If I had chosen Si-in, would none of this have happened? If I’d realized my love for Si-in and chosen a life with him, then I wouldn’t have received my father’s love.
But what is this now? I lost everyone who loved me. Because of my foolish, pathetic choices.
“People really don’t come to their senses until it becomes their own problem.”
Thud……
Ji Haesu spoke in an irritated tone as he flung Choi Suho onto the bed, then sat down beside him and turned on the TV. Even after being choked and having his hair yanked, Choi Suho seemed numb to the pain, blinking blankly with unfocused eyes.
“You should’ve just lived properly in the first place……”
Ji Haesu stopped mid-sentence and closed his mouth.
If Choi Suho had lived well, would he ever have met him? Choi Suho would’ve been living a happy life with Do Si-in, raising a child. Ah—thinking about it that way made irritation bubble up unexpectedly. Ji Haesu kneaded Choi Suho’s buttocks as he lay sprawled on the bed, acting as though he were on death’s door. Bruised deep red from being roughed up day after day, the flesh cried out in pain at even the slightest touch.
When Choi Suho let out a soft uhn and trembled, Ji Haesu curved his lips into a deep smile and said in a sly, wet voice,
“Why don’t you try living properly, even now?”
“……”
That was when Ji Haesu turned on the TV. It was a thoughtless action. The channel that came on immediately was a current-affairs and educational program. Coincidentally, the topic being discussed live was [Obituary of Free Enterprise Chairman Jang Yuguk, and the succession?]. Unaware of what was on the screen, Ji Haesu continued fiddling with Suho’s hips—still firm and strong like an Alpha’s despite having become an Omega—and tossed out a casual, teasing remark, like throwing a ball back and forth.
“Think it over carefully. If you get pregnant now……”
Crash!
Suddenly, Choi Suho shoved Ji Haesu away and leapt down from the bed. Ji Haesu’s face hardened as he took a blow to the chest.
This little bastard—being nice to him made him act like a piece of shit?
“Hey. Choi Suho.”
With a deathly pale face, barefoot without even slippers on, Choi Suho tried to rush out of the hospital room. He’d pulled out the IV in his left hand; blood streamed down, but he didn’t even care, continuing toward the door. Ji Haesu, deeply displeased that Suho was rejecting the feelings he’d bothered to confess, grabbed both of Suho’s fists and resisted him like they were locked in a power struggle.
“Fuck, let go of me!”
Choi Suho thrashed wildly, trying to leave. Ji Haesu seized Suho’s wrist, which had only recently come out of a cast and still needed rehabilitation. Even as cold sweat poured down his face, Suho reached for the doorknob with his other hand. Seizing the opening, Ji Haesu slammed his shoe into the inside of Suho’s ankle.
Struck squarely on the ankle bone, Suho’s body wavered and pitched forward. Ji Haesu wrapped an arm around his upper body and drove a knee straight into his solar plexus.
Thud!
“Guhhk!”
“Do you only listen after you get hit? Huh?”
Ji Haesu then flung him onto the floor. Choi Suho coughed violently, crawling forward on his hands. Having been kneed repeatedly in the abdomen, he should’ve been in excruciating pain, his organs twisting—but he muttered like a madman,
“I have to go…… I have to……”
Ji Haesu watched him impassively. When Suho reached the door, Ji Haesu placed a hand on his ankle. Choi Suho’s face stiffened.
“Suho.”
“D-don’t……!”
Crack—
“……!”
The ankle twisted in the opposite direction, accompanied by the sound of grinding bone. It should’ve been unbearable, but prideful as ever, Choi Suho clenched his teeth and endured the pain of his ankle breaking. His whole body trembled violently, soon drenched in cold sweat. Through clenched teeth came short, broken sobs—“Hh… hhk… hk.”
After deliberately breaking his ankle, Ji Haesu tossed him back onto the floor. Even as aching pain radiated from the shattered joint, Choi Suho groaned and crawled once more toward the now-distant door.
“I have to go. This can’t be true. Dad wouldn’t…… do that to me……”
Hearing that, Ji Haesu muttered, “What are you talking about?” Then he sharply turned his head at the anchor’s voice reaching his ears.
[Yes, contrary to rumors, Honorary Chairman Jang Yuguk has formally passed down his assets in order to the three children officially registered in the family registry. As expected, Vice President Jang Jihyeok has become Chairman of Free Electronics, while Chairman Jang Jihun has taken over Free Distribution……]
“Dad wouldn’t do that……”
Choi Suho repeated the same words over and over, crawling toward the door as if utopia lay beyond it, stretching his hand toward the doorknob.
