4

But separate from finding him insufferable, Yul was thinking clearly.

Her heart was pounding.

Anxiety? Excitement? Anticipation of escape. Or hope. Feelings she shouldn’t let herself have kept surging up.

“I will never love you.”

“That’s a tiring lie. There’s no one who doesn’t end up loving me.”

“Care to bet on that.”

She had to hold on to this man.

That was Yul’s conclusion.

‘He can get me out of here. Whatever form it takes, as long as I can get out!’

The line about love was something she had lifted word for word from a film she had seen once. Before she had come to this godforsaken world. Before she had been trapped in this body. Further back than that.

She had once had a name: Lee Yul.

She had been seventeen, and on her way home after late-night studying, a freight truck had hit her.

She thought she had died, but when she opened her eyes, she was in the body of this girl, also seventeen.

And exactly one year later, she had been locked in a psychiatric hospital.

Yul rummaged through her mind and pulled out a few more lines she thought would interest the man in front of her.

“I’m going to make you trail after me, desperate for me to toss you even a scrap of attention. Watching you beg for my love while I kiss another man right in front of your eyes. Wouldn’t that be entertaining?”

“Oh, that’s actually kind of appealing. If you can still say that after spending time with me, I’ll take the bet. What do you say?”

“If it means I can sleep with you and then sleep with another man that same afternoon.”

“That sounds like fun. Let’s see if you can even walk out of bed on your own two feet.”

He came here because he needs me.

There was no other explanation for why he was being this agreeable while she spoke to him so bluntly. No other reason he would have sent the director away and met with her alone.

Yul calculated her own worth in an instant.

Until yesterday she had been worthless scrap. But if a man who was clearly of high standing wanted her, that changed everything. Her value was exactly whatever price he was willing to pay.

And Yul had no intention of selling herself cheap.

“Enough banter. Tell me why you need me and what you’re offering in return.”

“Freedom. Is that not enough?”

That smiling face was still insufferable.

Her mouth went dry. Yul narrowed her eyes.

As long as she didn’t cross certain lines, he liked this kind of insolence. She had read that much, and so she had decided to fix her attitude exactly here.

“That’s something you have no choice but to pay because you want something from me. It doesn’t count as compensation.”

“Hmm. Fair enough. I’ll grant you that, since I like you.”

“So…… what do I have to do?”

“Play the role of my wife.”

His voice was low and smooth. The tone was gentle, but the weight behind it was heavy, and his smiles came easily without ever looking sincere.

The bronzed skin typical of southerners. A clean, sharp jaw. Long, sweeping brows and a blade-straight nose that seemed to advertise a temper not to be taken lightly. A brilliant face that would have stopped her cold if she had passed him on the street, and deep crimson eyes.

He looked like every last drop of wealth and splendor in the world had been gathered up and painted onto his face.

No, he was sitting in front of a window with sunlight pouring in, so he should have been cast in shadow, backlit and dark. So why was he glowing like this.

“The marriage has a maximum term of three years. My grandfather will likely pass around that time, and once I inherit the family, the contract ends. You may keep everything I give you in the meantime. The only condition is that you leave the child behind.”

So this was a contract marriage.

He had come all the way to Moshre Psychiatric Hospital because he wanted a woman he could cut ties with cleanly.

‘The reason he chose me specifically……’

He liked her personality?

Unusual taste.

Or perhaps it was the color of her eyes.

Yul stared for a long moment at the man’s red eyes, the same unusual color as her own.

An ordinary person could not hold a Master’s gaze. But Yul’s eyes were at least a color. Recessive or not, a Quialaiser was still a Quialaiser, and looking a Master directly in the eye was possible.

Their gazes collided in the air between them.

“I plan to squeeze every last coin I can out of you, so watch your finances.”

“Fine. But even if you fall in love with me, try to convince me you haven’t. Who knows, I might find that so interesting I hand you the deed to a house.”

“Keep the deed. What I want is something else.”

Her throat was burning.

She couldn’t quite believe she was getting out of here until she saw this hospital go up in flames, but just imagining it was enough to lift her spirits.

“I’m curious what my beloved wife desires.”

The man said it smoothly and rose from his seat. He crossed to her with unhurried elegance and pulled her sharply against him by the waist. She hadn’t bathed in five days and had been sweating through her clothes, so she had to smell foul, yet he was smiling like his sense of smell had simply stopped working.

‘Fine, if you don’t mind, I certainly don’t.’

Still held in his arms, Yul spoke clearly and deliberately.

“Revenge.”

“On whom?”

“My ex-husband. And my stepmother who threw me in here. And my biological father who stood by and let it happen. All of them.”

She was going to destroy every last one of them.

No, she was going to make them suffer the exact same pain she had.

She had imagined it every single day. Walking out of here and hunting them down. For years she had ground her teeth and told herself she would sell her soul to a demon if that was what it took.

“Something like that is easy.”

And this beautiful monster had more than enough power to give her what she wanted.

“Should I bring them half-dead, or just the heads? I’ll serve them up however you like. Just say the word, sweetheart.”

…… That alone was reason enough to throw herself into this madness without hesitation.

***

“While we were talking, I had the patients moved out and the vermin rounded up.”

The moment she accepted the contract, the man opened the director’s office window and showed her the state of the courtyard below.

Yul leaned forward without thinking, then squinted against the brightness.

To prevent patient escapes, the hospital’s courtyard was positioned at the center of the building. It had always been buried in shadow, and Yul had forgotten what sunlight even felt like.

‘Right. It was like this.’

The sharp sun stabbed at her eyelids. Even so, the bright stream of light tickling its way down her cheek made her shiver.

It felt good.

Being up this high and feeling the sun on her skin. This was something good.

After basking in it for a long moment, she narrowed her eyes and looked down.

Sure enough, the ‘vermin’ were there, just as he had said. The hospital staff lay bound and immobile, surrounded by what looked to be well over a hundred men standing in a ring.

They were all his personal subordinates, no doubt.

He really does have a lot of money.

Thinking that, Yul stared at the director.

“Did I do well, my lady?”

The man pressed his cheek lightly against her shoulder and smiled with his eyes.

Yul said nothing, but he clapped his hands as though her expression had already given him his answer.

Clap.

At that, some of the men moved in perfect unison, dousing the courtyard and every corner of the hospital with oil.

Yul watched in silence for a moment, then spun around and strode down into the courtyard.

The man followed, and as she snatched up an oil canister, he called after her with an amused lilt.

“Oh. What are you doing?”

“Cleaning.”

“You don’t have to do it yourself. That’s what the help is for.”

He added something else, but Yul ignored it completely and upended the canister.

Splash!

The orderly who had choked her in the night and cackled. The janitor who had slapped her cheek whenever boredom struck. And the director who had used her as a test subject.

Yul poured oil over every one of their heads, then shook the canister until the very last drop fell.

“Tell the help to handle the rest.”

“Bold.”

Yul knew. If she had refused his offer, she would have died here alongside them. This man had come to burn this hospital down regardless of whether the proposal worked or not.

‘He can’t let word of the marriage contract leak out.’

A man of power who could destroy countless lives and an entire building to ensure secrecy, and face no punishment for it.

That was how this world worked. It ran on rank.

Yul wanted that power desperately.

‘If I’d had power, I wouldn’t have been thrown into a psychiatric hospital with no way to fight back.’

No one would have dismissed everything she said. She never would have ended up in this situation to begin with.