She immediately called someone on her phone. Tutu, tutu. As the ringing tone sounded, tears oddly fell drop by drop.
Two years of groaning misery melted away. Foolishness finally recognized its fault and knelt.
—What's with the call on a weekend?
"Chu-ja siiiii...! Hueuuu...!"
—What is it? Did you drink?
"What do I do...! The vegetative man might come to work at our hospital!"
'She must have dried poppy and done drugs.'
Like a confession, Yi-yeon's long, drawn-out story was worryingly incoherent. There was no such nonsense as that nonsense.
Chu-ja had rushed over with her makeup half-done. But she suddenly kept her distance.
Bloodshot eyes, a reddened nose bridge, lips swollen like a goldfish's. Because of Yi-yeon's appearance—heaping tissues on the table and blowing her nose loudly—with not a single thing worth learning from.
So let's summarize—
She witnessed a live burial, the murderer chased her, there was an accident, and someone became a vegetative state? And she just accepted that burden?
It wasn't taking out a huge loan for an extension, but shouldering a white elephant?
Chu-ja checked under the sofa first to see if Yi-yeon had hidden any liquor bottles.
"Chu-ja siiiii..."
But under the sofa was clean, and at the rare sight of Yi-yeon's tears, Chu-ja had no choice but to harden her face.
A child who didn't cry even when people threw stones at her. This really did look like she'd gotten caught up in something bad.
"If you saw a criminal, you should've just reported it to the police, what is this!"
"I couldn't help it."
"Heavens. This isn't a stray dog, I've lived and lived but never heard of someone bringing home a vegetative person! I knew from when that penniless girl was spraying nutritional supplements on the back mountain and being a sucker. But now a vegetative person! Truly impressive!"
Chu-ja sneered with veins standing out on her neck.
"Why are you telling me this now of all times!"
"Well..."
When Yi-yeon hesitated and couldn't say anything, Chu-ja felt her insides burn.
So Yi-yeon hadn't changed, past or present. No matter how long they'd known each other, she didn't easily open her heart. Only plants had managed to squeeze through that stubborn wall.
The girl who had grown up lonely all her life had parts that hadn't fully grown, and usually such children had weak roots.
Remembering this, Chu-ja's anger fizzled out as if it had been waiting. She slumped onto the sofa and muttered emptily.
"So you really were hiding a man."
"Not a man, a vegetative person..."
Yi-yeon wiped her eyes bit by bit with a tissue.
"So. What do you need me to help with."
"Chu-ja siiiii..."
When she started sobbing again, Chu-ja rubbed her knee for no reason.
"Skip the flattery."
"...First, I lied that I'm that person's wife."
"What?!"
When the one-sided eyeliner came right up to her nose, Yi-yeon flinched.
"This is crazy! You've lost your mind!"
Chu-ja slapped Yi-yeon's back hard with her rough hand. Then Yi-yeon bolted up from her seat and started a game of tag, circling around the table.
"He's someone who doesn't remember anything anyway! As soon as he woke up he pinned me down, I had to manage somehow!"
"Where in the world is there a secret that can be kept forever!"
"Chu-ja si really doesn't know. That man, he was burying a person on the left side, and had another bloody one stored on the right! He's exactly the kind who breaks human ethics just by brushing clothes!"
As if thinking about it again was horrifying, Yi-yeon gasped.
"And you just let yourself be dragged along when someone that scary woke up?"
"Aigo, you fool."
"I should have put a bridle on him when he didn't know anything. Especially on a beast like that."
Yi-yeon, who had stopped moving with both hands on her waist, looked stubborn. Her wet eyes were strangely glinting.
"I just want to get my daily life back as soon as possible."
That wasn't the look of a fool who had dumbly accepted a vegetative person.
"I've worked so hard to survive, to live, all this time."
Her voice trembled like a thin string. Chu-ja nodded as if she understood everything.
So Yi-yeon wasn't one to easily give up, however fearful she might be. Quiet, but wanting to grow long. So she had absolutely no intention of letting control of her life be taken away here.
"But later when he finds out everything, what will you do...!"
"We just need to catch the real culprit."
Chu-ja slightly furrowed her brows. The words seemed somehow subtly off.
"Then everything will go back to its place."
Her appearance, muttering with long hair hanging down like a virgin ghost, looked somehow gloomy for some reason.
