Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Ghost in the Blood
●FLASHBACK
The sky was still bruised with night when my day began. 4:30 AM. The hardwood floor was icy under my bare feet, a familiar, punishing cold. The house was a mausoleum of resentment, and I was its ghost, moving silently so as not to wake the living—the ones who slept in warm beds and called themselves my parents.
By 5:00, the floors were swept, the scent of harsh bleach clinging to the air. By 5:30, water was boiling for tea, the steam scalding my fingertips when I poured. A small, familiar pain. A punctuation mark in a sentence of servitude.
6:00 AM. Breakfast on the table. Precise. Flawless. A single grain of rice out of place would mean a shattered plate, the shards skittering across my freshly mopped floor. My mother's voice, a blade honed on disappointment: "Lazy girls grow up to be useless wives. Is that what you want to be? Useless?"
The bruise on my upper arm, a yellowish-green bloom beneath the threadbare sleeve of my school blouse, throbbed in agreement. A reminder from two nights prior when the laundry hadn't met her standards.
School was a thirty-minute walk in shoes worn thin at the soles, my bag—stitched and re-stitched by my own hands—heavy with textbooks. It was my asylum. In classrooms, I was not a ghost. I was a conqueror. Top of the class. Every time. The awards piled up in a silent, dusty corner of my mind because there was no one at home to show them to. Parent-teacher meetings saw empty chairs where parents should have been. My name echoed in prize announcements to polite, disinterested applause.
The walk home was a slow march back to the gallows. More chores. Dinner to prepare. Clothes to iron—my father's shirts required a military precision. The air was thick with a simmering, unspoken fury. "We feed you, we clothe you, and this is how you repay us? With your silence? Your ingratitude?" What gratitude was owed for scraps and scorn? I never knew what I did wrong. My existence was the original sin.
At seventeen, I found a sliver of hope: a part-time job at a dusty little florist's shop after school. The scent of lilies and damp earth was a gentle reprieve. I saved every won, dreaming of a college far away, a room of my own, a life that belonged to me.
They found the tin box under my mattress.
The sound of coins scattering on the floor was like laughter. My father's face, a mask of cold entitlement. "You live under our roof. Everything you earn is ours. You owe us your life." They took it. All of it. The dream, the hope, the metallic taste of freedom, swallowed whole.
Birthdays came and went like any other Tuesday. No cake. No song. Just my mother's brittle observation: "Don't expect anything special. Be grateful we didn't leave you on a church step."
They were careful never to tell me who I was. No baby pictures. No stories of first steps or childish words. I was a blank page in their ledger, an expense with no origin story. Just a girl with a name that felt borrowed, living a punishment for a crime she couldn't remember.
The final sentence was passed at eighteen. A man. Park Jihoon. A decade older, with eyes like polished stones and a smile that never reached them. A businessman. "A good match," my father said, sealing the deal over whiskey I'd poured. "You're lucky someone of his standing would take damaged goods."
Lucky.
I was sold.
And I had nowhere to run. No family but my jailers. No money but what they stole. No voice but the one I used to laugh with friends at school, a convincing performance before the curtain fell and I'd cry silent, wrenching sobs into the thin pillow in my storage-room bedroom.
[PRESENT DAY – The Monster's Bedchamber]
The chaos of the day—the whispers, the assembly, Sara's fierce defense—had faded into a deep, watchful quiet. Taehyun slept beside me, his features softened in slumber, the ruthless professor and feared kingpin momentarily erased. In the dim light from the hallway, he looked… peaceful. Human.
And it terrified me.
I lay on my side, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. My mind was a prison cell echoing with the past. The scrubbing. The bruises. The hollow click of coins on the floor. The cold weight of Jihoon's gaze assessing his purchase.
Why?
The question was a scream trapped behind my teeth. Why would this man—this vortex of power and darkness—choose me? The broken girl. The discarded daughter. The soul sold at a bargain price. My heart might be stumbling, tripping over its own rhythm toward him, but my mind was still locked in that cold house, hearing the lie that shaped me: "You are nothing."
My hand trembled as I lifted it, hovering just over the sharp line of his cheekbone. I didn't dare touch.
"Did you really see me back then?" The whisper was raw, torn from a place deep within the rubble. "Or are you just another beautiful cage? A gilded one, but a cage all the same?"
●DREAM SEQUENCE – A Haunting in Gold and Shadow
It always begins the same.
A soft, persistent wind that smells of distant rain and freshly ground coffee.
A streetlamp casting a dim, golden puddle of light on wet asphalt.
And him.
A man. A silhouette cut from darkness itself, standing at the edge of the light. Faceless, but his presence is a physical weight in the dream-air, a gravitational pull. He doesn't speak. He watches. Not with the leering intent of the men from my past, but with a fierce, silent guardianship. A sentinel in the shadows.
And beside him… a girl.
Her laughter is the sound of sunlight breaking through clouds. She calls me by a name that isn't 'Aish', a name that feels like coming home. Her smile is pure, uncomplicated love. She brushes my hair when nightmares chase me, sings lullabies in a language I don't know but my soul remembers every syllable.
My sister.
The thought is clear, certain. A bone-deep truth.
But… I don't have a sister.
Do I?
