#55
Since that day, the watch Eunsol had given to Hyun-oh always adorned his wrist. There were more expensive watches in Hyun-oh’s dressing room. Some had even been custom-made exclusively for Hyun-oh.
Nevertheless, Hyun-oh never removed the watch Eunsol had given him from his wrist whenever he went out, as if he had only one watch.
Because of this, Eunsol had unknowingly fallen into a misunderstanding. That perhaps Hyun-oh’s heart had tilted a little toward him.
How groundless that thought was… Eunsol would come to realize painfully not long after.
* * *
It was the day when all the leaves that had stubbornly clung to the trees until they lost their color finally fell, carried away by the cold wind.
His breath was as rapid as if he had sprinted hundreds of meters without rest. Hyun-oh brushed back his sweat-soaked hair and slowly moved his body backward.
The thin body trembled slightly, to a pitiful degree. Hyun-oh pulled the bunched-up blanket from the edge and covered the trembling body.
He needed to clean up, but it was to give Eunsol time to catch his breath, if only for a moment.
It was then that Eunsol slowly raised his body. The blanket covering him slid down to his waist, revealing the fever blossoms that had been hidden.
“It must be difficult for you to move.”
Usually, after intimacy with Eunsol, Hyun-oh would fill the bathtub with water while Eunsol caught his breath, and then move the exhausted Eunsol to the tub.
He was planning to do the same today. Despite the slowly blinking eyelids clearly indicating that he was tired enough to fall asleep immediately, Eunsol strangely maintained his sitting position and watched Hyun-oh’s reaction.
“Do you have something to say to me?”
By this point, Hyun-oh also realized that Eunsol had something to discuss with him. His fumbling lips glistened with saliva. As his body, having just satisfied its desires, started to respond again, Hyun-oh instead focused his gaze on the black pupils.
“We’ve been… continuously intimate.”
The words from Eunsol, who had started speaking with difficulty, were about their marital relationship. Hyun-oh’s brow furrowed slightly. Given Eunsol’s personality, bringing up such a topic wouldn’t be easy.
He wondered what aspect was causing this. …Perhaps he wanted to say that having intimacy too frequently was difficult for him?
That was something Hyun-oh understood to some extent. Eunsol had weak physical strength. His skin was also delicate, so Hyun-oh had to constantly strive not to lose his reason during their encounters.
Otherwise, at some point, bruises of different colors and intensities would remain clearly on Eunsol’s body. When he discovered Eunsol’s wrist wrapped in bandages with ointment applied by inexperienced hands, he had found it difficult to hide his inner consternation.
At some point, Hyun-oh couldn’t stop his hands from reaching for Eunsol. Inevitably, whenever they shared a bed, except for the days when he had to sleep apart from Eunsol, he would invariably take Eunsol into his arms.
Since Eunsol didn’t refuse and followed along well, he hadn’t felt that Eunsol disliked it.
It was around the time when Hyun-oh’s gaze sank lower, reflecting his complicated feelings, that Eunsol said something unexpected.
“I was wondering if… it would be alright if I got pregnant.”
Pregnancy.
Hyun-oh felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It was because he had had a similar conversation with Eunsol before. Then too, it was Eunsol who had first brought up the topic of contraception.
Hyun-oh’s gaze bypassed Eunsol and stared somewhere behind him. In Hyun-oh’s opinion, their married life was flowing smoothly.
Thanks to Eunsol, Hyun-oh didn’t have to look for another partner whenever his rut cycle came, and there was no room for sexual desire to build up.
They were sexually compatible, and Eunsol was also following him well in external matters when needed. No, in fact, he had been surprised more than once at how excellently Eunsol fulfilled his role, beyond expectations.
But pregnancy was a different matter.
Hyun-oh had never thought about having his own child. From his parents, they had married because their interests aligned. Though he questioned what exactly a normal family was, Hyun-oh’s family relationships were definitely abnormal.
For one thing, his father had welcomed Kang Ye-ryeong without properly resolving his relationship with his first wife. Divorce was merely a means to circumvent the law that didn’t permit polygamy.
