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Chapter 10
The shaman prepared the marriage papers as though she were truly arranging a wedding ceremony.
She decorated the bridal chamber with flowers and plastered sheets of paper covered in mysterious red writing all over the walls.
Soon, she lit incense.
The smoke burned away in an instant, filling the small room.
Then the shaman crouched down and began drawing something on the floor with a red dye-like substance.
The pattern was strange and chilling.
The metallic scent resembled blood.
Soon, the shaman straightened her bent back and turned to Hongsi.
“Please step over here, Cheonin.”
Clutching the hem of her pure white dress tightly, Hongsi stepped into the center of the pattern the shaman had drawn moments earlier.
The instant she stood in the middle, something cold and unpleasant brushed against her skin.
“Then we shall begin.”
At the shaman’s instruction, Hongsi knelt down and closed her eyes.
That was when the loud ringing of bells began.
The shaman danced.
Please…
You can take my life instead,
Hongsi prayed to every god she could think of.
Please save Taesan.
I’ll do anything, so please don’t take him away.
If, as the shaman said, Taesan’s mother was trying to drag him away, then take me instead and let him go.
She begged and begged.
Time passed quickly before she realized it.
The sound of the bells and the shaman’s cries only grew more intense.
The shaman danced around Hongsi in circles, leaping wildly as sweat poured down her brow.
Sweat had formed on Hongsi’s forehead as well.
Then suddenly, the shaman, who had been running about frantically, snapped her eyes open.
At the same time, someone burst the door open.
“Hongsi!”
At Jung Heeyoung’s cry, Hongsi’s eyes flew open.
“Taesan woke up!”
She didn’t even know how she managed to run there.
All Hongsi could think about was seeing him awake with her own eyes, so she sprinted barefoot down the hospital hallway without noticing.
When she reached the very last hospital room, Hongsi flung the door open.
Slide!
She looked ready to rush in immediately, but suddenly froze.
Taesan sat on the bed, bathed in the pouring sunlight.
He had always styled his hair perfectly with pomade without a single strand out of place, but now his bangs fell naturally over his forehead like a prince from an old fairy tale.
Taesan turned his head and looked at Hongsi. Dust floated through the sunlight, sparkling softly.
Between those drifting particles, his pitch-black eyes stared directly at her.
His expression revealed nothing, yet there was a faint trace of affection in it.
The corners of his lips lifted loosely.
“You should come over here.”
With a playful twitch of one eyebrow, he beckoned her closer.
Why wouldn’t her feet move?
It felt as though they had been glued to the floor.
Something hot rose up her throat.
“Come here.”
“Hic…!”
The moment he spoke again, tears burst forth, and Hongsi ran into his arms like a child.
Taesan’s eyes widened slightly at the sudden impact of her small body.
Soon, he chuckled softly and gently stroked her back.
Hongsi cried even harder.
He was reminded of the old Hongsi, who used to burst into tears over the smallest things, yet at the same time his heart ached.
While he had been unconscious, he could only imagine how terrified she must have been.
Trying to stop her crying, Taesan spoke teasingly.
“Did I die or something?”
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.
Hongsi jerked her head up, glaring fiercely at him.
Judging by those sharp triangular eyes, she looked ready to sulk for at least three days.
“Why would you say something like that?!”
“It’s a joke, a joke.”
Realizing he’d stepped into dangerous territory, Taesan hurried to soothe her.
“Then why are you crying like the sky’s falling over someone who’s supposedly dead? Your crying face is ugly.”
Of course, that only made Hongsi even angrier.
Telling her to stop being mad, Taesan playfully pinched her cheek.
“I want to see a pretty little brat face, not an ugly little brat face.”
Hongsi bit down hard on her lips and glared at him for continuing to joke around.
“Were you that worried?”
“No. Not at all. Because…”
Swallowing back the tears threatening to rise again, Hongsi answered,
“Because you’re Taesan. A huge mountain.”
Taesan smirked.
“Correct answer.”
His large hand settled atop her head.
She had missed his living breath, his touch, so desperately that the joy only hurt more.
Tears welled up in Hongsi’s eyes once again.
As Taesan wiped them away with his thumb, he murmured quietly,
“My life’s too stubborn for me to die. And how could I die when I’ve got someone trailing after me everywhere I go?”
“You should stop treating your future wife like a child. It doesn’t look good in front of others.”
At the sudden interruption, Hongsi and Taesan turned around.
Chairman Kang entered the room, supported by Jung Heeyoung.
Hongsi hurriedly wiped away her tears and stood up.
Taesan stared at Chairman Kang with a hardened expression before asking,
“What are you talking about?”
Hongsi swallowed dryly.
It felt as though a heavy stone had settled in her chest, like she’d committed some terrible crime.
