Chapter 195
Chapter 195
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 195
Chapter Title: Flower on the Ashes
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[One Week Before Park Sunwoo's Press Conference] A splitting headache dragged Cheon Hye-yeon awake from sleep.
Even though she'd left the air conditioner blasting all night, the Philippines' sticky heat clung unpleasantly to her entire body.
She reached out familiarly, fumbling across the bedside table.
Her fingers closed around a whiskey bottle, half full.
She brought the bottle straight to her lips and gulped down the remaining liquor like water.
Only then did her blurry vision start to sharpen bit by bit.
And the scene before her eyes was nothing short of a disaster.
The living room floor was littered with expensive champagne and wine bottles like corpses.
The ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts piled into a mountain, while discarded underwear and a crumpled dress rolled around on the floor.
Cheon Hye-yeon swept over it all with a numb gaze, as if surveying someone else's house.
She rose from the bed without a stitch on, kicking away a liquor bottle that tangled with her foot in irritation.
Crash!
The sharp shattering echoed hollowly through the empty house.
She approached the floor-to-ceiling window.
Beyond the glass stretched a blindingly blue sky, a serene infinity pool below it, and a tropical garden laid out like a painting.
The prison landscape her father had prepared for her.
How laughable it was, falling from Taesung's heir to an exile in the Philippines.
Clutching her throbbing head, she headed to the bathroom.
Her reflection in the mirror felt alien.
Empty eyes, sallow skin.
Averting her gaze, she stepped under the showerhead.
Hot water battered her body.
To clear her mind, or perhaps to wash away all these sensations.
But the instant the scalding water hit her skin, her body trembled involuntarily.
Unwanted memories resurfaced, sensations etched deep into her flesh.
The iron grip yanking her hair.
The crushing weight pinning down her entire body.
That gaze dominating everything on the border between humiliation and pleasure.
"Hngh…"
She twisted the shower knob shut and pressed her forehead against the cold tile wall.
Water dripping from her soaked hair trailed down her cheek like tears.
An uncontrollable thirst crawled up from deep inside her, near her womb.
'Bastard. Fucking bastard…'
The start of it all.
Kim Cheolsu.
'The father who abandoned me, left me with this wretched body... not even a single phone call, you fucking bastard…'
She swallowed her curses and slammed her fist against the wall.
Her knuckles ached, but the hollow thirst surging from deep within didn't fade.
He had taken everything from her and left only his mark before vanishing.
Her vision blurred.
Everything in the steam-filled bathroom grew hazy.
She leaned precariously against the wet tile wall.
The damp, cold touch slid down her spine.
Then, her fingertips brushed something.
A white electric toothbrush on the vanity.
Her hand picked it up naturally—or as if compelled.
Her trembling thumb fumbled for the power button.
Click.
"Vrrr—"
The machine's low hum shattered the silence.
Fine vibrations spread from the plastic across her entire palm.
That mechanical quiver resonated with the thirst inside her.
Cheon Hye-yeon panted roughly as she slowly slid down the cold tile wall.
In the fogged mirror beaded with droplets, only a blurry outline reflected, unrecognizable.
The vibrating brush head moved toward her deepest, softest place.
"Hngh…!"
The cold plastic touched wet flesh, unleashing a stifled moan.
It wasn't pleasure.
It was agonizing stimulation, a desperate writhing for relief.
He had inscribed a new sensation into her body in the most degrading way.
Now she was a beast that had to satisfy the thirst he'd left on her own.
"Vrrr… Hn, ah…!"
The rhythmic mechanical pulses probed relentlessly.
She threw her head back, biting her lower lip until her teeth might shatter.
Tears of humiliation streamed down her cheeks, but her body reacted on its own.
Just as it had under his touch.
Suddenly, her whole body stiffened, convulsions wracking her fiercely.
A brief oblivion.
An empty climax.
"Vrrr—"
The vibration stopped.
Thud.
The toothbrush slipped from her limp hand to the floor.
In the bathroom echoed only her ragged breaths and the patter of droplets on tile.
The thirst eased momentarily, but in its place gaped a larger, icier void.
Nothing filled it.
If anything, it felt even emptier.
As her mind faintly cleared, Cheon Hye-yeon's gaze drifted downward.
