YHTI 02

Chapter: 02

Four years later.

Lying on the bed of a locked psychiatric ward, Yoonseul mechanically accepted the pills handed to her by the nurse.

There was an unfamiliar pill added to the ones she usually took, but she swallowed it without even asking what it was.

It had been a long time since she had stopped asking what medicine they were giving her or even what day it was.

“Ms. Sara. I’m going to check whether you took your medicine.”

Yoonseul mechanically opened her mouth, and the nurse inspected the inside.

“All done. Now, you’ll see the director.”

Yoonseul nodded with unfocused eyes and followed the nurse.

When she had first opened her eyes on an unfamiliar bed, dressed in a patient’s uniform, Yoonseul had resisted desperately.

‘I’m not crazy!’

‘I’m not Min Sara. I’m Min Yoonseul.’

Every time, a cold needle was inevitably driven into her body.

Whenever she begged them to let her out, she was told that she had been hospitalized under protective custody by her family and therefore could not discharge herself.

As time passed, she became more and more helpless.

The hope of ever leaving this place disappeared.

Once she sat down in the leather chair inside the doctor’s office, the director flipped through her medical records.

“Patient, do you still believe that you are Min Yoonseul rather than Min Sara?”

“No.”

With a dry voice, Yoonseul lied to the doctor.

“I’m Min Sara. My husband was never taken from me, and neither was anything I wrote.”

She had to say that in order to prevent them from increasing the number of medications she had to take.

Instead, she repeatedly told herself over and over inside her mind.

‘I’m not crazy. I’m not Min Sara. I’m Min Yoonseul.’

The doctor smiled with satisfaction.

“You’ve improved considerably. You may be discharged.”

It meant she could finally leave the place where she had once thought she would never escape until the day she died.

After following the nurse, changing her clothes, and coming outside, Yoonseul saw Min Sara and Woo Taekyung sitting on the waiting-room sofa with their legs crossed.

“Oh my. What happened to you? If I had seen you outside, I might not have recognized you.”

At Sara’s mocking words, with luxury brands wrapped around her from head to toe, anger surged to the top of Yoonseul’s head.

But she clenched her fists tightly and suppressed her rage.

First, she had to get out of this place.

“Where are you taking me?”

Yoonseul asked with her bloodless, cracked lips.

“We’re going home.”

Taekyung answered casually while gripping her arm tightly.

Wherever he meant by “home,” Yoonseul did not want to go with him.

“Just let me go.”

“Do you want me to put you back in there?”

At Sara’s cold threat, Yoonseul frantically shook her head.

She knew that if these people wearing the mask of family joined forces, they could throw her back into a psychiatric hospital whenever they wanted.

Sara glanced at the now-docile Yoonseul and jerked her chin toward the car.

“Shut up. Just get in.”

Yoonseul silently got into the car.

After driving for quite some time, the car stopped in front of an unfamiliar mansion.

The moment the front door opened and Yoonseul stepped inside, an inexplicable sense of unease crawled up the back of her neck.

“Why did you bring me here? The two of you can just live without me. I’ll quietly divorce you, so let me go.”

Hearing that, Taekyung let out a low chuckle.

“You still haven’t figured out what’s going on. You can never divorce me.”

“Why? Why can’t I?”

The question she had carried ever since the day she witnessed their filthy affair was finally answered by his next words.

“Inherited property isn’t subject to division of marital assets.”

Yoonseul’s eyes trembled violently.

At the age of twenty-four, she had met her biological father for the first time. Chairman Jung Yoonjoon of Hansan Group passed away from pancreatic cancer several years later.

Even though he had refused to correct the family register, he had left an enormous inheritance in Yoonseul’s name.

Was it because of that money?

“If you divorce me, I won’t get a single penny. But if you become a widow…”

Yoonseul’s eyes met Taekyung’s as he slowly curled his lips into a relaxed smile.

A chill ran through her entire body.

“Then all your property becomes ours.”

“Ours?”

The people entitled to inherit Yoonseul’s estate flashed through her mind.

Her husband.

And…

Her parents.

Her heart sank.

“No way…”

Yoonseul’s lips trembled.

“Mom too?”

Her vision spun as she faced a truth she desperately did not want to believe.

When the strength left her legs and she staggered before collapsing onto the floor, she heard Sara’s excited voice.

“Is the medicine already taking effect?”

Yoonseul’s eyes widened.

Medicine?

The unfamiliar pill the nurse had given her that morning.

The moment she remembered the pill she had swallowed without a second thought, a terrifying chill swept through her entire body like a wave of icy fear.

“Am I… going to die?”

Yoonseul realized.

