#136

The loud noise prompts the residents of the officetel to open their windows one by one and look outside. Among them is the man Ki-hyuk is looking for. When Ki-hyuk deliberately makes eye contact and gives a smirk, his lover, recognizing him, hurriedly closes the window and draws the curtains.

Without hesitation, Ki-hyuk walks up to the door of the house where he lives. As a courtesy, he presses the doorbell once.

“Come out while I’m asking nicely.”

However, there is no response from inside.

Stupid bastard, as always. Does he really think he can hide just by holding his breath? I saw him inside. Feeling no need to be patient any longer, Ki-hyuk presses the passcode on the door lock.

Beep-beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep.

“Fucking bitch….”

It seemed the passcode had been changed. He slams his fist against the door with a loud bang! Contrary to the menacing noise, his voice is as sugary as ever.

“Honey, do you want to die? Aren’t you going to open the door?”

Only then does a voice, thick with tension, drift from inside.

“W-why are you here?!”

“Open up quickly, honey.”

“Am I crazy? To let a murderer into my house! I-I’ll call the police if you don’t leave right now!”

Ki-hyuk stops pounding on the door and sweeps his tongue across the inside of his mouth. His cheek bulges for a moment in the shape of his tongue before returning to normal.

The sensation of holding the lamp had not yet fully faded. The surging murderous intent is now quite familiar. Ki-hyuk asks, his voice still sugary.

“Did you happen to testify to the police, honey? How could you actually believe some nonsense spoken while high on drugs? I told you not to act stupid. Don’t you really know that with one word from me, you could go to prison as a drug offender too?”

“H-hello?! Is this the police? There’s a stalker in front of my house right now!”

A hollow laugh escaped him.

His house? This house was registered under Kwon Ki-hyuk’s name. A little whore who lives off others by spreading his legs…

“You know Kwon Ki-hyuk, right? The one whose face is all over the TV lately! Yes, yes! That Kwon Ki-hyuk from Myeong-jeong Group’s Korea Aviation! I’m telling you, that man is threatening to kill me right now!”

Suddenly, the sound of police sirens wailed. They were close. Could the police have come because of his lover’s report? Already?

“Please come quickly! Hurry!”

“…Fuck.”

Kwon Ki-hyuk spun around with a sharp snap and hurried down the stairs. All sorts of curses poured from his mouth. Why the hell did I come here? Did I secretly trust that little whore despite Father’s words? No way.

In the next moment, Ki-hyuk felt he somehow understood. He had simply wanted someone to love him.

Since he couldn’t obtain the love of the father he so desperately craved, he needed substitutes. Jeon So-hyun, his son, and even his lover. But all of them had ended up abandoning Ki-hyuk.

“Haa…. Ha, fuck….”

Having reached the bottom of the stairs, Ki-hyuk paused at the sight of the crowd gathered in the parking lot. People were surrounding the car he had slammed against the wall. And Ki-hyuk saw them: two uniformed police officers speaking into their radios. He knew exactly what they were doing. They were checking the license plate.

Once it was revealed that the car belonged to him, they would come looking for him immediately. Ki-hyuk bolted in the opposite direction.

Huff, huff, fuck, why am I, huff….

He was out of breath, and the metallic taste of blood lingered in his throat. Reaching the end of the alley, Ki-hyuk turned his head at the sound of loud sirens. Several bright red fire trucks were racing down the road. The sound seemed to shake the silent darkness.

He began to laugh like a madman. The sirens of the fire trucks sounded eerily like a funeral dirge.

Honk—! Along with the sound, the bright light of car headlights shattered in front of his eyes. He instinctively squinted. The driver rolled down the window, shouted “Fuck you!” at Ki-hyuk, and swerved around him.

Only then did Ki-hyuk look at where he was standing. He was in the middle of a six-lane road. He had no idea when he had wandered this far. Panting, Ki-hyuk stood stepping on the center line.

A wind rose as cars zoomed past him in both directions. The hem of Ki-hyuk’s dress shirt and his hair fluttered in the same pattern. The car lights left linear afterimages following their speed. Along those afterimages, a voice etched into his mind echoed in his head.

‘I shouldn’t have put you in the position of successor.’

Ki-hyuk slowly shook his head from side to side.

“No, Father…. That wouldn’t have happened.”

‘I should have given that position to Jung-hyun.’

