Chapter 196.1

Natalia Yegorova’s posture had been flawless, honed by years of ballet. Seoryeong, feeling awkward under the forced padding of her chest, discreetly tugged at her bra strap while pushing a laundry cart piled high with clothes.

Unlike the guest house Natalia had visited a few days earlier, the central main house was where Lee Wooshin actually lived. The moment she stepped inside, a strange exhilaration seized her, stealing her breath.

This place was Lee Wooshin’s core.

After all that wandering, she had finally reached his core. The bones on the back of her hand stood out as she tightened her grip on the cart handle.

“…”

Sometimes, a faint scent that reminded her of him lingered on the discarded clothes, and it was unbearable. Not the artificial mix of colognes Kim Hyun used, but the raw, warm scent that came only from Lee Wooshin’s body when he sweated.

Seoryeong held her breath and turned her head away.

When she passed women who looked like housekeepers, she glanced sharply at each of their faces. They varied in appearance and age, but almost all of them had black hair. She straightened her posture again, irritated by the bra pressing uncomfortably against her ribs.

The man spent his days walking slowly by the lakeside with a cane, lying on the sofa lost in thought, or working out. Every night, the guest house would open, and by morning, a few bloodstained garments would always appear in the pile.

Though the mansion had plenty of staff passing through, no one stayed near Lee Wooshin. Despite occupying this vast estate, he was always alone.

His body, visible here and there, was covered in scars, and the fine lines between his brows were cracked with fatigue. Every time she saw him like that, Seoryeong found herself biting her lip.

The last time she saw him asleep felt like a distant memory. She had boasted about opening the final gate, yet seeing his sunken cheeks and bruised collarbone made her mood hit rock bottom.

Why did you let yourself get like this…

What are you even trying to do now…

She had wanted to mock him for ending up in the same miserable state as her. Thought she’d feel vindicated seeing him so degraded…

But despite wanting to blame him for hiding something again, she was the one hurting more with each passing day. The pounding headaches only grew worse.

“…”

With no results to show and time slipping by, her anxiety grew by the day. Even though she had Kia temporarily under control, he was still a ticking time bomb, she couldn’t let her guard down.

Seoryeong let out a weary sigh as she pushed the laundry basket forward. She couldn’t get close to him, and now she was stuck doing laundry every day like a maid.

And there was only one reason getting near him had become so difficult.

“Bloodhound…”

It was as if Lee Wooshin had some high-performance sensor. Every time she showed up, he would click his tongue subtly and change direction.

At first, she thought it was coincidence. But after it happened two, three times, she couldn’t deny it anymore.

He knew something and was deliberately avoiding Natalia Yegorova.

If she chased him, he would go farther. If she tailed him, he’d vanish completely. She only needed to tell him the operation and leave Russia, but with him treating her like a plague, even that simple task became impossible.

If Lee Wooshin really was the agent who prioritized his mission, he’d have picked up on it right away and acted smart.

At this point, his excessive coldness toward Natalia was starting to really piss her off.

“Haa…”

She glanced down at her overly padded cleavage and furrowed her brows. No way… right?

A blind man, at that…

‘Honestly, when I heard he was blind, I thought I could just bump into him with my chest a few times. Soft, warm… Tactile senses stir imagination, right’

Could it be… he touched HER before? Is that why he avoids me like a burned animal?

Seoryeong returned to the first-floor cleaning room and immediately grabbed the steaming iron.

The hot vapor occasionally blurred her vision, but she pressed on fiercely.

Ssss, ssss, the heated metal grazed dangerously close to her fingers, and the wrinkled sheets straightened out in clean lines.

“You’re gonna burn your fingers like that.”

One of the maids, who had never even made eye contact with her, murmured in a low voice.

“There’s plenty of drugs we can use.”

“…Sorry?”

“If even you can’t get it done, just name a date and time.”

“…”

“No matter how uninterested Solzhenitsyn is in women, one pill, and he’ll come at you like a dog in heat.”

The middle-aged woman, calmly folding bedclothes with a strict expression, spoke as if it were nothing.

Sss. The sheet Seoryeong had been ironing started to burn. Startled, she lifted the iron to reveal a charred black patch.

“If you fail, you’ll be replaced too. So don’t you think you need to cause some kind of stir, Natalia?”

She knew things were dragging. She knew they needed a breakthrough. In Russia, it seemed they wanted Natalia to use her voluptuous figure to spend a night with the target, but Seoryeong knew even a short window was enough.