Chapter 55
“Oh, that’s great. I happen to have someone I’d like to introduce. Yes, a college student who’s about to turn twenty-one. He’s very responsible and quick. He’s quite handsome too, so I think he’ll attract quite a few regular customers.”
Hyeon-woo blushed at the embarrassing words introducing him. Thanks to the landlady, he easily found a job this time as well.
She was a kind person. Even though she said he resembled her deceased son, they weren’t related by blood. Hyeon-woo felt more than gratitude for her unhesitating help and support.
Without her help, he might have been caught early on after running away and fallen into Tae-geon’s hands already. If that had happened, he wouldn’t even have been able to dream of having this child. Hyeon-woo inwardly vowed to repay this kindness somehow.
*
It was a clear weekend afternoon. The streets were busier than usual. Hyeon-woo looked around warily and hurried his steps, pulling the hood of his coat down low.
At the new cafe where he started working, he mainly took charge of making drinks, washing dishes, and ordering ingredients, trying to avoid contact with customers as much as possible. It had already been two weeks since he started this job. He alternated between working at the cafe in the mornings and at the tutoring center in the afternoons. Hyeon-woo felt the envelope of money in his pocket.
“Hyeon-woo, thank you for your hard work today. Here’s today’s pay!”
Thanks to the owner’s consideration, he was receiving his pay on a daily basis at the cafe as well. Hyeon-woo was deeply grateful for the good people he had met in his first steps into the world outside of Tae-geon’s protection.
Although he was like a frog in a well, he knew well enough that the world wasn’t easy. That’s why the luck he was enjoying now felt even more special and precious.
Thanks to his pregnancy, even his heat cycles had disappeared, significantly reducing his stress. Recently, he hardly engaged in self-harm, and the phenomenon of time vanishing completely had noticeably decreased. And his appetite had exploded like never before. Hyeon-woo’s cheeks were plump and healthy-looking.
The place Hyeon-woo arrived at, venturing out to the city for the first time in a while, was a bookstore. Knowing nothing about omega childbirth, he wanted to study in advance through books. As he headed straight to the childbirth and childcare section, he saw not only books but also baby items like bibs and mobiles on display. They seemed to be free gifts with book purchases.
As Hyeon-woo flipped through a book on the display stand, jotting down important information in his notebook, he counted the days on his fingers. It had already been a month and a half since he left home. He shifted his gaze to the book to check the information for that period. It said that a fetus between 4-7 weeks was only 2cm long. Surprisingly, it also mentioned that the brain and heart start to form around that time.
Unconsciously rubbing his lower abdomen, Hyeon-woo suddenly looked around. Perhaps due to the nature of the books, the area around the display was full of couples. An omega with a visibly swollen belly approached the opposite side of Hyeon-woo, pulling an alpha by the hand.
Just as Hyeon-woo had done, the omega counted days on their fingers, then flipped through a book and pointed at something inside, smiling at the alpha beside them. The alpha’s eyes were sweet as honey as they looked at the omega. Hyeon-woo quickly moved away, leaving behind the couple sharing an affectionate embrace.
An omega loved by their beloved alpha.
It was a happiness he would never experience in his lifetime.
As Hyeon-woo was feeling self-pity, K suddenly came to mind. The embrace of the only alpha where he had felt peace as an omega for the first time.
Hyeon-woo shook his head violently. K didn’t exist in this world.
Tae-geon had spent his childhood complicated by schizophrenia. While delusions and auditory hallucinations were problematic, what experts worried about most was his emotional response. He spent his days in isolation, barely alive, without even minimal communication or emotional expression. Tae-geon’s attending physician diagnosed it as emotional blunting.
The pathological symptoms Tae-geon experienced were intertwined like cogwheels, positive and negative, creating a complex pattern where treating one side would intensify the other. That’s why treatment wasn’t easy.
The first intense emotional response Tae-geon showed was related to possessiveness. Not only was it a trait of his extremely dominant alpha nature, but combined with his trauma-induced symptoms, Tae-geon’s primitive desire for exclusivity was almost manic.
One incident related to this occurred when they were in elementary school.
The stationery store in front of the school was raising a small puppy, and Tae-geon, who was indifferent to everything except Hyeon-woo, was particularly fond of this puppy.
“What’s that?” Hyeon-woo asked on their way to school, noticing a vacuum-packed premium jerky in Tae-geon’s hand as they sat side by side in the back of the sedan. There was a picture of a dog in the corner.
