21 – Baby (Side Story)

“Did you sleep well, Hae-ah?”

“Yeah…. Tae-rim.”

Me, making the California king-size bed feel cramped, and you, who I believe was born into this world for me. Sunlight peeks onto our bed.

I love mornings like this. Waking up to a familiar, yet seemingly never-tiring sweet scent. Next to me, Kang Hae-ah, lost in dreams, is adorable. The sunlight filtering through the thin curtains decorates the windowsill plants like a painting. When I spread my arms, his round, white forehead leans against my shoulder.

As we snuggle together, sinking into the center of the mattress,

“Ummm….”

A pleasant sound resonates from deep within Hae-ah’s throat.

Chomp, chomp. Making sounds with the tips of my pursed lips, I kissed Hae-ah’s head. It was more of a ‘peck’ than a ‘kiss.’ Hae-ah’s morning grumpiness was getting worse day by day, creating a vertical line between his eyebrows, and his lower lip pouted.

“Ugh….”

It’s no use twisting his head to avoid my lips pecking at his crown and temples. Chomp, making constant pecking sounds, chomp, I conquered Hae-ah’s cheeks and even his lips.

On mornings like this, the back of Hae-ah’s ear and hair tickle my forearm. His slowly blinking, hazy brown eyes are lovely. The texture of his white cheeks, marked by the pillow, is soft, and his small, plump lips, completely covered by mine, are fluffy, warm, and sweet.

Without hesitation, I stuck out my tongue and delved into the gap between Hae-ah’s lips. As I licked his tightly closed front teeth,

“Ah.”

Hae-ah twisted his waist as if flustered.

His eyes, where sleepiness had retreated a step, were as big as a rabbit’s.

“Really?”

Hae-ah asked. I licked up Hae-ah’s upper lip.

“…Now?”

The questions he kept asking were short. He must know what I want.

Gently touching the tip of my nose to the tip of Hae-ah’s nose, I examined his eyes. My lower abdomen was already heavy. It was midsummer inside my pajama pants.

“You don’t like it?”

Holding back my hot breath, I asked,

“It’s not that I don’t like it….”

Hae-ah avoids my gaze.

He doesn’t know how pretty he is when he doesn’t look at me. The shadows cast in his slowly moving pupils are elegant, and his lowered eyelashes are as pretty and cute as a young puppy. His lips, slightly twisted in thought, are very sexy.

Heat boils in my groin.

Fortunately, I knew very well how to deeply soak Hae-ah’s shallow moans.

“Ugh, um….”

As I slipped my hand into his yellow checkered pajama pants, Hae-ah’s waist twitched slightly. Even though I play with it every night and day, sometimes kissing and sucking it, he still reacts sensitively to my touch. It seems to be getting more sensitive day by day.

Kissing his small jaw, I grasped Hae-ah’s thing in my hand. Already half-erect, his shaft hard and his glans soft, his penis seemed especially cute. Kang Hae-ah’s thing, which has no function other than to be held, stroked, and sucked by me. This is mine forever. Just like his already moist and fragrant backdoor.

“Haa, ah, ugh.”

If I gently rub the glans with the tip of my thumb, Hae-ah easily loses himself. If I lightly scratch the small hole at the tip of his penis with my fingernail, he lets out a loud groan. His face turns as red as an apple, as if frictional heat is rushing to the top of his head, and if I squeeze it tightly as if wringing out a wet towel, he makes a painful yet more excited expression.

“Cute.”

Hae-ah’s face, quickly disheveled by pleasure, is pretty.

“Ah, ugh, d-don’t, don’t look. Ah….”

Displeased with my gaze, captivated by his beauty, Hae-ah whined. He seemed to push my cheek away with one hand, but realizing that my face wouldn’t budge with his weak arm strength, he grabbed the pillow. Then, thump. He covered his face with the pillowcase as if wanting to suffocate.

My lips are parched and I’m thirsty. Swallowing dry saliva, I squeezed Hae-ah’s penis hard. Ugh… A muffled sound leaks out weakly. Hearing that sound made me want to pull out my tool quickly, so I decided to stop playing around.

As I diligently moved my hand and jerked him off, it wasn’t long before,

“Ugh, ugh, ugh….”

Hae-ah trembled his thighs and ejaculated.

Haa, haa…. Letting out labored breaths, he hugged the pillow covering his face very tightly. His belly, stained with semen, was flat, and his chest, filled with hot breath, rose and fell repeatedly with his crumpled pajamas.

After admiring that sight for a few seconds, I gently grasped Hae-ah’s knees. His legs seemed to resist for a moment with a twitch, but soon lost strength. After completely stripping off his already half-removed pajama pants and underwear, I grabbed Hae-ah’s thighs with both hands and spread them apart. And I found my place between his bare and moist thighs.

As I took out my slightly painful erection and placed it between his butt cheeks, his small, reddish hole twitched noticeably. As if more surprised by his own reaction, Hae-ah let out a small gasp.

‘Cute.’

There’s no need to ask for permission. The rich body odor wafting from him is begging me to come quickly, to hold him quickly, to leave my mark inside him.

“Hae-ah.”

Letting out a long, hot breath, I very slowly burrowed into Hae-ah. Really, I like Kang Hae-ah so, so much. I like his soft, warm, and tight insides. I like the moans he lets out as if urging me on, and I like the intense sensation of the muscles tightly clamping the tip of my penis.

Apart from what I like, I had to curb my hasty nature.

Hae-ah has pants that he enjoys wearing every spring. The jeans are characterized by a gaping hole as if the hem had been folded vertically and then vigorously cut with very large scissors. It’s a world of luxury that I find difficult to understand. Last year, Hae-ah collaborated with the brand that created those jeans. The new clothing, consisting of jeans, overalls, jumpsuits, denim jackets, and denim coats with a cut and sliced appearance, was presented on the runway in Paris with forty models. The fashion show was a success and Hae-ah was in the best mood. Hae-ah, who didn’t stop smiling all day, was pretty, cute, and lovely from morning to night. Thanks to that, my mood also followed an upward curve.

And that night, after emptying a bottle of wine gifted to us in a hotel room filled with flowers, Hae-ah fainted as soon as we started having sex.

…Because I suddenly thrust my large penis all the way to the base.

“Hoo….”

So I have to be patient. Closing my eyes tightly and gritting my teeth….

“Ah, Tae-rim, Tae-rim….”

To avoid making Hae-ah, who is still more accustomed to calling me ‘Tae-rim’ than ‘hyung,’ faint….

“Ugh, ugh, hyung….”

…I mustn’t fall head over heels for his hopeless seduction.

“Hae-ah…. I’m, right now… being patient, you know.”

Very slowly, as I moved my body languidly, the tip of my penis, the glans, slipped into his narrow hole. I hadn’t even inserted half of it yet, but Hae-ah stiffened his dry waist and groaned. I don’t know if it’s a reaction of pain, wanting more, or both, but it sets my heart on fire.

“Haa, ugh….”

All the blood, heat, and nerves in my body are focused on my cock. The sweat trickling down my spine is fast. As I wet my dry lips with my tongue, I moved my waist very carefully and finely, dividing it into three or four times. Each time I slowly retreated and thrust my penis a little deeper,

“Sniffle, ugh….”

The pillow covering Hae-ah’s face shook greatly.

I snatched away the tear-stained, saliva-stained pillow. And I pressed my face against his face, which was so sexy it made my heart flutter. I licked his lips, rubbed his nose, and pressed my right cheek against Hae-ah’s left cheek. The feel of his soft skin feels incredibly good.

Incredibly, good.

“Haa, Hae-ah….”

To my voice, calling his name as I shook my waist like a rutting beast,

“Ah, ah, yeah. Yeah….”

His voice, moaning as he answered me obediently….

“Ah, good….”

Heat rises and water wets the junction. When the bodily fluids Hae-ah has shed and the pre-cum I have spat out mix, the scent of pheromones, so strong it stings my nose, wafts up. Around the time rhythm is created with the squelching sound, the sound of the bed shaking, and the panting breaths, Hae-ah always ejaculates before me. Hiccup… He holds his breath, making a scratching sound in his throat, and as his body shrinks so that my penis is tightly squeezed, he sheds tears between his closed eyes and spits out semen.

Then, shudder… He trembles his cheeks and lips like a cold person and closes his legs. I really like the moment when Hae-ah, intoxicated by pleasure, wraps my waist with his legs.

“Haa…, haa….”

I know the meaning contained in his brown pupils, staring at my eyes as he breathes heavily. The plea to not move and be patient for just thirty seconds because he’s sensitive and tired from just having ejaculated….

“One.”

Feeling the pulse throbbing in my temples, I muttered.

“…Two, three, four….”

As if my actions of counting seconds were absurd and ridiculous, Hae-ah laughed with a ‘tch’ sound. His expression, frowning his forehead and raising his eyebrows, is like a cartoon. It can’t be helped even if he glares like that. Because he’ll definitely sulk if I don’t wait while counting. It’s not been just a day or two since I grabbed the ankles of Hae-ah, who had just ejaculated, and forcibly thrust my cock in to make him cum and then slept in separate rooms.

“Idiot.”

Hae-ah teases me for stopping my movements to consider his feelings.

“Tae-rim, you’re such an idiot.”

I laughed at those words. Even though I know I’ll look like a real idiot if I smile after being called an idiot.

“You’re really pretty.”

I said, unbuttoning Hae-ah’s pajama top, stained with sweat and semen.

“I think you’ve gotten prettier today than yesterday.”

Moving his arms as I pleased, Hae-ah quickly became naked. I grabbed and massaged his reddish, heated chest, then slipped my hands down to wrap around his waist. Then I can see the red tip of his tongue peeking out from between Hae-ah’s teeth before hiding again.

“Do you like me that much…?”

Hae-ah asked, tossing and turning his back, which had soaked the sheets with sweat.

“Why are you saying the obvious?”

Moving my left and right knees, I readjusted my position.

When Hae-ah places his hand on my hand holding his waist, that’s the signal. Slowly intertwining fingers, slowly blinking eyes, directly meeting gaze, the subtle implication in those pupils. Other than that, no words of permission are needed.

Once, I moved my waist a little roughly on purpose. I thrust my penis hard, so that a mound formed on Hae-ah’s lower abdomen.

“Ah!”

And I slowly moved my body back. Until the bulging part at the tip of my glans was almost caught in Hae-ah’s narrow hole.

“Ugh, ugh….”

Hae-ah lets out an impatient moan, narrowing his heated insides with a twitch. I waited until a puzzled question appeared on his face, then thrust my penis all the way to the base again.

“Ack….”

Hae-ah screams shrilly and convulses. The soft, hot, and tenacious inner walls swallow my penis as if squeezing it out. Heat rises to the top of my head from the pressure that feels almost like chewing.

I want to cum quickly. I want to thrust my cock into this soft body until it’s torn in two. I want to messily resolve my unquenchable lust. I want to spit out all the semen bubbling inside me into Hae-ah’s deepest place and block the hole so that not a single drop can spill out. I want to grab his thighs, lift him upside down, and violate him over and over again until he bears my seed as fruit.

To me, engrossed in such desires,

“I love you….”

Hae-ah whispers.

Shaking his whole body so that his head dangles every time I thrust my waist.

“Ack, ah, Tae, Tae-rim….”

He confesses without even knowing how to open his eyes properly.

“I love you….”

My answer, escaping through gritted teeth, was like a groan from a monster in a cave. Still, Hae-ah raised the corners of his lips as if satisfied. He moans, huh, huh… and answers my confession.

Because Hae-ah is so lovely like that, I put strength in both jaws. To make him feel more, to make him happier, to make him more full, I held back my ejaculation and moved my waist.

Every time my groin collided with his buttocks,

“Ah…!”

His shy moans forget their shyness and grow louder.

The pulse throbbing in Hae-ah’s neck feels just like mine. The sexual tension and excitement carried in his Adam’s apple, moving up and down, is also the same as mine. The relentless pounding of his heart, drumming against his ribs, the strength entering the intertwined fingertips until they tingle, even the painful feeling rising stiffly from his heated penis, all of it, all of it is mine.

And he, just like me, was looking at himself through me.

Feeling it, he was.

“Haa, ha…!”

Making a grinding sound with my teeth, I bumped my forehead against Hae-ah’s shoulder. Hae-ah wrapped his arms around my head as if he had been waiting. And he hugged me with the inner walls of his narrow and small hole, with both arms, and with his widely opened legs.

“Ah, aah….”

I was the one ejaculating, but Hae-ah was the one moaning.

“Ugh….”

Even the temperature of his closing eyelids was hot. Resting my chin on Hae-ah’s shoulder, I ejaculated twice, shaking my body. The amount of semen I spat out was large. During the second ejaculation, Hae-ah’s buttocks and my pubic hair were all stained.

“Haa, ah….”

Hae-ah shook his wrist gently, as if trying to untangle our hands, locked together like a perfect zipper. Lying on top of his soft body, I instead put strength into our intertwined hands.

“…It’s, it’s heavy, Tae-rim….”

Hae-ah whined in a half-hoarse voice. Then he shook his hands with more force. I knew it meant to slowly untangle our fingers, go to the bathroom to wash, and start a new day. Still, I didn’t let go of his hand.

“…….”

Hae-ah’s eyes, which had been listless, became clear again. His gaze, widening his eyes and pursing the ends of his lips, as he looked up at my face, was obvious.

“…Are you going to, again?”

Hae-ah asked, rolling his eyes from side to side.

“It’s gotten really soft.”

Answering like that, I moved my waist slightly. Even after a long ejaculation, my body didn’t know how to be satisfied, and the strength that had slowly left my penis was returning. As I pulled out the penis deeply embedded in his soft, relaxed insides and then thrust it back in, Hae-ah twitched his shoulders.

Because my body reacts as if it’s the first time every time like this, I can’t help but get excited.

“Haa….”

Frowning his forehead, Hae-ah turned his head. I became displeased with his gaze heading towards the phone on the bedside table. I grabbed Hae-ah’s hand, reaching far away as if to check his schedule, and placed it neatly on his chest.

“Ah, but….”

Hae-ah stretched his neck to the left, fidgeting his legs for no reason. The clock hanging on the wall where his gaze reached was unnecessarily accurate.

Nine ten.

After muttering and confirming the time as if chewing on it with his teeth, Hae-ah made a pitiful expression, pulling down the ends of his eyebrows.

“Our manager, shouldn’t be late….”

“It’s okay.”

“Aah….”

Hae-ah’s gaze, comparing reason and instinct, my going to work and our sexual release, duty and fun, is busy. After rolling them around this way and that, he looks at me again. He glares at me reproachfully, sitting with a stiff erection thrust into his soft and hot back that seems about to melt.

“I think I’ve become a bad friend who’s turning Tae-rim black….”

“…….”

He probably wants to apply the proverb ‘one who stays near vermillion gets stained red.’ It was a real pleasure for me to notice Hae-ah learning new words that he’s been into lately like this.

“Friends don’t do things like this.”

I said with a smile on my face, and

“That’s just a figure of speech.”

Hae-ah pouted his lips. The shape of the center of his protruding upper lip is especially like a bird’s beak.

Touching his cute philtrum with the tip of my index finger, I lowered my voice.

“So, you don’t like it?”

I feel like a giant when I stand in front of Hae-ah. My hand, placed on his seemingly weak jaw, looks as big as a pot lid. I’m afraid that it might break if I grip it wrong. So when I touch Hae-ah, I have to put in effort to be careful, and take out as much strength as possible. I slid like water over his slender and graceful neck, his chest that’s firm inside and soft outside, his slender belly and cute navel, and his penis that’s unable to come to its senses after three or four ejaculations.

“…Even like this?”

I smiled, grabbing Hae-ah’s penis, the end of which was red and ripe. Then, without giving him a chance to avoid it or even be surprised, I quickly moved my hand up and down.

“Huh?”

“Ah…!”

