Emergency Instinct - Chapter 41
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Click.
The sound of the hospital room door closing locked her heart as well.
The moment she realized that Tae-jun had left.
Drip.
Tears flowed down Ji-an’s cheeks.
Even though she tried to hold back, she no longer had the strength to contain them.
Ji-an gripped her mother’s hand even tighter.
The thin back of her hand, dry skin, motionless fingers…
Even while holding her mother’s hand, her chest felt empty and cold.
“…Mother.”
With a thin sob, she pressed her forehead against her mother’s hand. Her throat burned hot and she couldn’t breathe.
Ji-an’s small shoulders trembled violently.
“Please open your eyes. Mother…”
The words couldn’t continue to the end.
She didn’t know why she felt so sorrowful today.
“Wake up, Mother… I need you…”
Grandmother’s forced verbal abuse. Terrible threats. Her aching cheek.
She was used to enduring. She had always lived that way.
But the moment she saw Tae-jun’s face, it felt like the whole world was crumbling down.
Was it pathetic pride?
She absolutely didn’t want him to know about Grandmother’s existence.
When she thought her shameful secret that she wanted to hide until the end had been exposed, she felt embarrassed. Humiliated.
Most of all, she was afraid.
That he might discover Grandmother’s terrible plan.
That she might pathetically cry and cling to him, begging him to save her.
She deliberately sent him away coldly.
She couldn’t bring herself to look him straight in the eyes.
She kept remembering Grandmother’s cruel face as she casually told her to have his child.
It was horrifying.
The fact that the same blood flowed through her own body…
Her body trembled more and more violently.
“Sob, hic!”
The resentment mixed with fear and anger finally burst out of her mouth.
She kept hearing Grandmother’s words from somewhere that the only way for Tae-jun and herself to be together was to have a child.
She couldn’t accept it. But her already depleted self-esteem said otherwise.
How insignificant she appeared in others’ eyes. How bleak her reality was.
Sadness poured out endlessly as tears.
She had just started to feel excited about tomorrow coming…
She was still lacking.
She couldn’t let him go.
“Mother, what should I do…”
Ji-an collapsed as if everything had ended right then.
“Sob… Please say something. Mother…”
I feel like I’m really going to die.
It hurt. Much more than she had thought.
“Please open your eyes. Mother…”
Ji-an poured out her unreasonable resentment to her mother, grabbing and shaking her arm.
When she lost Father and fell into poverty holding Mother’s hand, Ji-an had smiled.
Though the cold, shabby one-room apartment was scary, she never cried.
Even when Mother collapsed, even in the face of fear that she might never return, she gritted her teeth and endured.
She held onto hope and struggled desperately to survive somehow.
But what was this man she had only met recently?
Why did the thought of losing him hurt this much?
The tears wouldn’t stop.
They kept flowing down with increasingly violent trembling.
It was agonizing. He who had arbitrarily stolen her entire heart.
He had dropped Ji-an into an endless abyss.
“Mother… please hold me.”
Please catch me.
As if grasping at her last hope, Ji-an brought her mother’s hand to her wet cheek. But it felt like holding onto a withered, dried branch.
There was no warmth from Mother, only her own trembling was transmitted.
“Please open your eyes! Mother’s daughter is in so much pain right now…”
The resentment she had never been able to voice even once poured out toward her mother.
She could no longer pretend to be okay.
“Mother… Mother!”
Like a childish kid, Ji-an called for her mother.
I like that man. Now, I think it’s love.
I thought I could let go, but I don’t want to.
I want that person so much, I want to have him.
“Mother… sob.”
I have someone I love now.
Mother needs to wake up and listen to my story.
It felt like she could hear Mother’s voice right away.
‘Ji-an, my daughter. If you love someone, you should hold onto them. It’s okay. My daughter, have courage…’
But the mother before her eyes still said nothing to her.
Her reality was always cruel.
No matter how kindly she lived, no matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t see the end.
As if trapped in a swamp she could never escape from. Just when she thought she could breathe, she was mercilessly trampled again.
“Sob…”
Ji-an buried her face in her mother’s hand and poured out violent tears.
She collapsed endlessly, endlessly to the bottom.
So she couldn’t see.
That every time her daughter’s hot tears wet the back of her hand.
Mother’s eyelids were trembling painfully.
***
Why cry when you pushed me away.
After stubbornly pushing me out.
Clicking his tongue, Tae-jun clenched his fist tightly.
