Flowers Are Bait

Chapter 64:

Chapter 64:

“Do you know your face changes the moment you look at a tree?” Kwon Chae-woo had been watching Lee-yeon working from the edge of the grove. He took her bag from her to lighten her load.

“I just feel comfortable around trees.” Lee-yeon smiled.

As the sun started to set in a glow of red, Kwon Chae-woo couldn’t take his eyes off of his wife’s smile.

“Comfortable?” he asked,

“Yes. The poet Rilke wrote poems underneath a tree beside his lane and Schubert relaxed underneath a lime tree. Even Gautama Buddha was born underneath the tree of souci and gained wisdom underneath a linden tree.” She turned around to face Kwon Chae-woo. “People have no issue living without love, but everything in the world will be contaminated if there are no trees.”

“So, what did you do that was underneath a tree?”

“Well...” A memory entered Lee-yeon’s mind, but she stopped herself from saying it.

“What? Was it your first kiss?”

“No!”

“Then, what was it?”

“I often took refuge under a tree,” Lee-yeon answered, looking away. “And listened to music there.”

Kwon Chae-woo realized that he wasn’t part of the memory she was thinking about. It made him sad. “What kind of music?” he asked.

“String music.”

Kwon Chae-woo frowned. A memory rushed into his head of the melody he heard at the party. The sharp sound of a stringed instrument cut right through his nerves, causing nausea and a headache. It had been an unusual reaction.

“What are you talking about?” She suddenly felt as if she were in danger. She turned to leave, but the men circled her, closing her in.

“Which are you? Are you from the city or police?”

Lee-yeon waved her hands in denial “I’m a tree doctor!”

The men erupted with sinister laughter. They certainly didn’t believe her. Then it occurred to her. This mountain was known for the placement of tombs, not for hiking. So, what were they doing here? A news bulletin came back to her. People had been illegally harvesting trumpet mushroom, pine nuts, herbs, and ginseng from the wildlands. These were protected areas.

Lee-yeon tried to appear calm, as she surreptitiously put her hand into her pocket to find the familiar rectangle of her phone.

“I meet lots of annoying people like you. They always lie to me.” The man’s expression was becoming more frightening. “But do you know what happened after?” he asked.

***

“Kwon Chae-woo!” Kwon Chae-woo’s head turned towards the voice in the air. It was faint, almost as if it was a trick of the wind. He frowned, trying to figure out the direction it was coming from. He started running, unsure if he was going the right way. He cursed the fact that there weren’t any proper trails on this mountain.

The ground was getting hard to see, as the dusk closed in. A huge boulder covered in moss suddenly appeared from the shadows. Kwon Chae-woo jumped over it, at the last minute, and continued running through the bush.

“Lee-yeon!” he called back to the forest. He was cursing himself for getting distracted. He had been focusing on the broken branch he had found, envisioning how he would carve it and make it a gift for Lee-yeon. When he finally looked up, he realized that he was alone in the middle of the forest. After running through the brush for some time, he heard the movements of a group of people ahead of him.

Through the branches of the trees, he could see a group of men carrying the limp body of a woman. “You f*cking bastards,” he swore to himself. It was clear the woman was Lee-yeon. She appeared to be unconscious, as if she had been hit by a blunt object. He hoped it was nothing worse.

He followed them as they carried her past a ‘No Trespassing’ sign and disappeared into some thick brush. Lying, discarded on the ground in front of where the group disappeared, was Lee-yeon’s medical bag. He opened it and shoved anything that looked like it could be used as a weapon into his pockets.

He decided that he was going to take his time eliminating these men. He was going to cut off all their fingers for touching Lee-yeon. Then he had the intention of shoving those fingers down their throats as well. He started imagining all of the merciless and brutal things he would do to these men, when Lee-yeon’s voice echoed though his head. ‘Be calm,’ it said. ‘Don’t get angry and things won’t get hard. I just wish your syndrome would get better.’

Surprising, the rage within him began to slowly quell. He laughed. It was a twisted sound.!