Chapter 54
In a dark room with the lights off, Hyeon-woo sat hugging his knees, surrounded by more than five pregnancy test kits scattered around him. All of them showed two red lines.
The word “pregnancy” filled Hyeon-woo’s dazed mind.
It’s unclear why the first thing that came to his mind at this moment was the alpha-omega couple he and Tae-geon had encountered at the supermarket while shopping for groceries. The image of the alpha gently caressing the omega’s swollen belly and the omega smiling like sunshine at the alpha was etched in his mind, refusing to disappear. Their radiant appearance painfully stirred Hyeon-woo’s heart like a red-hot iron skewer.
There were times when he had wondered what it would feel like to carry the fruit of love with someone he cared for, but when actually faced with that moment, the first emotion he felt was despair.
Hyeon-woo absent-mindedly rubbed his lower abdomen. There was a baby inside. He couldn’t believe it. Without a doubt, it was Tae-geon’s child.
He remembered that day when Tae-geon’s member had swollen up like a balloon after ejaculating inside him. He had cried in pain from the pressure, trying to move his body, but their connected parts didn’t budge at all. Only now did Hyeon-woo realize that act had been knotting.
Hyeon-woo’s eyes were filled with confusion as he chewed his nails out of habit. He had never once thought something like this would happen to him.
He felt lost. He didn’t even have enough money for the surgery. Both giving birth and having an abortion required a significant amount of money. His mind felt like it was about to explode, overwhelmed by this unexpected situation on top of his struggle to hide from Tae-geon.
Instinctively thinking of his parents’ embrace, Hyeon-woo shook his head, his face turning pale. He was afraid of the potential conflict between his family and the Tae-ryeong Group because of him.
His father had dedicated his entire life to the Tae-ryeong Group. He remembered his father’s face full of expectation when he asked what Hyeon-woo had been playing with Tae-geon after returning from the mansion. His father showed no concern when Hyeon-woo caught a fever after spending all day making snowmen with Tae-geon outside.
One day, Hyeon-woo overheard his parents arguing fiercely while he was half-asleep.
“How much longer does our Hyeon-woo have to keep going to that house?! You said it would only be until last year!”
“I can’t let my son associate with that psychopath anymore. Do you even know what happened in front of the kids’ school today?!”
“How is this for Hyeon-woo’s benefit?! It’s for your own sake! You got that position thanks to Hyeon-woo! You should be ashamed!”
On such nights, Hyeon-woo would pretend to be asleep, pulling the blanket over his head. He felt he was the one who should be blamed. It was his own will to be with Tae-geon, not anyone’s coercion, so if that decision was wrong, he should be the one pointed at, not his father.
As the marital disputes continued, Hyeon-woo’s heart gradually distanced from his parents. From a certain point on, he no longer shared his true feelings with them.
“Hyeon-woo, do you like Tae-geon that much?”
When his mother came to his bedroom before sleep and asked while gently stroking his hair, Hyeon-woo nodded.
“I like him.”
He said it was fun and enjoyable to be with Tae-geon. He also felt good about being the only one Tae-geon, who never let anyone close, followed, and being the only one who knew that Tae-geon’s jewel-like eyes contained the universe.
The curiosity and possessiveness typical of that age were burning fiercely towards Tae-geon. Although his mother was displeased with Hyeon-woo rushing into a narrow relationship centered around Tae-geon when he should have been expanding his world, she eventually gave in when her son said he enjoyed spending time with his best friend the most.
After that, there were no more marital disputes, but his mother consistently disliked Tae-geon. She said looking into Tae-geon’s eyes gave her goosebumps. She said his pitch-black eyes were as empty as an abyss.
Hyeon-woo couldn’t empathize. In Tae-geon’s eyes, he saw a sparkling universe and the Milky Way. But he could understand what his mother feared. When standing before Tae-geon’s father, Mu-seok, Hyeon-woo felt like a mouse in front of a satiated lion. The overwhelming pressure made his spine shiver. Looking into Mu-seok’s eyes, devoid of any warmth, Hyeon-woo wondered if this was the pitch-black abyss his mother had mentioned.