“Dad would never…… do that to me……”
“So that’s what this was about?”
Ji Haesu asked calmly. At the word that, Choi Suho pushed himself upright, braced one leg against the wall, and grabbed Ji Haesu by the collar, screaming hoarsely.
“You fucking bastard, what do you know?! Do you know how much Dad loved me?! There’s no way he’d give that to Jang Jihae! He’d give me the casinos and the big-box marts before handing that over to Jang Jihae—why would he give that to him?!”
“So it’s a fight over inheritance, after all.”
Ji Haesu wore a bored expression. Grabbing his collar tighter, Choi Suho shouted,
“Inheritance?! That’s proof that Dad loved me! That Jang Jihae bastard—!”
“You’re an Omega.”
Ji Haesu poked Suho’s forehead with his index finger. Choi Suho’s face went rigid.
“A—”
Before he could finish, Ji Haesu seized his neck and dragged him back to the bed.
“Here. Take a look. See what it says your trait is.”
“……!”
[Name: Choi Suho. Age: 28. Trait: Omega (recessive). Pregnancy: No]
Cracks spiderwebbed through Choi Suho’s eyes as he read it. Holding Suho from behind—unable to stand properly because of the ankle Ji Haesu himself had broken—Ji Haesu leaned in and whispered into the ear that had only just begun to recover.
“Your father had a rule, didn’t he?”
“……”
With a face drained white, Choi Suho swallowed dryly.
“Absolutely no recessive Omegas in his family.”
“Then… wait. The reason he came to the house was……”
Choi Suho blinked slowly. Like a panorama, he saw his father, Jang Jihyeok, Jang Jihun, Jang Jihae—and two people he’d forgotten: his father’s attending physician and the lawyer.
“To confirm that I’d become an Omega……?”
“Correct!”
Choi Suho lowered his head, utterly hollowed out.
“Did he stop loving me because I became a recessive Omega?”
“No idea.”
He was already dead—how would anyone ever confirm that?
“That’s why I told you, Suho.”
Snickering, Ji Haesu held him tightly so he couldn’t escape.
“I told you over and over—you’re fucked.”
You’ll go through the exact same procedures you made Do Si-in go through. His smiling eyes said as much.
He knew—and still abandoned me. Yes. He was there too.
At that moment, laughter burst uncontrollably from Choi Suho.
“Ha… hahahaha. Hahahaha! Hahahahahaha!”
Then—
“Uheuheuheu……”
He bowed his head and wept. The moment he confirmed the death of the father who’d been the only one to love him, it felt like the world had ended……
But the father who came with his doctor and lawyer the instant he learned Suho had become an Omega—to decide whether to abandon him or not—had never loved him either……
“Hahahahaha!”
He’d loved the shell of the father who gave birth to me. At last, Choi Suho acknowledged what he’d denied even in his father’s final gaze.
That’s why he loved me. That’s why he cherished me so dearly.
If I hadn’t resembled you, would you have loved me like that? Like the three Jang brothers?
“Hhk… hhuk. Ah, ah!”
In the end, even to Dad, I was never loved for who I was.
That’s why I was discarded the moment I became an Omega.
If Dad had truly loved me, he would’ve loved me even after I became an Omega.
Dad……
Until the very end, you loved only Choi Juho.
Right before facing death, your eyes said exactly that.
You didn’t die from the shock of seeing your son being raped—you died in the joy of seeing the lover you once loved again.
Then what was the love you gave me all this time?
Who am I even valuable to?
“Suho, don’t worry.”
As Choi Suho escaped the false, beautiful world his father had created and now had to live in a filthy, brutal reality with one broken leg, Ji Haesu whispered in a beautiful voice right into his ear. Like a broken marionette, Suho creaked as he turned his head. As if he’d been waiting, Ji Haesu grabbed his neck, kissed him, and smiled so deeply his dimples could’ve been carved in stone, speaking in a wet voice.
“I’m here—the one who’s thinking only about fucking you up.”
“Fuck you, how is that ‘don’t worry’? You mean I should just die getting fucked over by you every day?!”
In the month and a half to nearly two months since meeting Ji Haesu, there wasn’t a single part of his body that was uninjured. Even the police cautiously asked who had done this to him. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that his ex-lover, Do Si-in, had hired a man using the alias Ji Haesu to take revenge by doing to him everything Suho had once done to Si-in.
His pride wouldn’t allow it.
