Unhealthy - Chapter 54
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Chapter 54. Sweet Silence
“Yes, I understand.”
“Somewhere with tight security. Since it’s a house for living alone.”
“But, will that be alright?”
When Taejun showed a puzzled expression, Secretary Lee hurriedly added.
“Letting her stay alone. It would be better if you stayed together…”
“Is there anything that would ruin the kid’s future?”
Taejun’s voice turned sharp.
“No, but to call her a kid, she’s too grown…”
“Is tomorrow’s executive meeting prepared?”
Taejun changed the subject. He had already finished his emotional exhaustion when he held Hae-yeong in his arms at the hospital.
“With the chairman’s absence, most executives are taking their vacations all at once, so we still can’t determine how many will attend the executive meeting.”
“Now that their puppet master is gone, they’re trying to use their little brains.”
“It seems like the figures who were on the chairman’s side are trying to assess the situation.”
Secretary Lee added while pushing up his glasses.
“They’ll probably gauge how to act based on the trial results in two days, so how about scheduling the meeting after that?”
“No, proceed as planned. I don’t need to accommodate them.”
At Taejun’s firm attitude, Secretary Lee nodded. Taejun had the eyes of a destroyer trying to establish a new order.
“There’s also a lot of talk about the chairman position that’s now vacant…”
“Leave it empty.”
Taejun’s answer came without a moment’s hesitation. As if that position should have been empty from long ago, he spoke as if reciting a natural principle.
“Even when we don’t know when the chairman will be released? If we don’t establish at least an acting system, the stock prices will fluctuate immediately.”
“The chairman won’t be coming out.”
“Ah…”
“I’m keeping it for Hae-yeong’s share.”
Secretary Lee’s face turned pale with shock.
The idea of handing over Jiwon Group’s real power to Hae-yeong, who was just a college student who didn’t even know the first letter of ‘management,’ was an unprecedented move that no one would dare to imagine.
It wasn’t simply compensation. It was the most cruel price for her lost childhood, her murdered father’s honor, and her trampled life.
“But Director, Miss Hae-yeong is still a student… Moreover, the current chairman’s side won’t stay quiet. The board members won’t just hold their breath under a young woman.”
The board was filled with people from gangster backgrounds anyway.
Since it was time for a complete overhaul anyway, Taejun was making plans in his head to clean things up step by step before Hae-yeong became part of Jiwon Group.
“What if they don’t stay quiet?”
Taejun asked coldly while zipping up his bag.
Heavy lighting cast deep shadows along his high nose bridge, and a languid killing intent flickered in his half-closed eyes. A sharp aura that seemed like it would cut at the slightest touch filled the space.
“…”
“Will they kill me or something?”
Knowing the ice-cold weight carried in Taejun’s murderous words, Secretary Lee kept his mouth shut.
Taejun had already reached a conclusion about whose blood would stain his hands to put Hae-yeong in that position.
Since he had destroyed the world for her, the new world built on those ruins had to be hers as well.
Even if all of Jiwon’s retainers were slaughtered in the process, Taejun wouldn’t bat an eye.
“Then I’ll prepare as you’ve instructed. If that’s your will, Director, I’ll thoroughly block the opposition forces’ movements first.”
Secretary Lee bowed 90 degrees respectfully and withdrew.
The ominous premonition brought by Gi Jae-jun’s mysterious whereabouts stabbed at a corner of his chest like poison, but there were many things to sort out for now.
***
As if proving the tense times she had endured, Hae-yeong was sleeping soundly like a child left alone in the world. So deeply that she couldn’t even hear the rustling noise of the unfamiliar hotel bedding.
A little while ago, Secretary Lee had made quite presumptuous remarks while moving her belongings.
He asked if Taejun knew how devoted Miss Hae-yeong had been when the Director was lying in the hospital room like a corpse, and suggested that maybe they should forget about revenge and just date as their hearts desired.
It was meddling that he would normally have cut off sharply, but Taejun just listened silently.
After finishing his shower, Taejun toweled his wet hair and approached the head of the bed.
He could see hair scattered messily over Hae-yeong’s pale forehead.
Taejun carefully brushed away the hair across her face with his fingertips that still had moisture on them.
The skin touching his fingertips was so delicate that he naturally relaxed his hand, feeling like it would break with just a little pressure.
“If you die like this, watch me. I’ll die too.”
The murderous voice that had lingered in his ears while unconscious apparently wasn’t a hallucination. Those words, whether curse or confession, had grabbed and pulled Taejun up from the darkness.
“When will you open your eyes? You’re not really dying, are you?”
The voice filled with desperation, and the warm body temperature covering his hand. The sincerity she must have poured out every night while holding his hand belatedly tore at his heart.
Taejun took a breath and studied her sleeping face.
“Like this, it’s like I killed you…”
When even the words she had muttered to him while he was bleeding to death in the past overlapped, he realized that this woman was desperate to keep him alive, then and now.
Even while watching the son of the enemy she should rightfully hate dying, she was actually terrified that his breath might stop – such contradictory goodness.
A self-deprecating laugh escaped weakly from Taejun’s lips.
“You should have wanted me to die.”
In the silent room, his low, dry voice penetrated between Hae-yeong’s breaths.
“You’d be free if I disappeared.”
Hae-yeong was beautiful and sensitive, a woman anyone would covet.
Even inside the Hannam-dong estate filled with poison, she was like a lily that never got stained by dirty water.
To Taejun, Hae-yeong was precious enough that just looking at her could lift his sunken mood. She was lovely and beautiful, a woman who inspired such reverence that he felt he shouldn’t touch her with his dirty hands.
Taejun suppressed the pain from his still-unhealed waist wound and lowered himself to sit on the floor. Then he stared intently at sleeping Hae-yeong.
Her appearance, breathing languidly in her sleep, gave him an eerily profound sense of stability.
There’s a saying that flowers bloom even on ruins after a storm passes.
Her existence was breathing warmth into Taejun’s parched inner self.
To think the air could change this much just from removing one Gi Chairman. He should have gotten rid of him from sight long ago.
This moment’s silence was sweet enough to make the past years of making her cry and destroying himself seem futile.
Taejun carefully touched the tip of Hae-yeong’s sleeping fingers. Like someone trying to confirm this wasn’t a dream, he stayed by her side for a long time, holding his breath.
It was near dawn, when bluish twilight began seeping through the thin curtains hanging by the window.
Hae-yeong, who had barely lifted her eyelids, was startled to discover Taejun sleeping leaning against the floor beside the bed in her drowsy consciousness and sat up in surprise.
Despite the bed’s soft texture, he was leaning against the hard floor with his head hanging down.
Gi Taejun was still a patient. Her heart stung sharply at his stubbornness in watching over her all night when he could barely take care of his own injured body.
It was rare to observe Taejun sleeping this closely. He was always armed with sharp bravado or pushed Hae-yeong away with cool smiles that revealed nothing of his inner thoughts.
Hae-yeong completely forgot that she should wake him up and examined one by one the remnants of dawn that had settled on his sculpture-like face.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————