The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 63

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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 63

When the subject turned to her husband, Seo Hyun-ah let out an involuntary laugh. But the moment the housekeeper appeared with the tea, she suppressed it.
As the housekeeper hurried away, she finally answered in a low voice.
“You know how my husband is. Always distracted by something else. It’s possible that Choi Jin-wook is even more obsessed with the company than we are.”
A trace of bitterness colored her murmur.
Kim Je-eon quietly set his teacup on his lap.
He and Seo Hyun-ah were like oil and water—they could never truly be close. Yet they shared the same family circle, and he knew everything she had endured.
“I know Choi overextended himself after you and your husband lost the child.”
“No. That’s not it, brother. That man was always company-first from the beginning. The child was…”
Seo Hyun-ah trailed off, absently reaching for the Five-Color Thread Bracelet around her left wrist.
Once, merely speaking of it would have caused her pain. But ever since she’d worn the bracelet, something strange had shifted—talking about the child now brought only peace.
“The child was just a hollow sense of obligation.”
……
At Seo Hyun-ah’s vacant murmur, Kim Je-eon’s eyes hardened. Her condition seemed perilously fragile—too much so to blame on moving fatigue alone.
He turned his gaze to the bracelet around her wrist. It was made from twisted five-colored thread—an accessory that didn’t suit Seo Hyun-ah, who usually preferred clean, understated style.
Seized by an odd feeling, Kim Je-eon asked a question he normally wouldn’t have.
“Are you planning to have another child?”
Seo Hyun-ah, who had been fingering the bracelet, turned to look at him. Her hollow eyes were certainly not like her usual self.
Sensing something wrong, Kim Je-eon examined her condition more carefully.
Her skin had grown rough, her hair disheveled, her face pallid and bloodless. Her fingers, which kept reaching for the bracelet, had taken on a dark, reddish hue. To him, who had watched her closely all these years, her appearance was utterly unfamiliar.
“Yes. I will. Our baby will come back. Brother.”
And her answer, too, was one that invited doubt.
Where did such a belief come from—that a child already dead would return? As Kim Je-eon wrestled with the impossibility, Seo Hyun-ah spoke first, as if to deflect his concern.
“Anyway, what brings you here? It’s not company business, surely.”
He and Seo Hyun-ah were so distant as cousins that he hadn’t even known of her move. That was only natural—Kim Jong-hyup had chosen her as a counterweight against Kim Je-eon.
Kim Je-eon decided against pressing her about the bracelet or the child she had lost so long ago.
It was already far too late for him to be a good cousin to her. And besides, he had come here for another reason entirely.
“I wanted to confirm some things about our family and the Chairman.”
“…What do you mean, suddenly?”
The vacant gaze she’d fixed on him sharpened with wariness.
Having witnessed Kim Jong-hyup’s inexplicable distrust of his only grandson up close, Seo Hyun-ah had begun to doubt Kim Je-eon as well. Suspicion was contagious as plague.
“Don’t worry—I’m not asking for anything grand.”
“Then what have you come all this way to hear?”
“About my mother. And the temple where your parents are enshrined.”
“What?”
Seo Hyun-ah made no effort to hide her bewilderment.
Ever since this unexpected visit, Kim Je-eon had been acting nothing like his usual self. Seo Hyun-ah sighed, brushing her hair back with a sharp edge to her voice.
“When have you ever cared about such things? As for my parents’ memorial day, yes—we’re cousins only in a distant sense, so it’s reasonable you wouldn’t think of it. Fine. But does it make sense that you’d now go visit Aunt Kim Su-yeon?”
Seo Hyun-ah was the only blood relative Kim Jong-hyup’s sister had left behind. Seo Hyun-ah’s own parents had died young, and it was Kim Jong-hyup’s daughter, Kim Su-yeon, who had raised her.
This was why Kim Jong-hyup cherished Seo Hyun-ah. The same reason Kim Je-eon could never be a good cousin to her.
“I’m not going because I think it makes sense.”
“Good. I’m relieved. All this time I thought Grandfather was simply misunderstanding you, that his heart was just unsettled. I saw with my own eyes how you devoted yourself to the company and the family more than anyone. So please, brother—don’t disappoint me now.”
“Hyun-ah.”
Kim Jong-hyup’s distrust of Kim Je-eon was something Seo Hyun-ah couldn’t deny. Yet that distrust wasn’t aimed at Kim Je-eon alone.
Kim Jong-hyup distrusted all people. And she, who had stood closest to him and watched, had felt his suspicion in her very bones.
“You’re right—I have no right to visit her. I never went once after she passed.”
After Kim Su-yeon’s death, Kim Jong-hyup had placed her remains in a certain temple. Whenever anyone in the Kim Family passed, their remains were enshrined there.
And until now, Kim Je-eon had never visited that temple. He didn’t believe he had the right.
All this time, Kim Je-eon had believed that Kim Su-yeon’s death was his fault.
He was a Poison Snake born by killing his mother—and so not only his birth mother, but also Kim Su-yeon, who had raised him as her own son, could not escape death.
But what if that weren’t true? What if there were another cause behind their deaths?
In the end, even as she rebuked him, Seo Hyun-ah gave him the name and location of the temple where they were enshrined.
As he left Seo Hyun-ah’s home, Kim Je-eon glanced back at her gaunt face before moving forward.
Right now, it was not Seo Hyun-ah who needed his help.

