LLU 67

Every time my pulse pounded, thump, thump, hot blood surged and gushed out. He crossed his arms and pulled off his indoor top. The force with which he pressed the tightly balled-up cloth against his chest was like a rock.

A slightly sharper pain than what I had felt earlier wrapped around my body. The injured area felt as though it were burning up.

And yet, the overflowing exhilaration heightened me. The euphoria that filled my entire body to the point of bursting overpowered the pain.

I wanted him to feel helplessness as he watched the body that Choi Junghan had been so obsessed with getting destroyed right in front of his eyes. I wanted him to feel anger, a sense of loss, and regret. Just like when I lost one by one the things I cherished right before my eyes, Choi Junghan had to feel the exact same emotions I had felt.

In the darkness, Choi Junghan’s gleaming eyes were completely out of his mind. The eyes I had always thought looked like preserved reptiles seemed incapable of absorbing any emotion. Yet in those eyes of Choi Junghan, for the first time, countless emotions were swirling like a vortex. Like a huge, living, breathing waterfall.

“Open your eyes. Fuck, I said open your eyes. Pioon!”

Every time he shouted in a voice that had lost all reason, my chest throbbed with ecstasy. Bright red blood poured out in surges like a festival, soaking between Choi Junghan’s fingers. Pure white exhilaration surged wildly before my eyes. Without realizing it, laughter kept spilling out of me.

I’m really… going insane.

A calm realization followed. And yet, within my gradually blurring vision, I could not stop myself from smiling at the Choi Junghan reflected there.

Choi Junghan, having lost all his usual composure, was a completely different person from normal. Looking at his disheveled hair and his face covered in blood, I squeezed out my last strength and raised my blood-stained hand. I stroked his cheek and parted my lips.

Until I completely break you, I will not stop.

The moment I barely finished those last words, all strength drained completely from my hand. But before my hand could reach the floor, Choi Junghan’s hand snatched mine. The hand that had been corpse-cold until now felt unusually hot, unlike his usual self.

Countless sounds of footsteps. It was the sound of the bodyguards stationed outside bursting in. And the endless calls of my name filled my ears.

It’s noisy. I want to sleep. I tried to cover my ears to escape the noise surrounding me, but I did not have the strength to move even one finger.

Then at some point all the sounds cut off. Instead, a familiar scale quietly rang in my ears. The sound of a chilling lullaby. It was Choi Junghan’s voice putting me to sleep.

I gladly accepted that hallucination. The pitch-black storm subsided. Only then could I finally let go of everything and fall into a deep sleep.

At some point my eyelids slowly opened.

The ceiling felt strangely familiar. This was definitely not Choi Junghan’s house.

Then where had I seen this… I thought with a hazy mind. The first thing that came to mind was the house where I lived with my mom.

…No, it wasn’t. There were no water stains from leaks on the ceiling. Come to think of it, my house burned down… A sorrowful realization followed.

Then is it the ceiling at Kim Junwoo’s house. No. That one was similar to my house too. Then this place is…

A dry, rasping laugh escaped me. It was because I realized this was the psychiatric hospital where I had been forcibly admitted right after the shareholders’ meeting.

Funnily enough, I was rummaging through old, stale memories. Not in the sense that a long physical time had passed. It was because some solid wall had completely severed the history I had lived, making it impossible to ever return there. Since it would now exist only in my memories forever, it felt even more distant.

Why was I groping through memories that had long since gathered dust and faded like old photographs, when the answer was right there nearby. I felt pathetic and foolish for doing so.

And I felt sad.

“You’re awake?”

A low voice came from the side. Actually, I had already known he was next to me even before turning my head. I had just consciously ignored it.

I slowly turned my gaze.

“The bleeding was quite severe. They had to put in a lot of stitches too. They said there would be a scar on your chest.”

“…I don’t care.”

A hoarse voice came out. When I squinted, he held out a cup of water with a straw in it, his face expressionless. After swallowing a couple of sips, I closed my eyes again. I was trying to ignore Choi Junghan’s presence and go back to sleep when he tossed out a remark.

“Pioon.”

“…….”

“Why do you go this far?”

It was an empty tone. What remained after the whirlwind passed was only emptiness. There was no sign that Choi Junghan was trying to reproach me or mock me. He was genuinely, purely curious.

The image of Choi Junghan shouting at me to open my eyes with madness gleaming in his eyes felt like a dream. If it weren’t for the throbbing pain in my chest, I might have believed it really was. The gap between the last remembered image of Choi Junghan and his current appearance was that severe.

“Then what about you.”

I asked in a cracked voice.

“Why did you.”

“…….”

“Make me like this?”

It was what I had truly felt right before losing consciousness. The sharp realization that I was really going insane. It was a completely different feeling from when I had pretended in order to deceive Choi Junghan.

The me who could not contain my joy as I slashed my own chest with a knife was not the me acting to break Choi Junghan—it was the real “me.”

Choi Junghan had taken everything from me. He took my friends, my family, my future, restrained my body and restricted my freedom. And that wasn’t enough—he was slowly killing my mind too. By slashing my own body with a knife and looking into Choi Junghan’s crumbling eyes, I made him writhe in true ecstasy.

So the one who should be asking the question was not him, but me. I wanted to hear the reason from him.

“Because I wanted to possess you.”

