Prey (Lee Seohan) - Chapter 70

Seol Suhyeon was wearing a dark brick-colored checkered shirt and jeans. Her hair was loosely tied up in a single bun.

Her overall appearance was similar to that of the twenty-year-old I had seen pass by in front of Seol Hee-nam’s house.

Long, straight hair. Clean, pure white skin. Her skin contrasted sharply with her dark eyes and her unusually red lips.

She was beautiful, really disturbingly beautiful.

A slight chuckle escaped my lips at the thought. While Seol Hee-nam’s wife, Oh Kyung-hee, looked beautiful in photos, Seol Suhyeon was far more stunning.

There was an overall atmosphere that resembled her mother but with a more innocent beauty.

……Innocent beauty.

The expression that suddenly popped into my mind didn’t sit well with me, and one eyebrow raised slightly.

I instinctively recalled the muddy, childish face I had seen at the orphanage.

Where in that face could I find innocence? It was the same person.

“It seems she usually studies at the school library during the week and reads or studies at that place near her house on weekends.”

“How boring.”

I muttered under my breath and got out of the car.

I immediately entered the café and sat down at a table across the way, keeping my distance. Seol Suhyeon seemed indifferent to the people coming and going, her gaze fixed solely on her book.

I ordered an espresso from the approaching waiter. After the waiter left, I crossed my legs and quietly watched Seol Suhyeon among the crowd.

……What does she know about her father?

Does she realize he’s a murderer, less than a beast?

She had said she was scared of and disliked Seol Hee-nam as a child, so she wouldn’t like him. But she probably couldn’t fathom that he was someone who would ruthlessly commit murder, shattering a family.

At that moment, the woman reading intently slightly furrowed her brow.

As her white brow knitted, she exuded a different atmosphere from before.

I focused on her face.

After a long while, her brow returned to its original state. Her face remained focused solely on the book.
That was enough; I didn’t need to see more.

Screech.

I stood up from the chair.

After leaving a tip on the table, I left the café without any lingering thoughts.

After that, I went to that café once every month or so.

Seol Suhyeon was mostly reading, but sometimes she was also looking at her major textbooks.

I would order a cup of coffee and watch her for a moment before leaving.

I didn’t attach any special meaning to that action, whether it was observation or something else.

I simply continued doing this until the season changed from the leaf-strewn autumn to the flowering spring.

There was no clear reason; it was just a matter of watching a girl who was reading from a distance and then leaving.

Eventually, I stopped going.

My slight interest in Seol Suhyeon felt unnatural.

Of course, it might have been because she was Seol Hee-nam’s daughter. That could have been the first reason, along with a desire to offer the apology I hadn’t been able to give in my childhood.

That was probably the extent of what weighed on my mind. Plus, the fact that she happened to come to study in America, not far from where I was, might have sparked even more interest.

Whether it was simple curiosity, a sense of debt from the small help I received in childhood, or hatred, I felt uncomfortable from the moment I sensed that unnaturalness.

There was also a reason why that pale face, reading a book, increasingly popped into my mind.

The way her brow furrowed when she concentrated, the slight redness around her eyes as if she were holding back tears, and the way her lips curved into a beautiful smile when she laughed unintentionally…

These thoughts would suddenly emerge in my mind.

So, I decided to stop looking at her.

After I cut off my visits to the café, Seol Suhyeon’s face, which had occasionally popped up, gradually became hazier in my mind as time went on.

Just when I was about to completely forget her, Chairman Do came to America.

“How should I persuade you to come back?”

“I’ll marry whoever I want. If you can do that for me, I’ll go to Korea.”

Those words had come out without a plan. But the target was clear.

Seol Suhyeon.

To use the daughter to make Seol Hee-nam taste all the power and then take it away again as his business declined rapidly.

At first glance, that plan seemed reasonable, but in fact, it wasn’t. It was a failed scheme that excluded simpler methods.

Yet at that time, I was deliberately ignoring that fact.