You Just Have to Take It — Four Years Later
Four years later.
In a bed in the closed ward, Yun-seul listlessly accepted the pill the nurse held out to her.
It was an unfamiliar pill added on top of her usual regimen, but she swallowed it without a word. It had been a long time since she'd last asked what they were giving her — or even what day it was.
"Miss Sa-ra. I'm going to check that you've taken your medication."
Yun-seul opened her mouth mechanically, and the nurse peered inside.
"All done. Now let's go see the director for your appointment."
With eyes that no longer focused on anything, Yun-seul nodded and followed the nurse out.
In the beginning, when she had woken up on a strange bed in a patient gown, she had fought like a wild animal.
I'm not insane!
I'm not Min Sa-ra — I'm Min Yun-seul!
Every time, the answer was the same: a cold needle plunged into her flesh. Every time she begged to be released, they fed her the same line — she'd been admitted for protective custody at her family's request, and she had no power to leave on her own.
As the days wore on, the will drained out of her. Even the hope of ever getting out of this place faded away.
When she sat down in the leather chair in the consultation room, the director flipped through her file.
"Patient. Do you still believe you're Min Yun-seul, and not Min Sa-ra?"
"No."
Yun-seul spat the lie out at the doctor in a dry, cracked voice.
"I'm Min Sa-ra. I never had my husband stolen from me, and no one ever stole anything I wrote."
Only by saying those words could she keep them from adding more pills to the ones she already had to swallow. Instead, she repeated it to herself over and over, silently, endlessly.
I am not insane. I am Min Yun-seul, not Min Sa-ra.
A satisfied smile curled at the corner of the doctor's mouth.
"You've improved a great deal. You're cleared for discharge."
This was the place she had believed she'd never leave — not until the day she died.
She followed the nurse, changed back into her own clothes, and stepped out to find Min Sa-ra and Woo Tae-kyung sitting on the sofa in the waiting area, legs crossed, waiting for her.
"My, my. Look at the state of you. If I'd run into you on the street, I almost wouldn't have recognized you."
Sa-ra's sneer — directed from head to toe at a woman drowning in luxury brands — sent a flash of fury rocketing to the top of Yun-seul's skull. But she clenched her fists tight and swallowed it down.
First, she had to get out of here.
***
"Where are you taking me?"
Yun-seul asked through cracked, bloodless lips.
"Home," Tae-kyung answered blandly, gripping her arm hard.
Wherever that "home" was, Yun-seul wanted no part of it.
"Just let me go."
"Want us to put you back in there?"
At Sa-ra's icy threat, Yun-seul shook her head quickly. She knew all too well that with one word from the people wearing the mask of family, she could be thrown back into the psychiatric ward whenever they pleased.
Sa-ra glanced at the suddenly docile Yun-seul and jerked her chin.
"Shut up and get in."
Yun-seul climbed into the car without a word.
A long while later, the car stopped in front of an unfamiliar mansion. The moment the front door opened and she stepped inside, an inexplicable dread slid down the back of Yun-seul's neck like ice water.
"Why did you bring me here? You two could just live here without me. I'll quietly divorce you — so just let me go."
Tae-kyung let out a low chuckle at that.
"You still don't get it, do you? You can never divorce me."
"Why? Why can't I?"
The question she had carried inside her ever since the day she witnessed their sordid affair was, with his next words, laid to waste.
"Inheritance isn't subject to division of marital assets."
Yun-seul's eyes wavered violently.
The biological father she had met at twenty-four — Jung Yoon-joon, chairman of Hansan Group — had died of pancreatic cancer a few years later. Even though he had refused to correct her family registry, he had left her an enormous inheritance.
Was it all because of that money?
"If I divorce you, I don't get a single won. But if you die—"
Her eyes met Tae-kyung's as he drew his mouth up into a leisurely smile, and a shiver crawled across her entire body.
"—everything you own becomes ours."
"Ours?"
The list of beneficiaries to her inheritance flashed through Yun-seul's mind.
Her husband. And then—
Her parents.
In that instant, her heart plummeted.
"Don't tell me……"
Yun-seul's lips trembled.
"Mom too?"
Her vision spun at a truth she couldn't bear to believe. Her legs gave out; dizzy, she swayed and crumpled toward the floor — and then Sa-ra's exhilarated voice reached her ears.
"Is it kicking in already?"
Yun-seul's eyes went wide.
Kicking in?
The pill from that morning — the one that had been different from all the others. The moment she remembered thoughtlessly swallowing it, a horrifying terror wrapped itself around her whole body like a chill she couldn't shake off.
"Am I… dying?"
Yun-seul understood then. The real reason they had let her walk out of that hospital so compliantly.