Kim Je-eon’s car sped down the highway. From Seo Hyun-ah’s house, he headed straight for the temple she had named.
After more than an hour of driving, he arrived at a rugged mountainside.
Kim Je-eon brought the car to a stop at the entrance of the mountain path.
“Baeksong Temple?”
He read the characters inscribed on a wooden sign that was falling apart, then gazed up the mountainside.
The mountain wasn’t large, but its terrain looked formidable. Fortunately, there was an asphalt road that ran halfway up the slope.
‘I’ll have to walk from the midpoint onward.’
As Kim Je-eon drove slowly up the narrow mountain path, his thoughts drifted to Hee-seo.
It had been well over a week since Hee-seo left the Estate on her own feet.
Given her nature, he’d expected her to reach out to him by any means possible the moment she left, but contrary to his expectations, no word from her ever came.
‘Perhaps that’s safer, after all.’
A chilling memory suddenly surfaced in his mind.
That day—when Hee-seo, drawn by the sound of an infant’s cry, had made her way to the Basement. The person who came to find Kim Je-eon that day was not Cho Jae-un.
To be precise, it was not a person at all.
‘Could it be that what Hee-seo saw that night was the same thing?’
What appeared before Kim Je-eon’s eyes when he opened the door was a Red Snake of such monstrous size it defied belief.
The Red Snake coiled itself in the courtyard of the Estate, its head held rigid and upright, fixing its gaze upon him. With each breath the creature took, a sinister aura emanated from its jaws.
Its mere presence was so malevolent that his body froze solid just from facing it. If he looked away even for a moment, he felt certain the serpent would swallow him whole—he couldn’t even blink.
Soon the snake’s crimson eyes blazed brighter as it crept steadily closer. Despite the terror that made his spine tremble, Kim Je-eon did not retreat.
Because he knew: if he stepped back, the serpent would advance straight into the Estate and devour Hee-seo instead.
Hisss—hisss. The creature’s breath was foul, and the aura it exhaled burned like searing flesh. With each breath he took, the poisoned air mingled with his own, choking his lungs.
Kim Je-eon stared at the approaching serpent with his fists clenched.
Sssshhhhh…….
Then the snake flicked its whip-like, supple tongue. The needle-fine spines that densely covered its surface seemed ready to shred his skin at any moment as it lashed before his eyes again and again.
In that instant, Kim Je-eon felt as though the serpent was trying to tell him something. It was an absurd fancy.
Shhhhiiiiikkkk……. Shhhk.
Yet the serpent did not hold its attention on him for long. The tongue that had been tasting him soon stopped. And the direction its head turned was…….
‘I cannot leave Hee-seo in the Estate any longer.’

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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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