Bring It On! - Chapter 86

Chapter 86.

The woman showed no signs of giving up. She was determined to see Cha Yoon.

“Can’t I at least see his face for a moment? How is he? He lost so much blood that day… Is he really okay? I think I need to check with my own eyes. Haah… then at least, could you tell him I was here?”

Her voice, leaking into the hospital room, was not just desperate but pleading to the point of breaking. Cha Yoon, enduring yet another weary night, suddenly let out a hollow laugh. 

Her persistence, clinging on without knowing her place, reminded him oddly of Cha Seong-hwan.

On the black screen of the TV in front of him, his own laughing reflection was clearly visible. With a thin hand, Cha Yoon rubbed harshly at the corners of his mouth. 

His face felt strangely unfamiliar. Since waking up with lost memories, it seemed like this was the first time he had laughed. He didn’t know if it could really be called a laugh. It was closer to a sneer.

He picked up his phone and called Park Jong-hoo. The call connected before the second ring.

—“What? Did something happen?”

“Put more guards in the hall. I don’t want to hear that woman’s voice again.”

***

Each day he could feel himself falling apart. Not just his body, but his mind was becoming a complete wreck. Insomnia wasn’t the only problem. A constant anxiety, as if he were missing something vital, made cold sweat run down his back at random moments.

His body, which had never once betrayed his will, now felt foreign, as if it no longer belonged to him.

It was the discomfort of living in a borrowed body. Emotions that didn’t feel like his own. A kind of unease he had never experienced before, so revolting it defied all words.

To counter that alien sensation, Cha Yoon had begun reaching for cigarettes. Something he’d rarely smoked in the past. Before, he might have had a stick or two only when stress was unbearable. Now, he smoked them in a chain, every day.

Park Jong-hoo had suggested he drink instead, but Cha Yoon hadn’t even bothered to answer. Even the slightest alcohol dulled his mind and sent him into sleep far too easily. 

And he had no desire to wake from that kind of sleep again, feeling like filth the way he had after the sleeping pills.

That day was no different. He went out to the terrace of the lounge as usual. Just as he lit a cigarette, he saw a woman walking toward him from a distance. 

Clicking his lighter shut with a snap, he fixed his gaze on her. He hadn’t meant to stare. It was simply a reflex, so natural he hadn’t even noticed himself doing it.

For a brief moment, even the sharp headache that had plagued him without rest for twenty-four hours straight seemed to fade.

Her wrists were thin enough to snap, yet her lips were full, soft, and red, drawing his eyes. With languid weariness, Cha Yoon stared at them for a while. 

His gaze drifted upward, brushing against her drooping lashes, heavy with sorrow. Her eyes, fixed firmly to the ground, barely moved. She looked troubled, hesitant.

“Ah.”

So even in a hospital, people try to hit on you.

He thought that as he watched her walk straight toward him. It was nothing unusual for him. The only difference was that, for an instant, his mind flicked to the phone in his back pocket.

The guards moved in to block her. Just as they were about to, Cha Yoon waved them off with a flick of his hand.

He turned his back slightly, already wondering in his mind what voice she might call out to him with.

“Jay!”

The familiar voice pierced his skull like a crack of lightning. The lips calling out not his name but someone else’s made the pain he had forgotten stab deep once more.

“You… you could’ve at least told me you woke up. You bastard.”

Her large eyes welled with tears. As Cha Yoon looked down at her, his mood sank fast and hard.

He drew deeply on his cigarette, then shot the guards a murderous glare.

“I’m paying you to make sure trash like this doesn’t get near me. What the hell are you doing?”

The guards’ faces went slack with confusion. It was Cha Yoon who had stopped them from intervening. Now he was scolding them as if none of that had happened.

He showed no shame at his own insane fickleness, his expression arrogant and brazen. He studied the woman’s startled face as though savoring it.

“So it’s you. The one who kept whining about wanting to see me…”

“…Whining.”

The rims of her ears flushed scarlet in an instant. Her translucent skin, where veins threatened to show, bloomed pink, and her pale irises quivered without rest. A reaction that practically begged to be teased.