“No…. Father, you shouldn’t have said that much to me.”

Muttering, Ki-hyuk whipped his body around to the opposite side.

He had to see his father’s face. And he would ask again. Whether those words were truly sincere, whether he had truly abandoned him. Depending on the answer, he felt confident he could strangle his father’s neck. It was just as he took a step forward.

Crash!

An old car slammed into the left side of Ki-hyuk’s body at full speed. His body soared into the air like a plastic mannequin.

The moment he began to fall to the ground, the car charged again as if specifically targeting Kwon Ki-hyuk. His body bounced off the hood with a thud and fell obliquely.

The car wheels dragged Kwon Ki-hyuk’s ankle and continued for several hundred more meters. The car finally came to a stop only after crashing into a utility pole.

His head felt hot. Convulsions ran through his limbs, but a thin breath still remained. He should have been in pain, but a sudden wave of drowsiness came before the agony. In his haze, Ki-hyuk slowly rolled his eyes.

He saw someone approaching from the driver’s side door, viewed at a 90-degree angle. The figure was small. A woman? As she approached bit by bit, she was making a strange sound.

“Heh… hehe… heh.”

Was she panting out of fear after causing the accident?

The woman’s face blurred into his pupils. An old woman. Why does she look familiar? There was no way he would know an old woman in tacky clothes with a face full of wrinkles.

“Hehe… heh.”

The old woman wasn’t panting out of fear. She was laughing, her wrinkled face drenched in tears of overwhelming emotion.

“F-finally, I did it. I did it…. I’ve avenged my son….”

In his fading consciousness, Ki-hyuk slowly remembered. The reason that face looked familiar. It was because she looked exactly like Kim In-jung.

* * *

“Thank you for everything today,” Jung-hyun said, unbuckling his seatbelt. As Jung-hyun tried to open the passenger door himself, Shin Ho-jae stopped him with one hand and quickly walked around the hood to open the door for him. Jung-hyun looked at Shin Ho-jae, unable to hide his bewilderment.

“What are you doing?”

“I opened the door for you.”

Shin Ho-jae replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He would have done this even if Jung-hyun weren’t a pregnant man carrying his child. That was how he had been taught and raised.

But for Jung-hyun, it wasn’t like that.

“Earlier, I was flustered and panicked because I thought something was wrong with the baby, but that’s not the case now. I appreciate it, but you don’t need to do things like this.”

Jung-hyun hopped out of the passenger seat and closed the door himself. Ho-jae rubbed his face in embarrassment and quickly followed behind him. Jung-hyun, who was about to open the front door, stopped again upon seeing this.

“…Why are you following me?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not trying to come inside the house, are you?”

At those words, even Shin Ho-jae couldn’t help but be flustered.

What do you mean? Jung-hyun is carrying his child, and the hospital had clearly said it would be good to be exposed to his pheromones frequently. And that he should massage his stomach since it would be quite tight….

Yet, for some reason, it was difficult to utter even one of those many reasons. It was because he could clearly feel a wall from Jung-hyun even unconsciously.

As Ho-jae stood there flustered, unable to say anything, Jung-hyun let out a light sigh.

“I feel I should make this clear, so I’m telling you: just because it’s your child doesn’t mean you have to take responsibility.”

“……What?”

“So, I’d like you to stop treating me as if I’m your Omega.”

Ho-jae could only blink, speechless.

“Given your personality, Ho-jae, you probably thought you absolutely had to take responsibility once you heard it was your child. But you’re still too young to make a decision like that. You have to think about realistic problems too.”

Unconsciously, Ho-jae’s brow furrowed. He still hated the word ‘reality’ that the other man brought up. He didn’t understand. Why was that still an issue?

Although they had failed to make Kwon Ki-hyuk be judged for the murder charges, new charges had arisen because Jung-hyun cooperated with the prosecution’s investigation. Shin Ho-jae knew what that meant.

He had completely escaped from Myeong-jeong.

If so, wasn’t the only thing left a happy ending?

“To me, you are the reality, CEO. Aren’t you the one who can’t think about realistic problems? The doctor said so too. Both the child and the pregnant parent need the biological father’s pheromones.”

Out of frustration, his words came out a bit strongly. Since the other had spoken of reality, he simply wanted to tell him a reality he couldn’t ignore. He had no idea that his words would have the opposite effect.

137 – Puck Drop