The thought Yi-yeon was fixated on was all focused on that single action—the saw she had wielded, which might have contributed to making the man a vegetative person.
Everything started from there.
The power of the other side where self-defense didn't apply. Yi-yeon had already taken a solid hit from that, so she didn't want any more weaknesses caught.
So as long as she could live quietly while keeping Gwon Chae-u, she was willing to do anything. For him not to suspect this situation of a man and woman living in one house, and to handle Gwon Chae-u as she pleased, posing as a couple was the best option.
But in Chu-ja's eyes, that looked completely wrong.
'That can't be the answer.'
Yi-yeon didn't know how rapidly male-female relationships could ignite and twist, and thus how exhausting life could become. The important thing wasn't the relationship between perpetrator and victim, but the situation already bound as a man and woman.
"I don't know. I won't get involved."
"That's enough. Just treat me like a married woman."
Aigo, she's twisting her fate quite dramatically. Chu-ja pressed her temples.
Though the clueless Yi-yeon seemed unable to distinguish heaven and earth, to Chu-ja, whose husband had changed five times and who had worn mourning clothes three times, something kept rattling.
Leaving aside the question of whether that fellow was really a murderer as Yi-yeon said, whether he really lost his memory. What was most suspicious was the man's circumstances.
Why a son of a family that seemed to have both wealth and power was holed up in a rural corner instead of big hospitals in Seoul. Why a brother, not parents, was stepping forward.
"Yi-yeonssi?"
At that moment, an unfamiliar voice came from behind Chu-ja.
It was on a different level from the voices of old men who had lost elasticity and become rough. A resonance that made one involuntarily listen, like a thick wooden barrel with rich color, came from a human vocal cord. Chu-ja's head turned by itself as if someone had grabbed her by the hair.
She thought she'd been scammed into some multi-level marketing and brought back cheap jade flooring, but what is this.
A young man, fine as jade and beautiful as a flower, was coming down holding the second-floor railing.
If Yi-yeon had been faithful to her survival instinct, Chu-ja couldn't overcome another instinct.
"...Did my son-in-law arrive."
* * *
"This is my first time hearing of a tree hospital."
Gwon Chae-u slowly looked around the interior where there was no boundary between home and office.
Yi-yeon was restless, not used to seeing a man sitting squarely on her sofa, and Chu-ja examined Gwon Chae-u carefully like an interviewer.
She had decades of data from rolling in manure pits. Since learning physiognomy from a monk she liked in the old days, she had never been wrong about judging men.
But, he was burying people alive? A good man lost his clothes and wandered the mountains?
'He's incredibly handsome, can't even say.'
In his cold but proper impression, not a single deficient element could be found. His long, stretched eyes were more profound than cruel, and his pupils were intelligent like blooming fire. Moreover, a noble air resembling metal energy was flowing continuously. He was born with gold and an axe in both hands by nature.
'With that background, if he could only amount to being a mere murderer, that would be rather disappointing.'
At minimum, he should be in a position to manipulate countless people for it to be worth it. What he could do with an axe in hand was currently unknowable, but.
"Mother-in-law."
At that moment, Gwon Chae-u, who had lowered his gaze slightly, spoke softly. Whether the word that didn't stick to his tongue was unfamiliar, his lips were stiff.
"May I go over there? I want to sit next to Yi-yeonssi."
Chu-ja's luxurious eyelashes fluttered. She was rarely flustered, but somehow she missed the tempo to react. Yi-yeon also froze her body that she couldn't leave alone.
When the two women showed no reaction, Gwon Chae-u tilted his head as if urging them. That appearance was exactly like the silent pressure of 'How long do I have to wait,' so Yi-yeon quickly moved to the opposite sofa. Only then did a strange relief fill the man's eyes.
"Um, Gwon Chae-ussi. This person, Chu-ja ssi, is actually not my mother, but a hospital employee. We've known each other for about fifteen years, so she calls you son-in-law because she thinks of you affection...ately."
"Why do you call me by my full name?"
"Huh?"
"I'd like Yi-yeonssi to think of me affectionately too."
"..."
While Yi-yeon wandered through the conversation that didn't go as she pleased, Chu-ja silently touched her forehead. Whether because he lost his memory, his face, white as drawing paper, was focused solely on Yi-yeon. And Chu-ja couldn't help but be bothered by that.