The hand touching her belly trembled.
Hyuk Joo’s words, as hard as his piercing eyes, pierced her heart like a dagger.
It felt like a sharp knifetip was piercing the deepest part of her heart.
Mistakenly feeling as if Hyuk Joo’s words were attacking their unborn child, Eun Soo felt her blood vessels drain dry.
Cold sweat trickled down her back. She was choked by the penetrating pain. She couldn’t breathe properly.
This shouldn’t be happening.
Biting her lips, Eun Soo breathed in and out slowly and deeply, repeatedly.
“Eun Soo.”
Hyuk Joo called her name, brushing through her hair.
His hand, which had touched her head, slid down and softly cupped her cheek. Then he lifted her face to meet his gaze.
Eun Soo stared blankly at his hard gaze looking down at her.
No, it was more correct to say she was in shock.
Ever since she heard him say he didn’t marry her hoping for a child, Eun Soo hadn’t been in her right mind.
“Even if you had told the truth, nothing would have changed. So let’s put an end to this conversation.”
At his dry voice, Eun Soo’s eyes stung.
His indifferent gaze hiding the words he really wanted to say.
Don’t say things like let’s break up now that I’ve decided to cover up your lie.
Heartbroken, Eun Soo moved her lips.
She wanted to pour out to him why she was behaving this way. However, at his continuing words, she had to keep her mouth tightly shut.
“Don’t talk about breaking up anymore. I can’t tolerate you acting like this just because of that small thing, especially when we’ve been doing well till now.”
“……”
“I’ve let it slide. So it’s only right to end it here.”
Fury showed between his furrowed brows.
It seemed like a stern warning not to mess up this quiet relationship anymore.
“Rest. I’ll pick you up in the evening.”
Hyuk Joo spoke as he loosened his necktie knot with his hand. His actions seemed to suggest not to add more to his exhaustion. At this, Eun Soo tightly closed her eyes.
The sound of Hyuk Joo’s footsteps walking out of the sickroom gradually faded.
In the end, his conclusion was that nothing had changed from the beginning.
Hyuk Joo had never once had a scandal that could provoke negative public opinion.
Rumors that he couldn’t forget a woman he broke up with against his family’s objections were only floating among acquaintances, it was not an officially known story.
If she were to divorce him, those rumors could swell uncontrollably and potentially devolve into internet gossip. Such a blow to his image would be too great.
“Ha….”
Eun Soo cupped her face with her dry hands.
Driven to the brink, images that made her miserable kept surfacing.
‘Whether we have a child or not.’
Anyway.
‘I didn’t marry you hoping for a child.’
Hyuk Joo’s words, spoken at different times, strangely matched in her head.
She removed the hand covering her face, and Eun Soo looked down at her dry belly.
Struggling to hold back the tear ready to fall, Eun Soo lifted her head.
The morning sunlight streamed through the hospital room window.
It was dazzlingly bright.
So much so that her forcedopen eyes started to blur.
Seo Yoon Ji alternated between looking at the IV line attached to the back of her hand and her cell phone.
She had mentioned that Thursday was for a followup examination, but she felt upset when Hyuk Joo didn’t say anything special. So, she staged an emergency room show to give him a shock of sorts.
But there had been no contact from Hyuk Joo from last night until now.
She had said she was in pain.
She had clearly stated it was the emergency room.
All that happened was that someone claiming to be Hyuk Joo’s secretary came to the emergency room and moved her to a sickroom.
“It’s Eun Soo. Please send a message to Mr. Hyuk Joo about where the hospital is. I’ll be there soon.”
She had clearly said she would send it soon.
But even by morning, Hyuk Joo hadn’t picked up or made any calls.
He was someone who would rush without delay whenever she said she was sick. But his sudden change made Seo Yoon Ji anxious.
Actually, on reflection, it wasn’t sudden.