With an irritated groan, Hae-ah twisted his waist. Even that gesture felt like a seduction to me. I covered Hae-ah’s entire body, rubbing my nose against his white neck, bringing my lips to it, and leaving teeth marks. Each time I bit down hard, sinking my upper teeth in, and then licked over the teeth marks with my tongue, I could feel the throbbing of his manhood, tightly grasped in my palm, burning hot.

“Ah, it hurts!”

He briefly struggled, squeezing his knees together with force. But I had already taught him that resistance was futile.

Whether it was resignation, or the Omega’s condition of being aroused and his bottom becoming damp, Hae-ah’s thighs, which had been constantly wriggling against my sides, stopped.

And,

“Haaah…”

With a long sigh, they slowly spread apart.

“Okay, I got it. But gently…”

I pressed Hae-ah’s hands, clasped together, against the head of the bed, burying them deep into the sheets.

“Ge-entl-y!”

Hae-ah shouted, his eyes tightly shut. I pressed my face against Hae-ah’s chest and blew air, “pooh, pooh,” until a hint of laughter appeared in his voice.

Like any other Monday, the morning spent in a familiar bed with the most familiar person made me happy. More than anyone, I know that the ordinary is happiness.

On such a happy morning, the present, so easily within reach, was incredibly precious. It was a happiness that had no tangible proof, only felt in the heart, and therefore all the more immense and perfect.

4 weeks.

“I’m home.”

As I walked through the entrance and down the hallway, where paintings and plants were harmoniously arranged, Baek-gu, Do-jin, kept getting under my feet. His tail, curled like the letter C, wagged busily from side to side. His panting breath was proof that he was smiling in his own way.

Loosening the tie that was choking my neck, I looked around the house, which was quiet and dark. I turned on the automatic sensor lights one by one and headed inside with Do-jin.

“I’m home.”

I greeted him even louder, wondering if he hadn’t heard me, but

“……”

The house remained still, like the calm before a storm.

I put down my bag and moved my hand, which had been stroking Do-jin’s crown, to his belly. His belly, which was usually full, was just round, as if he hadn’t had dinner yet.

Tilting my head, I frowned.

‘Did Hae-ah say he was going out somewhere today?’

No, he didn’t.

“Hae-ah?”

Just as I was struck by a dull worry, I saw a white hand sticking out from beyond the armrest of the sofa in the distance. Letting out a long sigh, I quickly walked over and peeked around, and the beauty of the owner of the fair, white hand greeted me. Hae-ah was asleep in a very uncomfortable position, his head resting on his outstretched left arm.

“Haa…”

I let out a short sigh of relief and playfully poked Do-jin’s nose.

“You should have told me your dad was here.”

Then Do-jin let out a ‘hmph,’ a sigh-like snort. I glared at him as he jumped onto the sofa, towards Hae-ah’s feet, and then looked at my beautiful husband again.

‘Is he sick?’

Kang Hae-ah, whose old nickname was ‘the owl of Paris.’ He would often lock himself in his studio and stay up all night. I always nagged him to take care of his health first, but I couldn’t stop his incredible concentration.

But he’s already asleep. The clock has just passed nine, and he’s already gone to bed at this early hour.

I wondered if our young master had a fever and touched his forehead, but Hae-ah didn’t wake up. I smoothed out his crumpled hair and poked the small cheek that bulged out from being pressed against his arm, but he only fussed, ‘hmm,’ and didn’t wake up.

Only after Do-jin climbed up Hae-ah’s thigh and stood tall did he,

“Ugh, Do-jinaa…”

He whined, narrowing the space between his eyebrows.

Waving, waving, Hae-ah’s right hand, reaching back to push Do-jin off, touched my wrist.

“Oh? Tae-rim-ssi.”

His languid brown eyes widened twice as much, and Hae-ah abruptly sat up. And he rambled.

“Why are you home so early? I thought you’d be late…”

“…It’s two minutes past nine, Hae-ah.”

Hae-ah’s face, rubbing his eyes with the back of his fingers, looked lazy and tired. He didn’t even notice Do-jin pushing his elbow into his nose, and he didn’t seem to hear my question about where he had been today.

He was so out of it that he suddenly mumbled, ‘Tae-rim-ssi, dinner,’ and got up from the sofa. He was staggering like a penguin with a sprained ankle, so I quickly caught Hae-ah in my arms.

“Did you drink?”

I asked, just in case, and Hae-ah shook his head. His tired face rested heavily on my shoulder.

Haaah…

A long yawn was buried in my shirt collar.

“…Sleepy.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s go upstairs and sleep.”

I knew what Hae-ah’s gesture of leaning completely on me meant. I wrapped one arm around Hae-ah’s shoulders, which were like a blanket dried in the summer sun, and lifted him up, supporting him under his knees with the other arm.

Then, our beautiful young master, who was too lazy to even climb the stairs himself, let out a small chuckle, ‘heu.’

I carried Hae-ah to the second-floor master bedroom, with Do-jin following behind us, wagging his tail. As soon as I laid him down on the inside of the wide bed, Hae-ah wriggled and seemed to crawl towards the headboard, then buried his head in the pillow.

“You need to wash up and change, Hae-ah.”

Now that I looked, his top was a sweatshirt, and his bottoms were long sweatpants. Judging by the pants he often wears when taking Do-jin for a walk, he must have missed the time to change clothes for more than half a day.

‘Then he’s been napping for over ten hours.’

As I scratched my chin with a puzzled look, Hae-ah said,

“Tae-rim-ssi, you go first… use the bathroom. I’ll wait for you.”

Then the long breath he exhaled was ‘pooh…’ very heavy. He had fallen asleep before I could even answer.

Counting on my fingers, I calculated the calendar and dates in my head.

Is it his heat cycle period? No, that can’t be. At the annual health checkup at the beginning of the year, the doctor diagnosed that Hae-ah had entered a completely stable period as an Omega, and predicted that his heat cycle would come once a year. And that prediction was correct. Thanks to that, the weekend the month before last was very happy, so much so that it was a shame it was only once a year.

Then, a date with a stressful family gathering? That’s not it either. All the big events have already passed, and he didn’t even attend those. We, the Cheon family, celebrated Lunar New Year and Chuseok together. On July 7th, Hae-ah’s birthday, we went abroad together. Hae-ah smiled brightly, saying that he felt like he was on his second honeymoon in Florence, which we had visited again after leaving Do-jin with Mother.

Does he have a cold or flu? If so, Hwang Ok-hye Madam or Driver Oh wouldn’t have failed to report it. Hae-ah’s weight has actually increased by about 400 grams these days, and his physical strength has also improved. Even this morning, he said that his condition was at its best and ran around the garden with the spray hose. More like a puppy than Baek-gu Do-jin.

Then what’s the problem…

I stripped off all of Hae-ah’s clothes and socks, and wiped his face, neck, hands, and feet with a towel soaked in warm water. I carefully covered him with the blanket up to his neck, then took Do-jin to the kitchen and gave him a meal of canned beef, deer meat feed, and cleanly washed celery. I checked the security of the entire house, went into Hae-ah’s studio, closed the open window, rinsed the brushes that had been carelessly thrown into the brush-washing container, and took a shower in the guest bathroom on the first floor so as not to wake Hae-ah.

Throughout all of this, the strange sense of déjà vu didn’t disappear.

However, it’s not uncommon to feel a sense of mystery from a man named Kang Hae-ah.

6 weeks.

“Tae-rim-ssi. I… I have cancer.”

Just like this, Hae-ah destroys my world.

It’s an irony that’s hard for me to bear. That the one who destroys my world, made up of Kang Hae-ah, is only my love, Kang Hae-ah.

Thursday, 11:30 a.m., Hae-ah’s voice was cheerful as he answered the phone to ask how he was doing, as always. His voice, half a tone higher than usual, sounded too bright and cheerful. That’s why I skipped lunch and came home. Because I know Kang Hae-ah’s habit of hiding depression with an exaggerated smile.

And I encountered a disaster. He had sent Hwang Ok-hye Madam and Oh Geon-min Driver home early, sent Do-jin to doggy daycare, and Hae-ah was alone in the large house. Left alone, he was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, crying.

Then, as soon as he saw me running into the house, he said this. That he was sick, that he had cancer, what should he do…

Is what’s meant to happen bound to happen in the end? A philosophical question covered my mind.

Shaking my head slightly, I shook off the despair. And I tried to come to my senses.

I knelt down at his feet, where he was sitting with his legs drawn up, looking depressed. And I hugged Kang Hae-ah.

“It’s okay.”

I said that first.

“Everything will be okay, so don’t cry.”

If you were to make the word ‘love’ into a person, it would be Kang Hae-ah. My lover, who leans his head against my chest with an unbelievably lovely gesture. My husband, my spouse, my partner. It doesn’t matter what disease Hae-ah has. Even if he has some terrible cancer, I will absolutely protect Hae-ah. I will never let him die before me.

For me, Kang Hae-ah’s death will only happen four days before my own death. On a warm spring day ninety years from now, in the afternoon when we are holding hands and strolling through the garden, in a full, abundant, and peaceful time.

That’s my plan.

That’s how I decided what the last chapter of Kang Hae-ah’s life will look like.

“Hae-ah. Let’s stop crying. Okay?”

Hae-ah’s nasal breathing was rapid. The shoulder blades under my palm were also rising and falling busily.

“Stop crying and tell me.”

Then Hae-ah rubbed his face against my shoulder. After wiping all his tears on my jacket, he lifted his head and showed me his pitifully swollen eyes. What then filled my gaze was a small object from his pants pocket.

For a moment, my mind became hazy. Expecting a CT or MRI scan result or a hospital diagnosis, Hae-ah held out a long, white stick in front of my nose.

‘…Did someone scam Hae-ah? Did they sell him stocks, saying that a cancer diagnosis kit had come out?’

I suspected for a moment, but then I thought of the next most likely question.

‘If not that…’

…Let’s stay calm.

Let’s stay calm, Cheon Tae-rim.

Very slowly, I reached out and took the small stick. And I examined it with all my concentration. The letters written on either side of the angular result display window were T and C, respectively. They stand for result line and control line. I narrowed my eyes, then widened them again, and looked at the reddish-purple lines drawn inside the window.

Positive.

Not a positive tumor.

Because this is a pregnancy test.

Then, positive… that must mean pregnant.

“……”

Is my common sense wrong?

“Hae-ah. This is…”

Looking straight at my speechless face, Hae-ah shouted.

“They said that if a man gets two lines, it means testicular cancer!”

“…Usually, if an Omega gets two lines, doesn’t it mean pregnancy?”

Our voices intertwined.

The sudden commotion disappeared as quickly as it had come. Each of us, kneeling and sitting with our legs drawn up, had the same expression. We stared at each other’s lips with wide eyes like surprised fools, waiting for someone to tell us the answer to this situation first.

“……”

“……”

The strength in my legs completely gave way, and I sat down on the floor. Hae-ah, startled by my movement, tried to reach out, but then pulled back. I snatched his hand, which he was trying to hide behind his back, and pulled him towards me, getting up from my seat.

I hugged Hae-ah, who stumbled into my arms, tightly. And I waddled over to the sofa. Without hesitation, I plopped down on the sofa, and the slender Hae-ah sat down on my lap, his bottom against my thighs.

Reaching out, I touched Hae-ah’s lower abdomen. It was a very ordinary belly, as if he had eaten a hearty lunch. Whether I looked at it with my eyes or felt it with my fingertips, it was just a flat, slender belly. It was a cute belly with a pretty navel that made me wonder who had cut the umbilical cord so well.

Following my gaze, Hae-ah also looked down at his belly. His lips were pouting, his eyes were bewildered, and there were clear traces of tears that he hadn’t been able to dry on his cheeks.

The eccentric Kang Hae-ah.

I love that Hae-ah.

“You’re driving me crazy…”

“Tae-rim-ssi.”

Hae-ah murmured, placing his hands over mine.

“…So, does that mean I’m pregnant? Not that I have cancer in my testicles… but that Tae-rim-ssi’s baby is in my belly?”

Hae-ah’s voice, full of question marks, brought all sorts of emotions to me. Only after facing today did I realize that I had been desperately, prayerfully wishing for this moment all along. The moment when light, like sunshine after the rain, shines on Kang Hae-ah’s face, when my seed is planted in his healthy and slender body, and when I hold him, my husband, my lover, my Omega who has my child, on my lap…

Strangely, my throat was wet. Only after tears made a path and soaked my shirt collar did I realize that I was crying. It wasn’t because I was sad. They were tears of joy and tears of emotion. It was a feeling I had never felt before, and I couldn’t explain it in any words.

Hae-ah, holding my face in his hands and dropping tears, was flustered. He was busy wiping and wiping my face, but my tears wouldn’t stop, even after soaking his hands. They poured down almost like a waterfall.

“Don’t cry.”

Hae-ah comforted me and comforted me again, then hugged me tightly. He held my head to his chest and shook his upper body, saying, ‘Why are you crying?’

“Crybaby. Cheon Tae-rim, crybaby.”

I hugged his waist tightly with both arms. I was crying, but Hae-ah was laughing. It was a very strange time.

Sunlight streamed diagonally into the middle of the living room, where my sobbing and Hae-ah’s laughter, elevated with happiness, were mixed. The diamond-shaped light that pierced my eyes was dazzling.

However, it was only forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes from when I didn’t even have the mind to contact the company, put Hae-ah in the passenger seat, and hurriedly headed to the obstetrics and gynecology clinic for male Omegas. My happiness became precarious in just forty-five minutes.

As soon as we hurriedly finished the registration, a sticker-type band was attached to Hae-ah’s arm. All I could do behind Hae-ah, who was going back and forth to draw blood and get tested, was hold his coat.

The doctor walked out to the hallway to guide us to the examination room at the news that the youngest son of Han-seong Group had come to the hospital. After seating Hae-ah on the backrest sofa, I sat on the small couch.

Hae-ah’s first question to the doctor, who was wearing white horn-rimmed glasses, was this.

“I drank two glasses of wine the week before last. I also met a friend who smokes. I’m working on a campaign, so I’ve been handling a lot of oil paints and smelling a lot of oil. My sleep schedule has also been irregular.”

As expected, it’s Kang Hae-ah. My Kang Hae-ah, whose joy is short-lived and who is eaten away by worries, anxieties, and concerns for a long time.

His hand on his knee was trembling slightly. I covered that hand with my own. I held it tightly and looked at the doctor, who looked back and forth between me and Hae-ah and then smiled.

“It’s okay. If you didn’t know you were pregnant yet, the baby will forgive you.”

The doctor said, and

“Ah, I see.”

Hae-ah agreed.

“……”

No, is that all…? What kind of nonsense is this? Doesn’t the effect on the fetus change depending on whether or not you are aware of the pregnancy? Is it okay for a doctor to say such absurd things? And why is our Hae-ah listening to that and feeling relieved…?

Leaving me, who was burdened with all of Kang Hae-ah’s question marks, the doctor said this and that.

“I’ll prescribe you some vitamins, so get the prescription. Until you reach a stable period, please come to the hospital for regular checkups once a week. I’ll make a reservation for you on your way out.”

With a bright smile, she stretched out her right hand and pointed to the door of the examination room. And she looked at Hae-ah and said.

“The nurse will tell you the precautions.”

At that, Hae-ah got up from his seat, and I gestured to the doctor to let him go out first. Because the doctor’s hand was precisely separating Hae-ah and me.

With a slightly dazed face, as if nervous, Hae-ah followed the nurse. The sliding door of the examination room closed softly, and the click of the magnets meeting echoed through the gap. It was a signal. A signal that the smiles were disappearing from the doctor’s and my faces.

“So, what is it?”

I asked, smoothing Hae-ah’s coat over my forearm.

Naive Hae-ah didn’t seem to notice, but I did. It was strange that the doctor had only given us good news without any warning, so briefly and simply. His action of singling out Hae-ah and sending him out of the examination room was also strange.

Sure enough, the Doctor adjusted his glasses, which were slipping down his nose. Then, after clearing his throat, he opened his mouth very carefully.

