Chapter 173
“There are times when a series of events feels like they’re happening in a predetermined order, like a chain reaction of well-designed gears meshing together.”
“…”
“It’s the feeling of being swept away by the waves of fate no matter how much you struggle to escape.”
Mu-seok, who had been muttering to himself, shifted his gaze from Hyeon-woo to the completely damaged statue. His face was deep in thought as he stared at the grotesquely broken surface.
“It was around this time in winter, I think. When my half-brother was exiled here.”
Hyeon-woo’s eyes widened at those words. It was the first time he learned that Mu-seok had a sibling. And a half-brother at that…
“Unlike me, a beta, he manifested as a dominant alpha at a young age and began to receive everyone’s expectations and hopes. I couldn’t accept it. A mere child of a concubine…”
Hyeon-woo listened quietly to the story. He was interested in Tae-geon’s family history, which he had never heard before. He had always been curious. Where was Tae-geon’s other parent besides Mu-seok, whether he had other siblings, and what his relationship with relatives was like.
But they had never talked about this. Tae-geon always kept him at a distance when family matters arose. He never opened up about his family members, so Hyeon-woo couldn’t ask carelessly.
Hyeon-woo also learned for the first time that Mu-seok was a beta. He had vaguely assumed he was an alpha due to his intimidating aura that could make people shrink just by looking at him. As Hyeon-woo was thinking how unexpected this was, Mu-seok’s voice continued:
“Even as my brother grew more wayward and became too damaged to function as a normal person, the family couldn’t let go of their expectations for him. That drove both my brother and me even crazier.”
“…”
“As his eccentric behavior worsened to an intolerable level, he finally received a special punishment and was isolated in a remote place, cut off from the world.”
A remote place cut off from the world. Hyeon-woo instinctively realized that the place Mu-seok was referring to was this very mansion.
“But you know…”
Mu-seok’s eyes suddenly sharpened as he trailed off and turned his gaze to Hyeon-woo.
“Who would have imagined that he would fall for an omega of unknown origin working as a menial laborer at that place of exile?”
Even knowing this wasn’t about him, Hyeon-woo couldn’t move. Although Mu-seok clearly didn’t know that he was an omega, the situations of the characters in his story felt so similar to his and Tae-geon’s that it made him uncomfortable.
“No, that’s not quite right. It’s inaccurate to say they fell for each other.”
Stroking his chin with his thumb as if recalling an old memory, Mu-seok’s gaze that had drifted into space soon returned to Hyeon-woo.
“It was my brother’s one-sided pursuit.”
“…”
“I didn’t know that in the meantime, my brother had even imprinted on that omega.”
“…!!”
At the mention of imprinting, Hyeon-woo startled like a thief caught in the act and quickly lowered his head to avoid Mu-seok’s gaze. Mu-seok’s eyes flashed with silent confirmation as he observed this reaction with narrowed eyes.
“I swear there was no other intention in driving the pregnant omega out of the mansion. I only recently became certain through that child that my brother’s monthly bizarre seizures were imprinting pains.”
It sounded like a pathetic excuse.
Hyeon-woo couldn’t understand why he was telling him this story. He had been listening only because he thought it might not be unrelated to Tae-geon, but the term “that child” that came up at the end of the story grated on Hyeon-woo’s nerves.
…That child?
The voice, devoid of attachment or warmth, didn’t sound at all like a parent talking about their own child.
“As the days when my brother’s mind was unsound increased, proportionally, many things he possessed gradually became mine. It took 5 years to grasp everything of my brother’s.”
Was it an illusion? Something like regret seemed to flash across Mu-seok’s face as he curled his lips.
“When my brother, who had stubbornly endured his severe symptoms, took his own life by jumping off a cliff, I began frantically searching for the omega I had driven away, as if possessed by something. And what I found there was that child.”
Mu-seok’s last words shocked Hyeon-woo.