Since she had called him when she came back to Korea, Hyuk Joo had been strange. He felt distant, to an excessive extent.
As if he was not delighted by her return.
Her breath became rough at the thought that his interest had disappeared.
“I said I was in pain!”
Yoon Ji yelled, tearing off the IV needle attached to the back of her hand. Because her voice was so loud, the nurse outside was surprised and came in.
Seeing the sight of blood dripping, the nurse turned pale and ran to her side.
“I’m done with this.”
“…But there’s still a lot of fluid left?”
“Never mind that, stop the bleeding first.”
At Yoon Ji’s irritated voice, the nurse quickly taped up her hand to stop the blood. When the medical tape was all attached to the back of her hand, Yoon Ji got up from the bed and started to take off her patient gown.
“Patient, the test results will be out soon, so it would be better to wait for a while…”
“I’m fine, so it’s okay.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m fine.”
Yoon Ji said, mixing in irritation. After changing into the clothes she had worn in, she immediately left the sickroom.
Arriving home from the hospital, Yoon Ji strode roughly to the fridge and pulled out a beer.
After downing a can of cool beer in one gulp, she anxiously gnawed at her fingernails.
“Sungshim Hospital…”
The fact that Eun Soo had been hospitalized in the same hospital wasn’t something she should have cared much about.
From what Yoon Ji had learned, Sungshim Hospital had a lot of cancer patients admitted at that time, even running a hospice ward in the countryside, which was rare.
There would have been several pediatric cancer patients like Eun Soo.
Yoon Ji had tried hard to ignore the ominous premonition that had been bothering her for a while.
“I said I didn’t know she was sick. Definitely…”
After the day when Eun Soo had visited her flower shop, Yoon Ji had thought about Hyuk Joo.
“What if my brother’s wife had a disease similar to mine?” she had asked.
At the outoftheblue question, Hyuk Joo had stiffened his face as if she was talking nonsense. And then he had said in a cold voice.
Eun Soo is healthy.
Yoon Ji took out another can of beer from the fridge and drank it. As the alcohol entered her system, her body warmed up and her head started to spin.
‘She seems to have gained Hyuk Joo’s sympathy with her sick body. But she won’t fool me.’
She recalled the words poured out by Moon Young Ran when she came to find her.
That woman had treated her like a parasite clinging onto Hyuk Joo, who was living with the guilt of having let his mother die in vain.
She had clearly said so while revealing every detail of her past she wanted to hide.
How dare someone unworthy even dream of surpassing Moon Hyuk Joo.
“What would happen if Moon Young Ran found out that Eun Soo was sick?”
Seo Yoon Ji’s eyes became sharp.
A cruel smile spread across her pale face.
lu lu lo la ▪️ net (lululola.net)
When scheming men desperately battle for her favor in the male harem
This one’s also on my reread list! The rivalry, scheming between the men in the imperial harem are just as intense and thrilling as in classic palace drama novels, where concubines fight to the death. Give it a read, girls! I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Synopsis:
“I am not worthy of her… but I still want to be by her side, even if only as a loyal dog…”
Those were the painful whispers of Yue Guanyi – the proud Crown Prince of the Great Qi, who was torn between deep love and a guilty conscience. Despite holding the supreme power of the Imperial Guard, he still could not forget the dark past when he was sold into a brothel.
Fate played a cruel twist when Qiu Shuzhi – a young female official who had just passed the imperial examinations with top honors – stepped into his life. She did not know that she was the one who had saved him from a tragic fate many years ago. And now, her heart was the target of pursuit for both Yue Guanyi and the powerful Empress Dowager Qin Qing.
While Yue Guanyi only dared to silently care for and protect the one he loved from afar, the Empress Dowager Qin Qing openly expressed his feelings and did not hesitate to take advantage of his power to approach Qiu Shuzhi. The covert struggle between the two most powerful forces in the imperial court began…
Trigger warning: All men in this novel are yandere style.
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