The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 88

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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 88

Hee-seo had never been swept along by anyone like this before, and she was completely caught up in Kim Je-eon’s pace. The same had been true of what continued until morning.

−Hee-seo.

“Hee-seo?”

−Lee Hee-seo.

“Would you like some more water?”
Suddenly, the voice calling her name, trembling with excitement, surfaced in her memory. Those long, smooth fingers, the flushed tongue that had licked his lips.
Large hands gripping her firmly, calling her name again and again. A memory that hadn’t passed even a few hours ago swept over her like a tidal wave.
Perhaps it was because the ramen was spicy. Heat kept rising, so Hee-seo urged Kim Je-eon to give her another cup of water, and after that still wasn’t enough, she rushed into the cramped bathroom for a cold shower before she could finally face Kim Je-eon again.
It was a small room, but it seemed to have even the basic fixtures properly maintained. Because Hee-seo, unlike herself, had left half the ramen uneaten, Kim Je-eon’s back as he washed the dishes looked somewhat melancholy.
Regardless, Hee-seo was grateful for the physical distance she could put between herself and Kim Je-eon, and she shook her wet hair dry haphazardly. Then her gaze stopped at a framed photograph on the wall.
‘What……?’
In the photograph, a young Kim Je-eon and a frail-looking woman stood side by side, smiling at the camera.
But the woman’s face was somehow familiar. When she saw the gaunt face marked by illness, it seemed to be Kim Soo-yeon, Kim Jong-hyeop’s daughter who had raised Kim Je-eon.
But what made Hee-seo puzzled was a different part of the image.
‘Had he really kept such a large dog……?’
Beside Kim Je-eon sat a dog as large as his shoulder. Its unkempt fur hung shaggy over its eyes, and its protruding pink tongue was rather endearing.
Hee-seo, without realizing it, frowned and moved closer to the frame.
“She was the mother who raised me.”
“So you’re saying she’s Chairman Kim’s daughter?”
Then Kim Je-eon approached and embraced her from behind. Kim Je-eon nodded.
Now that she thought about it, the face resembled Kim Je-seon’s quite a bit. Hee-seo tried to organize the complicated thoughts in her head. There was so much she needed to ask him that it was difficult to tell where to begin.
What was her relationship with Kim Je-seon, when did Kim Je-seon die. Had Soo-yeon kept Kim Je-eon confined here and raised him, and was that dog Kim Soo-yeon’s…….
These were questions she could only ask once Kim Je-eon stopped pretending to be a servant and she herself grew accustomed to the existence of Kim Je-eon and Kim Je-seon. In the moment she chose one question after considerable deliberation.
[Rrrrr…….]
Both Hee-seo and Kim Je-eon’s heads turned at the same time. It was a ringtone coming from Kim Je-eon’s outer coat hung carefully on the wall. Kim Je-eon tried to ignore it, but seized by some inexplicable premonition, Hee-seo reached for the phone.
And the name that appeared on the phone was one very familiar to both of them.

「Choi Jin-uk, Executive Director
010-xxxx-xxxx」

***

Even as the ringing continued, the other person didn’t pick up. Then the woman sitting across from him spoke with a wry smile.
“I told you so. Do you really think he has any interest in you right now?”
The one sipping deeply brewed coffee and mocking him was So Myeong Seon-nyeo. She kept prodding Choi Jin-uk, who was glaring at the phone as if he meant to kill it.
“What’s the point of calling? Hee-seo is stuck right there beside him. Do you think he’ll listen to you? Kim Je-eon isn’t somebody with thin ears like you…….”
“That mouth of yours. Shut it.”
“Such manners. Tsk, tsk.”
Though he let out a crude sound, Choi Jin-uk couldn’t bring himself to call again. Even with things having come this far, he lacked the courage to press Kim Je-eon or demand anything from him.
People tended to see Kim Je-eon as merely a third-generation chaebol heir, but Choi Jin-uk knew that something was hidden behind Kim Je-eon’s smile. Kim Je-eon intimidated people in a different sense from his grandfather.
‘These eerie women…….’
Just as Lee Hee-seo had a hidden identity, Kim Je-eon was likely the same. Otherwise, there was no way Kim Jong-hyeop would have kept Lee Hee-seo beside Kim Je-eon even knowing her true nature.
Choi Jin-uk recalled that day’s Kim Jong-hyeop, glaring at him with sharp, piercing eyes and speaking with finality.

