—Son, it’s Mom.
As the unexpected voice suddenly continued, the strength left Inho’s hand gripping the steering wheel.
He furrowed his brow, rechecking Haon’s number.
“I told you not to come home.”
—I’ll wait until you get here, so take your time.
The affectionate voice continued leisurely. Inho ran a hand roughly over his face and swallowed a curse. He held it in, worried that Haon next to him might hear.
“Don’t talk to the person in the house.”
His voice, suppressing anger, flowed out low.
“Don’t say a single word.”
Inho left a firm warning and then hung up. He had been at ease for a while since no one had come to his house. He should have been more careful since he had brought Haon home.
Inho took out a pill bottle from the console box and tried to open the lid while holding the steering wheel. Then, he dropped the small bottle, and the contents spilled out.
“Ha…..”
As one frustrating situation after another unfolded, he didn’t even feel angry.
Inho, letting out a hollow laugh, picked up the pills that had fallen on his lap and swallowed them. The bitter taste spreading in his mouth calmed his mind.
When the light changed, he sped up and swallowed another pill. He didn’t want to show an agitated side to Haon. He only wanted to remain composed and relaxed in front of him.
Because what he had said about liking Haon was sincere.
***
He was much better now, but Inho had suffered from a deep mental illness in his childhood.
Signs had appeared around the time he entered elementary school, but his family didn’t find out until he was about to graduate. For a full six years, young Inho had withered away alone in deep depression.
A body much smaller and thinner than his peers, and a dull mind. Empty eyes that revealed no thoughts, and lips that were always closed, only moving when he was at home.
However, no matter how much he made noise in the house as large as a palace, all that returned was his family’s indifference and his secretary’s businesslike responses.
It was only natural since Inho had been an unwanted presence even before he was born.
Jang Eun-young, the third wife of the Hansung Group chairman, had to cling only to her pretty looks after her own father’s business went bankrupt. All she could believe in was giving birth to the superior alpha that the chairman had long desired and establishing her position within the family.
The chairman of the Hansung Group, pathologically obsessed with traits, had three children, but none of them met his expectations. He only intended to make a superior alpha like himself his successor.
Thanks to this, Jang Eun-young’s greed grew uncontrollably. As a superior omega herself, she was certain that she could give birth to the child the chairman wanted.
However, her expectations were plunged into the abyss of despair the moment Inho was born.
Born small and frail, Inho was in and out of life from the moment he was born, growing up in an incubator. It wasn’t yet the time for his trait to manifest, but he was a child who showed no signs of being a superior alpha at all.
Young Inho was slow to learn and exceptionally small. He showed a stark difference compared to the chairman and his brothers, who had been called prodigies since childhood. His appearance, too, only resembled Jang Eun-young, causing unpleasant rumors to spread with each passing year.
Rumors that he was a child born from Jang Eun-young’s affair.
The gossip that circulated only in private eventually reached the chairman’s ears, and Jang Eun-young ended up being banished to a separate residence with her young son.
The chairman did not acknowledge Inho as his own child even after seeing the paternity test results. That was how insignificant Inho was.
He was denied existence by his father and received no love from his mother. Jang Eun-young only focused on having a new child and did not try to care for her deficient son. On days when she was heavily drunk, she would even grab Inho and rant that he was not her child.
Inho grew up in such an environment. He always had to cover his thin body with expensive and fine clothes, and he ate and ate until he vomited to build up his physique.
Whenever he occasionally met his much older brothers, he was met with comparisons before greetings. ‘You’re still so small. What’s your rank at school? Why don’t you just go study abroad? Your mother, who gave birth to you, is pitiful.’
Whenever he heard words attacking him, Inho remained silent. However, he did not avoid the other person’s eyes. He would simply stare intently with the beautiful eyes he had inherited from Jang Eun-young, wearing a vacant expression.
He was a truly peculiar child. Young Seo Inho.
Around the age of ten, Jang Eun-young had another child. As if he had been waiting for it, Inho was sent to the United States and became alone again in a boarding school where he couldn’t even communicate in the language.
Even when his environment changed, Inho’s life did not. Rather, greater loneliness gnawed at him, and in the end, he let go of his empty life.
Young Inho first tried to die at school, in front of everyone. After that, he opened a window in front of the doctors and nurses who cared for him with utmost devotion, and finally, in front of Jang Eun-young, who hadn’t contacted him for three years.