They appear in fragments. A sun-drenched park. A chaotic marketplace. A quiet room with rain-streaked windows. Different ages. Different clothes. But always together. Always mine.
The man never speaks. But in the dream-logic, I know. He moves mountains in the silence. He breaks bones in back alleys so they never touch me. He is the reason the florist manager suddenly stopped yelling, his face pale after a late-night visitor. He is the shadow that made drunk men stumble away from me, their bravado turned to fear.
I'd hear the whispers at my part-time jobs: "Leave her alone, the boss got a visit." "Someone's watching out for that quiet girl."
I'd laugh it off. Luck. Coincidence.
But in the dreams, I know.
It was protection. From a distance. From the shadows.
By someone who loved me more than I had ever learned to love myself.
His face is always blurred, a smudge of darkness. But his presence… it wraps around me in the dream. Warm. Invisible. Unshakable.
Not a memory.
Not a fantasy.
A promise.
One etched in blood and silence long before I knew how to be afraid.
●INNER MONOLOGUE – The Tearing
Why does this feel like a betrayal?
He's here. Taehyun is real. His hands are the ones that braid my hair. His chest is the one I curl against at night. His voice is the one that drops to a possessive whisper in the dark.
I am starting to fall. The feeling is a vine, wrapping around my ribs, pulling me toward him.
But something aches. A phantom pain in a limb I forgot I had. A ghost in my blood whispers that I am betraying someone. Someone from the haze. Someone from the dreams.
What if I loved before?
What if there is a man with a face lost to my broken memory, still searching, his heart holding a space shaped like me?
What if I already belonged to someone… before Taehyun stole me from the altar?
Then who the hell am I?
Is 'Aish' even my name?
Taehyun's words echo: Those people weren't your parents.
If that's true…
Who raised me with such calculated cruelty? Why?
God, my head is splitting.
I feel like two people.
One here, in this bed with a man who is equal parts terror and solace.
One there, in the golden gloom of a dream, tethered to a silent guardian and a laughing sister.
Two men.
One of flesh, fire, and frightening devotion.
One of shadow, silence, and a love that feels like destiny.
Am I falling for both?
No. Fuck no. I hate this. Love triangles are for paperback novels and bad TV. They're messy and they leave everyone bleeding.
So what is this? Panic? A coward's heart afraid to accept the terrifying gift of Taehyun's reality?
Or… is the man from the dreams a thread from a past life?
I don't believe in that shit.
I believe in one life. One truth. One heart.
But my one heart feels ripped down the middle.
Torn between dream and reality.
Between a fate I can't remember…
and a choice that's stealing my breath.
●THE CONVERSATION – Late Night, Truths and Teeth
The bedroom was a pool of dim lamplight. Taehyun sat in the armchair by the window, a file open but unread on his lap, his gaze distant. I walked in, clutching a glass of water like a lifeline, the chill of it seeping into my bones.
I perched on the foot of the bed, my voice carefully, painfully casual. "Taehyun… do you think I had someone? In my past, I mean."
He didn't look up, but his fingers stilled on the paper. "Hm?"
"You know. A lover. An ex. Maybe even a… husband." I forced a hollow laugh. "Maybe I was in love before all this. Before you."
The silence that followed was thick enough to taste. He slowly closed the file and set it aside. When he looked at me, his eyes were dark, searching, seeing straight through the fragile veneer of nonchalance. "Why are you asking that now?"
"No reason!" The words came too fast. I took a frantic sip of water. "Amnesia. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? My… my parents said it was a medical accident. They had a report and everything." My voice dropped to a threadbare whisper. "But sometimes… I feel like there's a hole. And in that hole… there's someone I'm supposed to remember."
He watched me, a predator sensing a tremor in the undergrowth. "I don't know if you had someone," he said, his tone deceptively calm. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, bridging the space between us. "But even if you did… he's not here now."
"What if he's waiting for me?" The question escaped, small and desperate.
A flash of something violent crossed his features before it was banked. "Then he's late," Taehyun replied, his voice gaining a sharp, jagged edge.
I finally met his gaze. The intensity there wasn't just anger. It was pain. An old, festering wound I'd just poured salt into. He stood and crossed the room in two silent strides, sinking to his knees on the carpet in front of me. He put us eye to eye, his world narrowing to mine.
"I don't know who you were before," he said, each word measured, soft, and devastating. "I don't know if there was another man. But I know this." He reached out, his thumb brushing away a tear I hadn't felt fall.
"Whoever he was… he let you suffer. He didn't find you when you were crying in the dark. He didn't stand between you and the wolves." His voice cracked, just a hairline fracture, revealing the raw truth beneath. "I did."
I clutched the glass so tight I feared it would shatter. My heart was a frantic, trapped thing.
"But why," I breathed, the confession tearing free, "does it feel like you're both pulling at me? Like my heart is being split in two?"
He went utterly still. His eyes searched mine, diving into the storm of confusion and fear. When he finally spoke, his words were low, deliberate, and they seeped into my marrow like winter frost.
"Then perhaps, little one," he murmured, his thumb now tracing the frantic pulse in my wrist, a possessive counterpoint to his chilling words, "one of us is your present…"
He leaned in, his lips a breath from my ear, his final whisper a vow and a sentence.
"…and the other is your fate. And I have never been a man who loses to fate."