Wishing for Salvation (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 12
Ji An shuffled past the front door.
Her plan for the day—to learn from Director Do, have lunch in the company cafeteria, and then stroll through the park inside the complex with a cup of coffee in hand—had completely fallen apart.
“Well, I guess this is the charm of office life.”
Though she felt disheartened, she gently coaxed her heart back into positivity.
“I’m here, Director.”
“Have a seat.”
Kang Hyun’s gaze lazily followed her. Suddenly feeling as though he was showing her excessive attention made her uneasy.
“I looked over your résumé, Ms. Seo Ji An. You’ve had a very long gap since graduating from university. Is there a reason for that?”
“Oh… I was in poor health, which delayed my employment.”
“For five years.”
“…Yes.”
Ji An’s voice grew even quieter. She couldn’t recall what she’d done before her accident, and her only post-accident work experience consisted of part-time jobs, which embarrassed her.
This was how the interview should have gone from the start. In truth, she’d been hired on special recommendation solely because of her resemblance to Han Seo Yoon.
“What illness did you have?”
Kang Hyun pressed his throbbing forehead.
He couldn’t shake the report he’d overheard from Seok Won, now intertwined with Seo Yoon’s photograph in his mind.
So he’d summoned Ji An—preferring to cut through the complexity by simply asking her himself.
“Do I really have to tell you?”
“Is it difficult to talk about?”
“It’s not so much difficult… I’ve attended many interviews before, but whenever I mentioned being unwell, I always got rejected. But I’m perfectly fine now.”
“Don’t worry about that. The contract’s already signed. This is a personal question—I’m asking not as your employer but as someone inquiring about Seo Yoon’s family.”
For a moment, Ji An entertained the absurd thought that perhaps the DNA test results had already come back. Kang Hyun’s certainty was that overwhelming.
“Four years ago, I was in an accident. I was found in a hospital, but even my parents don’t know what kind of accident it was.”
“So you were seriously injured.”
“I hit my head, needed surgery, and stayed in the hospital for a long time.”
“Am I right in understanding that you don’t remember the accident yourself?”
“Yes. I don’t know if it’s due to aftereffects or something else, but I have no memories before waking up in the hospital.”
“What?”
His tightly composed lips twitched.
“The memories in my head only go back four years.”
Kang Hyun remained silent for a long while, staring blankly at Ji An.
Perhaps it was because the exhaustion he’d been suppressing suddenly crashed over him.
Since yesterday, his rebellious heart had been sending waves of twisting pain through his chest.
Why?
Seo Ji An had been in an accident and lived with only four years’ worth of memories—why did this make it so hard to breathe, as if his throat were being strangled?
“Seo Yoon is dead.”
“…Yes, I know.”
Ji An murmured, bewildered.
Was he asking why I’m alive when Han Seo Yoon is dead?
If so, she’d have no choice but to declare Tae Kang Hyun utterly insane. While this thought crossed her mind, their eyes met.
“…”
His normally calm pupils were fracturing into tiny shards.
He was too dark—his oppressive shadow seemed to swallow the entire space, and Ji An grew solemn along with him.
“Let’s do a DNA test.”
The urgent tone—uncharacteristic of Kang Hyun—shattered the brief silence.
There wasn’t much time left now.
Autumn and winter. Once the red leaves dried and scattered, the five years Seo Yoon had longed for would be complete.
How had he endured that eternity of time? He couldn’t accept any more confusion.
He just needed to confirm Seo Ji An—only Seo Ji An. That would be enough.
“I’ll do it. Let’s do it.”
Ji An quickly made up her mind too. Part of her wished that Kang Hyun would find the bloodline of his beloved and finally gain some peace of mind.
The test turned out simpler than expected.
All it involved was swabbing the inside of her cheek and sending a few strands of hair to compare against Seo Yoon’s preserved DNA.
The results arrived in less than two days.
They were twins.
She’d somewhat anticipated this, but learning they weren’t blood-related to their parents still made her stomach churn slightly.
Twins. Had they grown up together, they would’ve been each other’s second selves—but since Ji An had never seen the living Seo Yoon, she still felt utterly unfamiliar.