At the time, all she could think about was saving Taesan, but now she finally began to fear how he would react.
She was terrified of how he would accept this situation.
She knew she had to explain, yet the words wouldn’t come out.
Chairman Kang seemed much the same.
At that moment, unable to bear the silence any longer, Heeyoung stepped in on behalf of both Hongsi and Chairman Kang.
“Taesan, you see…”
But before she could properly continue, Taesan let out a laugh.
Looking utterly dumbfounded, yet also genuinely concerned, he turned toward Chairman Kang.
“Grandfather, did you get sick while I was unconscious or something? Why are you making such horrifying jokes?”
The wrinkled cheek of Chairman Kang twitched.
He brushed Heeyoung aside and stepped forward with the support of his cane.
“Hongsi is your wife from now on.”
“I’m asking why you’re joking like that to your grandson who just woke up.”
Taesan kept laughing in disbelief.
“Hongsi, my wife? Are you saying I somehow had a wedding without even knowing it?”
“You did.”
Taesan’s eyebrow twitched.
Carefully gauging the atmosphere, Jung Heeyoung spoke again.
“Taesan, thankfully, the Cheonin we’d been searching for turned out to be Hongsi. She stepped forward to save you, and while you were unconscious, the two of you exchanged marriage vows. Thanks to that, you woke up. They said you’re no longer in danger now…”
“Hongsi.”
Taesan’s icy gaze dropped onto her like a blade.
Hongsi flinched under the cold stare.
Whenever he looked at her before, there had always been affection in his eyes. But today, they were frighteningly cold.
“Tell me yourself.”
Every time his suppressed voice reached her ears, her tightly clasped hands trembled.
“Is that ridiculous nonsense actually true?”
Please say it isn’t.
His glaring stare said exactly that.
If she told the truth, that already cold face would probably freeze over completely.
He might never look at her again.
But Hongsi couldn’t lie.
“It’s true.”
Everything she did had been to save him.
And because of that, Hongsi stood firm.
“I… became your bride yesterday, oppa—”
Taesan turned his head away.
The determination she’d tried so hard to hold onto by convincing herself it had all been for him crashed to the ground in an instant.
This was the first time he had ever turned away from her.
So this was what it felt like.
To be shut out by him.
Taesan, completely ignoring Hongsi’s pale face, erupted in fury.
“I thought I told you to stop saying that insane bullshit in front of me.”
His anger froze the room in an instant, leaving no one able to speak.
“I told you not to play along with that crazy nonsense. Not now, not ever. So stop dragging innocent kids into it too. Understood?”
“No!”
Screeeech!
Even now, Taesan vividly remembered the accident from that summer day when he was ten years old.
The acrid smell of smoke.
The metallic stench of blood.
His mother and father lying there covered in blood, eyes wide open and lifeless.
Those memories still gnawed away at him.
Even so, he wanted to live.
He struggled desperately to survive, but from some point onward, absurd accidents started happening.
The ground collapsing beneath his feet on an ordinary street. A sign suddenly falling and injuring him.
Things that made absolutely no sense.
At first, they seemed like coincidences, but after the accidents kept repeating, he eventually ended up hospitalized.
That was when his stepmother, Jung Heeyoung, stepped in and convinced Chairman Kang to bring over a shaman she claimed to know well.
“He’s being clung to viciously. She’s stubbornly trying to drag her own child away with her, which is why these accidents keep happening. If things continue like this, he’ll follow his mother to the grave.”
The shaman chattered on smoothly with her heavily painted lips.
She claimed his dead mother was trying to kill him and take him away.
“He must find a Cheonin. Someone who can suppress this evil and sever his mother’s vengeful spirit. He must find her before he turns thirty.”
It was utter madness.
Naturally, Taesan laughed right in their faces and ignored it.
But the accidents kept happening, and Chairman Kang eventually started searching all over Korea for a bride as soon as Taesan turned twenty, just as the shaman had instructed.
How hard had Taesan worked to avoid that absurd fate? To prove that he could live just fine without any of it?
And yet after suffering the worst accident of his life and waking up, they told him he now had a bride.
And not just anyone—
Hongsi, the scruffy little brat he had practically raised himself.
Ridiculous.
How could Hongsi possibly be his bride?
There could be nothing crazier than that.
Yes. That was definitely what he thought…
Hongsi suddenly pressed a kiss against his lips.
Taesan’s eyes widened at the soft warmth of her lips.
“I’m ready now, oppa.”
He had intended to scare off the audacious Hongsi who had broken into his home and boldly declared she would become his bride.
But Hongsi wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself even closer.
The sweetness and softness of her body felt enough to melt his brain, and heat instantly pooled low in his body.
“…Then try handling it.”
Taesan immediately captured Hongsi’s lips in a kiss.