He had just wanted them to look at him.
“Do as you please.”
Jang Eun-young had encouraged him to leave comfortably if it was that painful, while preciously holding her plump second child in her cozy embrace.
That day, too, Inho ultimately failed to die. He ended up confined to a hospital room again with only broken limbs. He spent his days and nights lying awake in a hospital room where no one but the caregiver came.
It was then that an unexpected manifestation heat struck Inho.
In the late dawn, on a silent hospital bed where no one was, young Inho writhed in terrible pain. Thinking he might die like this, he quietly swallowed his pain alone without calling anyone.
However, contrary to Inho’s wishes, after regaining consciousness, he became healthier than anyone else. Within half a year, he grew noticeably taller, and his frame changed even though he hadn’t exercised.
Without even seeing the test results, everyone who saw Inho said in unison. It was clear that he had manifested as a superior alpha. And their predictions were accurate.
Even though only Inho’s trait had changed, all the environments and people surrounding him changed by 180 degrees. Everyone, including Jang Eun-young, welcomed Inho, and even his father, who had never called his name once, summoned him to his study every day.
All because a single trait had changed.
When Inho became a high school student, he became a more conspicuous child than anyone else. As his looks resembling Jang Eun-young, the Hansung Group chairman’s large build, and his background mixed, everyone looked up to him. His peers all tried to become friends with Inho, and relatives and adults showered him with gifts.
On Inho’s birthdays, when he had never even received a single cake before, the biggest parties were now held. However, the protagonist of the parties never attended.
The more attention Inho received, the more rebellious his behavior became. At first, he broke things, and then he made a mess of his room. When his violence reached people, it was finally decided that he needed psychiatric treatment, and he was sent back to the United States.
Jang Eun-young, who had been elated that her son had manifested as a superior alpha, became anxious again. She followed him to the United States and poured out the attention and affection she hadn’t given him before, but it was useless.
Inho had already been ruined. He sought people and objects out of loneliness but quickly grew tired of them. He only felt stable in environments surrounded by new things and couldn’t last a single day without alcohol and drugs.
He had wasted his life like that before a small incident made him come to his senses, and he returned to Korea.
Inho didn’t live as the Chairman and Jang Eun-young had hoped, but he also didn’t waste his life as he had in the past.
All thanks to one big goal that had entered his life, which had been flowing like water.
***
Inho, having arrived home, opened the front door irritably. Before crossing the inner door, he checked the floor of the entryway and relaxed his crumpled expression. Only Haon’s shoes were placed there.
“Haon-ssi.”
He was walking quickly through the entrance hallway when he ran into Haon, who was just coming out. Haon had been doing the dishes in the kitchen and rushed over, wiping water off his clothes.
“You’re here.”
Inho immediately scanned Haon’s expression. Haon was always smiling, but his gentle face couldn’t hide his emotions well.
“Your mother left first.”
Haon brought up Jang Eun-young’s name first. The face with a moderately bright smile was fortunately not too dark.
“What did she say? Didn’t she say anything strange to Haon-ssi?”
Inho, stepping close to Haon, asked. He had asked a similar question earlier.
“No, she just borrowed my phone for a moment.”
Haon’s gaze, looking up at Inho from close range, wavered slightly. It was because Inho’s complexion looked somewhat pale. Moreover, beads of cold sweat were forming on his forehead.
“Did you run all the way here…?”
Haon gently wiped away the beads of sweat and wore a worried expression.
“Are you not feeling well somewhere?”
Now that he looked closely, Inho’s complexion was excessively pale. He hadn’t noticed his bad color because his lips were red, but looking at him closely from right in front, the area under his eyes looked a little dark. As if he hadn’t slept.
“Really, is that all?”
Inho, grabbing Haon’s hand that was touching his forehead and pulling it down, asked again. A different emotion began to slowly surface on his tired face.
At that moment, Haon suddenly grabbed Inho’s face with both hands. He cupped his cheeks with both hands, not just one, and called Inho in a trembling voice.
“I-Inho-ssi….”
Nosebleed, you’re having a nosebleed. He mumbled distractedly, cupping under Inho’s nose with his bare hands. The blood that gushed out began to run down Haon’s hand and onto the floor.