“You can go home now.”
Despite receiving the awaited results, Kang Hyun didn’t look pleased. He simply dismissed her with a face as cold as ice.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ji An readily bowed her head. She certainly had no complaints about leaving early.
Alone in the room where the ticking clock echoed loudly, Kang Hyun wrestled with his thoughts for a long time before finally picking up his phone.
“Yes, Director.”
“Is there any way to distinguish identical twins? Through DNA testing or anything else?”
“We could request a high-resolution DNA analysis, but it would take a lot of time, and even then, it might not yield definitive results. Since their appearances would differ based on upbringing, we could start by comparing visible traits…”
“What if their appearances are identical—even their moles are in the exact same places?”
“What? Their moles are identical? That’s astonishing. I’ve never heard of such a case.”
Kang Hyun’s narrow eyes wavered unsteadily. His initial suspicion had stemmed from Ji An’s memory loss, reportedly caused by an accident around the same time as Seo Yoon’s.
Though Ji An’s aura was different, her build and face were uncannily, almost unnervingly alike.
These absurd hypotheses kept swirling in his mind, trapping him deeper in anxiety.
“What’s the fastest way to confirm?”
“Fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Yes. Fingerprints can never be identical.”
After hearing Dr. Han’s firm assurance, Kang Hyun ended the call and rubbed his numb fingertips.
He only needed to wait until Ji An returned to work the next morning—but he immediately grabbed his car keys and left the house.
“Ms. Seo Ji An.”
Ji An stood in the first-floor foyer, staring at the sudden downpour. She’d considered borrowing an umbrella from Kang Hyun but decided it looked like a brief shower and planned to wait it out.
“Director?”
“There’s something I couldn’t confirm. Let’s head back upstairs.”
Without realizing it, his hand reached out and grasped Ji An’s wrist.
A chill similar to Seo Yoon’s—whose body temperature had always run low—lingered on her thin skin.
Each time his suspicion grew, the urge to leap off a cliff overwhelmed him.
He would gladly trade his soul if it meant Seo Yoon could return alive—but he doubted he could bear the guilt of not recognizing her.
His grip on reason had thinned to the point of snapping, nearly splintering into fragments.
Now that the one certainty he’d held onto for four years was crumbling, he couldn’t even be sure the woman lying cold in the morgue had truly been Seo Yoon.
Back then, Seo Yoon had borne too many painful wounds—cold, rigid, and lifeless. That was all he remembered.
Kang Hyun himself had only recently awakened from the ICU, utterly trapped in despair over Seo Yoon’s death.
So maybe… maybe he hadn’t seen her clearly enough.
That thought alone turned his insides upside down.
“What’s this for?”
“They contacted me—they need fingerprints. The research institute studying identical twin DNA wants to collect various records.”
“Oh, all five fingers?”
“They’ll appreciate that even more.”
Having crafted a plausible excuse, Kang Hyun opened the ink pad he’d retrieved from his study. Ji An’s fingerprints left their marks, one by one, on the white paper.
The results would come within three hours at most.
After handing Ji An an umbrella and sending her off, Kang Hyun dialed Yeon Ju’s number.
Given Yeon Ju’s father—a former Prosecutor General—and her brothers, all judges or prosecutors, she could get quick confirmation.
Ji An, who’d been pulled back from heading home, tried hard to understand her boss’s extreme mood swings but found it anything but easy.
Tae Kang Hyun, sitting on the sofa clutching his phone, seemed to have forgotten his own existence.
“Ms. Seo Ji An.”
Ji An, who’d quietly tried to rise while gauging Kang Hyun’s mood, sank back down at his low call.
“Yes?”
“Do you like milk?”
“Huh?”
“Not banana or strawberry—plain white milk.”
What on earth? After going through a DNA test, he was now asking about her milk preferences?
Ji An turned to look at Kang Hyun and barely managed to swallow a sigh. His pupils, swimming in wide whites, looked terribly unstable—so she gave him an honest answer.
“If I had to choose, I do prefer plain milk. It’s mild and not sweet.”
“I like plain milk too. It’s not sweet, just mild.”