“The possibility of a miscarriage is very high….”

The words that came out were much worse than I had expected.

“…Please soothe your husband so that he doesn’t have high expectations, and so that he can calmly prepare for the worst.”

“……”

For a few seconds, I couldn’t say anything. In the silence, the Doctor lifted a glass of water and moistened his throat. The sound of the second hand ticking in the wall clock sounded as loud as applause. Like applause clapping against my ears, telling me to wake up.

Clap….

“What are you talking about?”

I shouted. I didn’t mean to raise my voice, but it was hard to control my temper. I felt like I had lost control of the steering wheel.

Looking up at me, who was still large even while sitting, the Doctor drank his second glass of water. I belatedly realized that she seemed threatened and frightened. I barely suppressed my anger and squeezed my thighs with my fists.

My startled heartbeat was still fast. But I could still lower my voice.

“Tell me honestly… in detail.”

At the question I asked with a straight posture, the Doctor opened his mouth.

“Kang Hae-ah’s awakening was very late. As such… his body is not physically able to handle the pregnancy. The state of the womb looks good for now, but a natural birth is impossible. He will have to have a C-section no matter what.”

The words ‘C-section’ felt like a slap in the face. Hae-ah’s health, Hae-ah’s share, and the surgery Hae-ah would have to undergo were not even on my mind. The tears I had shed in pure joy immediately felt foolish.

The Doctor struck me with lightning as I swallowed my bitter saliva.

“In the first place, the probability of the baby in the womb entering a stable period healthily and without problems is very low.”

“……”

“Just look at the birth rate of Omegas who awakened in their mid-twenties. They generally don’t make it past 28 weeks. But Kang Hae-ah’s awakening was even later than that….”

“What percentage is it?”

At this moment, my voice is like a knife. A knife that cuts off the Doctor’s roundabout words.

“To answer statistically….”

I needed an answer, not comfort.

“It’s less than 7 percent.”

And that answer was not on our side.

“I see.”

The voice that comes out of my lips sounds like someone else’s. It feels so indifferent that it’s almost apathetic. That was the only way I could express myself.

“I understand.”

I repeated the answer I had given a second time,

“Okay….”

And the conversation ended after the third time.

In the silence, the Doctor gave me time to sort out my emotions. She turned her gaze to the monitor and just moved the mouse around aimlessly.

I silently mulled over what I had heard and continued to think.

To be honest, I’m okay.

Even if the answer the hospital gave us wasn’t on our side, I’m okay. It’s because I know better than anyone who ‘we’ are.

Cheon Tae-rim and Kang Hae-ah.

The ‘we’ made up of two people overcame tens of thousands of probabilities, endured the worst of times, and achieved love even in a world filled with hatred, misunderstanding, resentment, and tears. That’s how we reached today and became ‘we’.

The number 7 is by no means insufficient for such a ‘we’. I was ready to bet my heart on this gamble. I’ve always wanted a child since I was a child. Around the age of four or five, I even drew a house with a roof, a green yard, a smiling spouse, and a child wrapped in a blanket on a piece of drawing paper at kindergarten as my future hope.

From my first meeting with Kang Hae-ah, I have longed for this moment. I have deeply wished that a child with Kang Hae-ah’s and my genes would be born like a miracle, and that the child would look into my eyes and open his mouth and cry ‘Dad’.

So I’m okay. I know it well. I already know that as big as my expectations are, the disappointment that will come will also swell in size. I’m confident that I can endure any amount of sadness.

If I’m okay….

‘Then Hae-ah will be okay too.’

That conviction suddenly came to me.

Kang Hae-ah had no plans for children in the first place. He said he didn’t even want to imagine a child who looked like him. He grumbled that he wasn’t confident in raising children well, and sang that Do-jin was enough for him.

But then, while watching my expression,

‘Tae-rim-ssi, would you like to have children? …Perhaps, does Father-in-law think so too? Does Mother-in-law think so too? Am I the only one who thinks we’re perfect as we are and is complacent? Tae-rim-ssi, is that why you don’t like me? Should I go get fertility shots? Should we try IVF?’

…He would pour out a storm.

Every time, I would pat Hae-ah on the shoulder and shake my head.

‘Calm down, Hae-ah. I’m sure we’re perfect as we are now.’

Then Hae-ah’s cheeks would quickly brighten, and his eyes would light up. He was relieved and satisfied. The fact that Kang Hae-ah had no plans for pregnancy in his life was a fact that even Do-jin’s morning poop knew.

But Hae-ah will be okay…. Kang Hae-ah has a strong side in a strange corner. Even if an unplanned child comes for a while and leaves with a 93 percent probability, he may not be greatly disappointed or collapse.

Swallowing my precarious worries, I got up from my seat.

“I’ll see you next week.”

After saying goodbye to the Doctor, my feet felt lighter than before as I walked out.

And immediately, the worry the size of a candy that had been stuck in my throat grew so large that it tightened my esophagus.

“……”

Suppressing my breath, I leaned my shoulder against the hospital hallway wall.

Beautiful.

Kang Hae-ah, standing far away, is beautiful. Hae-ah, looking up at the clear sky in front of the window where flowering cacti are lined up, is beautiful. Hae-ah, stroking his belly, which is still just flat… is beautiful.

How many more times do you have to make me fall in love, Kang Hae-ah-ssi, to be satisfied?

“Are you happy? Hae-ah.”

As I unfolded the coat I had folded, Hae-ah leaned his back against me.

“Yeah.”

Hae-ah, biting his lower lip with his upper teeth and smiling, looks like an innocent child. Moving his arms around, he naturally received the help with his clothes. After putting it on, I realized that the coat I had hurriedly brought was my coat, not Hae-ah’s.

Looking up at me as I folded the sleeves that covered his hands, Hae-ah blinked his eyes quickly.

“Tae-rim-ssi. Do you think our baby… will be a son or a daughter?”

“Let’s talk about that later….”

…Let’s do it later. That’s what I was going to say.

“……”

I would have if I could have ignored Hae-ah’s sparkling eyes.

“I….”

Slowly lowering Hae-ah’s hand, I moistened my lips with the tip of my tongue.

“I… hope it’s a daughter.”

And I ended up saying it. I took it out of my mouth and put it out into the world. The brilliant and terrifying expectation that might come back with great disappointment and dig into my heart….

I should have guessed from the moment I headed to the hospital. That the news of Hae-ah’s pregnancy would reach Chairman Kang Jun-il’s ears at the speed of light.

It’s my fault that I forgot the obvious fact that the Kang family’s web was laid out everywhere because I was so flustered. I forgot to ask the hospital to keep it a secret. Well, even if I had asked them to keep it a secret, I doubt that the great Chairman Kang Jun-il would not know about his child’s pregnancy….

As soon as I got behind the wheel with Hae-ah, who wanted to eat salad pasta for a healthy meal, calls from Han-seong flooded in. Looking back, Kang Jun-il had been subtly mentioning grandchildren to me since the wedding reception.

On the screen of my cell phone, which was neatly placed next to the steering wheel, the name of Chairman Kang’s exclusive secretary, ‘Hwang Jong-tae’, repeatedly appeared and disappeared. Then, along with a dull vibration, the name ‘Chairman Kang Jun-il’ appeared and disappeared again.

Chairman Kang Jun-il

6 missed calls

Hae-ah’s face, which I glanced at, was indifferent. With his eyes wide open and his lips twisted to one side, Hae-ah scratched his right cheek with his index finger.

Only after Chairman Kang had ruined his reputation and left a record of seven missed calls did Hae-ah say this.

“Even so, what’s with ‘Chairman Kang Jun-il’, ‘Chairman Kang Jun-il’? I saved Father-in-law as Papa and Mother-in-law as Maman. I even put a heart on each side.”

“…Then, what did you save Father-in-law as?”

“‘Chairman Kang Jun-il’.”

“……”

I laughed, exhaling at the feeling of helplessness, and then my cell phone vibrated again. At this rate, I’m going to collect all the phone numbers of Chairman Kang’s secretarial team.

Well, I guess I would do the same. If Kang Hae-ah was my child, and I heard that child was pregnant. Would I just call? I would run barefoot, pick him up, and spin him around four times to the left and five times to the right.

How beautiful would a child who grows up in Kang Hae-ah’s womb and inherits Kang Hae-ah’s genes be? His face would resemble Hae-ah’s and he would be a beauty, and his personality would resemble Hae-ah’s and he would be fun. He would also be excellent in sensitivity, artistry, and character. He would have a strong sense of pride and a strong defensive instinct. He would know how to throw himself away and protect others if necessary, and he might sometimes be too kind and hurt my heart.

Reaching out next to me, lost in my delusions, Hae-ah took my cell phone. I was puzzled by that. Hae-ah doesn’t really like to contact his family. If it was a call from Chairman Kang, he could postpone it until later and pass it on to me.

“Are you going to call?”

I asked, stopping the car at a red light.

“Yeah.”

Hae-ah smiled slightly and slid his finger over my cell phone. He quickly entered the password, 0707, and opened his contacts.

The dial tone rang immediately.

Mother

Only then did I exclaim ‘Ah’ like an idiot. Even I didn’t think of calling my parents right away.

Next to me, where I didn’t know what kind of expression to make and kept gripping the steering wheel, Hae-ah stretched out his arm. And he changed the angle so that my face and his face were together in the front camera of the cell phone.

Soon, my Mother’s face appeared in the square screen. She had a scarf around her neck, as if she was getting ready to go out, and she was about to put pearl earrings on her earlobes with her hands.

Why are you video calling, Tae-rim… Oh, baby.

The voice, which had been indifferent as she looked outside, immediately became lively. As soon as she saw Hae-ah on the screen, my Mother’s face blossomed. Her movements were busy as she put down the earring she was about to put on and picked up her cell phone.

What’s going on, you two at this hour?

At the kind question, Hae-ah smiled like an excited child. And he said.

“Have you had lunch? Grandma.”

Huh? …Yeah, I’m going to eat with my friends. I was just about to go out.

“What are you going to eat? Are you going to eat something delicious, Grandma?”

Huh? Uh, uh? Yeah. I made a reservation at the Korean restaurant that Hae-ah recommended to me before.

“Oh, you did. Good job, Grandma!”

No, Hae-ah. Why do you keep calling me Grandma….

Hae-ah’s shoulders, holding the cell phone, shook with laughter. Our appearance in the screen also swayed up and down.

Why are you…. No. Huh?

Soon, my Mother showed an expression that even I, her son, had never seen in my life. She blinked her eyes slowly, looking bewildered, and then smiled broadly, showing all her lower teeth. The light in her eyes seemed to be flashing, and a great joy seemed to be overflowing.

Is it true?

My Mother asked, and

“It’s true!”

Hae-ah’s smile only grew bigger.

Hae-ah was busy taking out the pregnancy test from his pocket and showing it to the cell phone camera. While glancing at him, I checked the changed signal. I gripped the steering wheel, which felt particularly stiff, and drove the car.

Instead of this, I should go to your house. Oh, my…. What did the Doctor say? How’s your body? Is it okay?

“The Doctor didn’t say anything! I’m healthy, so I’ll be okay!”

While drawing a V with one hand and putting it under his chin, Hae-ah smiled, showing his teeth.

“Right, Tae-rim-ssi?”

My Mother’s question passed through Hae-ah and weighed down on my shoulders.

“Yes.”

Trying not to look at the screen, I answered as casually as possible.

“Everything will be fine.”

I know my Mother well, and my Mother knows me well. I can feel all of my Mother’s expressions in my peripheral vision. After pausing for a few seconds, the sound of her laughing ‘Hoho’ feels meaningful.

She must have already read my expression. I’ll have to call her again in the evening and confess honestly.

Okay, Hae-ah. Be careful in the future. And make sure to eat only cooked food.

“Yes, Grandma!”

I was caught in the two people’s harmonious atmosphere and couldn’t help but smile, but I was seized with a precarious feeling.

I want to call the Doctor again and ask. What’s the right thing to do in this situation, I don’t know because this is my first time, and what’s the percentage that my silence is the right answer right now.

‘Am I… doing well?’

An unfamiliar anxiety kept churning in my stomach.

Should I have told Hae-ah that the risk was great, that there was a high possibility of miscarriage, that he shouldn’t expect too much, and that we shouldn’t be too happy in advance? Am I pushing away my own fear under the pretext of not stressing him out…?

The third person Kang Hae-ah told about the pregnancy was unexpectedly, but very Kang Hae-ah-like, our housekeeper, Hwang Ok-hye.

“Ok-hye-ssi, Ok-hye-ssi, make me baeksuk!”

Hwang Ok-hye jumped even higher at the news of Hae-ah’s pregnancy, who was constantly jumping up and down.

“Calm down, you can’t jump!”

Then she took Hae-ah to the most comfortable sofa seat and sat him down, and grabbed her shopping basket, saying she would go buy the ingredients right away. She hurriedly went to the front door, but then backed up, saying ‘Oh, right’ and congratulating him five or six times.

When she returned, she was holding a bulging shopping basket and a heavy paper bag.

“My son is a medical student, so he recommended these nutritional supplements. Make sure to take them.”

Hwang Ok-hye wanted to open a restaurant next to her son’s hospital when she quit her job as a housekeeper. Hae-ah would encourage her twilight dreams by saying that he would invest as much as she wanted and make her a table, but he would also cling to Hwang Ok-hye’s arm, saying, ‘But I don’t want you to quit for the rest of your life.’

Today, Hwang Ok-hye’s cooking skills, with her sturdy arms rolled up, were amazing. I, who had hurriedly gone to the company to put out the fire, was greeted by Hae-ah, who was crumpled up on the sofa and asleep, and a splendid table of nineteen side dishes.

Do-jin, who was eating the unsalted baeksuk made with the remaining chicken breast, was happy, and Hae-ah, who was stretching and sitting at the table, had a happy evening.

Wearing plastic gloves, I neatly removed the meat from the two baeksuks placed for my share. I replaced the bowl with only pure meat, without leaving a single bone, with the bowl placed in front of Hae-ah.

“I have to contact them and say that I’m dropping out of the campaign work. The process of canceling the contract will be a bit complicated, but… I don’t think smelling oil will be good for the baby. I also have to train our Do-jin in advance so that he can adapt well. And….”

While Hae-ah was preoccupied with his worries instead of eating, I took the spoon in Hae-ah’s right hand and

“I’ll do it.”

I forcibly took away his plan.

“Tae-rim-ssi will? …All of it?”

“Yeah, I’ll do it all. You just eat well, sleep well, and rest well. That’s what everyone does when they’re pregnant.”

I don’t know what ‘everyone’ is like, but Kang Hae-ah has to be like that anyway.

“Don’t worry about anything and just lie down and play comfortably.”

Then Hae-ah lowered his head. He put the spoon dipped in the baeksuk broth in his mouth, and his chewing motion seemed shy.

Every day, I try to be a better husband by trying to do better.

Every day, Hae-ah blushes red and packages the sincerity I pour out like a jewel.

“Thank you….”

That round cheek that rises up was the reward of life for me.

Without any fuss or pickiness, Hae-ah emptied a bowl of chicken soup. For a light eater who had no appetite in the morning and hated eating dinner, it was a great effort.

“I think I’ll draw a fairy tale tomorrow.”

Smiling as if great fullness was conveyed to the whole world, Hae-ah whispered.

“A fairy tale picture to show our baby when he is born.”

“…Okay. Show it to me when you’re done.”

“Yeah. I’ll show it to you first…”

Silently nodding, I got up from my seat. I reached out to clear the empty bowl and dishes, but Hae-ah placed his hand on the back of my hand.

“Tae-rim-ssi. I’m happy.”

At those words, I broke down.

“This isn’t a dream, is it…?”

Action was faster than rational thought. In a moment when I didn’t know what to do, I quickly approached Hae-ah, passing the large dining table.

“Hae-ah.”

My instinct made me cup Hae-ah’s cheeks with both hands.