“Is it for the puppy?”
“Yes. I’ll give it to Ssali after class.”
“Ssali? The stationery store puppy?”
“Yes.”
Even to the indifferent Tae-geon, Ssali seemed cute.
“Isn’t Ssali cute?”
“Yes.”
“I like Ssali too!”
Tae-geon stared blankly at Hyeon-woo, who was smiling brightly with his front teeth missing.
When waiting for Hyeon-woo’s class to end late, Tae-geon would play with Ssali at the stationery store in front of the school gate. The puppy’s white fur like rice cakes and gently drooping eyes reminded him of someone. It satisfied Tae-geon that the puppy, who ignored other children, would wag its tail and act cute only for him.
But one time, Ssali ignored Tae-geon as he approached and ran towards someone else, wagging its tail. The stationery store owner was standing there with a bowl of dog food.
The incident happened the next day.
“…Why did you do that?” Hyeon-woo asked, crying. He had accidentally witnessed the scene while coming out of the school gate.
Tae-geon, lying on the bed playing with a game console, replied nonchalantly.
“It betrayed me.”
The scissors that had cruelly cut off Ssali’s tail were stuck in Tae-geon’s pencil holder, wiped clean of blood, as if nothing had happened.
Because of that incident, Tae-geon’s treatment period and methods were adjusted again. The attending physician’s expression was grave.
“Do you even know what happened in front of the kids’ school today? How long are you going to keep my son next to that psycho?”
Trying to ignore the sound of mom and dad arguing loudly in the living room, Hyeon-woo pulled the blanket over his head.
Although he didn’t know exactly how much Tae-geon’s condition had improved, it was certain that his pathological possessiveness remained. It wasn’t something that could be fixed. It was his innate nature, regardless of whether he could be cured or not.
A childlike possessiveness devoid of affection.
To take revenge on him for mixing his body with another alpha without permission, Tae-geon had deceived him in the cruelest way.
He knew that the sense of fulfillment he felt through K was all an illusion. Nevertheless, the gentle hands that had embraced him preciously and the warm kisses showered on his forehead kept coming to mind, tormenting him.
Hyeon-woo suddenly felt dizzy, his vision turning white, and he stopped his stumbling steps.
He was so confused about whether the alpha’s embrace he was remembering was K’s or Tae-geon’s.
Although they were clearly the same person, inside Hyeon-woo, their existences felt as if they were separate entities.
*
“Teacher, please make curry for us. Curry~”
“Me too! I want to eat it too. Milk curry!”
They must have heard rumors from somewhere because today, too, the talk of curry didn’t stop.
“I’ll make it for you next time. I don’t have the ingredients now.”
“When is next time? Only Gyuri and I haven’t eaten it! I’m so curious~”
There was one thing Hyeon-woo had realized while being with the children: his food preferences were completely like those of elementary school students.
A few days ago, he had made curry for lunch, and as it happened, some children whose field trip was canceled midway due to rain invaded the tutoring center without warning. Everyone was beside themselves with the smell of curry, so Hyeon-woo invited the children to join him and the director at the table where they were about to eat, and they all had curry rice together.
The next morning, he received three phone calls from parents.
“Hello, Teacher Hyeon-woo. This is Ji-hye’s mother. Ji-hye has been talking about the curry you made all day long. She said it was so delicious. She even ate all the vegetables in the curry without leaving anything. If it’s not too much trouble, could I know the recipe?”
The subsequent calls were all about the same thing.
Somehow, it felt strange. Hyeon-woo carefully typed out the recipe that Tae-geon must have developed for him and sent an email to the parents using the director’s account.
He emphasized in red the instructions to sauté the vegetables in butter instead of cooking oil, and to pour milk instead of water and simmer on low heat for 15 minutes. Soon, replies arrived.
[Thank you, Teacher Hyeon-woo. My child doesn’t like spicy food so I couldn’t make curry often, but I never thought of adding milk. It’s definitely suited for kids’ tastes! I’ll be able to make them eat more vegetables too. How did you come up with this idea~]
Hyeon-woo stared at the monitor, lost in thought.
Taste preferences aside… Did I not eat many vegetables?
Of course, he preferred meat over vegetables, but he didn’t think he had ever been a picky eater.
Throughout reading the reply, he felt a tickle in his chest for some reason, but he couldn’t understand why.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
