The title Crimson Lies became a specter that haunted the city. It was leaked to the press, and the literary world ignited with anticipation. "Yoon Siheon's Return!" "A Masterpiece in the Making!" The buzz was a low, constant hum in the background of Seol's life, a reminder that the clock was ticking toward a publication date that felt like a verdict.
Siheon had vanished. Not just from her, but from the world. Choi Taek reported that he had barricaded himself in his penthouse, refusing all contact, living on coffee and obsession as he raced toward the finish line. The "period of isolation" was in full effect. Seol knew this was the most dangerous phase. A man descending into his own darkness, with her face on the cover of the abyss.
She tried to focus on the shop, on the tangible reality of soil and stems, but her own mind had become a treacherous place. Every time the bell above the door jingled, her heart leapt into her throat. Was it him? Was it someone else? The fear was a vine, tightening around her chest.
It was Soo-ji who, in her relentless optimism, stumbled upon a potential key.
"Unnie,you said he's writing about a forensic botanist, right? Using poisons?" Soo-ji asked one evening as they were closing up.
Seol nodded,her hands stilling as she wiped down the counter.
"Well,it's just... you're always so good at finding the root of a problem with a customer. What's his root? Why flowers? Why this specific, twisted kind of obsession? It can't just be because you're a florist. That's too... convenient."
The question struck Seol with the force of a revelation. Soo-ji was right. She had been so busy reacting to his narrative, she had never stopped to question its origin. A forensic botanist. It was an esoteric, hyper-specific choice. Siheon's mind didn't deal in coincidences; every detail was deliberate.
Driven by a new, desperate purpose, she began to dig. She started in the only place she could: the internet. But searches for "Yoon Siheon family" or "Yoon Siheon past" yielded nothing but the same polished, mysterious author bio. He was a ghost.
Her break came from an unexpected source: a frail, elderly woman named Mrs. Kwon, a regular customer who had been buying white chrysanthemums for her late husband every week for a decade. She was a living archive of the city's old families.
"Yoon Siheon?" Mrs. Kwon said, her wrinkled face thoughtful as Seol carefully arranged the chrysanthemums. "That name… it's familiar, but not from the books. The Yoon family… they were old money. Pharmaceuticals, I believe. There was a tragedy, decades ago. The mother… such a beautiful woman. A noted botanist, if I recall correctly. It was all very hushed up."
A botanist. The word was a key turning in a lock.
"What happened to her?" Seol asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Mrs. Kwon's eyes grew distant. "A terrible accident. In her own greenhouse, I think. Something with a rare plant. A poisoning." She clicked her tongue sadly. "The father sent the boy away to boarding school abroad not long after. The family closed ranks. They were very good at making unpleasant things… disappear."
The pieces snapped together with a chilling clarity. The root of the obsession. It wasn't her. It was his mother. A beautiful botanist. A death by poisoning in a greenhouse. He hadn't chosen a forensic botanist as a character at random. He was trying to solve his mother's death, over and over again, in every book. He was trying to understand the mind of a killer—or perhaps, exorcise the ghost of one—by becoming one on the page. And now, with Seol, he had found a living, breathing substitute for the mother he had lost: another beautiful woman surrounded by poisonous potential in a glass-walled greenhouse.
He wasn't just writing a thriller. He was re-enacting his deepest trauma.
This changed everything. Pity was no longer enough. This required a reckoning. She had to force him to see the source of the story, to break the cycle. But how does one confront a ghost?
The answer arrived in the form of a single, hand-delivered envelope, slipped under her shop door one morning. There was no name, only her address written in that now-familiar, precise script. Inside was not a note, but a keycard for a high-security storage facility, and an address. Paperclipped to it was a dried, pressed sprig of Belladonna—Deadly Nightshade. A flower meaning silence, falsehood, and… a warning to be wary.
It was an invitation. A dare. He was leading her deeper into the labyrinth.