“It’s not a dream. It’s real. It’s reality…”

I kissed Hae-ah’s left cheek, then his right cheek, and said. If necessary, I could say it a hundred or a thousand more times.

That it’s real, it’s reality. Both your happiness and my joy from it.

It’s more real than real.

6 weeks.

This week alone, I had one absence and two early leaves.

When my cell phone rings, Si Eun-cheol sighs first. It was only once or twice that I waved people away, but now I had to walk to the bathroom in the CEO’s office. It became natural to turn on the faucet water to prevent my voice from leaking outside.

When I swiped the ‘Call’ button with my finger, one of two voices was heard. Hwang Ok-hye, the housekeeper who takes care of Hae-ah at home, or Driver Oh Geon-min, who drives Hae-ah’s car outside the house.

Representative.

Today’s first caller was the latter.

I’m sorry to call you while you’re busy. I don’t know if I should even tell you this…

“Get to the point.”

The writer complained of dizziness on the way back from the prosecutor’s house. We pulled the car over to the side of the road and rested for 20 minutes.

I couldn’t help but sigh at the cautiously delivered story. I squeezed my eyes shut and gripped the edge of the sink tightly.

I knew that Kang Hae-ah had been feeling anemic since morning. When he came down the stairs to see me off to work, he staggered, and my heart sank. To go see my Father in that condition. I repeatedly told him to lie down and rest, and even got a promise with a pinky swear… This was betrayal.

However,

‘This is betrayal, how could you deceive me? You said you’d rest well. You said you’d lie on the sofa all day and only do the exercise of shaking a doll at Do-jin! You promised to rest!’

…If I were to grill him like that, I would surely see Hae-ah’s cute face. He would open his eyes wide and look at me as if I were a bad kid going crazy in the toy aisle at the mart.

‘Playing with Father and Mother is rest for me?’

Then he would pout his lips.

It’s really unfair. That I can’t win against Hae-ah in an argument.

I feel a headache for no reason. I pressed the temples on both sides with the tips of my middle and thumb fingers. Thanks to the shade created by my palm blocking the fluorescent light, I regained some sanity.

Representative? Are you listening?

“I’m listening. So, where are you now?”

We’re back home now, but, well… The writer told me not to tell you, but he said he couldn’t get up and was just going to rest for a while, but now, he’s lying down in the back seat of the car for 20 minutes.

“Stay put.”

I hung up the phone and turned off the faucet water. And almost running, I crossed the CEO’s office and headed for the elevator. The elevator, which was staying on the 12th floor, quickly went up one more floor. The door opened with a ‘ding’, and the youngest secretary reached out to me as I moved quickly.

“Oh? Representative! Just a moment!”

I showed her my index and middle fingers.

“20 minutes.”

The secretary’s face came closer through the crack of the closing elevator door.

“You did that yesterday and it was an hour later…!”

The nagging was cut off as soon as the silver door closed.

Suppressing my urgent heart, I headed to the underground parking lot, to the driver’s seat of my car, and home. Then I stopped the car haphazardly on the uphill road at the entrance of the house and got out.

“Representative.”

Driver Oh Geon-min’s expression, who was approaching me with his cell phone in his hand, was dark. Beyond his shoulder, I could see a white sedan with the back door wide open. It was a new car from a famous brand that was known to keep people safe even if the car was crushed in a traffic accident, a gift that Chairman Kang sent as a ‘pregnancy gift’.

‘What is he going to give me when she gives birth to the baby?’

Next to me, as I was agonizing over the increasingly cramped parking lot, muttering to myself,

‘He’ll give a building in the baby’s name.’

Hae-ah’s reply was very calm.

As I slowly approached the white car in question, I raised my right hand. Then Driver Oh closed his mouth and quietly stepped back. He’s good because he’s quick-witted anyway.

I approached, muffling the sound of my shoes, and in the back seat, Hae-ah was fast asleep. The posture of sitting with both legs in place and only the upper body lying sideways looked very uncomfortable. The attitude of putting a clenched fist to his mouth was just like a child. On the other hand, the arm that wrapped around his dry belly as if protecting a precious treasure looked mature.

I admired his Angel-like sleeping face for a moment, then put my upper body into the car. And I worried for a long time about how to make Hae-ah less uncomfortable and changed his posture.

As carefully as possible, I first hugged and lifted Hae-ah’s upper body. The body leaning weakly on me was thin, weak, and soft. The scent of lotion, the unique smell of flesh, and the pheromone scent of Omega flowed out faintly.

It was my husband’s pheromone scent that always made me feel good. But I didn’t welcome it as much as now. It was not a scent that he gave off because he wanted to, was excited, or liked it. It was a scent that flowed out because his body was exhausted and his control was broken, along with a very weak fever.

As I pulled Hae-ah out of the car, I held him firmly in my arms. Perhaps because he had overdone it with his weak body, Hae-ah did not wake up even as he was lifted into my arms and dropped one hand into the air. He only twitched the hand that wrapped around his belly and clutched his clothes.

Driver Oh quickly opened the door. Thanks to that, I was able to enter the house easily. He was the best driver I knew. He would walk outside without me having to instruct him, and I could see that he was properly parking my car with the keys in it.

One step, two steps, I carefully climbed the stairs and arrived at the warm master bedroom.

These days, Hae-ah spent most of his day in the bedroom. He always had a lingering body ache and his body was slightly hot. He said he had no appetite, but he forced himself to fill his stomach with nutritional supplements and porridge every day. He says he’s happy, but it’s a pity that his health doesn’t keep up with his happy heart.

I’m not the only one who worries about Hae-ah. On the day I came to the hospital for an ultrasound, the Doctor also gave me some worried advice. He said that the womb in Hae-ah’s belly was very small, and it barely seemed to exceed 15mm. I was surprised that the culprit who made Hae-ah wither like a delicate flower was so small.

On the other hand, Hae-ah was surprised that the fetus’s heartbeat was too fast.

‘The baby must have been very surprised. His heart is beating very fast. Stop the exam. Isn’t it going to explode?’

We, who didn’t know at all that the fetus’s heartbeat was originally faster than that of an adult, were novices. Looking at Hae-ah’s and my hands, which were tightly clasped in panic, the Doctor told us to calm down several times.

Then, his voice adding was calm.

‘Next time you come, please have the pregnant woman gain 1 kilogram more.’

At that time, I didn’t know anything and answered confidently, ‘Yes’. Looking back now, 1 is a very regrettable number.

As the Doctor ordered, her weight should have increased because she was pregnant, but Hae-ah’s weight moved in the opposite direction. It seemed that even the 400 grams that she had carefully gained before had disappeared.

At this rate, if I turn on the air conditioner in the summer, she might fly away in the wind. She might become lighter than Do-jin soon. I’m worried, so how can I let her go out on a day when there’s a strong wind warning?

As I laid Hae-ah in the center of the bed and was lost in delusions, the vibration of my cell phone woke me up. The vibration coming from the back pocket of my pants was full of urging. The youngest secretary was stamping her feet, saying that the representative had disappeared again, and it was clear that Si Eun-cheol and Yoon Eun-ah would be looking for me with fire in their eyes.

But it can’t be helped.

“Tae-rim-ssi…”

In front of Hae-ah’s small call, clutching the hem of my clothes as I was about to cover him with a blanket and leave again…

The small force in his index finger stopped my movement and I gave up my plan.

“Yeah, Hae-ah.”

As if tied to an anchor, my body slowly sank to the edge of the bed. Losing track of time, Hae-ah leaned his head on my thigh.

Whenever I came home during the day, Kang Hae-ah, who would jump up and down saying, ‘Why do you come in person, what are you going to do with the company!’ or, ‘You can ask Eun-cheol Hyung or Eun-ah-ssi to run errands!’ or, ‘Again, again, again, you left the USB behind, didn’t you? You’re such a clumsy representative’, now clings to me, mistaking that it’s evening.

“I… dream…”

Well, he’s even talking in his sleep now.

“Yeah, did you have a dream?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of dream?”

“…A bad dream…”

I slowly stroked Hae-ah’s head, whose eyes, which already looked gentle, became even more sullen. Was he having a nightmare, should I wake him up… I was worried for a moment. The frown on his forehead quickly disappeared, and his gloomy expression gradually became brighter and more comfortable.

He seems to like the touch.

‘How lovely.’

I stroked and stroked him for a long time, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“I love you, Hae-ah.”

When I whispered my confession, a faint smile spread across Hae-ah’s lips.

“I love you very, very much. Hae-ah.”

With each successive confession, the corners of his lips twitched, as if he was about to show his cute upper teeth. “You’re the prettiest in the world. You’re the most precious. I love you so much.”

Smile.

It was a confession given with that wish.

“Me too…”

Unexpectedly, Hae-ah returned the answer.

“I love you too, Tae-rim-ssi… Pretty Tae-rim-ssi…”

The mumbling voice was as mushy as mashed soft tofu.

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah…”

But the smile didn’t last long. His cheeks, which were shyly flushed, turned pale as quickly as he was surprised, and his eyes, which were cute with sleepiness, had a faint wrinkle.

“What’s wrong?”

As I stroked his dry arm in embarrassment, Hae-ah whispered in my ear.

“I need to go to the bathroom…”

“Really? Should I help you up? Should I support you?”

“No, no…”

Then Hae-ah’s face darkened as he clutched his belly with both hands. Seized by the shock of his heart plummeting to the floor, I quickly touched his belly as well. It was still a small belly. It was about the size of two of my palms.

“Ugh…”

Hae-ah shuddered slightly as if cold and got up from his seat. He pushed me away with his left hand, who was following him in embarrassment, and went into the bathroom and closed the door. The door that closed in front of my nose with a thud was so cruel.

Since when was the bathroom such a great space? The urge to break the doorknob and chase after Hae-ah surged strongly. It was even more so because I could hear the sound of the faucet water running beyond the door. Because I knew his heart to hide even a handful of sound.

“Hae-ah. Are you okay?”

Like a person with a fire on his feet, I couldn’t stay still.

I was just worried about Hae-ah. I was so worried that my head turned white. It turned white like a blank sheet of paper, then pale like a hospital ceiling. The Doctor’s words that there was a high possibility of miscarriage stabbed my brain.

‘Maybe he’s seeing blood inside?’

My hand knocking on the door trembled slightly.

“Hae-ah.”

…Why isn’t he saying anything?

After ten seconds passed, I heard the sound of the toilet flushing. Again, the sound of washing hands continued for a long time and then stopped.

Soon, the bathroom door burst open. As soon as he showed his face through the crack in the door, Hae-ah was noticeably surprised, ‘Ah!’

“You startled me…! Why are you doing this?”

I quickly wrapped my arms around Hae-ah’s belly, whose eyes were wide open.

“Are you okay?”

When I spoke in an excited voice,

“Huh?”

Hae-ah rather stroked the back of my hand.

“Oh…? Yes, I’m okay. I just had a cramp in my stomach…”

“In your stomach?”

“Yes, a cramp…”

“…Okay, you had a cramp?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

Hae-ah moved his eyes to check my expression. Then he chuckled like a child who had found something very small and funny.

“Why are you so serious?”

“……”

“Shall we keep standing here like this?”

“…Ah.”

As I took a step back and moved my body, Hae-ah shrugged his shoulders.

I watched him carefully as he headed back to the bed. Kang Hae-ah is the best at enduring pain than anyone else in the world. He’s a terrifying Kang Hae-ah who can pretend to be okay even if he has a concussion with water running from his nose. Therefore, I had to put my heart and soul into it and stare at him very closely.

The lazy posture of crawling onto the bed and leaning against the headboard, the expression of yawning while trying not to open his mouth wide, the large eyes that blinked slowly, and the hand movements of patting the crumpled pillow, all of that… didn’t look like a person in much pain.

‘Okay. Pass.’

Well, if his stomach was even a little tight or painful, he would have said let’s fly to the hospital right now. At that time, it wouldn’t be ‘Kang Hae-ah’ who was in pain, but ‘the baby in Kang Hae-ah’s belly’ who was in pain, so the situation would be different.

As my thoughts reached there, I became a little, just a little sad. I wish he would cry when ‘Kang Hae-ah’ is in pain…

Hae-ah said to me, who was standing blankly in the place where worry had swept through.

“Tae-rim-ssi. Do you have to go back to work?”

At the clear voice, I quickly shook my head.

“No. No. I left work early today. The work finished quickly.”

“Liar… Eun-ah-ssi said you would be busy today, Representative.”

His pretty brown eyes were full of suspicion. To him, who was showing the expression of an angry squirrel, I brazenly insisted.

“It’s true.”

As if saying that would make it true.

“It’s true. I’m telling you it’s true.”

The innocent Hae-ah quickly gave in to me. He released the strength he had given to his shoulders and loosened his posture, and gave a small smile that made no sound. And when he gestured for me to come here, I acted as if I had become Do-jin.

I quickly filled the seat next to Hae-ah and sat side by side, and his light head touched my neck.

“I’m sleepy.”

“Yeah. Hae-ah.”

“Go back to work after I fall asleep.”

“Okay. I will.”

Slowly, Hae-ah brought my right hand onto his thigh. He made a shape by folding each finger from the index finger to the ring finger, and the little finger that came walking was thin.

“Promise.”

Then he shook his hand up and down, but my hand only extended and lowered the little finger that was hooked, and did not shake.

Tch.

While Hae-ah was complaining with an amazingly cute sound, I secretly twisted the index and middle fingers of my left hand behind my back.

This way, even lies are forgiven.

For the first time in ten years of the Cheon family’s history, an argument broke out. It was an incident that occurred during a family meeting with the topic of ‘Should Kang Hae-ah be informed of the possibility of early miscarriage’.

From beginning to end, Father insisted that Hae-ah should be told all the facts. But Mother’s attitude was strongly opposed. It was unexpected that the person who always took Hae-ah’s side more than anyone else would want to deceive him.

“Well. What would an inexperienced person who has never been pregnant know?”

Then she told me to keep a close eye on him until the day of delivery since I had already created a secret.

I couldn’t tell if those words were sincere or sarcastic. So I asked.

“Are you saying that sincerely, or are you being sarcastic?”

As soon as I finished speaking, Mother punched my arm with her fist. Then she grabbed the back of her hand, saying ‘Ouch’.

“It’s sincere! Would your mother be sarcastic to you?”

The question of whether she sometimes makes such jokes soared above my neck, but I had to swallow it forcibly.

“It’s her first child.”

As she put the chestnuts that Father had cleanly peeled into a bowl, Mother said casually.

“It’s the first child I’m having with you.”

Bewildered by the meaning behind those words, I looked at Father. But my Father was just as dense an Alpha. We exchanged glances for a few seconds, each demanding an explanation, before realizing that there was no one to answer, only two Alphas asking. So, I looked back at Mother.

Adding a handful of chestnuts to the simmering braised short ribs, Mother shook her head. And said,

“If you scare Hae-ah by saying things like miscarriage or that something might happen to the baby in her belly, do you think Kang Hae-ah will just go, ‘Oh, I see!’ and detach himself from the child? As if. How much does Hae-ah like you, Tae-rim. It’s the first child he’s having with you, isn’t it?”

Then, Mother began to tell a story about the Omega son-in-law of an acquaintance of an office manager she knew. Even though he had awakened as an Omega on time, he had become depressed after getting pregnant. She also said that a book recommended by her book club had a study on acute depression caused by the division between the ‘self as an Omega’ and the ‘self as a male.’

I shook my head and waved my hand.

“Hae-ah is different. There’s not even a hint of that kind of depression.”

“Isn’t that what I’m saying?”

Mother raised her index finger and wagged it from side to side like a windshield wiper.

“You’ve been bad at Korean since elementary school, Tae-rim. Your awards were only for math competitions, science competitions, water rockets, kite flying contests, marathons, and high jumps. The first letter you ever wrote to the parents who raised you was a letter of apology.”

“I thought you liked that apology letter. You even put it in a frame.”

“Who wants an apology letter that follows the six principles of writing so well? Hae-ah gave me a book of French poetry the other day. He translated it line by line himself. And he wrote so neatly and carefully. He even included dried flowers from his garden as a bookmark.”