Chairman Han Chihun had maintained two households as if it were natural.
Moreover, Kang Ye-ryeong was someone who prioritized her work instead of staying by Hyun-oh’s side when he was young. Not to mention Chairman Han Chihun, who viewed his children as chess pieces.
Hyun-oh had never properly received parental affection. That’s why he had never thought about having his own child. He had never met someone for whom he wanted to plant his seed, and the mere thought of a living being resembling himself coming into the world instinctively repulsed him.
His gaze, which had wandered past Eunsol, once again locked with Eunsol’s eyes. The black pupils, which seemed to have been continuously looking at him, visibly trembled.
Eunsol, too, had not received parental love. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he had gone through a much more unfortunate time than Hyun-oh.
So why was Eunsol so fixated on having a child? It was something he couldn’t understand at all.
“I’m not sure. I don’t want children.”
This was the answer he gave after contemplating for a while in response to Eunsol’s careful question. For a very brief moment, he had thought he might want to see a child who resembled Eunsol rather than himself, but as always, Hyun-oh erased thoughts that stirred his heart as soon as they arose.
His chest ached momentarily at the white face turning sorrowful as soon as his words ended, but Hyun-oh stood up as if nothing was wrong.
“I’ll fill the bathtub with water. Don’t sit up, lie down and rest.”
“…Yes.”
Eunsol barely answered with a sinking voice. His gaze watching the broad back moving away quickly trembled uncontrollably.
“…You still don’t want it.”
Why had he expected to hear a different answer?
Was it because of the heated gaze that looked down at him when their bodies joined? Or was it because of his actions of always filling the bathtub with warm water after they finished?
His pupils, looking toward the dressing room where the watch he had given to Hyun-oh would be placed, fluctuated rapidly. Tears that flowed down his cheeks before he could stop them pooled at the tip of his chin and then fell.
Simultaneously, Eunsol felt as if his heart had dropped.
It had been a misunderstanding to think that if Hyun-oh truly didn’t want children, he would either force contraception on Eunsol or not plant his seed in Eunsol’s body.
“…Right. It won’t happen anyway.”
Eunsol gently stroked his flat stomach with his palm. Probably, the chance of natural pregnancy was less than 1 percent.
Unless Hyun-oh’s rut cycle and Eunsol’s heat cycle aligned…
Strangely, since the day his heat cycle was forcibly triggered because of Han Hyunyong, Eunsol hadn’t experienced symptoms of a natural heat cycle.
He had sought medical advice, but even the doctor couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause. The diagnosis was merely that due to the forcibly induced heat cycle, his pheromone levels had further decreased, and his pheromone system was as unstable as a tower of cards.
It was something that couldn’t be resolved with medication. Among cases with symptoms similar to Eunsol’s, there were instances of natural recovery, so they suggested monitoring the progress over time.
Eunsol quietly lifted his arm and pressed his nose to his wrist where the veins were pulsing, inhaling deeply. While Hyun-oh’s pheromone scent was intense, Eunsol’s was as faint as fog dissipating in the sunlight.
“If my pheromones were high grade…”
Would Hyun-oh have forced him not to have children?
With that thought, he even felt that the current situation might be for the best. Eunsol had personally experienced what kind of life a child would lead when born to parents where only one side unilaterally wanted the child.
He didn’t want to pass on a life punctuated by loneliness to his own child.
A child should be the happiest being in the world. With both parents’ love overflowing, filling their chubby cheeks with happiness.
Eunsol quietly hugged his knees, rested his head on them, and gently closed his eyes. He comforted himself that it was okay if tears soaking his eyelashes flowed down his cheeks.
The wound in his heart, throbbing as if cut by a sharp blade, would naturally heal with time. He just needed to catch his breath for a moment until even the afterimage of Hyun-oh’s voice, which had coldly rapped against his ears, disappeared.
But Eunsol didn’t know.
That the past wound in his heart wasn’t healing but remained deep within his chest, festering. That the wound, neglected even by its owner, was large and deep enough to shake Eunsol.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