His unmoving voice affirmed it.

“Isn’t it natural to want to break something pretty and possess it when you see it. So I just possessed it.”

…Ha. A deep sigh burst from within me. The empty breath that escaped me crumbled like the dried-out, long-dead empty shell of a snail.

“So, are you satisfied? Does it feel good to possess me by turning me into this wreck?”

I no longer expected anything from him. There was no way Choi Junghan would give me a normal answer just because I asked.

Even so, I asked him as if grumbling, as if lamenting. Because in this place I had reached after crashing and breaking over and over, the one who was with the current me was ultimately Choi Junghan. He was the one responsible for making me this way, and the one who should be held accountable for whatever came next.

Because this man held my past, my present, and my near future in his grasp.

“You and I are not finished. This wretched connection will only end when one of us dies.”

“Oon-ah. How do you think I would take those words.”

Choi Junghan replied in a soft voice to the words I spat out as if fed up.

“You promised me a lifetime yourself… How could I not be ecstatic to the point I can’t stand it.”

I was at a loss for words. I shot him a contemptuous glare, then gave up everything and looked away.

Every time I moved, the wound on my chest throbbed and stung. When I faintly frowned, Choi Junghan immediately reached out. I slapped away the hand that was trying to check the wound with a sharp smack. Paying no attention to my action, he lifted the blanket again and tended to the wound.

“I wasn’t joking when I said I wouldn’t stop until you die.”

My voice kept getting choked.

“You and I will ultimately ruin each other. …No, we’re already sufficiently ruined.”

“…….”

“You’ll only regret it after losing everything. I can’t give you anything. Forcibly breaking and possessing someone like me… in the end, you’ll regret it.”

Choi Junghan slowly withdrew the hand that had been checking my wound and covering me with the blanket. As always, no emotion rose on the face staring straight at me.

The reason he looked slightly different from usual was probably because the man who always maintained an impeccable appearance was sitting beside me completely disarmed.

Dressed exactly as he had been at home in training clothes. Hair disheveled and covering his forehead. No watch, no shoes, just bandages wrapped around his ankle. As far as I knew, Choi Junghan had never gone outside looking like this.

Separate from the throbbing pain of the wound, my chest—firmly covered with bandages—was being maintained intact. In contrast, the bandage wrapped around Choi Junghan’s ankle was stained red. I stared blankly at his ankle, where bleeding had not even properly stopped, and said nothing.

“I’m sorry, but. I don’t know those kinds of emotions, Oon-ah.”

Choi Junghan said in a tone that was not sorry at all.

“I’ve never regretted any decision I’ve made so far. And I don’t plan to in the future either.”

“…….”

“So just accept it. Oon-ah. We were good together, weren’t we.”

A hollow laugh burst out. I shook off his large hand holding mine and glared at him.

“Did you have a dream or something? What nonsense is that. When were you and I ever good together, exactly.”

“You relied only on me. Every day you knelt and craved my love, you could only eat and sleep after receiving my care, you couldn’t stand to be apart from me even for a moment… Back then, I really liked it.”

He looked like someone high on drugs. Choi Junghan, making an expression that was truly ecstatic, was probably feeling an emotion he had experienced hundreds or thousands of times by then, but he was not in his right mind.

“Maybe for you. Not for me. There was never a single moment when it wasn’t hell for me.”

“Think back. Oon-ah. Really not even a single moment?”

“…What nonsense are you talking about.”

“Was there never even once when you thought it would be easier to just love me like this?”

Choi Junghan asked back in a gentle tone. The moment I was about to snap back with venom at his confident question, my words suddenly stopped.

Because certain moments flashed before me like a panorama. The image of Choi Junghan gently embracing me when I had fallen to the absolute bottom of the bottom. His voice humming a lullaby by my ear until I fell asleep while I fussed and screamed.

The touch of the hands that held me like a child and put me to sleep was something I had never felt even from the mother who raised me. Even if it was all a pretense, because Choi Junghan accepted and embraced my completely broken self without any conditions, I had to feel confusion for countless nights and days.

Why do you do this to me.

But I could not acknowledge any of the confusion that stemmed from that. I had to deny it. I could not even afford to feel confusion.

Who was the one who broke me. Who was the one who left me all alone. To sweetly accept his warmth as comfort while I was alone in that terribly high castle… wouldn’t that be showing absolutely no respect for myself as a person…

“Are you crazy? It was all just a trick to screw you over.”

“…….”

“Don’t attach the word love to it. You don’t even know what it is.”

I glared at him with all my strength. I deliberately emphasized each and every word as I said it. Yet the gaze with which Choi Junghan took in those words did not waver in the slightest.

If only Choi Junghan had been hurt by those words of mine. If he had shown even the slightest sign of it, perhaps the tiniest ripple would have stirred in my feelings toward him.

But there was no time to dwell on that sudden question. Choi Junghan was far too devoid of emotion to fake such a thing, and my hatred toward him was far too deep.

Choi Junghan does not get hurt by anything I say. And I do not have even the tiniest crack to give to such a Choi Junghan.

This was our current reality. And it was the future of the two of us that would never change even a little going forward.

“Oon-ah. The truth isn’t anything special. The moment you believe it’s the truth, it becomes the truth. All belief starts from there.”

Choi Junghan said that and gently stroked my head.