The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 90

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

Episode 90

Thanks to that, she could make out what the dog had been guarding.
“I’m sorry…… I’m sorry, Grandfather.”
Bruises mottled his wrists, scabs crusted his lips. His cheeks were gaunt, his eyes shadowed with despair.
The moment Hee-seo’s gaze met the boy’s, she knew exactly who he was.
‘Ah. This is……’
Kim Je-eon’s past.
The instant she understood, every scene lurched forward into terrible clarity—as though she’d only now awakened from a long, suffocating nightmare.
‘……Damn it.’
“I won’t go upstairs anymore. I promise. I won’t let anyone see me. Just once more…… Just once more, please! I’m begging you, don’t take Whitey away from me! I swear I’ll never go outside again!”
The boy’s voice trembled with anguish, yet young Kim Je-eon did not cry. Instead, he offered every condition he could muster, desperately clinging to something he needed to protect. Faced with such raw longing, Hee-seo wanted nothing more than to reassure him.
But Past-Memory Vision did not bend to her will.
“Grandfather, please!”
A growl, then a bark! Another bark!
Hee-seo gripped the large dog’s neck firmly, and with her other hand, swung something down. At some point she’d seized a sturdy staff and brought it down on the animal.
But the heavily furred beast didn’t yield easily under the blows. Her anger mounting beyond restraint, Hee-seo found her hand turning toward the boy himself.
‘No! No, don’t!’
“Ah—ugh!”
A bark! Another bark, then a whine……
The dog, which had endured the staff without so much as a whimper, went wild the moment it saw the boy struck.
Unable to contain her fury any longer, Hee-seo brought the staff down hard against the dog’s skull.
Crack—! Something snapped. The animal collapsed, body convulsing violently. The boy’s face drained of color as he looked up at Hee-seo.
‘……No. That wasn’t me. Kim Je-eon, that wasn’t me.’
The dog’s fluffy, golden coat grew dark with blood as it struggled toward the boy.
Just watching this was agony. Hee-seo wanted to shut her eyes, wanted to strike herself with the staff and wake from this nightmare.
Facing Kim Je-eon’s gaze—one that burned with the force of hatred—was unbearably cruel.
“Really? You didn’t?”
Yet Kim Je-eon spoke as if he’d read her thoughts. His voice had shifted from pleading to something cold and hollow.
And that voice sounded exactly like……
“Really, you didn’t want to? You wanted to get rid of this dog. You felt the same way I did, didn’t you?”
Lee Hee-seo. His voice was her own.
“……What?”
“You are me, and I am you. I feel what you feel, and you feel what I feel. We are one.”
“That’s insane. What are you even—what are you saying……?”
It made no sense whatsoever.
Just moments ago, young Kim Je-eon had called her Grandfather. This should be a Past-Memory Vision of Kim Jong-hyeop and Kim Je-eon, so why was Kim Je-eon speaking in her voice?
The staff slipped from Hee-seo’s grip and clattered away across the floor.
Hee-seo stared blankly at Kim Je-eon’s face. Blood stained his clothes where he held the dying animal. She tried to step back, to flee from what she’d done.
In that moment, as she caught sight of the mirror on the wall, she understood who was speaking in Kim Je-eon’s voice.
And a scream she could not force out filled every corner of her being.
“No…… No, that can’t—”
How could this be? No. No, this isn’t Past-Memory Vision—this isn’t anything like that. This is a dream, this is a dream!
‘This can’t be happening!!’

