Chapter 161
Chapter 161
"Mmph!"
"Sara, it's okay. Mommy will untie you soon."
When exactly was she planning to untie me? Where did she think we were going? And how did she expect this to end?
Well, she would untie me eventually. She couldn't keep me bound forever. The real question was what she intended to do afterward.
No, before she untied me, I had no idea what she might do. Because right now, this woman seemed to be entertaining some very inappropriate thoughts about Sara's body.
Some mother she was.
If she truly thought of herself as a mother, she wouldn't be capable of doing something like this. No, she wouldn't even be capable of thinking it.
I threw all my strength into rolling my body.
Thump. I hit the floor of the car. A dull ache spread from my stomach. Right, the center hump of the back seat. I must have landed right on it.
"Sara!"
Choi Na-kyung cried out, sounding genuinely worried.
...That voice made my skin crawl.
From the very beginning, Choi Na-kyung had been after Sara's body. What was once only a strong suspicion had now hardened into certainty.
I still couldn't fully understand why. Had Choi Na-kyung been a pedophile from the moment she first laid eyes on Sara as a child, all intent from the start? Or had she approached for money initially, only to end up desiring Sara herself?
"Sara, are you okay?"
No, I was not okay at all.
Especially because of you.
Still, the half-roll left me facing the floor. My stomach was draped over the raised hump, which meant I could manage to get onto my knees and push myself upright.
The problem was that I had nowhere to go from there.
Both my legs and arms were bound. I might have tried to inch forward if I could move my knees even a little, but I was an inchworm. Thanks to how meticulously Choi Na-kyung had tied me, my options were violently limited.
"Sara!"
Choi Na-kyung kept shouting, but I ignored it, fighting to hold onto consciousness while scanning my surroundings.
What now? How could I get out of here safely?
...Sara still hadn't woken up. There was no response.
A few possibilities surfaced in my mind, but all of them led to outcomes I didn't want to imagine.
I shook my head hard, driving those thoughts away.
...This body must not get hurt.
And I absolutely could not let Choi Na-kyung take it.
Because this was Sara's body.
A body I treasured. Sara's precious body.
Because I wanted Sara to live happily from now on.
That was why I had kept trying to sever ties with this woman all along.
Thunk.
I brought my head against the side of the driver's seat area.
"Sara!?"
Probably because I had moved out of the rearview mirror's range, Choi Na-kyung let out another scream-like sound.
Paying no attention to that voice, I leaned my head against the surface and struggled to turn my body. After a few tries, I managed to turn myself toward the door.
Next—
My mouth was gagged. A cloth filled my mouth, soaked with saliva. Drool was leaking past my lips, but I didn't care.
What made me despair was that I couldn't use my mouth at all.
Of course, even without the gag, my mouth alone wouldn't have done much. Opening the door of a moving car would mean death. Choi Na-kyung was driving as fast as she could. The road was a winding mountain path, but there weren't many other cars.
There weren't many.
But that didn't mean there were none.
I immediately lowered my head.
Right in front of my eyes was the window button.
I twisted my head sideways, pressing it as close to the door as I could, and then lowered it further.
After a few attempts, I managed to press the button with the gag in my mouth.
Whirr. The window rolled down.
I quickly raised my head while the window was going down, but before I could stick my head out, the window was already going back up.
"Sara, that's dangerous! I'll let you out soon, so you need to stay still!"
"Mmph!"
I dropped my head again and pressed the button. But just as before, before I could lift my body, Choi Na-kyung triggered the button and raised the window again.
This time, it went back up before it had even fully rolled down.
It repeated over and over. Choi Na-kyung was driving with her finger resting on the window-up button. My body wasn't free, so there was no winning a contest of speed against Choi Na-kyung, who had at least one hand free.
Thud.
Every attempt failed. At my wit's end, I slammed my head against the window.
Thud!
The next one was harder.