Why is she suddenly talking about poetry? I can’t grasp the context at all.

I looked at Father again. Father avoided my gaze and started trimming the bean sprout heads.

“Goodness.”

Mother clicked her tongue at me, who was tilting my head in confusion.

“That’s how different Hae-ah is. Such a delicate and kind child wouldn’t have pregnancy depression or morning sickness.”

“So, Mother is saying…”

“So, I’m saying that even if you tell him to prepare for a miscarriage or something, it won’t make him less hurt. Do you understand now?”

“Yes. I understand.”

For a while, the kitchen was filled only with the sound of the braised short ribs simmering. The silence was long, making Father’s clearing of his throat sound particularly loud.

After organizing my thoughts, I let out a long sigh of relief.

“That’s a relief. I felt guilty for deceiving Hae-ah, but since Mother thinks that way… After hearing that, I think my choice was the most reasonable and right after all.”

“……”

Mother glared at me. Not knowing the meaning of that look, I blinked, then slowly grabbed my coat. I had achieved my purpose for visiting my parents’ house, so it was time to go see Hae-ah.

As I put my arms into the navy jacket that Hae-ah had chosen for me, Mother slapped my back with a loud thwack.

“Take the braised short ribs and the yukjeon with you! You have to feed our Hae-ah well!”

Thump.

Three large insulated lunch boxes were placed on the table.

7 weeks.

“Still, shouldn’t he know?”

Si Eun-cheol muttered to himself, as if wanting me to hear.

Every time he placed a file folder on the round table in the conference room, the ponytail at the back of his head swung. He’d been living for the compliments he’s been getting lately that ‘long hair suits him,’ but I hated how messy it looked.

‘Get a haircut. Buzz it off if possible. You looked best when you were a soldier.’

Si Eun-cheol listened to my heartfelt advice with deaf ears and brushed it off.

“He has the right to know what his condition is, doesn’t he? Kang Hae-ah has the right to know, doesn’t he?”

That guy is telling me what to do, meddling too much.

“He’s my husband.”

Leaning back in my chair, I slammed the tablet PC down with a thud. And replied.

“I’ll decide for myself. Whether I tell him or not is my decision, so don’t interfere.”

“Hey, are you going to shut me out like this? I’m Kang Hae-ah’s friend too!”

“……”

Every time this happens, Si Eun-cheol insists that he’s ‘Kang Hae-ah’s friend’ rather than ‘Tae-rim’s friend.’ That look is ridiculous, but honestly, it looks good. Because I know he’s saying it for Kang Hae-ah’s sake, because he doesn’t want Kang Hae-ah to get hurt.

‘…That’s that, and this is this.’

I tried to dismiss the conversation by slowly shaking my head.

“Anyway…”

…Tell everyone to come up for the meeting. Just as I was about to say that, Si Eun-cheol put his fist on his hip. And he pinched me with a very crooked posture and tone.

“Cheon Tae-rim. Are you going to keep Hae-ah in the dark until the baby is born? Can you do that?”

Then, Si Eun-cheol poured out words that were hard to tell whether they were insults or compliments. Aren’t you, Cheon Tae-rim, of all people? Is it even possible for you to deceive the person closest to your personality? Wouldn’t it be better to be honest with Hae-ah and tell him to be careful together…?

As the story dragged on,

“Then, what about you?”

I raised my head. The shadow cast on my eyes felt particularly clear and bleak at that moment.

“If it were you, could you tell him? That the child in your belly is in danger. That the probability of being born healthy is less than 7 percent. To Kang Hae-ah?”

Kang Hae-ah.

Not anyone else, Kang Hae-ah.

Who is he?

Last month, we carved out a new office in the remaining space on the 13th floor of our company. It was to move Representative Secretary Si Eun-cheol’s seat from the open space in front of the elevator to a more private office. Hearing that news, Hae-ah visited the company with an orange sofa. Then, he placed the sofa next to the potted plants that Si Eun-cheol had been growing by roughly watering them with the water he had left over.

At first, Si Eun-cheol was very grateful for that favor. He boasted about how he had a very expensive and pretty sofa in his office, making his junior secretaries stand up and listen.

But the gratitude didn’t even last two days.

‘Tell your husband to stop coming! Outsiders are prohibited from entering the company!’

Then, Si Eun-cheol jumped up and down like an angry grasshopper. My brows furrowed at the sudden outburst.

‘You said he was your friend. And why is my husband an outsider? Strictly speaking, he’s an insider. Since the Beta Test…, no. Hae-ah is our company itself. Without Hae-ah, there would be no AOM now. Know what you’re talking about.’

‘Ugh, I’m so frustrated! Do you talk to Kang Hae-ah like that too?’

‘Hae-ah doesn’t create situations where I have to talk like that in the first place.’

‘Wow, seriously….’

After a pointless conversation, Si Eun-cheol told me. The orange sofa was Kang Hae-ah’s exclusive seat. While I was out on business, Hae-ah went into Si Eun-cheol’s office, lay down on the sofa, and used him as a counselor. He said that the gossip he unloaded when he stopped by for lunch until four in the afternoon was all worries.

He never did that in front of me, but Hae-ah easily said that he was anxious when he was alone with Si Eun-cheol. According to what Si Eun-cheol told me, ‘I received a kiss and a confession of love from Tae-rim-ssi this morning, and a chocolate gift,’ but he showed a gloomy face. He said he was anxious because he was too happy.

Si Eun-cheol would usually nag Hae-ah, asking what his problem was.

Then, Kang Hae-ah would shrug and answer.

‘Just, me. I’m the problem. Kang Hae-ah is the problem.’

Putting aside the chilling problem that Si Eun-cheol’s imitation of Kang Hae-ah’s tone and attitude was too similar….

…Yes, Kang Hae-ah.

Kang Hae-ah is the problem.

The problem is that Kang Hae-ah is Kang Hae-ah.

“……”

So, even the great Si Eun-cheol had no choice but to close his eyes tightly. If the listener was ‘Kang Hae-ah’ when telling him that the child in his belly was in danger, he would blame himself for being an immature Omega first. He would blame and resent himself, and then he might collapse. It wouldn’t be strange if he developed severe depression and went insane, not just being stressed. It would be a relief if he suddenly relied on a religion he didn’t believe in or believed in superstitions.

After wrinkling his eyes for a long time, Si Eun-cheol said with a big sigh.

“Keep it a secret from Kang Hae-ah… Keep it a secret no matter what.”

“Okay.”

Filled with a strange determination, I met Si Eun-cheol’s gaze for a few seconds.

“……”

“……”

Then, we turned our eyes to our respective tablet PCs and cell phones. My tablet screen showed a pregnancy support pillow, and the screen that Si Eun-cheol showed me, saying ‘How about this,’ showed a bassinet for newborns.

But none of that needed to be given to Kang Hae-ah as a gift.

“I’m home…. Huh?”

What greeted me when I got home was a house full of baby items. I never thought there would come a moment when I would feel that this large house was ‘small,’ but today was that day.

“Hae-ah?”

When I called out loudly,

“Tae-rim-ssi, I’m here.”

A small voice echoed back.

“Where?”

“Here, here!”

In the distance, a white arm stretched out over a large sofa. To get to Hae-ah, passing the large and small objects that were tripping me up, I almost had to swim.

“What is all this? Did you go shopping?”

Releasing the arm that had been holding Do-jin and raising his upper body from lying down, Hae-ah said. It was a very happy response, closer to a shout than a word.

“Today, I feel good for once! I feel like I can fly. So, I called a shopper.”

For the first time in a while, Hae-ah’s cheeks were glowing. In his arms, Do-jin had baby socks on his front paws and a bib around his neck, looking sullen.

“You haven’t even found out the gender yet, and you’ve already bought clothes…?”

I muttered, looking down at the small clothes that covered the coffee table, and

“What does gender matter? What gender does color have?”

Hae-ah giggled and fluttered a palm-sized piece of clothing.

‘Still, skirts have a gender, don’t they…?’

Our baby’s nationality isn’t going to be Scottish, is it?

After standing there dumbfounded for a few seconds, an unfamiliar footstep caught my ear. Quickly raising my head and looking up the stairs to the second floor, I saw two women coming down holding the railing. Their faces were friendly as they smiled at me, saying ‘Hello.’

Reflexively nodding, I was still bewildered.

‘Who are they?’

Grabbing my arm as I asked with my eyes, Hae-ah dealt with the unfamiliar visitors.

“Thank you both for your hard work. I’ll see you next week.”

“Yes, Writer. Thank you for entrusting us with the project!”

Glancing at them as they bowed and left, I quietly smelled the air. I wanted to know if the people who had visited my house while I was away were Alphas or Omegas.

Next to me, trying to identify the body scent of the strangers, Hae-ah looked comfortable and happy.

“They’re the most popular interior designer couple in the country. I called them today and got a diagnosis on various things, and I signed a contract because their skills are good. I’m going to decorate the baby’s room in advance. I’ve already chosen the main color and the type of wood furniture. The theme is, Milky Way!”

Then, Kang Hae-ah’s smile, spreading his hands in the air, was innocent. It was a smile that I hadn’t seen in a while, a smile that was as excited as a child without a speck of dirt.

That brilliant anticipation stabs into my heart. It ends up tearing it in two.

‘Okay.’

I will never tell Kang Hae-ah. I made up my mind. I will never get caught. I’m confident I can do that.

Then, I found a great way. I’ll just believe in Hae-ah’s expectations too. I’ll forget all the doctor’s warnings and the risks of probability, and just live the tomorrow that Hae-ah is looking at.

In the 7 percent world, more faithfully than anyone else in this world.

10 weeks.

These days, I’m fully aware of what the hell of morning sickness is. Even if I have an appetite, seeing food makes me want to throw up, and the smell of juice or cheese, as well as the scent of things that aren’t food, sometimes makes me nauseous. I’m tormented by vomiting all day long, so even the taste of my saliva has changed.

Because of that damn morning sickness, a crack has formed in the dining table where Hae-ah and I used to be happy.

The problem wasn’t Hae-ah, it was me.

“Ugh….”

I ran to the bathroom once an hour.

It was the same not only at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but also at the company, where there was no smell of food at all. If I suddenly got up from my seat while working in the CEO’s office, the chair would hit the wall with the sound of the wheels sliding.

Rattle, thump!

That sound was already familiar.

Going straight to the bathroom in the CEO’s office and grabbing the toilet that had already had the cover lifted, the vomit that had been surging up would subside as if nothing had happened. I wanted to throw up and feel refreshed, but all that came out was bitter saliva. The damn morning sickness seemed to be mocking me.

On the other hand, I was glad that I was the one suffering from morning sickness. I was glad that it wasn’t Hae-ah, who was already weak and tired….

The doctor said something similar. It’s difficult to explain scientifically, but sometimes there are Alphas who get morning sickness instead of the pregnant woman.

‘I’m a little hesitant to say this, but it’s much better for you to have morning sickness in your current condition than for the pregnant woman to have it. Well… morning sickness isn’t something that goes back and forth like that.’

So, I was bewildered by the request, which wasn’t a request, to think of it as happily as possible.

‘If possible, I wish I could do it for seven more months instead.’

The thought that morning sickness might come to Hae-ah’s delicate body was terrible. Hae-ah, who was already having a hard time making a baby that wasn’t in his fate, was already trying hard enough. He eats a full bowl of rice every morning and evening, and if he doesn’t have an appetite, he makes sure to eat porridge or soup.

He doesn’t do any labor all day and only makes that much effort, just two meals, and I’m so grateful. Hae-ah, who is originally picky and a gourmet, can’t eat his favorite food, salmon sashimi, or medium-rare steak with only the outside slightly cooked, and he can’t eat smoked food, raw eggs, or blue cheese. But he doesn’t skip two meals a day and takes good care of himself…. He even tries to eat lunch, which he usually skips, saying ‘I’m not hungry.’ I wanted to print out an award and give it to him.

Create a ‘Kang Hae-ah of the Month Award’ and give one out every month. If possible, with a bouquet of flowers and a trophy.

“Hoo….”

I rinsed the lengthening thoughts away with cold water. My face in the mirror looked dark.

I already have a first impression of being ‘difficult to approach,’ but after losing a little weight, my features became more pronounced. I wake up every hour even while sleeping to check if Hae-ah is having nightmares again, cover him with a blanket again, and massage his arms and legs, so my eyes are sunken.

‘You’re too thin. What should I do? Poor Tae-rim….’

Hae-ah is the only one in the world who adores me with those words.

This morning, even Mother, who I stopped by at my parents’ house to drop off Do-jin and Hae-ah, said I was ‘scary’ when she saw me. She also advised me to smile as much as possible so as not to create a sense of intimidation when meeting people.

Staring blankly at the mirror, I recalled that advice. I narrowed my eyes as much as possible and forced myself to smile, showing my teeth.

‘Hmm….’

I don’t think this is it.

Along with the water, I wiped away the fake smile that looked like something a crazy psychopath had created with his imagination.

As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, a guest greeted me. After staring at him for a few seconds, I realized that he was the president of a cooperative advertising company. Rubbing the dull corners of my mouth with my fingertips, I quickened my pace.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“Ah. No. I just arrived.”

Getting up from the sofa, he held out his hand to shake mine. The hand I shook while adjusting my tie with my left hand was cold. His shoulders were awkwardly raised and his lips were trembling strangely.

‘Is he an Omega?’

I hope he doesn’t get nervous for no reason. Because if pheromones flow out and something like a body scent gets on me, it’ll be a problem. Then Hae-ah will worry unnecessarily. How sensitive is our Hae-ah to smells.

‘I need to take a shower before going in.’

After gesturing and nodding to have him sit back down, I took a seat on the sofa as far away as possible. Avoiding the nearby representative seat, the single-seater sofa, I chose the edge, causing the Omega CEO to look around in apparent bewilderment.

Then, he cleared his throat and said,

“…Congratulations. I heard you’re expecting a child next year….”

‘The rumors sure spread fast.’

He probably meant it as a way to ease the atmosphere, but I didn’t welcome the congratulations. The more expectant eyes there were, the greater Hae-ah’s disappointment would be if something went wrong. The congratulations on the pregnancy had already been more than enough with Hae-ah and me, just the two of us, embracing and smearing tears and laughter all over each other. So, I wished the attention of others would just disappear.

But there was no use in trying to keep it quiet by myself, and there was nothing I could do about it. Whenever gossip material ran dry, news about ‘Kang Hae-ah, the artist’ would often appear in the culture section of portal sites. Preventing the news of the pregnancy of Hae-ah, the mascot of Hanseong Group and the most famous young painter, and me, a Dominant Alpha and the CEO of AOM, from hitting the media was the best I could do for now.

The problem lay elsewhere. Chairman Kang Jun-il, who had become a fool for his grandson…. He had already gotten the date and time of the baby’s birth, but no matter how many times I indirectly told him not to make a fuss, or even directly told him once, it was no use. He still couldn’t hide his excitement about his first grandchild. How could the rumors not spread?

Anyway, that family is no help at all. Kang Jun-il, who only thinks about seeing his grandson and not about his pregnant son, the sisters of that family who are seizing the opportunity to try and build a friendship with me, and Kang Il-hae, who is serving time in prison for drug problems.

‘No one is thinking about Hae-ah.’

Really, besides giving birth to Kang Hae-ah, there’s nothing good to be found even if you look with a magnifying glass.

“Um…”

The Omega CEO’s voice broke me out of my thoughts.

“…Have you decided on a prenatal dream name?”

The question he carefully offered was quite welcome. I even felt a little excited.

Unlike me, who could only think of food names when naming a dog, Hae-ah had a good sense of naming and was very cautious. Singing about what name we should call our baby, he bought a notebook. Then, after writing down various names for over ten pages and agonizing over them, he finally held the final round of the long tournament.

