Vol 6 Ch 5

Water droplets occasionally dripped from Kwon Taeha’s half-damp hair. The elegant lines of his face and the finely sculpted features within were in perfect harmony. The lingering sweetness of wine still seemed to float in the air, though it must have been my imagination.

This man, the heir of STA Corporation, who seemed to have everything in the world, had a past that didn’t suit him. And in contrast, I had nothing at all—except a body that had somehow managed to catch his interest. Ah, I realized too late—the sweet scent of wine wasn’t from the air. It was rising from the lower half of my body. The stickiness of the wine dried into my pants had long since stopped registering.

If I let Kwon Taeha play with me as he pleased from now on, would I just become that naive Joo Hawon who stayed with Baek Hyunseok in a hotel again? Even though I was someone completely different now?

Taeha must have just finished a cold shower. A faint chill still clung to him as he sat silently watching me. I was perched on the edge of the bed, and he sat a little apart on the sofa. Whatever emotional turbulence had stirred inside him earlier had apparently been washed away down the drain—he had returned to the Kwon Taeha I knew all too well.

“When I looked back on everything… I just started thinking that must’ve been it.”

His gaze landed on my lips.

“He probably wanted to get revenge on me, the child, in front of my father. But that became impossible…”

I avoided his eyes.

“Still, I doubt he wanted to let things end blandly. He had to get that anger out somehow, but nothing ordinary would satisfy him. And it would’ve been a waste to destroy me too easily…”

“What are you trying to say?”

When I spoke in slow, roundabout ways, he demanded the core of it.

“Originally, the loan shark was going to sell me into prostitution. But someone must’ve told him not to—told him not to deal with me like that. I kept wondering… why? And then there was that bastard Oh Woosung, who hated me for no reason… But when I really thought about it, maybe it was because I was the only one getting special treatment. That’s probably why he couldn’t stand me.”

I lifted my gaze to look at Kwon Taeha.

“That bastard didn’t realize it wasn’t a favor. He never will… But you knew, didn’t you?”

I couldn’t tell what Kwon Taeha was thinking behind those gray-blue eyes. I couldn’t understand why I felt so disgusted.

“Did you order them not to send me to the brothel?”

No ripple crossed Taeha’s expression. He didn’t deny it, and that hollowed me out.

“You knew that the debt was impossible for an ordinary person to repay. And still, you made me repay it. Was your plan all along to drag me back into the gutter the moment I barely clawed my way out? Over more than ten years?”

This was something unspoken. Even if I suspected it, it was a question I should never have voiced. On the surface, our relationship looked like give-and-take, but at some point, I’d stopped receiving anything, and he’d stopped giving. Everything had settled into a state of zero. Because Kwon Taeha had changed. Even if I gave him WikiLeaks, he wouldn’t set me free. And if I didn’t give it to him, he wouldn’t let me go either.

Still, I held WikiLeaks. So he probably didn’t want that long-buried plan for revenge to be revealed. That would only deepen my resentment and drive our already-wrecked relationship even further into ruin.

“Is that the problem?”

“The problem…?”

“That I told the loan shark not to send you to the brothel? That I told him to slowly squeeze you just enough so you wouldn’t die?”

Suddenly, he was squeezing my heart. No—judging by the suffocating pressure, maybe it was my throat he was tightening.

“Was a bastard like that not allowed to have you?”

His words were cold, but my head was burning.

It had been over ten years since I started paying off the debt. I’d always been pessimistic, but I still clung to a small dream—maybe one day I’d start a seaweed farm. But if even that hope had been stolen from me, if there had been no escape, I would’ve either taken my own life or eventually been sold to a brothel and rotted away there.

At eighteen, Kwon Taeha had wanted me to suffer all my life and end up broken. And without WikiLeaks, that really would have happened.

I could’ve said everything. I could’ve told him all of it, and yet—I couldn’t get the words out. I wanted to be indifferent. I wanted to speak like nothing had hurt me, like I was untouched by it all. But my voice had already begun to crack.

I was this angry. And I felt you were nothing but cruel, Kwon Taeha. So how could you look at me like that, like nothing was wrong? Like nothing at all had happened?

“You gave it to me. That hundred million won—you handed it to me and pushed me toward him.”

He was the one who had said it. Said that the check placed on the casino table, worth a hundred million won, was the price Lee Kihyun had offered.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten you were the one who shoved me in Lee Kihyun’s direction? And now you’re saying you couldn’t bear the thought of me being with someone else?”

Even as I said it, it all felt absurd.

“If… if my father had left nothing behind, then you and I—”

We probably never would’ve stood face to face like this.

“So don’t act like you have feelings for me now. Whatever this half-baked emotion is—keep it to yourself. I don’t need to know.”

“So now that it’s too late to win you over, you’re saying I should give up on Wikileaks and just let you go….”

His jaw tightened. One way or another, it was Kwon Taeha who had bought my sex video from Aeil Kwon. It was that very video that had caused me so much grief, but thanks to Kwon Taeha, the leverage Aeil Kwon had over me was gone.

In the end, Aeil Kwon had practically traded Wikileaks for a head start on the Mega Float. Which meant I had no reason to keep my promise to him. Not that I’d ever intended to keep it in the first place. And Aeil Kwon never really believed I would, either. That’s probably why he used the video to pressure Kwon Taeha and got what he wanted through him.