Those words layered Seo Yoon’s presence once again over Ji An’s already identical face. Kang Hyun didn’t know how to express or process what he was feeling.
Without Seo Yoon to name these emotions, all he could do was recall her—right there beside him.
Kang Hyun’s shattered pupils held Ji An within them.
“Seo Yoon loved plain milk, but I never let her drink it often. She couldn’t digest it properly, yet insisted on cold milk every morning. I wasn’t at home every day, so I couldn’t warm it up for her. I’d instructed the housekeeper, but she never listened unless it came from me. If only I’d known, I’d have let her eat whatever she wanted. But I was afraid she’d get sick…”
His words tumbled out incoherently, rambling without clear beginning or end.
“Director, are you alright?”
“I was so scared she’d get sick that I didn’t let her do anything.”
Yet those very restrictions had caused her pain—and in the end, made her sleep in the most agonizing way imaginable.
So he didn’t want to live. That’s why he didn’t want to live.
If, by the slimmest chance, Seo Ji An truly was Seo Yoon—what would become of him? What would he be?
Would he be condemned to drag on this life, forever trapped in this abyss?
Kang Hyun’s hands, gripping his phone, now trembled visibly.
Tae Kang Hyun, having lost Han Seo Yoon, was nothing but pitiful and insignificant.
Kang Hyun pushed open his heavy eyelids and sharpened his blurry focus. The moment his drug-hazed mind cleared, the image that surfaced was Seo Yoon huddled in pitch-black darkness.
“Seo Yoon.”
“Oh my! Patient! You can’t move like that! Stay here!”
Kang Hyun yanked out the IV needles from his wrist, stepped barefoot onto the floor, and staggered off the bed.
“Director!”
Seok Won, who’d just entered for visiting hours, caught hold of his arm along with a nurse who’d called for medical staff.
“Where’s Seo Yoon?”
Seok Won’s eyes, which had lit up in surprise at seeing Kang Hyun awake, twisted into a pained grimace.
Having stayed awake night after night beside Kang Hyun’s ICU bed, he himself looked thoroughly disheveled.
After trying and failing to stop Kang Hyun from shaking off his grip, Seok Won instead adjusted his loosened tie and wrinkled jacket as best he could.
“You said she was admitted—put her in the same room! She kept insisting she’d leave me anyway! At least get someone to stay with her!”
Seok Won stayed silent for a moment, staring only at Kang Hyun. His parched lips refused to part. Having served Kang Hyun for so long, he understood better than anyone what Seo Yoon meant to him.
Distorted as it was—unfathomable and obsessive to everyone else—he had loved Seo Yoon in exactly that way.
“Do Seok Won.”
“Ms. Han Seo Yoon…”
Seok Won opened his tightly shut eyes and forced the words out.
“…has passed away.”
Male lead fell into her trap — and shattered when she walked away
This is also on my reread list!
This one is a slow burn, but when it burns, it burns hard.
Definitely worth a read, y’all!
The story follows a thousand-year-old seductive spirit who, on a bet, sets out to charm the male lead—a once-promising but unfortunate cultivator.
But just when she succeeds in making him fall for her, she heartlessly leaves, driving him to madness.
Determined to find her at all costs, he captures her, keeping her by his side no matter what, even if she hates him.
I love this kind of trope—I enjoy watching the male lead suffer in agony.
The ending drags a bit with unnecessary filler, but that’s fine.
As long as I enjoy the beginning, I’m good.
Intro
As an enchantress, Su Heng possesses captivating eyes and charming beauty, easily manipulating the joys and sorrows of living beings at her fingertips.
But to enchant a god, making him taste the bitterness of love’s separation, long-lasting resentment, unattainable desires, and inability to let go…
Do you dare?
Su Heng assists a divine lord in his cultivation, aiming to make him experience all the sufferings of love, so that he can attain the Great Dao.
Only after being chased down from the heavens by the divine lord, confined and completely possessed by him, does she realize how successful she has been.
The once gentle and polite youth has transformed into someone she no longer recognizes.
[Touch the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to move to the next chapter if you want.]
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