That was just yesterday. With ballpoint pen ink on his hands, lines drawn all over the lined notebook pages, Hae-ah’s steps were tiptoeing… cautious and light as he approached me with a joyful face. Sitting on my lap while I was working overtime in the study, Hae-ah opened the notebook wide and showed me the only name that had survived the storm of lines.

‘What do you think, Tae-rim-ssi? Do you like it?’

Thinking of that shy smile made me feel good. I had to calm down my excitement.

“Um…”

After clearing my throat, I proudly announced our child’s name for the fifty-first time today.

“‘Cheon Woo-joo.'”

“Cheon… Ah. ‘Woo-joo’? That’s unique! You’ve already attached the surname to the prenatal dream name….”

The Omega CEO responded to my words with great sociability. However, since there was a misunderstanding, I shook my head and corrected him.

“It’s not a prenatal dream name, it’s the name.”

As if it were natural, abandoning his own surname, Kang, and sharing my surname, Cheon, with that name.

“The child’s name is ‘Cheon Woo-joo.’ That’s what our artist decided.”

When I first heard this name, I thought it was unexpected. I had expected Hae-ah to come up with a more unique and original name.

‘Why Woo-joo?’

In response to my blinking question, Hae-ah shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Then, he wrapped his arms around my neck, rubbed his nose against my nose, and whispered with his lips close to my lips.

‘Because I’m going to give him everything in the world. I’m going to take the whole universe, so this child will be no different from the universe.’

With those words, I realized. Hae-ah had already finished preparing to be the most wonderful parent in the world.

I liked that about Hae-ah. I loved the way he drew lines on my neck with his index finger, listing one by one what he was going to give the child. A birthday with twenty presents, family trips every weekend, an environment where he could learn anything he wanted… Nights that would never be wrong. A daily life without pain. A life without tears.

That was a childhood that Hae-ah had never had.

It was the only wish that he, who had everything in the world, couldn’t fulfill.

But ‘Cheon Woo-joo’ wouldn’t have such a wish. He would fulfill all that happiness before he even had to wish for it.

Thinking about that warmed my heart. A smile naturally appeared. It wasn’t a fake smile that I forced while looking in the mirror. It was a shimmering smile that bloomed as the muscles in my face relaxed without me even realizing it.

“Kang Hae-ah must be really happy.”

The Omega CEO said something rather out of the blue to me.

“…What do you mean?”

I was only momentarily bewildered as I asked. I quickly understood the implication of those words. Hae-ah, who has a partner like me, ‘must be happy’—that was a compliment that elevated me.

The smile that had bloomed on my face vanished in an instant. Strength entered my eyes, and my lips hardened. I couldn’t control the chilling feeling.

How dare he attach the words ‘must be happy’ to Kang Hae-ah, of all people? Just because you say something doesn’t make it right.

Kang Hae-ah should naturally be given all the good things in the universe.

“You should say that to me, not to our Hae-ah. I’m the one who’s blessed to have a good partner.”

When I pointed out the facts with a straight face, the Omega CEO said, ‘Ah,’ and trailed off.

“……”

“……”

Silence lingered in the CEO’s office for a moment. I looked at him to see if he had understood my words properly, and he swallowed hard and hesitated.

“I didn’t mean it that way… Um… Ah, yes. Now that I think about it, yes. I’m envious of CEO Cheon!”

“You’re envious of me? Are you interested in Kang Hae-ah?”

“Pardon?”

“Pardon?”

Again, silence filled the CEO’s office.

Only after a longer time than before did I realize. I wondered if this man was coveting our Hae-ah, and I had unknowingly revealed my wariness.

To ease the atmosphere, I cleared my throat loudly on purpose.

“It was a joke, but I guess it wasn’t funny.”

Then, light entered the Omega CEO’s eyes, which had been quite clouded.

“Ah… Ahahaha! Haha, no. Haha. Your expression was so serious that I couldn’t help it.”

“Of course it’s a joke.”

I was so sincere. I was so sincere that I felt a surge of anger for a moment.

There’s nothing I can do. If I don’t do my best to protect him, some beggar bastard might snatch our Hae-ah away at any time, anywhere. Not just Alphas, but Omegas too, and Betas too. Hae-ah is the possessor of a great charm that captivates everyone. Not being even a little careless is the destiny I have as an Alpha who possesses such a Hae-ah.

‘I must be careful to avoid running into this CEO.’

Because it would be troublesome if he fell in love with Kang Hae-ah, who is even prettier in person, and started chasing after him.

After a long period of awkward laughter, the Omega CEO raised his upper body. The words he said next immediately dampened my mood.

“By the way, did you have a prenatal dream?”

“……”

This was the question that Hae-ah hated the most these days.

Every night, I didn’t have any dreams, and Hae-ah had nightmares every day. It had become a daily routine to call my parents every morning to greet them and ask if they had had any good dreams. Strangely enough, no one had had a dream that was even remotely like a prenatal dream.

I didn’t think of the problem as particularly unusual. Dreams are something you can have or not have at any time. And prenatal dreams are just a type of superstition.

But Hae-ah was different from me. He regarded the fact that he hadn’t had a prenatal dream yet as very ominous. He was so anxious that he even called Chairman Kang Jun-il for the first time in almost half a year. I had been the one conveying the news of the pregnancy and his recent updates, but Hae-ah couldn’t bring himself to entrust me with the question of whether he had had a prenatal dream.

As soon as Chairman Kang Jun-il heard Hae-ah’s story—that no one had had the baby’s prenatal dream yet, and asked if Father had had a good dream—he sent a 100 million won talisman. It came with the message that if you put it under your pillow and sleep, you can have a precious prenatal dream.

I wanted to tear that suspicious object in half. I even thought about putting it in the trash can and burning it. But I couldn’t because I was worried that it might have a bad influence on Hae-ah.

It is a blessing to be able to listen only to what reason says. I realized that only recently. Even though I knew it was all just superstition, it was hard to shake off those trivial things. I also thought that there was no need to go out of my way to do something ominous.

That ugly talisman. I didn’t want to bring that paper into the marital bedroom, and I couldn’t get rid of it, so I was worried. In the end, the talisman was hidden in my study’s safe in its envelope. And then I prayed for the first time in my life.

‘Please keep Hae-ah healthy. Please don’t let him get hurt, either physically or mentally. If there is a god, that’s what you should do.’

The yellow paper with the red writing didn’t give me any answer. Only Do-jin, who was loitering in the hallway, came to find me, making a pattering sound with his claws.

While I was glancing at my expression, which was unresponsive because I was reminiscing about an irrational moment, the Omega CEO said,

“This is a gift.”

And then I unconsciously accepted the paper bag he took out. I was about to offer my thanks when the Omega CEO opened the gap in the paper bag with a smiling face.

“It’s a snack that I often ate when I had severe morning sickness…”

The scent of flour, oranges, and sugar wafted out, and

“Ugh!”

I covered my mouth with my palm.

I didn’t even have time to explain the situation to the Omega CEO, who had a surprised look on his face. A second time, I felt a surge of nausea. Heat rose to my eyelids in an instant, and my uvula heaved greatly.

To avoid vomiting in front of the guest, I got up from my seat and ran to the bathroom. Behind me, I heard the voice of Secretary Yoon Eun-ah, who had been watching the situation in the CEO’s office. While quickly guiding the guest, who couldn’t hide his embarrassment, out, she was diligently explaining the situation.

I thought I vaguely heard the word ‘proxy morning sickness.’ The Omega CEO’s desperate cry of apology to me followed urgently.

“I, I’m sorry!”

I couldn’t see him off because I was holding onto the toilet and spitting out saliva and stomach acid. Not long after, Yoon Eun-ah came into the bathroom. It was to hit my back hard as I coughed up phlegm.

Only then did I feel a little relief.

“Hoo…”

Wiping my mouth, I closed my eyes and exhaled. I wanted to get rid of all the food smells that had seeped into my nose. If I could, I wanted to take off my nose, mouth, and esophagus, rinse them in running water, and put them back on.

“Are you okay, CEO?”

Yoon Eun-ah asked, patting my back as if she were used to it. A hollow sound rang out from my body, which didn’t contain even a bite of food.

Pushing away her concern with a wave of my hand, I pointed outside the hallway.

“Get rid of that smelly thing and ventilate the room.”

“It’s from a famous hotel, though? Orange soufflé.”

“I won’t eat it. Get it out of my room.”

“Yes.”

Instead of me, who couldn’t leave the bathroom because I hated the smell of bread, Yoon Eun-ah moved quickly.

Her strength was that she was diligent and full of company loyalty, and her weakness was that she was a little oblivious. She still hadn’t realized that my ears were very sharp,

“As if she’s not a princess…”

She even let out a quiet exclamation.

10 weeks.

Plain rice with seaweed. And water.

That’s all Hae-ah has been putting in his mouth these days.

As a result, Hwang Ok-hye’s face grew darker day by day. She was clearly flustered because no matter what side dish she made, Hae-ah wouldn’t eat it.

“This is the first time this has happened while serving the artist. When he doesn’t have an appetite, he likes it when I put honey in his milk, and even when he’s busy with deadlines, he always eats a bite or two of grilled bread with poached eggs.”

Hwang Ok-hye is Kang Hae-ah’s closest aide. She has taken care of Hae-ah for a long time by his side, and she has analyzed all of Hae-ah’s tastes. In some ways, she knew Hae-ah better than I did. Like the brand of cigarettes he quit when he married me and the type of lighter he liked, or the age of the tea leaves he threw away because he was worried about my allergies.

While conveying the bad news that the artist hadn’t eaten a single meal all morning, noon, and evening, Hwang Ok-hye took off her apron.

“He didn’t even come down to the first floor in the afternoon. I made bibim guksu [spicy mixed noodles] to try and stimulate his appetite, but he didn’t even look at it.”

Her expression contained very deep depression and worry.

I was the same, depressed because of Hae-ah and heartbroken with worry for him. When I sent Hwang Ok-hye back with words of appreciation for her hard work, she stared at my hands. The shopping baskets she used to carry when running errands for Mother were heavy in both hands.

“The stew pot is in the bottom drawer. Be sure to preheat the oven before using it.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Putting on her coat, Hwang Ok-hye let out a sigh of relief. She said that it was good, that I had thought well, and that the artist would eat if CEO cooked for him himself.

Honestly, I thought so too. Kang Hae-ah, who couldn’t eat and pushed away even Hwang Ok-hye’s cooking, which he usually liked so much, and my mother’s side dishes, which he said were too much and scraped clean to the bottom, was sure to be different with me. Because I’m special.

But I was wrong.

“It’s too much. I’m sorry. I can’t eat it.”

Hae-ah immediately turned away from me, who had brought him a tray with chicken stew with cabbage and a salad with sprouts instead of basil.

“I’m really sorry.”

Then he kicked me out of the bedroom altogether.

“……”

Outside the door of the marital bedroom, which had been slammed shut, I was left in despair with the food that had lost its eater.

It seems that there is no god in this world after all. It’s not that I didn’t know that, but I’ve been feeling that fact particularly resentful these days. I prayed ten times a day and threatened a hundred times, but how could he not grant my request? My earnest request to keep having morning sickness instead of Hae-ah.

Hanging my head, I bumped my forehead against the door.

“Hae-ah… Should I grill you some salmon? Salmon and corn. Will you eat it if I grill it with butter?”

“No.”

He could have said ‘yes’ out of consideration for my sincerity. Kang Hae-ah would have certainly done so normally. But he refuses with a curt ‘no.’

As I forcibly swallowed the sigh that was coming out, I heard a long exhalation from beyond the door. The door that my forehead was touching shook a little. Thanks to that small vibration, I could imagine Hae-ah standing with his head against the opposite side.

“I’m sorry…”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I really feel like I’m going to throw up… So don’t bother cooking. There’s no need for Tae-rim-ssi to suffer.”

That voice was kind. That’s why I hated it.

Without answering, I passed through the second-floor hallway and went down the stairs. I threw away all the food I had made, opened the windows, and let the cold food smell out of the house. As I wiped the dirty cooking counter with a dishcloth, I hung my head.

“Haa…”

Honestly, I felt upset. It wasn’t because of my hard work. That kind of thing is nothing. If it was for Hae-ah, I could cook again and again, clean, and throw away all the food I had made.

I just felt sorry for Kang Hae-ah. I felt sorry for his attitude of treating my efforts for him as a waste of time. He hasn’t been able to eat a proper meal for days, he only has nightmares when he goes to bed, his pregnant body is heavy, and he gets cramps in his arms and legs morning and night… It’s a time when it would be good enough for him to become grumpy, mean, and selfish.

But Kang Hae-ah was still Kang Hae-ah. He was Kang Hae-ah, saying not to bother because he wasn’t worth it.

I wanted to do something for such a Hae-ah. If I made the food first, maybe he would get an appetite, or maybe he would feel better. Morning sickness is fickle, after all.

I washed my hands thoroughly and headed back to the marital bedroom. After knocking twice, I entered and saw Hae-ah sitting on the couch by the window. His breathing was strangely labored with the window wide open. He seemed to be getting some air to relieve his indigestion.

Slowly approaching Hae-ah, I lowered myself. I knelt at his feet, enveloping his hands in mine. Then, meeting his gaze, I said,

“Hae-ah. You don’t have to eat it. I’ll just try cooking it for now.”

Looking down at me, who spoke with a sliver of hope,

“No, Tae-rim-ssi.”

Hae-ah’s eyes instantly welled up.

“Even if you do, Tae-rim-ssi… the cooking… will be wasted… I want to eat it too… I was listening to the sounds. I was actually waiting for it, but the smell… the smell of food… it’s too precious to refuse, but I… really can’t eat it…”

With that, he dropped his head. His gentle brown eyes became moist, and the rims turned red, his lips downturned as if holding back tears.

Seeing that expression, I felt as if my heart was being torn to shreds. My ribs were all broken, and my heart was shattered.

“No, no. I understand! I understand everything, Hae-ah. I won’t do it anymore. I won’t cook. I’m sorry for forcing you. Okay? I’m more sorry. Don’t cry, Hae-ah.”

Trying to stop the tears that seemed ready to spill at any moment, I cupped Hae-ah’s cheeks. Then, I kissed him as usual.

Hae-ah obediently closed his eyes. Responding to the kiss, he subtly parted his soft, warm lips.

“Ugh…”

…And then he gagged.

With a thud, Hae-ah pushed my shoulder hard. Unable to withstand the force, he was about to fall off the couch, but I quickly grabbed him and held him. A mixture of bewilderment, surprise, and fear was on Hae-ah’s swaying face.

“……”

With trembling reddish lower lip, Hae-ah scanned my expression. I instantly read his expression. Furrowed eyebrows and widened eyes in surprise, pale cheeks and a trembling lower jaw… Because of the sudden gag he couldn’t hold back, Hae-ah was worried that I would find him unpleasant. He was so worried and scared that he was trembling.

“It’s okay. It’s just morning sickness.”

Gently gripping Hae-ah’s arms, I looked straight into his eyes.

“It’s not your fault.”

“……”

Raising his hand, Hae-ah touched my shoulder. He seemed concerned that I was hit by his fist. No matter how hard he hit me with that cotton ball, I wouldn’t budge, and only he would stagger.

“Yeah. I know it’s not because you hate me.”

“……”

“Is it because of the toothpaste smell? I brushed my teeth at the office.”

“……”

Even when Hae-ah was silent, I continued the conversation.

“I’ll change the toothpaste at the office. To the same one we use at home…”

Only then did Hae-ah hug me. Releasing the arms he had been holding, he buried his head in my chest and hugged me tightly. I could feel his heart beating so fast inside his thin ribcage, it was as if I had his heart directly against my cheek.

Thump, thump… I hugged Hae-ah’s waist, who was expressing surprise, apology, and love with his whole body. As I slowly stood up, Hae-ah was lifted up, clinging to me like a koala.

Reaching the bed in five steps, I laid Hae-ah down and stroked his pale cheeks until the color returned. He seemed to have exhausted all his energy, so I massaged his arms and legs with care.

“Thank you.”

