
At least there were only two brothers—Geonhoo and Myeonghoo. But if his cousin, who’d died in a yacht accident recently, had been his half-sibling…… his unsuspecting mother would collapse into illness on the spot.
Had he been too naive? Should he have harbored that kind of ambition in the fight for succession?
But could the word “ambition” even be applied to a desire to seize that position by killing and driving people mad?
Myeonghoo, who had been born with an artist’s soul, thought that “ambition” was not a word that belonged on such ugliness.
“All I ever wanted was to paint pictures and spend money freely and die doing it.”
“Hmm. Won’t that be difficult now?”
58
Yeonsu removed the Talismans she’d placed throughout the room and replaced them with fresh ones. She set cups of salt that had been bathed in sunlight in each corner, hung a Golden Cord from the window frame, and drew the curtains to shield it from view.
Then she lined the space beneath the bed where Myeonghoo spent most of his time with Talismans. These empty spaces were precisely where unwanted things liked to settle.
Feeling the Talismans cling to the bed frame without any adhesive, Yeonsu smiled. These were made yesterday with Onseol.
Yesterday, Onseol had suddenly tilted his head as if sensing something odd, and opened and closed his hand repeatedly. He stood quietly, studying his palm as if trying to feel something. When Yeonsu mentioned she was going to write Talismans, he followed her up to the Buddhist Hall and worked alongside her.
So they spent the time writing Talismans, one after another, and when they had time left, they folded Paper Money together.
And the Talismans that Onseol wrote were remarkably effective. Rather than blocking malevolent forces, they excelled at restoring and healing the body of whoever received them, strengthening their Positive Vitality.
Was it an ability she’d kept hidden? Or was something that had been sealed away in Baekga territory, unable to manifest, now gradually emerging into the light?
As she rose from her crouch, lost in thought, she became aware of her own expression.
“What’s so funny?” Park Myeonghoo asked flatly, noticing her smile.
He watched her laughing face with undisguised confusion.
“I… I just naturally smile a lot.”
“Right. You were smiling when you came after me at first too. Out of fear, I figured.”
“Came after you? I came to save you, not capture you.”
There was no fault in what she’d said, so Park Myeonghoo clamped his mouth shut.
He understood it himself—that treating someone who was helping him this way was wrong. But being locked in a hospital, starving himself—something he’d never endured before—and then weeks without seeing another soul had worn him down past bearing.
If he ever came face to face with Park Geonhoo, his so-called older brother who’d done nothing but swagger his whole life, he’d tear the bastard’s head clean off.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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