Chapter 18.2

Feeling nauseous at the disgusting smell, Yoo-hwa, who had gotten up, staggered and fell to the floor again. Her hands and feet were tied. Then, she made eye contact with the man who was leaning against the door with his arms crossed.

At that moment, she turned pale, to the point that she wondered if the smell of blood that filled the house had come from her body.

“Fucking bitch.”

Kim Beom-sik smiled brightly, not matching his words.

“It was so difficult to see you that I thought I was losing my mind. Hm?”

Kim Beom-sik cursed, holding the waist of his pants and tilting his head. Seeing Yoo-hwa stiffening, he slowly opened the closet door. He began to say things she didn’t even ask.

“As soon as I saw you, I thought, ‘ah, this is it’. My hands were itching. Since I have a son, I’ve been enduring it for many years. That’s why you’re the bad girl. Why do you have eyes that provoke people like that? While I was thinking about whether I should kill you first or last, I saw that your mom was very useful. That’s why I let it go. If you died, your mom would kick the bucket too.”

As Beom-sik tilted his head, she saw his red, bloodshot eyes. It was the eyes of a madman. As if he could do anything right now.

“But that bitch found it first? My thing?”

“…”

He rummaged through the empty closet like a madman and let out a low laugh.

“Hm? Because she took my thing! And saw it! And let the cops take it! Hm?”

Bang! Bang!

Soon after, Beom-sik struck the empty closet with his fists like crazy. She heard a cracking sound coming from the old closet. After repeatedly laughing and getting angry like a madman, Beom-sik turned his head.

“My thing! Because that bitch took it! It’s all gone! All of it!”

Jumping from his seat, Beom-sik let out a thunderous yell. Yoo-hwa got goosebumps when she realized that it was the underwear the police were talking about.

Beom-sik approached her with red eyes. She knew she had to run away, but she couldn’t move because she was tied up. She couldn’t run, nor did she have any place to run to.

Beom-sik, who was suddenly right in front of her, clasped Yoo-hwa’s neck with one hand.

“Do you want to see your mother?”

“…”

“I’ll let you see her.”

His provoking voice struck her nerves. Her mother’s face, telling her to run away, and even her appearance, holding onto Beom-sik’s leg.

She only dreamed of love, so why did her mother have to end up like that?

She burst into tears in an instant.

Yoo-hwa squirmed like a crazy person to remove Beom-sik’s hand. The more she squirmed like a crazy person, the more his hand groped her. Yoo-hwa closed her eyes tightly and tried to scream.

She never wanted to live. But she didn’t want to die like this. She just had to properly finish the statement about her mother’s case. She did the best she could with that resolve.

The more she did so, the lower Beom-sik laughed. Amid her confusion, she heard him say, ‘You feel good.’

Crazy bastard.

With tears in her eyes, Yoo-hwa inwardly spat out all kinds of curse words. He regarded her struggle to live as nothing but a fish in a fishing hole.

Beom-sik strangled Yoo-hwa with one hand and fumbled around her legs with the other to take off her pants. She knew what he wanted. Kim Beom-sik was looking for his own trophy.

The anger and desperation to use all her might did not work at all. Her throat tightened. She was choking. She started losing consciousness and repeated a cycle of hearing and not being able to hear Beom-sik’s voice. Her like sank more and more into a deep hole. Meaningless tears continued to flow from her eyes.

It was a life that had never been the way she wanted it to be. Neither the beginning, nor the middle, nor the end. It was worthless.

Why… Why was she so unhappy until the end?

After the sorrow and anguish, resignation and renunciation flowed in.

She’d rather die like this.

All her senses grew dull, and her body subsided. Yoo-hwa’s rebelling movement stopped in an instant. At that moment, air rushed in, surprisingly. Yoo-hwa coughed, dumbfounded. She felt suffocated because the tape covering her mouth didn’t let her breathe out.

Yoo-hwa blinked, lying down at an angle. As tears flowed down, her vision became clearer.

Beom-sik was lying on the floor, in the same direction as she was. His face was red because he was straining, and he was holding a knife that was stuck on his side with trembling hands. A pale-faced Yi-woon was standing next to him. He looked alternatively between Beom-sik and Yoo-hwa while shaking his bloody hands.

“… Noona.”

Yi-woon, who had been standing still, looked at Yoo-hwa as if it was a dream, and suddenly ran towards her. Then, he took the tape off Yoo-hwa’s mouth. The fishy smell of blood rushed into her nose.