Whatever his motive was, Kwon Taeha had suffered trillions in losses. So he’d come for Wikileaks—and if he wanted it that badly, I didn’t see a reason not to give it to him.

If he insisted on opening the box I’d sealed shut, then fine. I wouldn’t stop him anymore.

“No… that’s enough. If you want it, take it. I’m too small, too pathetic to join your game with just that. I’m not planning to use it to hold anyone hostage, so maybe it’s only right I hand it over.”

If he took me to that meeting to make me feel small by talking about trillion-won business ventures, then he’d half succeeded. But he also managed to prod and jab at the tangled inferiority I’d wrapped around myself.

Aeil Kwon, Baek Hyunseok—they never saw me as an equal. To them, I was just Kwon Taeha’s lover. Difficult to touch carelessly because I was under his protection.

Well… maybe I had one more thing. I still had that classified information that could shake them. And even that was only safe because it was of interest to Kwon Taeha.

To those men, someone like me could be erased—just like that.

“So after I hand it over… are we just supposed to keep fucking until we get sick of each other?”

Silence followed, and he tapped lightly on the table. Maybe it was the damp hair, but he looked a bit worn out. I wasn’t the only one exhausted by this loop we kept spiraling through.

Then, in a rare moment, he actually frowned.

“I know. That you have every right to be angry. That it was forced. What happened today, too…”

Maybe he wasn’t used to expressing emotion, but now he seemed like someone who had decided to do it whenever he needed to—without hesitation.

Still, he never answered my question.

The day he finally lets me go… will be the day Kwon Taeha grows tired of me.

I decided to cut through the silence that stretched between us. I set aside the jumble of thoughts and steadied my breath.

“…There’s a condition for giving you Wikileaks. What you really want are the documents tied to TEX and STA, aren’t they?”

The steady tapping on the table slowed.

“Find my mother for me. Even if she’s dead, then at least her body. If you do that, you’ll be able to find it the same way my father did—from the bank.”

“I told you, if I can’t find her, that means she’s already dead.”

“I said, even just the body. I made that very clear.”

The deal I offered in exchange for Wikileaks was Kim Jaeyeon’s whereabouts.

Maybe he didn’t know it, but that was the final piece needed to complete the puzzle. And the one to open Pandora’s box—would be Kwon Taeha.

“Why do you… need Wikileaks that badly?”

You’re already ‘Big Brother’.

I didn’t need to say the rest.

He casually adjusted his sleeve and answered.

“I wanted to take down Felix. I didn’t really have anything against Aeil. Not at first.”

I brushed the crusty patch of wine off my pants.

“But you made me feel something. And now, I need Wikileaks more than ever. If I’m going to silence the main dealer who’s gone wild with it, I need to destroy it. If you run back to Aeil again, I’ll really lose my mind.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise.

Even his reason for wanting Wikileaks seemed twisted now.

If he took it from me, then I’d lose the last bit of leverage I had. Aeil and Baek Hyunseok had seen me as one of the crowd, but in the end, even Kwon Taeha wasn’t different. No—he was worse. He was trying to take the most selfish, absolute path.

He wanted me not as a Salome who could take his head, but as a Jillda—tossed aside after being used by the Duke of Mantua, yet still dying in his place.

He wanted me to be left with nothing, swayed only by him.

“President Kwon.”

He stopped at the doorway.

“…I know you had your reasons. Even if I don’t understand them, I can accept that you might’ve had your own feelings of revenge to act on.”

When he finally turned to look at me, his face was unreadable.

“And still… I felt betrayed. Strange, isn’t it?”

Maybe my expression looked strange too. Maybe he couldn’t understand a word of what I was saying.

But even so—I was reaching out. Telling him not to try to crush me or force me into obedience.

And I finally realized: the one more desperate than even him… was me.

Maybe it was just the suspicion. Just the faint, lingering thought that he might’ve been willing to destroy me for revenge—that made me resent him so deeply.

And maybe that’s why today, when I got my answer to that faint doubt, it felt like being thrown into a pit. My chest ached from the impact.

Even when I ate moldy bread between sneering men. Even when Oh Woosung spit in my face and called me a whore. Even when I thought about killing myself over and over, crushed by debt and loneliness.

You could have saved me at any moment.

And the reason that hurts now… is probably because I meant more to you than you thought.

He’d been ignoring his constantly buzzing phone, but now he glanced at the screen and then hung up.

I lowered my head—I was afraid he’d read what I was feeling.

His footsteps approached.

Then, after a beat of hesitation, he knelt in front of me.

He touched my wounded lip with his fingers. I stared only at the floor.

I was scared he’d reopen old wounds—but he didn’t. His touch was cautious, as if tracing my lips with permission he hadn’t dared to ask.

He wasn’t begging for affection like some man on his knees. But still, he handled my mouth with such gentle care, like someone asking if they were allowed to kiss.

“Truth is… that day, I wanted to say it.”

Between my ears, the ticking of the wall clock finally reached me—something I’d never heard before.

“You’re not a prostitute.”

He muttered bitterly to himself.

It felt like the halted gears had begun to turn again—or maybe they’d slipped out of alignment once more.