The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 51

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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 51

“There’s nothing to hate about it. This body held you because I wanted you.”
“Stop it—let go! You bastard, let go! Ugh……!”
Regardless of her resistance, physical pleasure made Hee-seo’s body tremble.
“Ah, no—stop……. You said to, ah, ah, hmm!”
“Don’t go limp. Unlike him, I can hurt you.”
“Nngh……, ah!”
The body that had opened for Kim Je-eon now lay trampled beneath him, and Hee-seo clenched her teeth.
Kim Je-eon looked down at her with cold eyes.
She felt the same pleasure he did—he was certain of it.
So why did she refuse him with that expression? Why? Because he wasn’t Kim Je-eon?
Je-seon, inhabiting Kim Je-eon’s body, bared his teeth in a smile. An inexplicable possessiveness, a hunger to own, threatened to shatter his sanity. He lowered himself and pulled Hee-seo close from behind with brutal force.
A gasp of pain spilled from between Hee-seo’s lips.
“When you entangle with this body, you should have known it would come to this. Answer me, Hee-seo.”
“Ah, ah, please—ugh, ah……! Stop, let go! You bastard, let—please!”
Hee-seo clawed at his hands, nails raking across skin. The man didn’t retreat. As waves of dizzying pleasure crested, Hee-seo held her breath, barely suppressing the cries that threatened to tear free.
“Ah……!”
“Is that what you wanted? To become this body’s bride? Tell me. Confess honestly, now.”
Kim Je-eon pressed relentlessly, and the unbroken pleasure began to feel like pain.
Hee-seo shook her head, her face flushed crimson. If she opened her mouth, a scream would pour out.
With her head hanging low, her body rocking with the rhythm, her hair fell across her face. Kim Je-eon suddenly wondered what expression she wore. As he reached to pull her hair back—
Crack! Hee-seo’s elbow snapped up against his jaw with brutal force. The impact was so severe that skin split where her arm connected, blood spraying.
Hee-seo didn’t waste the moment his grip loosened—she twisted free and shoved his face away.
“Confess honestly? I want to kill you right here, right now!”
As Kim Je-eon staggered backward, reeling from the blow, Hee-seo drove her foot into his chest.
The size difference was too great to send him sprawling off the bed. Still, Hee-seo forced herself up on shaking legs and stumbled away from it.
“Ah, ah…….”
The moment her feet touched the floor, her vision tilted. Blood dripped from her split elbow. But Hee-seo scanned the room, found a small picture frame, and gripped it. If he came at her again, she’d smash it across his skull.
“……Cough.”
Yet Kim Je-eon didn’t move. He lay with one hand cradling his bloodied jaw, head hanging limp in a way that looked fragile.
He hung there like a puppet with cut strings, his bare chest heaving with labored breath. Hee-seo kept her guard up, calling out his name.
“Kim Je-eon.”
“…….”
“Stop pretending, Kim Je-eon. Hey!”
After ravaging her just moments ago, he was going to play weak over a few blows? Hee-seo bit down on her own lip in frustration.
“……Sigh. Ha.”
But when Hee-seo called him, Kim Je-eon gave no response—only strained, rapid breathing. A creeping dread began to coil through her chest.
“……Kim Je-eon?”
When she called again, Kim Je-eon slowly raised his head. He lowered the hand that had covered his jaw, staring at the blood staining it. His gaze rippled with the shock of something incomprehensible.
“……What is……this.”
Ah. Only then did Hee-seo’s strength give way, and she sank to the floor. The tension drained from her as she heard him speak.
Kim Je-eon looked around like a man waking from a dream, his eyes unfocused. When he finally saw Hee-seo—
“You’re okay.”
She whispered the words softly.
“You’re okay. This is……okay.”
She spoke to the man who seemed to be screaming silently.
Kim Je-eon rushed over and pulled her into his arms. His anguish, his wounds—all of it poured into her. Hee-seo leaned into his exhausted embrace, holding him close.
It’s okay. Nothing happened.
We’re going to be okay. We’re……. We’re really…….