Hae-ah said. It was an undeserved greeting for me, who could do nothing else for him.

“What for.”

Just as I was about to brush it off,

“I should go to the hospital… as soon as the sun rises…”

Hae-ah muttered.

More than the ‘ugh’ gag, more than the cotton fist hitting my shoulder, those words surprised me more. From Hae-ah’s mouth, who hated hospitals to an unusual degree, came the words to go to the hospital.

“I should get an IV… What if our Woo-joo is hungry?”

Then he squeezed his eyes shut, very tightly. It was an attempt to hold back tears, but instead, tears welled up and streamed down his temples.

Seeing that, I was about to kiss him, but I hesitated. I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut so that the toothpaste scent wouldn’t leak out, and all I could do was comfort him with a gentle massage and hug his cold body. It was painful.

For the first time in my life, I was an incompetent Alpha.

“Bungeoppang.”

Shake, shake. I felt a hand shaking me.

Drip, drip. Water droplets fell on my cheek.

‘What is this…?’

Was there an earthquake? Was the roof leaking…?

After a few seconds of nonsense thoughts due to drowsiness, I suddenly sat up. Hae-ah, sitting next to me on the bed, was immediately visible. While shaking my shoulder, which had fallen asleep, and shedding tears, Hae-ah was waking me up.

I didn’t know when he had been crying alone, but his face, which had distinct features, was swollen.

“Hae-ah. What…? What is it?”

Shaking my head to shake off the drowsiness, I asked in a fluster. Then Hae-ah hesitated and opened his mouth. I was anxious even waiting for the fleeting moment until his dry voice came out.

The words that Hae-ah conveyed were quite unexpected.

“Bungeoppang…”

What is it. Is it a dream?

“…‘Bungeoppang’?”

As I repeated the words I heard in disbelief, Hae-ah nodded. The words I heard were correct. He clearly said ‘bungeoppang.’

I don’t know what was so sad about that word that he was shedding tears, drip, drip. Looking down, I saw a small puddle on Hae-ah’s pajama knees.

Sniffling, Hae-ah rambled.

“I only ate it once, but suddenly… I don’t know why, but I remembered it. Bungeoppang, the tail… I only ate one bite. I want to eat it.”

There was no time to be surprised by the fact that he had only eaten that common bungeoppang, even just one bite of the tail. I didn’t even have the mind to ask which bastard ate the remaining head and body of the bungeoppang that you bit into.

What was important right now was not such a problem. The most important thing was that the words ‘I want to eat’ came out of Hae-ah’s mouth.

“Now. Do you want to eat it now?”

As I asked, stuttering, Hae-ah nodded his head.

“Yes.”

Then he came into my arms, hitting his head against me with a thud. His arms wrapped around my waist felt particularly thin.

“I’m really sorry for waking you up while you were sleeping, Tae-rim-ssi. But I… I’m so hungry…”

A tearful voice lingered in my ear.

“I’m so hungry.”

The words felt so sad that my eyes were about to well up with tears.

I hugged Hae-ah very tightly, so tightly that his chest was pressed against mine.

“I’ll buy it for you.”

And I said.

“I’ll buy you bungeoppang. I’ll let you eat it before sunrise.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Really.”

So don’t cry.

Leaving the small whisper on the bed, I jumped up from my seat. Then I roughly grabbed a black jacket over my navy blue pajamas.

As soon as I ran down to the first floor, Do-jin approached, wagging his tail. I was sorry to Do-jin, who was smiling with a pant, but I didn’t have the time to take him for a walk.

“Take good care of Dad.”

I said softly to Do-jin, shoving my sneakers on,

“I’ll be right back!”

I greeted Hae-ah in the bedroom on the second floor in a loud voice.

As it was, I grabbed my wallet, cash, and cell phone and got into the car. Unbelievably, my head was spinning, even though I had just woken up.

First, I thought about whether I had ever seen bungeoppang in this neighborhood. I seemed to have seen it often near my parents’ house, but I had no memory of seeing a street vendor near the wealthy neighborhood where my house was located.

‘How do I find bungeoppang?’

I started the car and worried, biting my lower lip. Then I picked up my cell phone and installed a food delivery app. I aimlessly browsed the unfamiliar late-night menu, then found the search bar and entered ‘bungeoppang.’

Then, ‘Not open yet!’ notifications popped up. Only then did I realize that it was 1:15 AM.

‘So that’s why Hae-ah said sorry… That’s why he cried.’

Thinking that, I became stubborn.

‘Isn’t there a 24-hour cafe in Seoul?’

I threw my cell phone on the passenger seat and started the car for now. I drove out to a bustling street where there might be a cafe and started searching for a store with the lights on. While quickly looking left and right on the street, I parked the car on the side of the road if I saw anything that looked like a street vendor.

However, there was not a single street vendor open.

I went into the cafes that had their lights on, looked around, asked, and begged, but there was no place that sold bungeoppang.

By the time I entered the tenth cafe, the question was very familiar.

“Do you sell bungeoppang?”

“Welcome…, huh? No.”

It seems like this is a bust too. After finishing my judgment and quickly turning around, I touched my forehead. I realized that I couldn’t just wander around forever.

‘Hae-ah must be waiting anxiously….’

Shamelessly, I asked the night shift worker again.

“Is there any store nearby that sells bungeoppang?”

“They do sell it across the street…”

“Thank you.”

After finishing my greeting with a bow, I ran to the street across from the cafe in one breath. However, what greeted me in my pajamas was a closed street vendor with green ropes tied around it.

Whoosh… The night wind that swept through the gaps in the buildings was cold.

Clenching my fist and grinding my teeth, I got back in the car. It was time to turn on the food delivery app again and search for cafes while moving from area to area.

But there was no bungeoppang anywhere. There was hotteok, but no bungeoppang. There was cake, but no bungeoppang…

It was almost 2 AM when I found a 24-hour cafe that handled small bungeoppang. With hope, I drove for 20 minutes. At the store I found, the part-time worker looked me up and down and said with a bewildered expression.

“We’re out of bungeoppang right now…”

I frowned at the bland words.

“Isn’t it possible to make it if you have the ingredients and the mold? Can’t you bake some now?”

“Oh, that’s… We get the finished product, so we don’t bake it in the store. We just put it in the air fryer and turn it on.”

It was like a bolt from the blue.

‘I’m going crazy.’

When I couldn’t even get the small bungeoppang that seemed like the last hope, my heart was burned to ashes.

‘Hae-ah must be crying. He must be crying because he’s hungry….’

My steps moving out of the cafe were futile. To think that I had to starve Hae-ah because I couldn’t get bungeoppang, I couldn’t hate the world and feel sorry for myself like this.

Then suddenly, the words I had said echoed back and stuck in my mind.

‘Isn’t it possible to make it if you have the ingredients and the mold…?’

Returning to the car, I downloaded a used goods trading app this time. And I slowly drove home. In my left hand, I held the steering wheel, and in my right hand, I had the search history window with ‘bungeoppang’ searched.

As I got on a different road and the neighborhood changed, the used goods for sale in the app were automatically exposed differently. I glanced at the cell phone and turned the steering wheel, and in a very short moment that could be called a fleeting moment, a new post came up.

[For Sale] Bungeoppang Machine

And as soon as I made a right turn, it disappeared in an instant.

“Ah!”

I exclaimed loudly and hit the steering wheel. Fortunately, the five letters ‘Bungeoppang Machine’ were not some illusion created by my earnestness. The sales post existed, setting the nearby apartment as the direct transaction site.

I recklessly found the apartment written in the sales post. I parked the car next to the main gate, picked up my cell phone, and first speed-read the instructions on how to use the used goods trading app. Following the instructions, I opened a one-on-one chat room with the seller and sent a message. After about ten minutes, after twenty-eight transmissions, a reply came.

JunwooChaeyoonDad

Yami-s*** who does used trading at this hour

Judging from the state of the typos, it was definitely a message sent after waking up from sleep. Before being blocked for bad manners, I hurriedly pressed the keypad.

Radish#1539

Sir. First of all, I sincerely apologize for waking you up while you were sleeping.

Only after pressing the ‘Send’ button did I check the automatically set nickname. I was wondering if I should have contacted him with a more sincere and polite real name, but then I received a single question mark from the other party.

‘He hasn’t blocked me yet.’

Licking my lips, I tried to make this deal happen somehow.

Radish#1539

An Omega who is 10 weeks pregnant and has only eaten a few sheets of seaweed and a few spoonfuls of rice for five days is now crying because he wants to eat bungeoppang. I’ll go to your house, so please sell me the machine.

I pressed the ‘Send’ button without even having the mind to fill in the missing consonants.

However, there was no reply for 3 minutes. I became impatient and repeatedly typed and deleted ‘Are you asleep?’

‘No. Let’s not provoke him.’

Waiting with all my attention focused on the cell phone screen for 5 minutes, I finally received a reply from the other party.

JunwooChaeyoonDad

Do you have bungeoppang ingredients? Should I give them to you together?

Radish#1539

Yes. Please, I beg you.

After adding the fact that I was already waiting in front of the main gate, the other party replied with a single word, ‘Wow.’’

About ten minutes later, I was able to meet a middle-aged man with his hair all messed up. The man, who came out wearing checkered pajama pants and a padded jacket, had black plastic bags in both hands. The man and I stared blankly at each other’s pajama pants and outerwear, then belatedly greeted each other with ‘Hello.’

“Thank you for coming out, sir.”

With that, I opened my wallet. Since I had about 400,000 won in cash, I took it all out and gave it to him, and received two heavy bags.

“Oh, I don’t have any change…”

The man’s mumbling, as if he hadn’t fully woken up, was flustered.

“The change is fine.”

I bowed to him and quickly got into the car. And I sped up and returned home as quickly as possible.

The first to greet me when I got home was Do-jin, who was lying in front of the shoe rack with his chin resting on his paws. As I looked around while heading to the kitchen with plastic bags full in both arms, I saw Hae-ah sleeping crumpled on the living room sofa. I was worried that he would be crying alone, but I was relieved to see him dozing off.

I put the bags I brought on the dining table and checked the silver bungeoppang machine, a large bag of dough, and red bean paste and cream ingredients. And I plugged in the power cord of the bungeoppang mold.

As if woken up by the bustling noise, Hae-ah called me, ‘Tae-rim-ssi,’ before even opening his eyes.

“Yeah, Hae-ah. I’m back.”

I replied, quickly skimming through the instructions. A long yawn was heard.

“Huh?”

The surprised sound was one beat late.

“Oh, Tae-rim-ssi. What is all this…?”

Rubbing his swollen eyes with his hands, Hae-ah staggered towards me. He checked the clock, which had reached 4, and looked even more surprised.

Pulling out a dining chair for Hae-ah, I said loudly.

“I told you I’d let you eat it, right? Bungeoppang. The sun hasn’t risen yet.”

Hae-ah just stared at me with his mouth wide open. I live to see those eyes. Those cheeks. Those lips. That expression, I thought to myself.

“Sit down quickly. Sit down and wait. Don’t cry.”

As I tapped the back of the chair, Hae-ah sat down obediently.

With the dining table in the middle, he sat and waited, and I got up and made bungeoppang. Contrary to my confident cry, I had never made bungeoppang in my life. But I’ve seen it being made many times.

‘What’s so difficult about this?’

Remembering the memories of my childhood with good observation skills, I first filled the heated bungeo-shaped mold with dough. Then, a sizzling sound rang out, and a savory smell spread throughout the house.

Worried that Hae-ah might have morning sickness again, I glanced up to check and was relieved. Unlike before, Hae-ah’s eyes were sparkling. His cheeks were flushed, and the corners of his lips were gently curved upwards. He seemed excited at the thought of eating a snack, looking more like a young child than a pregnant adult.

I filled the center of the dough with red bean paste and properly locked the top mold to fit perfectly. While trying to resist the urge to open it wide to check if it was cooking well, I diligently baked it, turning it forward and backward.

“It’s done.”

Saying that with conviction, I opened the bungeoppang mold wide. At the same time, the top and bottom of the bungeoppang were torn apart, stuck to the mold.

“……”

“……”

It wasn’t long before I was frozen in embarrassment. I used a fork to tear off the pieces that had become rags, making it difficult to even recognize the pattern of the carp, and transferred them to a bowl.

“Sorry. I’ll bake them again right away. If I just put cooking oil on the mold, it’ll be much prettier…”

Hae-ah took the bowl from me as I fidgeted and made excuses. Then, he stared at the carp bread, where the filling had all spilled out and the dough was crumpled, for a long time. Soon, he picked up the biggest piece,

“Hoo…”

blew on it, put it in his mouth, and chewed.

Gulp.

The piece of bread went down Hae-ah’s throat. Without a ‘Ugh’ sound of indigestion, without a sad sniffle, without an apology for being sorry.

“…How is it?”

I was so nervous that my heart was pounding, so I asked very carefully.

“It’s delicious.”

Hae-ah smiles as he looks at me like that. So brightly that his eyes curve and his cheekbones rise roundly.

“I want to eat it with milk.”

It was the happiest thing I’d heard. I tried to calm down the urge to cheer and quickly took out a carton of milk. And I poured it into Hae-ah’s favorite glass cup with a picture of a globe amaranth flower garden.

“Should I mix in some honey?”

I remembered him saying that he drinks milk with honey when he doesn’t have an appetite, so I offered, but Hae-ah shook his head.

“Honey isn’t good for the baby. Someone said there’s a bad ingredient…”

Hae-ah smacked his lips as if he was disappointed. Instead of him, I took a spoonful of honey and mixed it into the milk.

“It’s because of botulinum bacteria, but it’s easily broken down in adult stomachs, so it’s okay to eat during pregnancy. It won’t affect Woo-joo in the womb at all.”

With a glass of milk like that, Hae-ah ate a whole ugly carp bread in one go.

“The texture is really good. I think I can eat other things baked in here, too.”

“Wait. One more. No. I’ll bake ten more.”

So we had a very late dinner and an excessively early breakfast together. It was very rare and welcome to be awake together at dawn. There were many words exchanged over the table, and nothing was depressing, mean, or bad.

Until the sun rose and Hwang Ok-hye, who had just gone to work, made an ‘Oh my’ sound, I filled the table with all kinds of carp bread. I baked, baked, and baked again. If you put everything in the universe into a carp bread mold, even Buddha is carp bread.

I, who put everything in the refrigerator into the carp bread mold and baked it, Hae-ah, who was too full to go up to the second floor and fell asleep on the sofa, and Do-jin, who was happily licking the crumbs on the floor, were all bright.

It was a full Sunday morning.

13 weeks.

The package arrived on a weekend afternoon. It was a book I ordered because I thought it would be good to read to Hae-ah, who couldn’t sleep every night. To select which of the seven candidate books was the most interesting, I sat down in the study.

Just as I was opening the fourth novel, which I had never liked in my life, I heard footsteps in my ear. The sound of footsteps walking from far away in the hallway on the second floor was strangely offbeat.

It was Hae-ah, who now anyone could tell was a ‘pregnant Omega’, with a hill drawn on his belly. His gait had naturally slowed down, and he was often panting even after just a light exercise.

‘Our house is unnecessarily too big!’

He suddenly poured out such complaints. The bedroom is on the second floor, and the studio and kitchen are on the first floor, so he naturally uses the stairs, and that’s why he’s out of breath every time.

Hae-ah’s body had become heavy regardless of his weight. He was ashamed of the sound of his footsteps pounding every time he climbed the stairs and the sound of his breath panting. But just hearing that sound of footsteps, that sound of breath, that voice calling me ‘Tae-rim-ssi’, made me feel good.

“Tae-rim-ssi.”

Hae-ah called me, breathing shallowly and quickly.

I closed the book I was reading and looked towards the hallway, and I saw him entering the study through the wide-open door.

Pregnant Hae-ah was more fickle than before. Just a few hours ago, he was worrying about a small scratch on Do-jin’s ear with a gloomy face, but now his expression was mischievous. His cheeks were flushed, and he was holding a new potato in both hands.

