Flowers Are Bait

Chapter 102:

Lee-yeon looked at him tentatively. “Well…” she trailed off.

“Did I at least graduate high school?”

Lee-yeon looked at the ID and read the education portion. She nodded. “You did,” she said. “Well, you got a GED.”

Kwon Chae-woo blinked. “Was I expelled?” His eyes looked desperate, like he needed to know more.

Lee-yeon sighed. “Why are you making that face?” she asked. “Do you need to know that much?”

He closed his eyes and pressed a hand against his temple. “What did you see in me? Why did you even sign the marriage license?”

Lee-yeon looked at him and, without meaning to, answered, “Your face?”

“That was enough to make you marry someone who was lacking in everything else?” he scoffed. “Really?”

“What? It’s an important thing.”

Kwon Chae-woo couldn’t hide the smile on his lips. “Sometimes, I feel like that’s the only thing.” He looked at the application and nodded. “I can fill out the ‘hobbies and specialties’ part.”

“Oh?” Lee-yeon raised a brow. “What are you going to put?”

Her husband leaned his head closer to her. “My specialty is beating up those who bother my wife and my hobby is chasing after my wife. What I like is So Lee-yeon, what I hate sometimes are trees, what I’m good at is making my d*ck hard, what I can’t do is have enough manners to not go on for 10 rounds—”

“Wait!” Lee-yeon cut him off before he could keep going. She looked at him worriedly. “You’re not really going to write that are you?”

“Do you think I’m lying?”

“No. And that makes it worse,” Lee-yeon glared at him despite the growing blush on her cheeks.

Kwon Chae-woo couldn’t hold back his laughter as she shyly looked away from him. He grabbed her puffed cheeks and leaned in to swallow her lips into a kiss.

Lee-yeon felt like her body was free-falling at just that. They kissed each other like there was no tomorrow. Then, his tongue slipped into her mouth and the kiss became deeper. Suddenly, the lightbulb that hung above them exploded and she stopped kissing back. Kwon Chae-woo frowned and pulled away.

“Are you really looking at something else when your favorite face is right here?” he asked.

“That’s an LED bulb,” she said. “Why did it do that?”

“Is that really important right now?” He frowned and started to attack her lips again.

Lee-yeon, however, was still staring at the bulb. It looked like it was about to burst. Eventually, realizing that she was too distracted, Kwon Chae-woo gave up.

Later, a repairman wearing a violet cap and vest came in.

Jang Beom-hee and Kwon Chae-woo’s eyes met.

***

Lee-yeon greeted the man with the toolbox and led him to the living room. “I mentioned it on the phone,” she said. “I have no idea why it exploded.”

The repairman nodded. “I’ll take a look at it,” he said. He set up that ladder that he had brought with him under the bulb that had exploded.

Lee-yeon had called the place that had changed all the lightbulbs in the house into LED bulbs. She went into the kitch and kept glancing up at the man as he checked the bulb. She frowned when she realized that he was looking at the most random places.

From his place beside her, Kwon Chae-woo glared at the repairman. Lee-yeon flinched when she saw his face and the room filled with an odd kind of tension. Kwon Chae-woo just stared at the man as if he was going to drag him down and the repairman couldn’t seem to focus because of that.

Even then, the repairman didn’t avoid his glare. Instead, he met his eyes for a moment before turning away.

Realizing that this wasn’t working, Lee-yeon grabbed Kwon Chae-woo’s arm and led him out of the room. At first, he didn’t budge but, when he realized that Lee-yeon was trying to move away, he followed.

“Chae-woo, why are you doing that?” she hissed, trying to stay quiet so that the repairman wouldn’t hear her. He just shook his head and clenched his jaw. Lee-yeon rolled her eyes. “If you don’t like someone else being in the house, then just stay here.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just…” he trailed off and glanced at the living room again. “It just feels weird. Sorry. You don’t have to worry about it.” His voice wasn’t hard now, but Lee-yeon couldn’t help but be curious about why he couldn’t seem to tell her what it was that bothered him.

In the other room, Jang Beom-hee quickly retrieved the wire that had exploded in the lamp and replaced it. It wasn’t the bulb that had exploded but the wire that he had planted inside. It was all his doing.

When he heard about the landslide, he was convinced that the young master had been hurt. He broke his orders to simply stand guard and decided to tell him the truth. He couldn’t stand idly by and twiddle his thumbs when a random accident could have taken him.

Young master, it can’t take this long, he thought. You still have work to do.

Jang Beom-hee looked around nervously.

Kwon Ki-seok was all about his family. He wouldn’t let his brother, who was 12 years younger, go on like this. He would punish his siblings and make life harder for them, but he wouldn’t let them die. He grew up knowing the importance of family. He would never let such a thing happen to anyone he cared about.

But if Kwon Chae-woo wasn’t coming back, he would lie low as nothing but a toothless beast.

Jang Beom-hee frowned. He knew that this wasn’t something that Kwon Chae-woo would have wanted if he hadn’t lost his memory.

He had tried to bring the young master’s memory back in all manner of different ways. He tried to bring it back by leaving around the roses that he used to like. His favorite poem had been about the rose’s thorn. He hoped that Kwon Chae-woo would remember his favorite part of that poem and come back.

But it was no use.

Jang Beom-hee realized that he needed to act.