LLU 62

Upon entering this place, even while knowing it was prejudice, I could not help but imagine quite intense and violent treatments—being tied up all day, receiving electroshock therapy, things like that—but in reality, the counseling and treatments conducted here were almost entirely perfunctory.

Since even the medical staff had no real will to treat me, I also had nothing to spill to them. Because of that, I could only become more and more convinced. My hospitalization was merely to deceive the media.

Choi Junghan came to visit every single day. On some days, he even stopped by twice. He would come early in the morning to see me before heading to work, and then he would faithfully come straight here after work.

During the daytime when he was absent, I made sure to watch the television news without fail. For the first day or two after admission, the phrase “CM Electronics shareholders’ meeting” noisily dominated the headlines, but starting from the next day, I could no longer find any news with the same content.

They must have enjoyed it enough and moved on to damage control. With an unfeeling face, I thought that. In any case, what I had done was not something I committed while expecting Choi Junghan and his company to collapse right away.

If I could just draw the world’s filthy attention and bother him even for a little while, that would be enough for me. As long as Choi Junghan did not kill me, there would be many days left to live.

The one thing that worried me was… the safety of my mother and the baby.

Choi Junghan had accepted the chaos I caused with joy and thrill—but to assert definitively, the person who should be in here is him, not me—so Chairman Choi would surely not feel the same. In fact, Choi Junghan had casually mentioned in passing that Chairman Choi’s blood pressure had risen so severely that he almost collapsed.

Even so, I could not bring myself to ask outright.

…What about my mother?

Because when I planned and carried out this act, my mother was already absent from my heart. Because my mother had turned away from me when I first fell into the mud. Because my mother abandoned her long-time family—me—and chose a new family, I too abandoned her.

Therefore, I have neither the right nor the obligation to worry about my mother’s well-being…

“What are you thinking about so deeply?”

Click, the door opened. Choi Junghan, dressed impeccably in a suit, stepped inside.

It could only have been around six o’clock. He must be extremely busy with company matters, so I had no idea why he kept forcing himself to come at such an early hour like this.

Moreover, he was holding an armful of flowers. The exuberantly blooming bouquet of red roses was so large and splendid that it filled Choi Junghan’s tall frame completely. Looking at something that matched neither the situation nor the location at all, I asked.

“…What is that.”

“Hm, as you can see, roses.”

“That is not what I am asking. Why on earth did you bring flowers?”

The gentle smile that curved his lips was unsettlingly clear.

“Just because. As a reward for you confessing to me, and as a discharge gift.”

“…You said in a week.”

“Five days was too long. It’s enough now.”

After placing the bouquet on the table, he came closer and stroked my hair.

“Time to go home now, Oon-ah.”

All the assumptions I had made while blankly staring outside for several days became completely useless. That he would throw me into a facility I could never return from, or that he would kill me.

The worst assumption I had hidden inside because I lacked the courage to voice it eventually became reality through Choi Junghan’s voice. At the same time, the question I had mulled over for months came along with it.

“Why don’t you discard me?”

At my question, Choi Junghan raised an eyebrow slightly.

“Why would I discard you?”

“I ruined your company. Your image, everything your father built up.”

“I told you. I didn’t build it so shoddily that it would collapse from one little show.”

“I deceived you. For months.”

“Ahh, that.”

Choi Junghan gave a faint smile.

“Yes, it was quite regrettable that the obedient, completely dependent version of you… was all an act. But someday I’ll get to see that side of you again.”

“Never, even in death. It was all lies.”

“Separate from that, I was genuinely impressed. To fool me so perfectly—truly remarkable.”

“Honestly, aren’t you sick of doing this with me? Aren’t you disgusted? Isn’t that right?”

My voice trembled with contempt.

“Why go this far? If you’re just doing this for fun, isn’t it too much trouble? Someone like you must have plenty of people clinging to you besides me. So why, why on earth me….”

An incomprehensible, enormous numbness rushed in and blocked my throat. Biting my lips, I turned my trembling gaze toward Choi Junghan. Toward him, who was holding something utterly incongruous between us.

In the time I desperately struggled to deceive Choi Junghan and to deceive myself, I received his touch countless times.

He tightly embraced me as I gasped, lost focus in my eyes, and thrashed about; he soothed the flesh torn by my nails; he patted my chest and sang lullabies until the night turned white.