She finally understood the real reason they had willingly let her leave the hospital.

“You took me out to kill me?”

“Yeah. The cause of death will be cardiac arrest from a drug overdose. It was seriously difficult over the past four years, going to the psychiatrist under your name to get antidepressants and ordering drugs.”

Sara casually listed everything she had done under Min Yoonseul’s name over the past four years.

The scenario was that after her biological father died, Yoonseul had fallen into deep depression, eventually turning to drugs.

‘So that’s why they admitted me under the name Min Sara. Min Yoonseul had to wander between psychiatrists for depression, abuse drugs, and eventually die at home.’

Yoonseul’s fingertips trembled against the floor.

Just when had they begun preparing my death so meticulously?

“You pathetic thing… You really thought our mother loved you more than her own biological daughter? That’s hilarious. Seriously.”

Sara poured cruel words into Yoonseul’s ear as she trembled violently.

“Call Mom…”

Yoonseul’s voice came out weak and cracked.

“Sure. I’ll call Min Junghee, the mother you love so dearly. We should at least grant your final wish before you die.”

Not long afterward, quiet footsteps approached.

Yoonseul slowly raised her head.

It was Junghee.

Ironically, the moment she met Junghee’s warm gaze, Yoonseul’s nose stung with emotion.

“Mom… Am I really going to die?”

Yoonseul’s voice trembled miserably.

She still could not believe that Junghee was going to kill her.

“It won’t hurt. Don’t worry, my daughter.”

“Oh…”

At Junghee’s gentle whisper, the tears Yoonseul had been holding back burst forth.

“Why…? What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Junghee silently looked down at Yoonseul for a moment.

Then she calmly said,

“You were just a little unlucky.”

Junghee’s hand gently brushed Yoonseul’s disheveled hair behind her ear.

Her touch was horrifyingly tender.

Tears dripped onto Yoonseul’s cheeks.

“Before Seulhye died, she asked me to take you to your biological father. She said he was Executive Director Jung Yoonjoon of Hansan Group. When I heard that, I knew that a stroke of luck that would never come again in my life had arrived. And then you were lucky enough to have your father die after leaving you a huge fortune.”

At Junghee’s quiet laughter, the color drained from Yoonseul’s face.

“Do you know the easiest way for a poor person to become rich?”

“……”

“Become family with a rich person.”

There was not the slightest trace of guilt on Junghee’s brightly smiling face.

“So I became your mother.”

“And I became your husband.”

“I became your older sister, huh?”

Taekyung and Sara added their words as though chiming in with Junghee.

Mother.

Older sister.

Husband.

The people she had believed were her family.

The people she had loved so much that even after meeting her biological father, she had chosen to continue living as Min Yoonseul rather than becoming Jung Yoonseul.

Yoonseul stared at them with a vacant expression.

There wasn’t a single real family member among them.

The light disappeared from Yoonseul’s pitch-black eyes.

“You did all this… just for money?”

“Just money? It’s tens of billions of won.”

At Junghee’s response, as though she genuinely could not understand why that was insignificant, Yoonseul completely broke down.

“If you were going to do this, you should have just killed me from the beginning. Why… why did you wait four years…?”

Yoonseul’s voice choked.

Even during those horrific years when her soul was slowly being devoured day after day on the cold bed of the locked psychiatric ward…

She had clung to the faintest hope that Junghee still cared about her.

But Junghee’s voice, without even the slightest trace of hesitation, tore Yoonseul’s heart apart.

“If you died too soon after inheriting the fortune, we would have aroused suspicion.”

“Oh…”

Tears poured down Yoonseul’s distorted face.

“You’re disgusting.”

Junghee, whom Yoonseul had loved all her life, now looked like a monster.

“You’re demons… Go to hell.”

Yoonseul clung desperately to her fading consciousness, squeezed out the last of her strength, and screamed until the veins in her neck bulged.

“I’m not afraid of some hell you go to after you die.”

Sara snorted.

“Thanks to you, our lives will be a perfect heaven while we’re alive. Thank you, our daughter.”

Junghee gently stroked Yoonseul’s hair.

“Goodbye, Seul.”

Taekyung bid her farewell with a sinister smile.

Her vision gradually blurred, and the sensation in her fingertips began to disappear.

Yoonseul desperately tried to keep her eyes open.

Even as her breathing grew labored, she tried to glare at them as though she could kill them with her eyes.

I’ll get revenge.

Even if I have to become an evil spirit.

Even if I have to sell my soul.

I will drag you to a place far more horrific than the hell I endured.

Yoonseul’s eyelids finally closed completely.

Yet even within the darkness, the razor-sharp hatred burning inside her showed no sign of disappearing forever.