Unhealthy - Chapter 38

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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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Chapter 38. Because I Want to Be Loved

 

Hae-yeong was truly heartbroken.

 

Because Taejun wasn’t bad.

 

Because she couldn’t hide her own desire to be loved by someone she shouldn’t have feelings for.

 

That’s why she was sad.

 

“There’s not much time left.”

 

Taejun urged her as if reminding her that there wasn’t much time remaining.

 

As she stuffed her mouth full of dry rice, tears that had pooled in her eyes rolled down her cheeks.

 

She didn’t want to cry. At least not in front of Gi Taejun.

 

Once the tears started, they wouldn’t stop.

 

With both cheeks puffed up like a hamster, Hae-yeong shed tears pitifully like a child.

 

“Sniff.”

 

“Is it that delicious?”

 

Taejun asked indifferently toward Hae-yeong who suddenly burst into tears.

 

His gaze lingered on Hae-yeong’s wet eyelashes, but Hae-yeong deliberately turned her eyes away to look at the nearby Han River Bridge through her blurred vision.

 

The scene of the subway gliding smoothly became distorted.

 

Even though she knew that crying more would require more pathetic excuses, her tears wouldn’t stop easily due to the overwhelming sorrow.

 

“Be-because… I wanted to be loved.”

 

Her throat was completely blocked and her breathing came in short gasps. The clumped rice mixed with tears scraped roughly as it went down her throat.

 

“Because I wanted to be loved, I guess that’s why I did it.”

 

Taejun didn’t give any particular response to her words and simply opened a water bottle cap and held it out to her.

 

“By people. I guess I wanted to be loved by people. But since that didn’t work out well, I was upset… So I said mean things. Because I had no one to take my anger out on.”

 

Taejun doesn’t know.

 

That day, because he came to pick her up at school, many things changed.

 

Due to her timid personality, she missed the chance to make excuses and couldn’t hang out with her peers because of her curfew. As a result, she began to be subtly ostracized among her peers.

 

She didn’t particularly resent him for it, but anyway, it was an undeniable fact that that day’s incident was the turning point.

 

So even this conscientious confession she was spitting out now, he would just listen to silently without understanding the context.

 

Hae-yeong forced herself to chew and swallow the rice that was still half remaining, using the water Taejun handed her to soothe the pain in her parched throat.

 

“Am I not enough?”

 

Why would her saying she wanted to be loved by people result in him asking if he wasn’t enough?

 

“If you say it like that, I’ll misunderstand.”

 

“What kind of misunderstanding, how.”

 

He asked back emotionlessly.

 

“It sounds like you’re asking if Gi Taejun’s love isn’t enough… That’s how it sounds.”

 

“I think you heard correctly.”

 

Taejun’s gaze pierced into Hae-yeong’s eyes without a hint of wavering. That firmness fiercely clawed at Hae-yeong’s heart as it passed.

 

“…That’s a lie.”

 

“From the day I brought you here until now, I’ve never treated you with anything other than love.”

 

That wasn’t love.

 

The love Hae-yeong knew wasn’t this kind of capture and domination.

 

The love Taejun spoke of was either pity, or merely a variation of responsibility created by a terrible sense of debt.

 

“That’s not love.”

 

“Then what is love.”

 

“Just thinking about it… makes your heart flutter.”

 

“It flutters.”

 

Taejun’s low, sunken voice created a heavy atmosphere in the car.

 

“…”

 

“It trembles.”

 

Why can’t I listen to what the other person says straightforwardly?

 

Hae-yeong had thought she was truly a positive person, but now it seemed that wasn’t the case.

 

“Is even this not enough?”

 

Taejun narrowed his brow as if pondering for a moment, then added in a cool voice.

 

“When I look at you, I want to touch you, I want to be close to you.”

 

The explicit confession poured out in a calm tone heated Hae-yeong’s ears.

 

It was a vulgar yet pure desire that the usual Gi Taejun would never have uttered. Even so, Hae-yeong found it hard to believe his sincerity.

 

“If it’s not that, then what I’m doing doesn’t make sense.”

 

Taejun slowly rubbed away the tear stains on Hae-yeong’s cheek with his thumb.