With the single-minded determination to ruin Choi Junghan, I deceived him for months and even crawled into his office. The words I whispered while pinned beneath him on the desk, gasping; the way I sweetly accepted his kisses like a lover—all of it was false. Every single bit was false. And I made him realize that fact in the worst possible way.

Yet why on earth does Choi Junghan not discard me? As days and nights repeated endlessly, I wanted to ask countless times.

Why. Why. Why. Why on earth.

Why do you go this far for a mere toy? Why go this far for mere amusement? For a mere sex doll, why go this far?

What am I that you go this far?

Why, why on earth do you go this far…?

“…Are you in love with me or something?”

The first time I spat it out of curiosity, the second time to mock him.

And now I am asking it for the last time. To despise Choi Junghan.

He must mock me here again, talking about my great fortune like last time. Only then can I—only then can this heart pounding as if it will explode without reason—not burst. Only then can I somehow cool my heart and plot once more to kill him in revenge.

Choi Junghan had shown great exhilaration about me discussing love in front of a crowd. But that was merely his sinister possessiveness and bizarre kink—nothing more. Choi Junghan had simply found amusement in the fact that I stabbed him in the back in front of so many people.

However.

Choi Junghan did not mock me. He did not even sneer. After staring at me for a long time with pitch-black eyes devoid of emotion, he slowly rolled his eyes as if calculating something, like a robot, and then,

“I love you.”

He clearly said that.

“…What?”

“You seem to have a tendency to obsess over those words lately.”

He replied without expression.

“If you’re asking because you said it to me and now want the same thing returned, then yes. Gladly.”

Choi Junghan took one step closer to me. The rose bouquet he held violently filled my vision as it approached.

“I love you.”

“…Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”

“I love you, Oon-ah.”

“Stop it, you fucking bastard!”

I could not endure it. I could endure no longer. The rage that had not risen even when I was trapped here like an animal in a cage finally exploded inside my chest.

I sprang up in one motion. I snatched the bouquet from the arms of Choi Junghan who had come close to me as if tearing it away. Screaming, I hurled the bouquet to the floor. I trampled the red, luscious blooms, grabbed handfuls of stems and ripped them out to fling aside, tore every petal I could grasp to shreds and threw them toward him.

In this crazy bastard’s hospital, no one comes even when I scream like this. It is not a hospital—it is merely a prison. Unless Choi Junghan permits it, that door will never open.

Knowing that, I screamed even more fiercely. Amid the thick fragrance that filled the surroundings to the point of dizziness, covered in scattering petals, I desperately howled and howled my existence.

A stinging sensation in my fingers, then blood appeared. The pain from being scratched by thorns ignited a fire in my chest. That feeling was thrilling. The fact that I was getting hurt by the thorns of the flowers Choi Junghan bought for me felt so good it made my heart race. I could finally feel the mind that had pretended to be mad finally going mad.

But soon Choi Junghan’s hand approached. He forcibly opened my palm that tightly gripped the thorns. When he took the rose from my hand and threw it away, the detached red petals fluttered chaotically in front of my eyes. He brought my bleeding palm to his own mouth.

“I love you. Oon-ah. I love you.”

He murmured, lips moving stained with my blood. The moment our eyes met, chills ran through me. Even the eyes of someone freshly dead would hold more warmth than his.

In his eyes, emotions could not settle and swirled like a vortex on the surface. What finally took hold was not anger nor love but raw savagery. And chaos. The smooth smile hanging at his lips was utterly discordant with his gaze. It was like a monster imitating a human.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“Stop! Shut your mouth, you fucking son of a bitch!”

“I love you. I love you, Oon-ah.”

Repeating it like someone who knew no other words, he pushed me down onto the bed. Climbing on top of my thrashing, screaming body, he lifted the loose patient gown.

My desperately resisting hands and his hands trying to subdue me tangled briefly, but soon his prevailed. Buttons popped off and rolled across the floor.

“Crazy bastard. What the hell, what the hell are you doing!”

In an instant my bare chest was exposed. My wrists, firmly pinned beneath Choi Junghan’s grip, could exert no strength at all. I tried raising my thighs and waist with all my might, but under his incomparably larger frame, all my movements were futile.

My defenselessly stripped body was dyed in the bluish air of dawn. My chest heaved anxiously. When I looked up, Choi Junghan’s eyes showed not the slightest wavering even as he did this.