I wasn't under any illusion that I could shatter the window by headbutting it with Sara's body. Sara didn't have that kind of strength, and more than anything, if I tried something like that, Sara would get hurt.
If my friends had been here, they would have worried, but they would also have known I wasn't seriously trying to bash my brains out.
...But the woman sitting in the driver's seat wouldn't know that.
"Sara!?"
Choi Na-kyung glanced back at me over the driver's seat, then snapped her head forward again.
She had no idea what to do.
Good.
Thud!
I rammed my head into the window once more.
The impact was fairly loud. But I wasn't using all my strength. Just in case it might actually break.
However, Choi Na-kyung, who didn't know me, no, who didn't know Sara, seemed unable to tell that this was an act.
"Sara! No! Stop it!"
Was she really that worried about this body?
Was she that panicked at the thought that the prize she'd finally gotten her hands on, the one she'd raised so beautifully, might get damaged?
If she thought it was so precious,
If it was so precious to her—
She could have treated it with so much more care.
She could have put aside those twisted thoughts and loved and raised her as a real mother.
I still couldn't understand this person's way of thinking.
I could piece together the sequence of events and the reasons she had done all this, but I could not fathom how she could do such things.
Thud!
I hit my head against the car window once more.
The speed of the scenery flowing past outside seemed to ease a little.
Thud!
My head throbbed from hitting the window over and over.
Sara, I'm sorry. If I were just a little smarter, I might have thought of a way that didn't hurt.
I pulled my head back to slam it again, harder this time—
Screech—!
A dangerous sound came from the car.
"Mph!"
Thud!
My head hit not the window, but the back of the driver's seat. The body I had struggled to raise lurched sideways and crumpled onto the car floor.
Thud. Thud. My head banged against something several times.
Tears filled my eyes. It wasn't just my head; the sudden stop had thrown my whole body around, slamming me into everything. When I came to my senses, I was on my knees, my head wedged into the gap between the back of the driver's seat and the car door.
"...Why is everyone... doing this to me...?"
I heard Choi Na-kyung muttering.
Groaning, I barely managed to push myself up. Lying in the back seat of a speeding car with no seatbelt during a sudden stop—both of my shoulders had slammed mercilessly into something. By the feel of it, the pain was worse than my head, which I'd been banging against the window moments before.
"Why! All of you! To me!"
At the ear-splitting scream, I flinched.
Choi Na-kyung slammed the steering wheel several times, unable to contain her rage.
"......."
Then, suddenly, she went quiet.
"......."
For a while, the only sounds inside the car were Choi Na-kyung's ragged breathing and my own tense breaths.
...Ah. Right.
I had been underestimating Choi Na-kyung far too much.
This was a person who viewed her own daughter as a sexual object, who had knocked her unconscious and kidnapped her.
I already knew she wasn't in her right mind.
The longer the silence stretched, the more my body trembled.
Right now, I couldn't escape, and I couldn't protect this body.
"You said you loved me."
"......."
Hearing that, a chill ran down my spine again.
Yes, Sara had definitely said she loved her several times in the past. She had called Choi Na-kyung "Mother" and told her that she was the only precious person in her life.
Choi Na-kyung had smiled happily at that.
But...
...It wasn't that kind of meaning.
She had removed everyone around her, made her mechanically dependent, and limited her communication to only herself.
She controlled all information as if she couldn't stand the thought of Sara's attention being stolen even by celebrities on the internet or TV. She prevented her from contacting anyone freely.
She had left only herself as the person Sara was allowed to love.
But Sara had already loved Choi Na-kyung long before any of that.
"You said we'd be together forever!"
Choi Na-kyung slammed the steering wheel again, making me flinch.
"You said you loved me! You said you missed me, over and over again! You said you wanted to be with me forever, that you never wanted me to leave! You even stopped calling me Mother! So why—why now! After all this time..."
"......."
"...Are you trying to leave me?"
Choi Na-kyung had been screaming, but her final words came out so eerily calm and quiet that they were terrifying.