 

The persistent warmth in that rough touch squeezed Hae-yeong’s heart.

 

In the end, Hae-yeong couldn’t accept his sincerity.

 

No, perhaps saying she turned away from it would be more accurate.

 

***

 

Jae-jun hurriedly boarded the plane to Tokyo as if every minute and second was precious.

 

It had been a setup he’d already prepared.

 

He was confident that if he pushed just a little more, he could crack the solid fortress that was Gi Taejun and get Hae-yeong into his hands.

 

However, because Taejun overturned everything, all his planned schemes went awry.

 

His mistake was complacently judging that Gi Taejun, that perfectionist with his obsessive cleanliness, wouldn’t be able to defy his father’s will even if it made him sick inside.

 

Looking at the clouds that began to appear outside the airplane window, Jae-jun swallowed a thin breath.

 

It had been a life of being compared to Taejun to a sickening degree since childhood.

 

Even though Gi Chairman and his mother were in a marital relationship, people in the world called Gi Jae-jun an illegitimate child.

 

He tried to deny and correct the stigma that followed him like a tag, but no one listened to his words.

 

Also, his biological father’s behavior of only favoring the eldest son and treating his existence as nothing more than Taejun’s auxiliary tool was disgusting to the point of making him shudder.

 

But just because he wasn’t satisfied didn’t mean he made the reckless choice of throwing away what little he had in his hands and leaving.

 

Gi Chairman was the type of person who wouldn’t look back and would cast aside even his own blood once their usefulness was over.

 

That meant he had to secure his own interests with his own hands, and if there was a share to be claimed, he had to desperately scrape it together using any despicable method.

 

Jae-jun swallowed the poison rising deep in his lungs and went back to the starting point, carefully tracing back from the beginning of this incident.

 

From the start, what Gi Chairman craved was clear.

 

Power, and the enormous capital that would solidify that power.

 

To him, the existence called Hae-yeong wasn’t simply in the position of a ward.

 

She was both a goose that would lay golden eggs to guarantee the family’s stable future, and the most expensive sacrifice offered to a greedy old man.

 

Whatever conditions Taejun had presented when persuading Gi Chairman, Gi Chairman must have judged them to be greater than the benefits he could gain through Hae-yeong. That’s why he changed his attitude so easily.

 

However, now the situation had completely reversed.

 

Gi Taejun was no longer the eldest son who received Gi Chairman’s unblemished trust.

 

Even when he had bowed his head miserably and prostrated himself flat in front of Gi Chairman at the golf practice range last time, he showed no particular reaction, making Jae-jun’s persistent efforts and cunning schemes seem useless.

 

But Gi Chairman must have already been sharpening a blue blade inside.

 

A dangerous relationship where he could stab a dagger in his father’s back at any time.

 

Just as he himself had stepped on everyone to devour the company in the past, he began to be wary of the fact that Taejun could very well do the same.

 

For Jae-jun, this catastrophe was nothing short of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

 

Between Gi Chairman and Gi Taejun.

 

Wasn’t this a situation where an irreparable crack had formed in what had been a solid father-son relationship?

 

At times like this, the way to survive was to open the tiger’s mouth and go inside.

 

All he had to do was squeeze through that tiny crack and take the position of Gi Corporation’s managing director.

 

To do that, getting his hands on An Ji-min, whom Gi Chairman was so desperately searching for, before anyone else was the key to victory or defeat.

 

Though he had boldly taken on the challenge, it wasn’t actually an easy task.

 

Wasn’t she someone that even Gi Chairman, who was more experienced than anyone at using people, and even Gi Taejun, who understood how to combine money and strategy for optimal results, hadn’t been able to find a clue about for years?

 

Tracking a woman with an unclear residence in the Japanese Archipelago was as distant a task as fishing out a single needle from the vast ocean.

 

But Jae-jun instinctively was certain that the only person who held the key to clearing away that hopeless fog was ultimately Gi Taejun.

 

His suspicion that the gloomy and meticulous Taejun might be scheming something behind the scenes solidified into conviction as time passed.

 

Jae-jun mobilized every available route to investigate Taejun’s background.

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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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