“Let’s stop this.”

“What exactly do I need to stop?”

“Whatever hardship we shared there, whatever memories we made, leave them as just that.”

“……”

“Don’t even think of using that as some excuse to tie yourself to me.”

The words stabbed her chest like nails, and her face froze.

Cha Yoon felt his heart tighten with a stinging ache, yet alongside it rose a vile satisfaction, a sick thrill. He had never been one to speak kindly, but this was different. 

This time he had spoken not just bluntly, but with the deliberate intent to wound.

He certainly had no desire to waste his energy on the kind of sordid acts that Cha Seong-hwan would’ve done. And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t control his body now.

He brushed past the woman who had frozen in shock. Judging by her expression, she was likely to spend the next few days thinking only of him. A strange sense of satisfaction stirred inside him.

***

“Fuck… I’m going crazy.”

Cha Yoon was now paying for his own actions. He couldn’t even eat because that woman, Sun Woori, kept gnawing at his mind.

No matter how much he tried to shake her off, it was useless. Like being bitten by something poisonous, she took root in a corner of his head and wouldn’t leave. 

The more his condition worsened, the more reckless he became. Collapsing unconscious in front of Sun Woori wasn’t enough, he had even groped her body in his sleep, greedy with desire.

“It was a mistake.”

He didn’t want to admit it, but he wanted Sun Woori. That was the truth he had been desperately denying. Every time he saw her, a familiar excitement and urge rose up in him, as though he had already experienced this countless times before.

Cha Yoon was bewildered, even forgetting the fact that he had finally slept deeply for the first time in over a month. Sun Woori, on the other hand, acted as though nothing had happened. 

Her calm demeanor only poked at his twisted temperament.

Why am I the only one unsettled? You look used to it. Just what the hell did you do with the bastard who wore my face?

If Park Jong-hoo hadn’t stepped in, he might not have let Sun Woori leave his hospital room.

Cha Yoon had to admit. When he was with her, his body stabilized in a way that shocked him. And stability was exactly what he needed. 

With Cha Seonghwan’s matter hanging over him, he couldn’t afford clouded judgment from prolonged sleeplessness.

So, he decided to use Sun Woori.

The effect exceeded expectations. He had never in his life experienced such high-quality sleep. Yet, the more his body found comfort, the more an unpleasant unease seeped in.

“Jay.”

Especially when Sun Woori kept calling him Jay, it grated on him more and more.

Amidst his turmoil, the thought of Yoo Ga-young’s missing body resurfaced. It was a chance to turn the tide in his favor against Cha Seong-hwan. 

If Yoo Ga-young’s body bore the deep stab wound in her side, just as Cha Yoon had testified, then his words would be proven true.

But even when the long-awaited corpse was finally found, Cha Yoon’s reaction was lackluster. Park Jong-hoo, who had been explaining in an excited tone, quietly studied his hardened face.

“Another problem?”

“No.”

But in truth, it wasn’t fine. Why the hell did Sun Woori keep bothering him so much? Every time he saw her, his emotions would spiral out of control. 

Sometimes he would be consumed with rage. Other times, no matter how insolent she acted, he became strangely lenient. And then there were times when a vile, sadistic urge would rise up. 

The desire to see Sun Woori’s tears, to force her to show a face that only reacted to him.

Even after being discharged, Cha Yoon had no intention of letting her go.

Every morning, he was summoned by Chairman Cha over the Cha Seonghwan case, forced to listen to words that were either threats or pleas. The tension pressed against his temples until he thought they might burst, but just thinking of Sun Woori, waiting at home, made it bearable.

As time passed, Cha Yoon realized just how much he was relying on her. But Sun Woori sought only Jay, never him.

Whenever she spoke of her memories with Jay, her face glowing with happiness, his jaw would clench until it ached. Worse still was that his body reacted to her attempts to help him recover his memories. 

Her gentle touch didn’t feel foreign, and the way her clear eyes looked up at him felt far too familiar.

Damn this cursed body and damn Sun Woori, who was slowly but surely erasing Cha Yoon.

Between the two of them, there was no Cha Yoon.