−What, a half-baked shaman? A fraud? Hah! Divorce her? It’s none of your business to meddle! That girl has her uses, which is why I’ve kept her there. Don’t interfere and straighten out your own conduct, you fool!

It was the first time Kim Jong-hyeop had ever treated him that way. Startled by the fierce atmosphere, Choi Jin-uk couldn’t even voice the words he’d prepared and had to return.
Kim Jong-hyeop already knew the truth about Lee Hee-seo. That meant he had deliberately placed Lee Hee-seo beside Kim Je-eon.
‘Then what on earth for?’
Kim Je-eon was unmistakably Kim Jong-hyeop’s only successor. On the surface, he kept Seo Hyun-a close, and Seo Hyun-a herself believed she was a confidant of Kim Jong-hyeop, but Choi Jin-uk had known even before the marriage that Seo Hyun-a could never become the owner of GM.
If Kim Jong-hyeop had intended to raise her as a competitor to Kim Je-eon, he would never have married her off to someone of no particular standing like himself in the first place.
On the surface, people believed that Kim Jong-hyeop cherished Seo Hyun-a and therefore respected the spouse she had chosen. But the truth was the exact opposite.
Choi Jin-uk was her weakness—the weight that kept her from soaring.
‘Why had he seated Hee-seo, of all people, beside Kim Je-eon, whom he’d guarded so carefully?’
The reason hardly mattered anymore. Choi Jin-uk would do anything—anything at all—so long as he could rid the Estate of Hee-seo, root her from the GM family.
And while he was still scheming how to drive her out, a familiar woman entered the Estate. She introduced herself as Hee-seo’s aunt—So Myeong Seon-nyeo, who had once proposed to Choi Jin-uk that he part with Hee-seo.
“If you’d listened to me from the start, things wouldn’t have unraveled like this. Dull as a stone, the lot of you. Did you really think that sending a few men to rough her up would dislodge something so deeply rooted? Truly?”
Choi Jin-uk bore no responsibility for the accident Kim Je-eon suffered in Dubai. Yet if Kim Je-eon’s coma persisted, the blame would fall on all of them. And it was So Myeong Seon-nyeo who had ended that dire predicament.
The moment Kim Je-eon awakened following So Myeong Seon-nyeo’s ritual, she naturally claimed the seat beside Kim Jong-hyeop.
But unlike before, Choi Jin-uk ignored the subtle proposals she sent his way. He no longer wished to be swayed by shamans and their ilk.
“Are you saying it’s my fault that child grew up so hardened? You filled her with nothing but malice, and look what came of it. Damn it—even men who make money burying people have limits. What do you expect from me?”
Hee-seo had to disappear. At the very least, he could not bear to encounter her again within these walls. Even if he could return to the past, Choi Jin-uk would make the same choice.
Watching the man show not a shred of remorse, So Myeong Seon-nyeo shook her head slowly.
The young shrine maiden’s voice rang in his ears, cursing him, yet So Myeong Seon-nyeo still had reason to deal with him.
“That child didn’t grow up hardened—she was born cursed. She takes after her mother exactly. It’s not for nothing they say daughters inherit their mothers’ fate. What use is a Sealing Ritual at birth? She’s bound to remain half a shaman. Though I suppose if she can endure the Extreme Body Curse, she must have some Spiritual Power—that much is clear.”
Merely invoking Wol-cheon—her sister in the faith and Hee-seo’s mother—left a bitter taste in her mouth.
If Hee-seo had inherited her mother’s Spiritual Power, it would make a certain sense that she could withstand an Extreme Body Curse, one unleashed with lethal intent.
‘But that Sealing Ritual was no ordinary rite. If it bound her Spiritual Power, how is she still enduring the Extreme Body Curse even now?’
Reluctant as she was to admit it, Wol-cheon had been a Full Shaman since childhood, and the ritual she performed had been conducted with every ounce of her being. And yet—hadn’t So Myeong Seon-nyeo performed the Descent Ritual countless times in an attempt to break the seal, all to no avail?
And now Hee-seo was stemming the curse’s influence with her own Spiritual Power?
“If Seo Hyun-a dies before Hee-seo, you’ll be the one held accountable.”
But So Myeong Seon-nyeo’s deliberation was cut short. Choi Jin-uk’s eyes gleamed with such menace, as though he might throttle her at any moment, that he ground out a threat.
He looked ready to raise a hand against her, but So Myeong Seon-nyeo met his gaze without fear—only with the look of one regarding something pitiful.

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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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