Her thighs dotted with water droplets, and between them.
Her most private place, groomed smooth without a single hair, to that man's tastes.
A shock hit her like a blow to the head.
'…Why am I…'
The question echoed in her mind.
'…still getting waxed?'
This fact felt more humiliating and pathetic than comforting herself to quench her body's thirst.
That man was no longer by her side.
He was in Korea, while she was imprisoned in this distant Philippine hell.
Yet her body, her subconscious, still conformed to his preferences.
As if preparing to welcome him back someday.
His brand dominated not just her flesh but her unconscious perfectly.
Thud.
She flung the plastic piece away like filth into the corner.
A dull thud rang out, then silence returned.
She left the bathroom, body still slick with water.
Her bare footprints smeared messily on the marble floor.
The air conditioner's chill raised faint goosebumps on her wet skin.
In that instant, a foreign thought seeped into her empty mind.
'Should I… not go to work?'
A notion she'd never once entertained back when she saw herself as Taesung's 'heir'—blasphemous even to imagine.
Then it hit her.
When was the last time she'd gone to the office?
It had already been a week.
A week of no-shows.
But no one came looking.
No calls, no messages, no rebukes or concerns.
As if she'd never existed to begin with.
Her usefulness ended there.
"...Heh."
A hollow laugh escaped.
"Heh, hehehe…"
Her shoulders shook faintly as she laughed.
She couldn't stand how ridiculous her fall was—from Taesung's heiress to Philippine exile, now an excess human no one sought.
Cheon Hye-yeon laughed until no more came, then blankly rose.
The sensation of water dripping from her hair down her shoulders felt distant.
She didn't bother with a towel.
She simply pulled a garish bikini from the bedroom closet and forced it onto her dripping body.
Hair hanging damp, mind hollow.
She staggered to the floor-to-ceiling window.
Opening the door, sweltering heat and blinding sunlight greeted her.
The infinity pool's blue ripples, picture-perfect, filled her vacant eyes.
She wanted to dive in with a splash and forget all these loathsome sensations.
Familiarly, she rounded the corner toward the pool deck.
It was right then.
Splash!
A heavy water impact shattered the quiet, ringing clearly in her ears.
Cheon Hye-yeon's steps halted abruptly.
'…What?'
This was the exile haven her father had set up—her private prison.
Outsiders were strictly controlled.
Fallen as she was, no one dared invade Taesung's 'princess's' solitary domain.
Alertness sharpened her senses.
Breath held, she slowly peered past the final pillar toward the pool.
And the moment that sight met her eyes,
Thud.
Her womb dropped dizzyingly.
Broad shoulders and an inverted triangle back gleamed under the Philippines' fierce sun above the water.
Black hair wet with water, muscles sculpted firm without an ounce of fat.
The man swam leisurely toward the pool's end, slicing the water as if the splash had been his doing—as if this were his own home.
With utter naturalness, utter arrogance.
That overwhelming masculinity and intruder's presence simultaneously awakened the fear and thirst branded deep in her body.
The man reached the pool's end and turned.
Sunlight shattered over his broad shoulders above the surface.
Water droplets tracing his honed muscles burst like diamonds in the light.
That overwhelming presence simultaneously awakened the fear and thirst branded deep in her body.
The man's mouth opened, his flippant voice slicing the muggy air like a blade.
"Oh?! My second wife's awake?"
...Vulgar.
Cold reason whispered.
The culprit who branded Taesung's princess a 'concubine' and exiled her to this foreign island.
Beast.
Yet contrary to reason, something hot surged from deep in her lower belly.
"If you're up, crawl over and do your job."
Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar. Vulgar.
While her mind froze cold, her fingers moved on their own.
They traced the thin bikini string clinging warmly to her nape.
...Snap.
A faint sound, the last cover loosening.
The air on bare skin felt novel.
She rose and headed to the pool as if entranced.
Step, onto the stairs.
Lukewarm water lapped her ankles, rising to her thighs in no time.
Her vision rippled blue underwater.
Ahead shimmered the firm thighs of the man called 'hubby.'
...Gulp.
The sound of dry-swallowing bubbled in the water.
She simply reached out. Her fingers parted the water's resistance, touching the rough nylon of swim trunks.
Downward.
She tugged the unresisting fabric slowly downward.