While people dismissed the periodic conspiracy theories about the Tae-ryeong Group as baseless rumors, Hyeon-woo thought differently. His father’s newly appointed role in the strategy office was to manage risks and lead innovation as the control tower of the Tae-ryeong Group. It was essentially a cleanup crew dealing with various wrongdoings under the guise of crisis management.
Thanks to the capable strategy office, the media and judicial authorities remained silent on various suspicions surrounding the Tae-ryeong Group, with only a few engaging in the battle for truth.
Was it due to conscience? Soon after being assigned to the strategy office, his father developed insomnia, and seeing his worsening symptoms, Hyeon-woo thought that perhaps the dark aspects of Tae-ryeong circulating as rumors might not be entirely false.
The image of his father, unable to sleep easily even after visiting a psychiatrist and taking sleeping pills, alternated with Choi Mu-seok’s emotionless black eyes in Hyeon-woo’s mind. That relationship felt similar to his own with Tae-geon.
“Using and discarding.” As if rejecting the cruel world of survival of the fittest, Hyeon-woo tightly closed his eyes.
Surprisingly, some instinct had surged from somewhere, and when he came to his senses, he found himself tightly hugging his belly with both arms. As if trying to protect it from threats.
Hyeon-woo swallowed a bitter laugh at his own gesture.
…Baby. My baby.
Thinking about the baby in his womb didn’t make his head hurt, but his heart. He didn’t think the pain in his heart would heal if he aborted the child. If anything, he felt he would suffer from incomparable pain. Just imagining it made his heart constrict with guilt. Apart from the guilt, Hyeon-woo didn’t want to abort the baby.
He wanted to give birth to it.
Although he felt foolish and pathetic, Hyeon-woo acknowledged his desire to keep this trace of Tae-geon, even in this way. Despite hating and resenting him every day, he found himself back at square one.
Once he honestly acknowledged his feelings, the initial sense of despair and fear in face of pregnancy began to fade, replaced by a rising expectation like a heat haze.
Hyeon-woo imagined what the child in his womb might look like.
My child with Tae-geon.
As his decision leaned towards giving birth to the child, his heart beat strongly. Color returned to Hyeon-woo’s corpse-like face, and a gleam appeared in his dull eyes.
Thump-thump.
It wasn’t a heartbeat caused by fear. It was a kind of excitement.
It will be beautiful. Whether it’s an alpha like Tae-geon, or a beta, it doesn’t matter. Even if it’s an omega, that’s fine too.
Hyeon-woo firmly decided to give birth to and raise the child.
He wouldn’t tell anyone about this. He would never reveal whose child it was. It mustn’t be discovered by his parents, Tae-geon’s family, or Tae-geon himself.
It was a life unwanted by anyone. There wasn’t a single person who would support and encourage his decision.
The child’s situation felt exactly like his own affection that had to be trampled before it could even sprout, and it pained his heart. But this time, he wouldn’t let it rot in the shadows. He would nurture it preciously under warm sunshine, giving it plenty of love. What others thought didn’t matter at all.
Because I want it. That reason alone was enough to justify its right to be born into this world.
Thinking about the child growing up under a single parent, fighting society’s prejudices, made him uneasy, but it made him more determined to work hard so that the child wouldn’t feel the absence of the other parent.
His attachment to life and will burned like fire. The future life with the child to be born seemed incredibly happy. With this child, he felt he could live looking only towards a bright future, without being bound by sympathy or lingering feelings for the past.
Having made up his mind, Hyeon-woo immediately started job hunting. There was no more time to waste on worries and concerns. He needed money. Even if he couldn’t dream of postpartum care, he needed to work hard from now on to prepare the minimum hospital expenses and childcare items necessary for giving birth. Once his belly started showing, no one would hire him, so he had to save as much as possible until then.
As Hyeon-woo, who had been in a daze for a while, started looking for jobs enthusiastically, the landlady helped him by calling her acquaintances who ran businesses to see if they needed any extra hands.
“Hey, it’s Kyung-ae. Jangmi was saying that she’s looking for someone to work at her cafe recently?”
An excited voice came through the receiver.