He had wondered why Mu-seok was telling this long story about his dead brother…
It was to reveal that Tae-geon’s real father was not Mu-seok, but his now-deceased half-brother. He had given such a lengthy introduction to reveal this fact. Or was that the only reason?
Mu-seok’s gaze, which had been fixed on him throughout the story, implied much more. The look in his eyes when he talked about his brother’s imprinting, and the meaningful glance he cast while looking up and down at Hyeon-woo’s uniform that revealed him as an employee here, were not so simple.
“The omega was gone. In that particularly hot summer, they said she hanged herself from a rafter. My brother jumped to his death in early autumn of the same year.”
Mu-seok’s following words shocked Hyeon-woo even more.
Hadn’t he said that he only started tracking the omega’s whereabouts after his brother’s death? If the omega had given up on life even earlier than Mu-seok’s brother, how long had Tae-geon, who would have been only four or five years old, been left alone?
He would have been about the same age as Jerome is now. Jerome, who can’t do anything on his own without someone to wash him, put him to bed, and feed him. Just imagining Jerome, who is barely old enough to be spoiled and loved, being left alone made Hyeon-woo dizzy.
Even when he had lost both his parents in an accident and was drowning in a terrible sense of loss, barely seeing any meaning in his existence, he couldn’t die because he kept thinking of Jerome who would be left alone. He couldn’t shake off those small hands clinging to his collar.
If he felt this way about a child that wasn’t even his own, how cruel and heartless must one be to make such a choice, leaving behind a child born from their own body?
Hyeon-woo thought, biting his lip. It was because they had never loved. It was possible because they had never loved Tae-geon for even a moment.
The image of Tae-geon writhing in agony with nightly seizures flashed before his eyes. The handful of medications prescribed to Tae-geon and the sharp needles piercing his skin, the dark silhouette of young Tae-geon sitting on the bed with a large full moon behind him, spewing curses into the air – these scenes passed through his mind like a film reel.
His heart ached as if someone was carving it with a sharp knife. Only now could Hyeon-woo begin to guess the weight of what his existence might have meant to Tae-geon.
But what about himself? After making sweet vows and promises to be together forever, he had left Tae-geon’s side without a second thought.
‘Hyeon-woo, Hyeon-woo.’
Tae-geon’s voice, desperately repeating his name while suffering from a terrible rut, echoed in his ears.
Had he been sensing Hyeon-woo’s existence somewhere in the world? Is that why he called out his name endlessly even in such a delirious state?
Mu-seok’s brother, who had taken his own life, must have realized it in the same way. That his imprinted partner no longer existed in this world, as evidenced by the ruts that no longer came.
“That child’s intense hatred for omegas must have originated from the one who gave birth to him. Born trampling on the wish for death, his fate was tragic. I took in such a child and raised him this far. I consider any debt paid off now.”
…What?
Raised? Debt?
It sounded like nothing more than saying he had used young Tae-geon to clear his own sins.
Anyone who knows about Tae-geon’s childhood would not deny the fact that he grew up in utter neglect and abandonment.
Hyeon-woo almost burst out laughing at Mu-seok’s cowardice, believing he had cleared all his guilt for driving his brother, who had given him such a severe inferiority complex, to death in this way.
A beneficiary who monopolized everything through his brother’s death, yet simultaneously a sinner who could never be free from the responsibility of complicity.
Mu-seok must have felt a deep sense of inferiority towards his half-brother who manifested as an alpha while he lived his whole life as a beta. It was natural that the existence of Tae-geon, who was his brother’s bloodline and an extremely dominant alpha, would have been more terrifying to him than a nightmare.
Perhaps it was nearly impossible for Mu-seok to truly love Tae-geon, who was the source of guilt and inferiority lurking in the deepest part of Mu-seok’s inner self, and a mirror reflecting his own dirty underbelly.
After taking in Tae-geon as an indulgence to offset his sins, using him thoroughly, and then abandoning him in a place like this when he was no longer useful. And then to have the audacity to say he had raised him this far. Hyeon-woo gritted his teeth at Mu-seok’s shamelessness.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
