“You have to get an abortion now. No matter what. I forgot for a moment. That you’re a piece of trash bastard.”
Even though Ji Haesu knew that the cracks that had spread across Choi Suho’s face were shattering and stabbing straight into his heart, he didn’t stop.
“Suho, you know that at this point, I’m the only one left who’ll love you.”
“Fuck. I’d rather die than be loved by a crazy bastard like you.”
Choi Suho twisted his lips into a crooked smile.
“Everyone wants me dead anyway.”
“No, Suho.”
Ji Haesu placed a hand on his own chest and spoke with a flushed, feverish expression.
“I truly love you.”
“You call that love? Saying you’ll stuff the person you love into a suitcase, saying you’ll make him miscarry? That’s your love?”
That was when Ji Haesu spoke lightly, wearing a refreshingly bright smile as if nothing were wrong.
“Then should I treat trash like you even better?”
“……!”
“You know it too. That you should be grateful just to be treated like a human at all.”
Choi Suho clenched his lips shut, grinding his teeth as he spoke.
“Do you really think you’re different from me?”
“No.”
“Right. You’re the same trash as me. Ji Haesu, you nameless bastard.”
Choi Suho didn’t stop there and kept going.
“One day, you’ll get paid back for all your trash behavior. A ‘commission’? You’re more cowardly than me. To avoid punishment, you take money from people weaker than you under the name of a commission, rape and kill trash like me under the excuse of ‘trash disposal’—but it’s all dirty money in the end! It’s not justified!”
“They wanted it.”
“Yeah! You used that to satisfy your own desires, didn’t you?! How is that any different from me?! You’ll be struck by divine punishment someday for what you’ve done, you fucking bastard!”
Ji Haesu’s face stiffened in a strange way.
“Who do you think you are—”
Reversing the words Choi Suho used to say so often, Ji Haesu reached out with both hands and began strangling him.
“Who do you think you are to lecture me? My philosophy isn’t wrong enough for trash like you to judge.”
“Kh—!”
“I’m not like trash like you. I’ll never be punished. I found that path and walked it.”
I’m different from parents who gave birth to a child only out of necessity. Watching parents who committed murder, robbery, rape, every vile thing imaginable, and were executed for it—I realized something.
I will never be retaliated against. I searched for that path, found it, and walked it all this way. And you dare—trash who lived comfortably just because you were born to good parents—dare say you’re the same as me? Who do you think you are!
“Ghk—!”
When Choi Suho’s neck was squeezed so tightly that his face turned deathly pale and he was nearly out of breath, Ji Haesu finally released his grip. The moment he let go, Choi Suho jerked his head to the side.
“Cough! Cough!”
He gasped roughly, coughing as he struggled to breathe.
“Suho.”
Thud. Thud. Ji Haesu deliberately slapped Choi Suho’s cheeks—pale, only now beginning to regain some color—in a deliberately degrading way as he spoke.
“With your father dead, you’re less than trash sitting in a trash dump. You’re nothing. Don’t compare yourself to me.”
“……”
With his father dead, I’m nothing.
Recalling what had happened at the funeral earlier that day, Choi Suho’s eyes filled with tears as he clutched his throat and looked at Ji Haesu.
Please, don’t say such cruel things to me. Don’t say words that utterly destroy me.
That pleading look clung to Ji Haesu’s entire body starting from his ankles, but Ji Haesu forced himself to ignore it as he pulled his cock out from inside Choi Suho.
As the glans scraped harshly against his inner walls while withdrawing, Choi Suho couldn’t even make a sound, trembling violently. Ji Haesu grabbed Choi Suho’s bruised hips and spread them wide; from the gaping hole, watery semen trickled down in a slow stream.
“This look suits you best now, so behave nicely. What are you going to do if even I throw you away?”
“Shit……”
Leaving Choi Suho sobbing with his head lowered and shoulders shaking, Ji Haesu walked out of the room. Running a hand through his hair, he let out an “Ah,” then muttered to himself.
“I need to buy a pregnancy test.”
His laughter scattered into the air.
***
—Even once would be nice. I wish the dad who gave birth to you would appear in your dreams.
When he was little, his dad would hold him in his arms. When he grew too big to be held anymore, his dad would take his hand, stroke it, and often say those words. How heartless must he have been, that Suho’s dad didn’t even appear in his dreams.
—You heartless man. If you’d just show up in my dreams once, hate me, curse me—anything—how nice would that be.