"You took me out to kill me?"
"Yep. Cause of death: cardiac arrest from a drug overdose. God, it's been exhausting, you know — running around to psychiatrists under your name all this time, filling your antidepressant prescriptions, ordering drugs online."
Sa-ra rattled off, with easy amusement, everything she had done under Min Yun-seul's name for the past four years. The scenario was airtight: after her biological father's death, she'd spiraled into deep depression and eventually turned to narcotics.
So that's why they committed me as Min Sa-ra — because Min Yun-seul had to spiral through psychiatric wards and die at home with drugs in her system.
The fingertips Yun-seul pressed against the floor trembled violently.
Just how long had they been preparing her death this meticulously?
"Pathetic little thing. You actually thought Mom loved you more than me — her own daughter? What a joke. Seriously."
Sa-ra poured cruel words, one after another, into the ear of the woman shaking before her.
"Call her… please call Mom……"
Yun-seul's voice broke, drained of all strength.
"Fine. I'll go get your beloved Min Jung-hee. We should at least grant a dying woman's last wish, right?"
Before long, soft footsteps sounded in the hall.
Yun-seul slowly lifted her head.
It was Jung-hee.
Ridiculously, the moment she met that warm gaze, the tip of her nose stung.
"Mom… am I really going to die?"
Yun-seul's voice wavered terribly. She still couldn't believe that Jung-hee was the one who would kill her.
"It won't hurt. Don't worry, our daughter."
At Jung-hee's tender whisper, the tears she had been holding back burst out all at once.
"Why…? What did I do wrong?"
"You didn't do anything wrong."
Jung-hee gazed down at her quietly for a moment. Then she said, perfectly calm:
"You were just a little unlucky, that's all."
Her hand, brushing the tangled hair back from Yun-seul's face and tucking it behind her ear, was horrifyingly gentle.
Tears splattered down Yun-seul's cheeks, one after another.
"Before Seul-hye died, she asked me to take you to your real father. Jung Yoon-joon, executive director of Hansan Group. The moment I heard that, I knew — a stroke of luck had come into my life that would never come again. And then your father went and died, leaving you a fortune. Luck upon luck."
At the sight of Jung-hee smiling softly, the blood drained from Yun-seul's face.
"Do you know the easiest way for a poor person to become rich?"
"……"
"You become family to a rich one."
There wasn't a speck of guilt on Jung-hee's brightly smiling face.
"And that's how I became your mother."
"And I became your husband."
"And I became your big sister, huh?"
At Jung-hee's words, Tae-kyung and Sa-ra chimed in as if punctuating the punchline.
Mother. Sister. Husband.
The people she had believed were her family — the people she had loved so much that even after finding her biological father, she had chosen to keep living as Min Yun-seul instead of Jung Yun-seul.
Yun-seul stared at them, her face blank with shock.
Not one of them had been family. Not a single one.
The light went out of Yun-seul's black eyes.
"All this… for nothing but money?"
"Nothing but? It's tens of billions of won."
At Jung-hee's baffled, incredulous reply, Yun-seul shattered completely.
"Then you should have killed me from the start! Why drag it out for four years—"
Her throat closed up.
All those nights on a cold bed in a closed ward, her soul gnawed away day after day in that excruciating time — and still she had clung to it, clutched it to her chest like a thread: the desperate, flickering hope she had held for Jung-hee.
And Jung-hee's voice, without the smallest tremor, tore Yun-seul's heart to ribbons.
"If you died too soon after inheriting, people would get suspicious of us, wouldn't they?"
Tears poured down Yun-seul's contorted face.
"Disgusting."
The woman she had loved all her life now looked to her like a monster.
"You're all demons… I hope you burn in hell."
Gripping her fading consciousness, squeezing out the last of her strength, Yun-seul strained against them, screaming until her throat went raw.
"I'm not afraid of whatever hell you go to when you die. Not even a little."
Sa-ra snorted.
"Thanks to you, our time on earth is going to be a perfect paradise. So generous of you, our daughter."
Jung-hee stroked Yun-seul's hair with a soft, unhurried hand.
"Rest well, Seul-ah."
Tae-kyung offered his farewell with a fish-belly smile.
Yun-seul's vision blurred at the edges, and feeling began to drain from her fingertips. She fought with everything she had to keep her eyes open. Even as her breath came in ragged gasps, she forced herself to glare at them with eyes that could kill.
I will have my revenge.
Even if I have to come back as a vengeful spirit.
Even if I have to sell my own soul.
I will drag every last one of you to a hell more brutal than the one you put me through.
Yun-seul's eyelids fell shut at last.
And yet, even inside the darkness, her seething, blade-cold hatred kept burning — as if it would never, ever die.