Chapter 2

Four years later.

Lying in a bed in a locked psychiatric ward, Yoon Seul took the pills handed to her by the nurse without a trace of emotion.

Another unidentified pill had been added to the medication she normally took, but she swallowed it without even asking what it was.

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

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

Yoon Seul mechanically opened her mouth, and the nurse inspected the inside.

“That’s fine. Now, you’ll have your appointment with the director.”

Yoon Seul nodded with vacant eyes and followed the nurse.

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

‘I’m not crazy!’

‘I’m not Min Sara. I’m Min Yoon Seul!’

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

Whenever she begged them to let her out, she was told the same thing: she had been involuntarily hospitalized by her family and could not discharge herself.

As time passed, she became increasingly helpless.

Eventually, even the hope that she could escape this place disappeared.

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

“Patient, do you still believe that you’re not Min Sara, but Min Yoon Seul?”

“No.”

Yoon Seul forced out a lie in her dry voice.

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

Only by saying things like that could she avoid having more medication added to her daily dose.

Instead, she repeated the truth over and over inside her mind.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not Min Sara. I’m Min Yoon Seul.

The doctor smiled with satisfaction.

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

She was being told that she could finally leave the place she had once believed she would never escape until the day she died.

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

“Oh my. What happened to you? I almost wouldn’t have recognized you if I’d seen you outside.”

At Sara’s mocking words as she sat there draped in designer brands from head to toe, Yoon Seul felt her anger surge to the top of her head.

But she clenched her fists tightly and swallowed her rage.

First, I need to get out of here.

“Where are you taking me?”

Yoon Seul asked with her pale, cracked lips.

“We’re going home.”

Tae-kyung answered casually as he held her arm tightly.

Wherever he meant by “home,” Yoon Seul had no desire to go there with him.

“Just let me go.”

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

At Sara’s cold threat, Yoon Seul quickly shook her head.

She knew that if these people, wearing the masks of family, joined forces, they could have her locked up in a psychiatric hospital again whenever they wanted.

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

“Shut up and get in.”

Yoon Seul silently got into the car.

After a long drive, the car stopped in front of an unfamiliar mansion.

The moment the front door opened and she stepped inside, an inexplicable sense of anxiety crawled down the back of Yoon Seul’s neck.

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

At those words, Tae-kyung let out a low, mocking laugh.

“You still don’t understand what’s going on. You can never divorce me.”

“Why? Why can’t I?”

The question that had plagued Yoon Seul ever since the day she witnessed their disgusting affair was answered far too easily by his next words.

“Inherited property isn’t subject to division during a divorce.”

Yoon Seul’s eyes trembled violently.

When she was twenty-four, she had met her biological father for the first time.

Chairman Jung Yoon-joon of Hansan Group had passed away from pancreatic cancer several years later.

Although he had refused to correct the family registry and officially acknowledge her, he had left Yoon Seul an enormous inheritance.

Was that why?

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

Tae-kyung slowly curled up the corners of his lips into a smile.

When Yoon Seul met his eyes, a chill ran through her entire body.

“All of your assets become ours.”

“Ours?”

The people who would inherit Yoon Seul’s fortune flashed through her mind.

Her husband.

And—

Her family.

Her heart sank.

“No way…”

Yoon Seul’s lips trembled.

“Mom, too?”

The truth she desperately wanted to deny made the world spin before her eyes.

The strength drained from her legs. Dizzy, she staggered and collapsed onto the floor.

Then she heard Sara’s excited voice.

“Is the medicine already starting to take effect?”

Yoon Seul’s eyes widened.

The medicine?

She remembered the pill that had been different from her usual medication—the strange pill the nurse had given her that morning.

The moment she recalled the pill she had swallowed without a second thought, a horrifying terror swept through her entire body like a chill.

“Am I… going to die?”

Yoon Seul finally understood.

She understood the real reason they had let her leave the hospital so obediently.

“You brought me out to kill me?”

“Yeah. The cause of death will be cardiac arrest due to a drug overdose. It was really hard, you know? For the past four years, I had to visit psychiatric hospitals under your name to get antidepressants and order drugs. It was exhausting.”