As the years passed, guilt faded while anguish grew heavier. His dad, shamelessly, desperately wanted to see the dad who had given birth to him, even if only in a dream. Just once was enough—appear in his dream, hurl insults at him to your heart’s content, then disappear cleanly, he muttered as if begging himself.
—Don’t you want to hear “I love you,” Dad?
At those words, his dad tightly gripped his hand and muttered something incomprehensible.
—I think it’d be easier if I heard “I hate you” instead.
Since he could never hear “I love you,” it was a selfish desire to at least hear “I hate you” and carve that into himself instead. His father was selfish to the very end, and even as he understood him and tried to think of him as a good person, he realized he himself was just as selfish—just like his father.
Still, he had been a good father to him.
—Do you really think so?
That was when it happened. The father who had never once appeared in his dad’s dreams, whose identity he hadn’t known for a single moment in his 28 years of life—the real father who had given birth to him—suddenly revealed himself, thrusting his face into view.
Choi Suho froze, breath caught in his throat, as he saw thirty-year-old Choi Juho, who looked exactly like his twenty-eight-year-old self.
So that was why his dad had loved him so much……
—Suho, you can’t be like that too.
In that instant, he understood perfectly why his stepmother had screamed that she didn’t want to register him in the family registry. It was like looking into a mirror—so much so that even if someone said they were identical twins, he’d believe it. If it weren’t for the bruises and injuries on his own body, he wouldn’t have been able to tell who was who.
Choi Juho, preserved exactly as he was after committing suicide, faced Choi Suho with a bluish line around his neck and smiled. Even his smile was identical—it sent chills down Suho’s spine. Covering his mouth, Choi Suho staggered backward, trying to flee, when he heard a clanking sound.
When he came to his senses, at some point a dog collar had been fastened around his neck, and a metal chain stretched upward into a sky with no end in sight. Choi Juho stared at him quietly, then clasped his hands behind his back and smiled faintly.
—I never once loved that man.
—……
Choi Juho spoke with a bitter smile hanging on his lips.
—I’m sorry, but the child I gave birth to with my own belly—you’re the same.
Without thinking, Choi Suho opened his mouth.
—I’m different from you dads. No matter whose seed I take and give birth to a child, I’ll love them. That child isn’t guilty!
Choi Juho’s eyes widened slightly, as if surprised. Choi Suho clenched his fists and shouted.
—Why? Why does the child have to bear all the sins and be hated? That’s too…… unfair!
Just because they’re born resembling someone, they’re denied their own birth, hated their entire lives, and pushed relentlessly toward death……!!
—So then, Ji Haesu. Are you going to give birth to XXX’s child?
Choi Juho looked worried. XXX? Say it properly. Say Ji Haesu’s name……
Until now, he hadn’t been able to find him because he didn’t know Ji Haesu’s name, not even his birth date. The only thing that had surfaced was that he’d stolen a Seoul National University student’s ID and was living under that identity.
Ah.
—Suho, don’t do this. You won’t be happy giving birth to that child. Because you’re my son, I know—
—So what do you want me to do?!
—Die.
Facing Choi Suho, Choi Juho whispered. Choi Suho’s face twisted.
—If you live and give birth to that child, do you really think that child will be happy?
Choi Suho clenched his fists.
—I’ll love them until the day they say they’re happy. Every single day.
—Really? You think so?
Choi Juho smiled and whispered into his ear.
—Won’t they curse you, just like you cursed me? Before that happens, just die. No one wants you to live in this world anyway.
—It’s a dream, just an illusion, so why does it hurt like my chest is being stabbed with a knife? Like nails are being driven in. It hurts so much I feel like I’ll die.
Choi Suho screamed SOS, SOS, MAYDAY over and over.
As if he’d realized that Choi Suho was sending out a desperate plea to be saved, Choi Juho grabbed his wrist and spoke.
—Does this dad sound like he’s talking nonsense?
—You’re already dead, saying all this—why would I believe you?!
When Choi Suho shouted hysterically, Choi Juho stroked his own neck with his opposite hand and said,
—I’m telling you from experience.
—……
When Choi Suho couldn’t say anything and just stared blankly, Choi Juho wrapped him tightly in both arms.
Even though it was a dream, being held in his father’s arms for the first time felt warm and comforting.
There, he understood that his father’s words weren’t a lie.
He could tell just from the fact that Choi Juho—who had never once appeared in the dreams of Jang Yuguk, the man who had driven him to death—only appeared in Suho’s dreams after Jang Yuguk had died.