***

While Hee-seo’s wounds healed, she and Kim Je-eon stayed at the villa.
They had light conversations, shared meals, bathed together, and in the evenings, they lay together.
Kim Je-eon waited until Hee-seo fell asleep before returning to his own bedroom, where he bound both his hands and feet with handcuffs before sleeping.
‘…….’
Hee-seo looked down at the sleeping man leaning against the headboard. A familiar medicine bottle sat on the bedside table—a sedative that Kim Je-eon had been taking every night for the past few days before sleep.

I don’t want this body to hurt you.

What must it feel like to close your eyes while anaesthetized? She perched on the edge of the bed, studying the pale contours of his face.
Since the night the body’s true master had returned, they had spoken of it not once. Yet each time their eyes met, Hee-seo could sense him suffocating under the weight of guilt—drowning in it.
There was something darkly amusing, yet bitter, about how the one who wielded the blade seemed to suffer more than the one who bled.

Don’t let your guard down. I can hurt you in ways she never could.

Whenever her mind grew hazy, that voice echoed in her ear.
Hee-seo had begun to suspect that perhaps his intention wasn’t to wound her at all. The more she dwelled on it, the closer her suspicion drew to certainty.
‘To wound me and him simultaneously. That had to be it.’
Kim Je-eon had been robbed of his body. And the entity that had stolen it had grown attached to Hee-seo. By whatever means, when the true master briefly reclaimed control, this revenge—inflicting harm on both of them at once—would have been his finest instrument.
Over the past several days, Hee-seo had gently caressed the man’s roughened cheek.
Ordinarily, he would have woken before her, but a sedative as potent as any anaesthetic had rendered him corpse-like for hours at a time.

You should have expected this would happen when you rolled around with this body.

He had spoken those words as he forcibly intoxicated himself, and Hee-seo could not deny them.
‘You knew better than anyone what would come of this. Foolish Hee-seo.’
The boundary between the living and the dead is absolute. Cross it with any weight of feeling or promise, and calamity follows without exception. These past days—they were her own blunder, nothing less.
‘And yet. Why.’
Still, why. Why did she not regret it?
Hee-seo leaned her weight against Je-eon’s shoulder, bewildered. After all that had happened, she should have felt remorse. She did not understand herself.
To be so swayed, so shaken by a spirit’s hold on a living body—it was unimaginable for who she once was.
Why did she grow so weak? Why like this?
Then soft fingers combed through her hair. As a slow breath settled gently upon her, Hee-seo fought back the swell rising in her throat.
Je-eon’s drowsy voice suddenly called her name.
“I dreamed of you, Hee-seo.”
……
“I dreamed of our wedding day.”
His voice still carried the languid pull of the drug, yet his handcuffed hands drew her gently upward, settling her across his lap.
Helpless, she let herself be pulled into the embrace, closing her eyes against the familiar scent of him.
“I dreamed of my bride in her veil—the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You couldn’t have imagined back then how terrifying the woman was who hid beneath that veil.”
She tried to sound unmoved, but her voice caught. To keep him from seeing her face, Hee-seo buried it against his shoulder—just as she had hidden it beneath the veil that day.
“Ha. I can’t deny it.”
His laughter carried a clarity it always held, strange and uncanny though it was. A spirit’s laughter sounding so pure—she could hardly fathom it. Hee-seo sniffled softly and sat in bewilderment.
Je-eon tilted his head down. His lips lingered against her hair.
“The most fearsome and beautiful woman in the world is my bride.”
How fortunate that is, isn’t it? His whisper tickled her ear.
Not wanting him to see her tear-stained face, Hee-seo nodded absently. The man’s touch, gentle as a caress for a child, continued for a long while.
After some time had passed, Hee-seo, her face swollen from tears, unlocked his handcuffs. She traced the marks left on the pale skin of his wrists, but said nothing of them.

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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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