Unhealthy - Chapter 48

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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 48. Decision

“I have no interest in the inheritance Hae-yeong will receive.”

“Then?”

“I wanted to protect her, and since I came this far to protect her, shouldn’t I see it through to the end?”

“….”

“If you don’t make a decision, Hae-yeong will be manipulated by Gi Chairman or Gi Jae-jun for the rest of her life. Because that’s how this game was designed.”

“Let me think about it more. This is a matter of life and death for me too, so I can’t just sign based on your word alone.”

“There isn’t much time.”

“That’s your family’s problem.”

Ji-min snatched the document envelope and turned around. But then, a chilling voice clung to her back.

“I know who really killed An Dae-jin and An Dae-cheon.”

It wasn’t just Ji-min who was shocked by his dry confession.

“Wh-what do you mean….”

Hae-yeong’s voice, who had been quietly holding her breath until then, reflexively burst out loudly.

“It was Gi Chairman’s doing. Gi Chairman personally eliminated both of them, along with all the influential figures of that time.”

“What exactly are you trying to say?”

As Ji-min burst into anger, Taejun slowly stood up and approached her.

“I will take care of them. I’m telling you this because your lives could be in danger while you’re deliberating. Gi Chairman has finally found you after searching so desperately, and he’s not someone who will just let you slip into my hands.”

“Are you threatening me right now?”

“As you said earlier, they never let go of prey they’ve set their sights on, and they don’t care if others’ lives are sacrificed for their own benefit.”

Ji-min’s face turned pale with horror.

She seemed suffocated by Taejun’s logical pressure closing in on her.

“You need to decide now.”

Ji-min stared blankly at the man before her as if he were some monster she was seeing for the first time. Taejun’s voice was so excessively calm that it felt surreal.

The dry confession that Gi Chairman had killed his own brothers, and the declaration that he would personally deal with that monster. It was like the prelude to a life-or-death war, completely different from a simple dispute over inheritance or rights.

A lifetime of cowardly years spent running away flashed through her mind like a panorama.

The price of living in a foreign country, pretending to be at peace while turning away from her brothers, had ultimately returned to grip her niece Hae-yeong’s lifeline.

Ji-min slowly raised her head and turned toward Taejun. In her eyes was a bizarre determination beyond shock and bitter disillusionment at the same time.

“You’re saying Gi Chairman killed my brothers. You’ve been living under that old man’s thumb all this time, bearing that family’s name and knowing all these facts?”

“I needed that name to bring him down. The moment you sign these documents, the weakest support of the fortress Gi Chairman has built his entire life will crumble. You must make this decision now, not for Hae-yeong’s sake, but for the sake of those two who died unjustly.”

Taejun precisely targeted Ji-min’s guilt and pressed her without yielding an inch.

Ji-min bit her lips as if they might burst, pondered for a moment, then took out her seal from the seal case.

The red mark stamped on the white paper spread vividly like someone’s fresh blood.

Ji-min pushed the documents toward Taejun and muttered with bone-deep curse.

“Take it. And as you said, make sure you deal with Gi Chairman. Since you said you’d collect the blood debt for my brothers in my place, if you fail, you’ll go to hell along with that bastard.”

Taejun tucked the documents Ji-min handed him into his jacket.

As the heavy texture of the paper touched his chest, he felt the sensation of the final piece of his long-prepared revenge falling into place.

Then, headlight beams from the distant alley entrance swept across the living room window. Ji-min’s husband had returned.

Ji-min closed her eyes as if disgusted, then opened them and stood up.

“My husband is here. Please leave now. Take Hae-yeong with you. I don’t want any more traces of Jiwon left in this house.”

Taejun gave a brief nod, then took Hae-yeong’s hand. She gripped his sleeve tightly with trembling hands.

His body temperature was hotter than usual, and that warmth spread through Hae-yeong’s body, which had grown cold from the truth about her father’s death.

When the two stepped out through the old door of the mansion, the night air had grown much cooler than before.

Taejun wrapped his arm around Hae-yeong’s shoulders and pulled her close to his side.

“Let’s go, Hae-yeong.”

Taejun put Hae-yeong in the car and pressed the accelerator deeply. Beyond the silhouette of the mansion receding in the rearview mirror, the irreversible past and the cruel truth they had to face were mixing into the darkness.

***

Taejun led the dazed Hae-yeong into a nearby small hotel.

For a place they had hastily chosen while passing by, it was fairly clean, but the silence filling the narrow space pressed down heavily on even Hae-yeong’s faint breathing.

Only after Taejun had completely shut out the noise of the outside world beyond the closed door did he carefully lift the chin of Hae-yeong, who was avoiding his gaze.

“Won’t you look at my face?”

Her eyes had already lost focus and were fixed somewhere in the air.

With tears densely welling up around her eyes, Hae-yeong couldn’t bring herself to let them fall or swallow them back, suppressing her sobs below her throat.

That desperate silence was tearing her inner self to shreds instead.

Taejun, seeing her precarious state, finally forced her cheek to turn and kissed her.

Through the lips that touched and parted, languid afterglow mixed with deep pain seeped in.

Only then did Hae-yeong’s trembling voice burst out through the forcibly opened breathing space.

“Knowing that the old man was the culprit, why didn’t you tell me anything all this time?”

It felt like she was finally witnessing her father’s death in its entirety. It was the sensation of the world she had relied on and believed in all her life crumbling miserably from beneath her feet.

Hae-yeong had to feel the pain of the chilling truth rising from deep in her chest, choking her throat.

Every breath felt like sharp glass shards were piercing into her lungs.

“Because nothing would have changed even if I told you.”

“Because I wouldn’t have followed along obediently?”

“Yes.”

At the firm affirmative answer, Hae-yeong let out a hollow laugh. That brutally cold and realistic confirmation was enough to tear at Hae-yeong’s heart.

Taejun didn’t make a single excuse.

That honest confession pushed Hae-yeong even deeper into the abyss.

“…It must have been entertaining all this time. Watching me grovel in front of the person who killed my father.”

“That’s not true.”

Taejun’s brow furrowed slightly, but to Hae-yeong it was just an empty denial.

Where the foundation of trust had disappeared, only sharp suspicion and destructive paranoia were sprouting.

“How ridiculous it must have been, watching me tell the son of my father’s killer that I loved him.”

The very person who had dragged her life into a quagmire, the son of the enemy who had killed her father.

She felt so foolish for whispering love to Gi Taejun and clinging to him without knowing such facts.

Hae-yeong finally burst into tears. She covered her face with both hands and began to cry her heart out.

As her suppressed wailing burst forth, the small room was quickly filled with her sorrowful crying.

Watching Hae-yeong’s shoulders collapse, Taejun murmured quietly.

“It was never ridiculous. Not even once.”

“*Sob*, *sniff*. How trivial I must have looked, living under the roof of my father’s killer and being so careful around them… How, how worthless.”

Hae-yeong forcibly pushed away Taejun’s hand as he approached to comfort her. Even that touch now felt like unbearable humiliation.

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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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