She went alone. The facility was in a nondescript industrial part of the city, all concrete and silence. The keycard granted her access to a private unit. The heavy door hissed open to reveal not boxes of old furniture, but a museum of a single, tragic life.
It was his mother's greenhouse, or a perfect, haunting replica of it. Pressed flowers filled large archival books, their labels written in a delicate, feminine hand. There were detailed botanical drawings of flora both common and exotic. And in a climate-controlled display case, sealed behind glass, was the centerpiece of the collection: a single, breathtakingly beautiful orchid with pale, ghostly petals and a deep, crimson throat. Its label, in his mother's writing, read: Cymbidium tracyanum. 'The Widow's Whisper.' Neurotoxin. Symptoms mimic cardiac arrest.
This was the plant. The one that had killed her.
On a small, simple pedestal beside the case lay a single, worn journal. Seol, her hands trembling, opened it. It was Yoon Siheon's, from his adolescence. The entries were not those of a grieving boy, but of a young logician trying to solve an impossible equation.
Entry: Age 14. Hypothesis: Accidental exposure. Flaw: She was the most careful person I knew. Probability: Low.
Entry: Age 16. Hypothesis: Suicide. Flaw: No note. She was cultivating new hybrids. Subjects with a terminal plan do not begin long-term projects. Probability: Low.
Entry: Age 18. Hypothesis: Homicide. Motive: Unknown. Suspect: Father? Business rival? The butler? (A cliché, but data must consider all variables.) The method was her passion. Poetic. The killer understood her. Probability: High.
The final entry was dated the week before he published his first novel.
Conclusion: The world is a series of interconnected, often hostile, variables. Emotion is the flaw in the system that leads to catastrophic failure. To prevent failure, one must remove the emotion. One must become the author, not a character. I will write the darkness until I understand it. Until I can predict it. Until I can control it.
Seol sank to her knees, the journal heavy in her lap. The full, devastating truth washed over her. Yoon Siheon wasn't a monster. He was a terrified boy who had witnessed the ultimate system failure—the death of a loved one—and had spent his entire life building a fortress of logic and narrative control to ensure he would never be hurt so chaotically again. His books were his defense mechanism. And she, Ha Seol, had blown a hole in it. She had made him feel. And in his traumatized mind, feeling was the precursor to death.
He had brought her here to show her the monster under his bed. He was saying, This is why I am the way I am. This is the story I am doomed to repeat.
But as Seol looked around the silent, ghost-filled room, she saw a different story. She saw a son's endless, desperate love, frozen in time. He hadn't locked this away to forget; he had preserved it to remember. To solve the case. His entire life was a monument to his mother.
She took the journal. It was evidence. Not of a crime, but of a heart.
That night, she went to his penthouse. She didn't call. She used the keycard he had given her for "contractual access." The apartment was dark, lit only by the cool blue glow of a computer monitor in his study. He was slumped over his desk, asleep, his face pale and etched with exhaustion. On the screen, the manuscript for Crimson Lies was open. The cursor blinked at the end of a chapter.
She didn't wake him. Instead, she gently placed the worn journal on the desk beside his keyboard, right next the snapdragon he had pressed in glass. Two preserved artifacts. One of a life lost, one of a feeling found.
Then, she turned to leave. But her eyes caught on a small, framed photograph on a shelf he probably thought was hidden. It was a recent photo, taken without her knowledge. It was her, in her shop, laughing with Soo-ji, her head thrown back, surrounded by sunflowers. It was a picture of pure, unadulterated joy.
He hadn't just been collecting data on fear. He had been collecting evidence of light, too.
She left as quietly as she came, the heavy door clicking shut behind her. The gambit was complete. She had laid the truth at his feet. The root of the obsession was exposed.
Now, she could only wait. Would he see the journal and the photo as a diagnosis, and finally begin to heal? Or would he see it as the ultimate plot twist, and write an ending so devastating it would eclipse his mother's tragedy forever? The final chapter was no longer in his hands alone. It was in the space between the boy in the journal and the man at the desk, between the Widow's Whisper and the defiant snapdragon.