It wasn’t long after he couldn’t leave from in front of the hospital room that Ji-an’s sobbing reached his ears.
It was crying that she was holding back with bated breath.
It was too clear that she was forcing herself to endure.
That sound made his solar plexus tighten sharply.
He felt suffocated as if sinking into deep water.
He wanted to immediately open the door and go in, embrace her and comfort her.
That it was okay, not to worry, that he would clean everything up for her.
But Ji-an’s desperate tears calling for her mother held his ankles back.
He couldn’t dare squeeze into that gap.
Tae-jun let out a rough breath and grimly took out his phone.
Ji-an’s heart-wrenching sobs made his head throb with unbearable pain.
He needed to hurry more.
He couldn’t just stand by and wait while watching his beloved person suffer.
When problems arose, cut them out by the roots as quickly as possible.
That had always been his answer, and what he did best.
Tae-jun pressed Kim Manager’s number with cold eyes.
“Investigate someone.”
Taking a short breath, he continued coldly.
“It’s the mother of the deceased Hong Ji-an’s father.”
He didn’t want to put the word ‘grandmother’ in his mouth.
That woman had no right to be called that.
“…Legally, the grandmother.”
Tae-jun’s eyes darkened deeply.
Though his expression was calm, his following words were razor-sharp.
“Dig up everything.”
The sobbing from beyond the door grew louder.
Though he felt the urge to twist someone’s neck right away, he barely suppressed it and gave his orders.
“I need private security too. Right now.”
His gaze fixed on the hospital room door as he lowered his phone.
Today will be the last time.
Next time, no matter what happens, I won’t let you cry alone. Never.
***
At the same time, in the VIP room at Dongsan Hospital.
[Chairman’s Wife’s condition is the same. Her granddaughter sent everyone out and is alone in the room now.]
Park Soon-ja threw her phone after reading the message from the caregiver she’d planted for surveillance.
“That stupid bitch! Who asked for this kind of report?”
Fuming, Park Soon-ja looked at her throbbing wrist and ground her teeth even more.
“How dare these bastards humiliate me?”
Rage boiled up from within her.
“I absolutely won’t let this slide.”
As she trembled with anger, she heard words that were no comfort at all.
“Mother, please calm down. You’ll burst a blood vessel at this rate.”
“Stop talking nonsense, where’s the medical certificate?”
“At most about 3 weeks…”
“Chul-ho! Son! Are you joking right now? I’m a powerless old woman. What about psychological trauma?”
“…But if we mess with Hanyeong Group’s son for no reason…”
“You stupid fool! That’s exactly why we need to push harder and squeeze out at least a settlement!”
Raising the hand with the IV drip, Park Soon-ja yelled at her son Hong Chul-ho.
“Mother. If you move like that, the blood will flow backward.”
“Aah! It hurts! Can’t this so-called Hospital Director even insert a needle properly?”
Accustomed to his mother’s tantrums, Hong Chul-ho quickly injected a sedative into the IV.
“Mother. You must have been shocked, please get some rest.”
“How pathetic. At least your brother had skills. What exactly can you do?”
The tiresome comparison pierced Hong Chul-ho’s heart like a blade.
Overwhelmed, he couldn’t hold back and raised his voice with rolling eyes.
“Why do you bring up my dead brother again? Mother, you told me to just quietly do what I’m told!”
Smack!
Before he finished speaking, Park Soon-ja mercilessly slapped her son’s cheek.
“You’re fifty now too. How long will you act stupid? Get out! Go out and finally do something!”
“…Yes. I understand.”
Hong Chul-ho turned and left, his fists trembling.
Park Soon-ja clicked her tongue and muttered.
“Useless bastard. What’s there to feel wronged about when you have no ability.”
Her dead son had ability but no ambition, which was frustrating. In the end, he disobeyed her, caused trouble by marrying an orphan, and died.
But her remaining son had no skills and couldn’t even do what he was told properly, so he was never satisfactory.
“How hard did I work to protect Dongsan Hospital? It absolutely can’t collapse like this. If I can just get through this crisis somehow…”
She was anxiously scheming how to extort money from Seo Tae-jun.
Her thrown phone rang with an unfamiliar number.
Is it Seo Tae-jun? After sending that, he must be scared now?
Her eyes gleaming strangely, Park Soon-ja immediately pressed the call button.
But what she heard was a completely different woman’s voice.
-Park Soon-ja?
“…Who is this?”
-I’m calling about Hong Ji-an.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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