A Taste to Spit Out - Chapter 5
“What… what are you even saying…?”
The same hand that once choked me now gently stroked my head, as though he were caressing something precious.
And then, word by word, he pressed his sentences onto my forehead like burning embers.
From his slightly parted lips, from the dark depths of his throat, came the next sentence.
“We have a child because we loved each other.”
The taste of those words was unbearable, like a desperate cry echoing from the depths of hell.
“Our little one.”
This foreign seed planted inside me… was none other than the child between Kang Yeol-Jin and me. This horrifying, brutal horror film playing out before my eyes was something I couldn’t stop, something beyond my control.
“What… what kind of nonsense is this…?”
How could any nightmare be this cruel?
Not long ago, you were trying to kill me. You broke into my room, wrapped your hands around my neck, and tried to crush me under your enormous weight.
“You tried to kill me! So I—so I tried to end it all by hanging myself from the ceiling…”
And then, in the next moment, a low sigh escaped. Kang Yeol-Jin’s large chest rose and fell as he exhaled, a strange, twisted smile threatening to spread across his face.
“Baby, when you hung yourself from the ceiling…”
That was about two years ago. It seems the shock from the car accident has temporarily erased some of your memories….
His thick hand, rough and calloused—far from gentle or delicate—brushed over my eyes. Even with my eyes open, that touch made my skin crawl with disgust.
It had to be a lie.
“…Lies.”
It’s all lies! What new kind of pain are you trying to inflict on me? Just kill me already if you want, but don’t twist my mind like this!
I trembled violently, like a lunatic, as if I were a patient locked up in a mental hospital. Not even a moth with torn wings would be as pitiful as I was.
“Just kill me! Kill me already!”
Why can’t I even die on my own terms? Why are you dragging me into this living hell? Then, Kang Yeol-Jin—his disgustingly large frame—wrapped me tightly in his arms.
It’s true, it’s true, baby…
“Then why would I have done this?”
Kang Yeol-Jin rolled up his sleeve with a swift motion. Seeing those thick, muscular arms, the same ones that once choked me, made my skin crawl again.
But then I noticed something that made me freeze.
On his tanned, rough skin, my name was tattooed in large letters.
“……”
A shiver spread through my entire body, like I was trapped in a horror film. Goosebumps rose on my skin as he slowly, methodically, closed the distance between us. He moved like a ghost stalking its victim in a movie—creepy, slow, like the murky depths of a rotten swamp.
“You had a stalker who followed you everywhere,” he murmured, his damp breath clinging to my skin. He wrapped an arm around my neck and pressed his lips to my forehead. The touch made my skin crawl with a sickening, creeping sensation.
“You were hit by a car while trying to escape that stalker.”
I stared up at him blankly, his words making no sense, as if my mind was buzzing with flies.
So… I hanged myself two years ago, and I’m lying here now because I got into a car accident? Is that why my body is so broken?
And in this horrifying script, I’m the one playing the pitiful fool, helplessly flailing about in this nightmare.
Does this make sense?
The idea that I married you, Kang Yeol-Jin.
That we were in love and had a child together—how could that be true?
That you have my name tattooed on your body, that we shared a bed, that we promised to spend our lives together—
How could I have ever slept with this bastard?
This man, who once tried to choke me to death, who ratted out Kim Sun-Woo to my father—the one person who was my lifeline, my only source of air—and drove him to his death.
There’s no way I could have loved this monster.
To me, Sun-Woo’s death happened only a week ago. I spent days, maybe weeks, crying and mourning the crushing grief of losing him. I cried until I was exhausted, until I felt so guilty that I tried to follow him by hanging myself…!
Does it make any sense that I could betray Sun-Woo in just two years?
