Prey - Chapter 26
‘Mom is my responsibility now.’
Even if it meant spending all the money she had saved or taking on massive debt, it didn’t matter. That was what she had to do for Oh Kyung-hee, even if it was belated.
With a determined expression,Suhyeon walked into the hospital.
‘Huh?’
After getting off the elevator and arriving in front of the hospital room, Suhyeon looked confused.
The door to the room where Oh Kyung-hee had been lying was open, and inside, it was empty.
She hurried over to a nurse who was tidying the bedding on the vacant bed and asked,
“The patient, Oh Kyung-hee, who was here… where is she?”
“Pardon?”
The nurse, startled by the urgent question, paused and looked at Suhyeon with a puzzled expression.
Suhyeon, her face anxious, asked again.
“She was here until yesterday… Did you move her to another room?”
“The patient who was using this room was transferred to another hospital by her guardian this morning.”
“…This morning?”
Suhyeon’s eyes widened, and then she heard a voice from behind her.
“Knew you’d come looking.”
“!”
Suhyeon turned her head. Seol Hee-nam was standing at the entrance of the room.
Seeing Seol Hee-nam smiling slyly, Suhyeon glared at him.
“It was you, wasn’t it? Where did you take my mom?”
She quickly approached him, demanding an answer, and Seol Hee-nam lazily nodded his head.
“Come outside first.”
With that, Seol Hee-nam walked toward the elevator.Suhyeon, biting her lip in frustration, soon followed him.
They left the hospital and walked to the smoking area near the outdoor parking lot. Seol
Hee-nam pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
Placing a cigarette in his mouth, he glanced at Suhyeon.
“You want to save your mom, don’t you?”
Suhyeon’s anger flared at his leisurely tone.
“I’m asking you, where did you take my mom?!”
“You really want to save her, huh?”
Seol Hee-nam grinned. Suhyeon almost froze for a moment, but she didn’t show it.
Since she was a child, Seol Hee-nam would smile like that, smugly, just before suddenly turning violent. He had once punched her in the face out of nowhere, claiming she wasn’t listening, and ruptured her eardrum.
When they went to the hospital, the doctor carefully examined the injury and asked,
‘Did the child really fall?’
Her mother’s eyes had wavered uncomfortably at that.
“So Suhyeon, you should save this dad of yours first”
Seol Hee-nam’s oily voice snapped Suhyeon out of her thoughts.
“If you do that, your mom will be saved too, and we’ll all make it through, right?”“…”
Seol Hee-nam grinned even wider and blew a puff of smoke in her direction.
“You heard everything yesterday, didn’t you?”
“…You moved my mom just to force me into marriage? To blackmail me?”
“If you had just done what you were told, I wouldn’t have had to do this.”
Seol Hee-nam spoke calmly, as if blaming her for the situation.
Seol Hee-nam was always like that. Whenever he hit his young daughter because he was in a bad mood, he’d blame Suhyeon, saying it was her fault for not listening.
When he was violent with her mother, he would always blame her too.
Suhyeon glared coldly at Seol Hee-nam and spoke.
“Are you really my father?”
Seol Hee-nam shrugged, blowing out another puff of smoke.
“You think I want to treat my daughter like this? But what else can I do? The business is on the verge of collapsing… If this goes under, we’re all dead. Suhyeon.”
His sneering eyes glinted in a way that made her skin crawl.
“…”
“If you help me just this once, I won’t ask you for anything again. You want to save your mom
too, don’t you? Isn’t that right?”
Suhyeon glared at him with clenched teeth, her frustration evident.
“…She was your wife, too.”
At those words, Seol Hee-nam burst out laughing, holding his cigarette between his fingers.
“Ah, right. Thinking about our dear Oh Kyung-hee always pains me. She’s a pitiful woman. That woman.”
Rage surged through Suhyeon so intensely that her vision nearly turned red.
Pitiful woman? You have no right to say that.
A lifetime of violence wasn’t enough—now, after openly keeping two households, he was using her mother’s life, caught between living and dying, as a cheap form of blackmail…
Thud.
Seol Hee-nam tossed his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his shoe. Spitting on the ground, he glanced at Suhyeon. She barely managed to swallow the nausea rising within her.
Seol Hee-nam looked at her and said,
“We’ve arranged to meet this Sunday at the <DERA> Hotel, so make sure to dress up nicely.”