“……No! No, I’m telling you no!!”
A scream tore from her throat as Hee-seo lunged upright. She fumbled at her own face frantically.
Her hands confirmed what her eyes had shown her—except for the cold sweat soaking her skin, everything felt ordinary again.
“……What was that. What—what was it.”
Hee-seo breathed hard, touching her face over and over. She rubbed her eyes roughly, cursed her racing heart, and struck her own chest as if to quiet it.
Only after a long while did her panic finally begin to subside.
‘What on earth was that……? Was that the Hoseo-nang?’
What Hee-seo had seen in the mirror was not herself. The reflection was something utterly inhuman.
Eyes shot through with yellow and black light, fur bristling across a beast’s face, elongated fangs and rounded ears sprouting from its skull.
The first scene had seemed to be Kim Je-eon’s memory, but what came after made no sense at all. And now, with her mind clear, it still didn’t.
‘When did I even get here……’
Her last memory was of falling asleep on Kim Je-eon’s bed, yet Hee-seo had awakened in Kim Je-eon’s backyard. She could be certain, having chased Hae-jeong here just moments before.
Hee-seo looked around and realized she was still wearing loose pajamas. The only small mercy was that the staff she’d used to strike the dog was nowhere to be seen.
To erase the vivid sensation that had coursed through the staff’s end, she wiped her hands several times over.
‘This is driving me insane. Is this a dream too?’
Hee-seo stood motionless, thinking. To wake from a dream only to find herself still dreaming.
When she thought of the dog, Kim Je-eon, and herself wearing the shape of a beast, it seemed less like Past-Memory Vision and more like a nightmare. Hee-seo tore at her hair and writhed in distress.
“Hoseo-nang and all that nonsense—if this is how you’re going to show me Past-Memory Vision, I’m just going to sell you to a zoo…….”
Whether any zoo would take her was another question, but in any case she hated these kinds of unpleasant Past-Memory Visions.
No—to be precise, it was the fact that Kim Je-eon had been treated that way that made her furious, but she couldn’t exactly go punch Kim Jong-hyeop right now. The only target she could vent on was Hoseo-nang.
Moreover, experiencing Past-Memory Vision this way was unheard of. Others only heard, read, and saw them—but wasn’t this as if Hee-seo had stepped directly into the situation herself? It was the same even now.
Hee-seo walked barefoot across the grass, feeling the blades tickle between her toes. Such a vivid Past-Memory Vision. Could even A-seon experience something like this? If so, she could understand why her companion fell ill every time she had a vision.
“Anyway, why are you showing me this again? This is where I came before. Are you trying to tell me where Hae-jeong is?”
Though Hoseo-nang was nowhere to be seen—not even a stray cat—Hee-seo gritted her teeth and demanded an answer. Even as she did, she occasionally touched her face, terrified it might transform into a beast’s snout again.
“So what am I supposed to do here? Where do you want me to go?”
But unlike the dream where she’d been drawn by the dog’s scent, this time she felt no signal at all.
Hee-seo irritably scanned her surroundings and shouted “Hey!” several times, but she only looked like a madwoman crying out into the void.
Unable to find answers, Hee-seo huffed and made her way toward the back door.
If Hoseo-nang wouldn’t respond, she’d retrace her steps to where she’d seen Hae-jeong. Even if this was merely a dream, she couldn’t simply wait around to wake up.
“So you’re not going to help me willingly, is that it? Fine. I get it. You turned me into an animal abuser and now you’re ignoring me? We’ll see what happens next time we meet.”
Hee-seo deliberately muttered aloud. Without doing so, she couldn’t move—the wounded expression on Je-eon’s face kept flickering before her eyes.
Unconsciously, she bit her lip again and again, trying to push his past from her mind. Either way, if she was still trapped in this vision, she wanted to find something that might help.
‘……That psychopathic old bastard.’
But despite her resolve, Hee-seo’s anger finally boiled over. The small picture frame hanging on the wall kept intruding on her thoughts—Kim Je-eon and the dog within it.
Kim Jong-hyeop had been the only support for Je-eon, who’d hidden in the basement to survive, and he’d killed that creature right before the boy’s eyes. Kim Jong-hyeop’s cruelty made her blood roil of its own accord.
“With a heart like that, no wonder your family’s in such a mess—treating a child, treating a dog that way. You sick bastard. Let’s see if I don’t make you pay.”
Thump, thump, thump. Her footsteps, unable to kick at Kim Jong-hyeop, trampled only the innocent grass beneath her feet.

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