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

The scenario was simple.

After her biological father died, Yoon Seul had fallen into deep depression and eventually turned to drugs.

So that’s why they had me hospitalized as Min Sara.

Min Yoon Seul was supposed to wander in and out of psychiatric hospitals for depression, take drugs, and eventually die at home.

Yoon Seul’s fingertips trembled violently against the floor.

Just how long have they been meticulously preparing for my death?

“You really are pathetic…”

Sara whispered cruel words into Yoon Seul’s trembling ear.

“You thought our mother loved you more than her own biological daughter, didn’t you? That’s hilarious. Seriously.”

“Please… call Mom…”

Yoon Seul’s voice cracked weakly.

“Sure. I’ll call the person you love so much, Min Jung-hee. I should grant you at least one last wish before you die.”

Before long, the quiet sound of footsteps approached.

Yoon Seul slowly raised her head.

It was Jung-hee.

Strangely enough, the moment Yoon Seul met her warm gaze, the tip of her nose stung with emotion.

“Mom… Am I really going to die?”

Yoon Seul’s voice trembled pathetically.

Even now, she couldn’t believe that Jung-hee was going to kill her.

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

At Jung-hee’s gentle whisper, the tears Yoon Seul had been holding back burst forth.

“Why…? What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jung-hee stared down at Yoon Seul for a moment.

Then she calmly said,

“You were just a little unlucky.”

Jung-hee gently brushed Yoon Seul’s disheveled hair behind her ear.

The tenderness of her touch was horrifying.

Tears streamed down Yoon Seul’s cheeks.

“Before Seul-hye died, she asked me to take you to your biological father. She said he was Jung Yoon-joon, an executive at Hansan Group. The moment I heard that, I knew that the greatest stroke of luck of my life had come to me.”

Jung-hee gave a quiet laugh.

“And then I was blessed with the even greater fortune of your father dying after leaving you a huge inheritance.”

The color drained from Yoon Seul’s face.

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

“……”

“Become family with a rich person.”

Jung-hee smiled brightly.

There wasn’t even the slightest trace of guilt on her face.

“So I became your mother.”

“I became your husband.”

“And I became your sister, right?”

Tae-kyung and Sara chimed in, as though completing Jung-hee’s words.

Mother.

Sister.

Husband.

The people Yoon Seul had believed were her family.

The people she had loved enough to continue living as Min Yoon Seul instead of taking her biological father’s family name, even after meeting her biological father.

Yoon Seul stared at them with an empty expression.

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

The light disappeared from Yoon Seul’s pitch-black eyes.

“You did all this… just for money?”

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

Jung-hee asked back as though she genuinely couldn’t understand Yoon Seul’s reaction.

Yoon Seul completely broke down.

“If this was what you wanted, you should have just killed me from the beginning. Why… why did you make me suffer for four years…?”

Yoon Seul choked on her words.

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

She had held onto the faintest hope in Jung-hee.

But Jung-hee’s voice, completely devoid of even the slightest hesitation, tore Yoon Seul’s heart to pieces.

“If you died too soon after inheriting the fortune, people would suspect us.”

A sob escaped Yoon Seul’s distorted face as tears poured down her cheeks.

“Disgusting.”

The woman Yoon Seul had loved all her life now looked like a monster.

“You’re all demons… Go to hell.”

Yoon Seul clung desperately to her fading consciousness, squeezing out the last of her strength as the veins in her neck stood out.

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

Sara snorted.

“Thanks to you, we’ll live in a perfect heaven while we’re alive. Thank you, my daughter.”

Jung-hee gently stroked Yoon Seul’s hair.

“Goodbye, Seul.”

Tae-kyung gave her a sinister smile.

As he bid her farewell, Yoon Seul’s vision gradually blurred and the sensation in her fingertips began to disappear.

She desperately tried to keep her eyes open.

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

I’ll get my 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 you made me endure.

Yoon Seul’s eyelids finally closed.

Yet even in the darkness, the blade-sharp hatred in her heart continued to burn, as though it would never disappear.