He walked straight across the wide desk to right in front of me, and then Hae-ah said this.

“Father, this is Cheon Woo-joo. Woo-joo, say ‘Father’.”

He was so excited to play a prank that he even slurred the pronunciation of ‘Father’. The new potato held in Hae-ah’s hand was round and clean.

“…What are you doing?”

I didn’t understand why the potato was our baby, so I asked,

“Our Woo-joo is this big.”

Hae-ah put the potato on his bulging belly. He said that Woo-joo’s size is exactly this big now, and he measured it accurately to the millimeter with a ruler in the kitchen.

“……”

Anyway, it was an absurd Hae-ah. Just when I thought I was used to that absurd charm, Hae-ah embarrassed me with another joke.

“Oh… I see.”

It’s best to agree first in these situations. It’s not too late to understand later.

The day before yesterday, Hae-ah had received three albums with my photos from his parents’ house. Then, he took all the photos from my kindergarten days to my elementary, middle, and high school graduation ceremonies, and the day I was discharged from the military, from the albums and carefully attached them to our refrigerator, both ends of the hallway walls, doors, next to the bathroom mirror, and even on the ceiling above the bed.

The reason was a superstitious story that the fetus’s face is completed by following the face that the pregnant woman sees often. It was no use arguing that if that was the case, why look at my picture, shouldn’t he just look in the mirror all day long.

I still can’t accept Hae-ah’s ‘Tae-rim-ssi face prenatal education’.

It is a natural fact that the appearance of the fetus is inherited from the parents’ genes and is determined by the influence of dominant genes and the involvement of many factors. For example, the probability that Cheon Woo-joo will have double eyelids is slightly over 62%. If he doesn’t get a disease that hinders growth, the probability of him growing into a tall person is even higher. Everything else is the same. Hae-ah staring at my childhood appearance in the photo all day long has no effect on the formation of Cheon Woo-joo’s appearance.

Let’s concede a hundred times that the method is effective. Then Hae-ah should admire his own beauty in the mirror even more. It’s true that I’m handsome, but if you can create an Angel, why bother playing in the human category?

Meanwhile, my Angel was carefree. He held out a small potato in front of my eyes, which were narrowed, and chattered nonsensical words.

“Father, how are you? I, Woo-joo, am growing up well today, too. I want to see Father as soon as possible.”Where did you learn that kind of tone?””

I couldn’t help but laugh in front of such Hae-ah. I was so dumbfounded and dumbfounded that I laughed ‘Haha’, and Hae-ah, satisfied with my reaction, repeatedly played pranks, shaking the small potato, saying ‘Father, Father’.

“Yes, Woo-joo. Grow up well.”

I pretended to stroke the well-washed small potato on Hae-ah’s belly. Hae-ah shamelessly answered ‘Yes’ on behalf of Woo-joo in the belly and the small potato.

“Do you want to stop reading and play with me?”

Following Hae-ah, who was pulling my hand, I reluctantly headed to the first floor.

Thanks to the fact that his body aches had subsided and he was regaining his energy, Hae-ah spent a lot of time in the studio these days. It was to draw fairy-tale-like pictures using acrylic paints and colored pencils instead of oil paintings that smelled of oil. I was worried that Hae-ah might be stressed out by dealing with new subjects with different materials than before, so I hovered around him and praised him, saying he was doing well and was wonderful.

After praising Hae-ah’s paintings about three or four times and spending time watching him work, Hae-ah started coming to me first. He would subtly lead me, saying that he was going to draw soon, so he wanted me to watch over him and praise him.

I was so tickled by such Hae-ah.

“Oh my. Where did the potato go…?”

In the kitchen, Hwang Ok-hye, wearing an apron, was wandering around with a ladle in her hand. Passing by her, who was looking into Do-jin’s snout to find the missing ingredient, Hae-ah hid the stolen small potato in my pocket.

16 weeks.

It was a particularly bright and cloudless morning.

On days like this, Hae-ah liked to spread out a picnic mat in the garden, lie down, and bask in the sun. He would lie down next to Do-jin and roll around for a long time so that the dog’s white back fur would become warm like a sun-dried blanket, and he would eat snacks, draw, and read books.

After checking the blue sky and the sun visible through the window, I inadvertently walked out onto the terrace. It was to watch the two white dogs, Do-jin and Hae-ah, on the lawn.

But there was no one in the garden today. The picnic mat, the tray with snacks and fruits, the sketchbook, and the books were nowhere to be seen. I wondered what was going on on such a sunny day, so I wandered around the large house.

Unexpectedly, Hae-ah was hiding in a corner of the shaded studio. His face, scribbling letters in an esquisse notebook with a colored pencil in his hand, looked a little depressed.

“Hae-ah. The weather outside is nice.”

Towards me, who was telling him in case he couldn’t see out the window, he opened his eyes wide and asked, ‘Yes?’

“So?”

“…So, aren’t you going on a picnic? You have to disinfect Do-jin’s fur in the sun.”

Hae-ah chuckled at my imitation of his habit. Then he put down the notebook filled with colorful scribbles and stretched.

“I don’t want to go out today. It hurts my hip bones and my back gets sore when I lie on the grass.”

“Really? Should I move the mattress and set up a spot?”

It was a question I asked because I was sad that I couldn’t see Hae-ah having a picnic in the sun. Half of it was a joke, and half of it was serious.

But the answer was no.

“I can’t even lie on my stomach, so it’s uncomfortable. I’m worried about my belly being pressed.”

Then Hae-ah shook off the colored pencil powder that had fallen on his belly. That nonchalant answer made me feel a little embarrassed.

“I see.”

Now, he can’t even lie down on his stomach, let alone roll around on the picnic mat…

After realizing a fact I didn’t know, my heart was in a mess. On the canvas and paper hanging on the studio wall, the yellow circles resembling the sun, the green lines like a lawn, the white triangles like Do-jin, and the paint splatters like pollen were warm.

While drawing such pictures, Hae-ah couldn’t even go on the picnic he liked so much.

For some reason, that small sacrifice felt so unfair. Hae-ah was putting the notebook back on his lap as if he didn’t have any thoughts, but I was disappointed and quite upset, so I stood there blankly for a long time. I even thought about digging a circle in the mattress so that his belly wouldn’t be pressed even if he lay down.

“Tae-rim-ssi.”

Hae-ah said, looking up at me, who was standing there blankly, and

“Yes? Hae-ah.”

I answered quickly.

“The fluorescent light… is blocking it.”

“Ah.”

Only then did I realize that my shadow was big and black, making the place where Hae-ah was sitting even more shaded. I moved to the side with an awkward smile, and Hae-ah shrugged his shoulders lightly. He looked a little bored, scratching his chin with the end of a colored pencil.

My job these days was to worry about what I could do for him.

Some dawns were too emotional to bear.

The experience of waking up from sleep with tears wetting my cheeks didn’t feel like my own even when I was doing it. I cried without knowing why. I leaned my back against the headboard of the bed and rubbed my eyes with my palms, but before I could sort out my emotions, Hae-ah woke up following me.

Hae-ah’s expression was bad in a daze, as if he had another nightmare. With a sullen, wronged, and sad face, he found me crying and opened his arms without hesitation. We hugged each other without knowing who did it first.

For no reason, he apologized to me.

“I’m sorry, Tae-rim-ssi.”

Hae-ah was the most innocent man I knew. Yet he was the one who apologized to me most often.

“Why are you?”

I asked, bewildered, and

“Just. Just because.”

Hae-ah kissed my ear. “I think Tae-rim-ssi is crying because of me. I had a sad dream.”

I understood those strange words. I nodded, saying ‘I see’ with my emotions, not my head. It felt so natural that Hae-ah had a sad dream and I cried, that our dreams and tear glands were connected to each other.

It was a heart-wrenching and warm night.

On the other hand, I was a winged beast.

After being banned from having sex because Hae-ah’s womb was still unstable, our bed became very dry. Even after the bed, which used to have its sheets changed and blankets washed about once a day, became faithful to only two purposes, ‘sleep’ and ‘rest’, we were fine for a while.

I was too busy adapting to the various changes to be calm, and Hae-ah seemed to have no energy to even play with his hands, let alone have sex.

But the situation changed after Hae-ah’s condition improved significantly and he received positive feedback from his doctor, saying, ‘Please keep up the good work’.

Of course, that word itself was very good. I was very anxious because the womb in Hae-ah’s belly was so small and precarious, but now it meant that the stable period was just around the corner. It felt like I was being recognized for taking good care of pregnant Hae-ah and protecting him well so far. I was very proud and happy.

There was only good in today’s Hae-ah, who was more stable than yesterday, so I couldn’t find any problems.

The problem was in the fickleness that had blown into my heart.

I don’t know how fickle an Alpha’s heart is and how pathetic its desires are. The precious ‘early 16 weeks of pregnancy’, which I had barely endured by hiding the harsh facts from Hae-ah, agonizing day and night, and worrying about it, were nowhere to be found. The past days spent with agape love had become ’16 weeks of abstinence’.

It’s already been 16 weeks, I haven’t had sex with Hae-ah.

As soon as I realized that fact, a new dissatisfaction blossomed. And it didn’t know how to wither. I just wanted the baby in his belly to be safe, Hae-ah’s body and mind to be healthy, and I had nothing else to wish for… But now, the lost sex life was bothering me and I was dissatisfied.

Even so, I couldn’t suddenly say in front of Hae-ah,

‘I want to have sex with you.’

I had to act like a gentleman, like I was okay, like I didn’t even want sex in front of him.

Hae-ah was still very anxious. He was tormented by nightmares every night, and he was still obsessed with the fact that he hadn’t had a prenatal dream yet.

Today, I thought he was sleeping soundly until early in the morning, but he woke up with a start. He couldn’t even open his eyes properly, but he found my hand and grabbed it. He put it on his belly as it was, and then fell asleep again.

Such Hae-ah was the cutest and most lovable man in the world. Feeling the warm body temperature of his swollen belly made me feel that his existence was sublime. I was so satisfied just by the fact that he and my baby had taken their place in this belly and were growing up well.

But the penis said something else.

I want to have sex.

I want to release my desires.

If I can’t go into Hae-ah’s body, which is too small to even take care of the womb, I can put my thing in his crotch and shake it. I want to torment his soft and white thighs until they turn red and convulse from the frictional heat.

I wish he would stroke my penis with this hand that holds my thumb so preciously. I wish he would kneel at my feet and hold, stroke, and shake my thing diligently, and then, when the heat is concentrated on the tip of my glans, he would suck it with his small and pretty lips with a ‘smack’ sound.

‘Ah. You crazy bastard.’

I shook my head and cursed myself.

‘How long has it been since the morning sickness went away…’

Hae-ah was so delicate and fragile that he felt nauseous even at the mint scent of the toothpaste left on my tongue. How could I have such lewd fantasies about such a pregnant woman? I want to rub my glans on his soft lips and smear precum, put my penis in his hot and narrow mouth, and think about burying it all the way to the root of the pillar so that the inside of his throat is all widened.

The face of the sleeping Hae-ah is beautiful. His slightly parted lips are especially pretty. I wish I didn’t know the taste of those lips, the slyly hidden tongue, and the tightness of the narrow throat. It felt like I was starving next to the delicious food that I had already tasted and enjoyed every day.

‘Ah…’

In the end, I got an erection. The inside of my underwear immediately became stuffy, and sweat was dripping from the heat. The pillar was aching because it was erected too vigorously.

If I could, I wanted to pull out while looking at Hae-ah’s face. But if I did, my pheromone scent might wake him from his sweet sleep. I was worried that the fact that I was in a state of sexual frustration might feel like pressure to Hae-ah.

Because if Hae-ah knew about my desires, he would definitely do something reckless, saying, ‘I’m okay.’

Before Cheon Woo-joo was given to us like a gift, there was only one time when we abstained from sex for three days because we were both very busy. At that time, Hae-ah seemed a little crazy. He made a fuss, saying he needed to check if our relationship was shaking. Even with his eyes bloodshot from handling a demanding work schedule and bandages plastered all over his wrists, he would sneak into my blanket, asking, ‘Should I comfort you up here, or down there?’

Some weekends, Hwang Ok-hye, who was taking care of Do-jin on the first floor, made us conscious, so we quietly played with each other’s hands. We turned up the music loudly and tried to hide our moans, but Hae-ah mistook my reaction as lukewarm.

That night, he brought a scary-looking black full-body leotard and said something bizarre about wanting to be tied up and done while wearing it. I sweated profusely trying to stop Hae-ah from forcibly squeezing his calves into the stiff leotard.

Besides that, there were many events to confirm Hae-ah’s passion for our sex life. Tools I had never seen before, comments that made me question his morality, and even situational dramas that showcased his innate acting skills.

I was certain that Hae-ah liked having sex with me.

That was before he carried Woo-joo.

‘Haa….’

With a sated Hae-ah lying next to me, I was an Alpha who was full in a different sense. To be sexually frustrated with an Omega who had just passed the difficult stabilization period after carrying my child and working hard to create him well.

Even if you have no conscience, there’s a limit….

I was ashamed of my appearance. The pangs of conscience stabbed at me like knives. I had to lift the blanket very slowly to avoid being caught with my thing, which had become erect without considering the person who would do the deed. Trying not to wake Hae-ah, I very quietly and gently raised my large body.

And I walked awkwardly with the front of my pajama pants bulging. The tightly pulled pants and underwear constricted not only my crotch but also my buttocks. With every step, the tip of my penis ached to the point of stinging.

Bearing the feeling of my legs giving out, I hurriedly hid in the bathroom attached to the master bedroom. I locked the door from the inside, stepped into the shower stall, and threw off all my clothes. Then, I turned on the shower as hard as possible and masturbated.

It felt like I had returned to my adolescence.

‘Damn it.’

I gritted my teeth as the hot water from the shower hit my back. Even in the midst of that, my right hand moved faithfully.

All I could think of was Hae-ah. Only Kang Hae-ah.

I closed my eyes tightly and imagined Hae-ah’s belly. That soft mound, his belly. The maternity dress he would awkwardly say was the only comfortable thing to wear. I imagined roughly pulling up that dress. I imagined burying my head under the fluttering hem, sucking Hae-ah’s genitals, licking his testicles, passing over the vertical line faintly drawn on his perineum, and inserting my tongue into his hole, again and again.

“Ah….”

Damn it.

My palm is hot, and my penis hurts. Imagining shoving my thing into Hae-ah’s insides right away, I gripped the fleshy pillar tightly. I stimulated it by squeezing it hard intermittently, as if Hae-ah’s inner walls were doing, and then releasing it as if letting go.

My heart was pounding.

I want to thrust my cock into Hae-ah’s insides hard, very hard, just like this. I want to make him scream, call my name, beg, and cum. I want to thrust until he faints while crying and drooling. I want to grab the buttocks of Hae-ah, who has fainted with his dry neck stretched out and his genitals and limbs dangling, and torment his hole until his mucous membrane is all red. And I want to knot him, burying my penis in the deepest part and making the skin of his white lower belly bulge out.

I want to rummage through all of Hae-ah’s insides. I want to bite his neck so hard that teeth marks are left. I want to suck his whole body until his white skin is mottled.

Then Hae-ah would like it.

‘Tae-rim-ssi, ah, ah!’

He would scream like a scream and cry all night long.

Hae-ah in my memory faints and then wakes up, sobbing. The overwhelming sensation scares him. I strongly grab the waist of Hae-ah, who is crawling away, and pull him back without a moment to breathe, thrusting the penis that had come out back in, and thrusting up his waist so that his round buttocks are crumpled.

Swallowing my moans, I shuddered.

“Haa….”

And I came.

Drip, drip…. The water pouring down through my hair soaked my whole face. With my whole body flushed with heat, I opened my closed eyes and saw the semen splattered all over my palm and the glass wall of the shower stall. The exhalation I let out, twisting my lips, was as embarrassing as it was hot.

“…….”

I picked up the showerhead and quickly cleaned up the semen I had just released.

Then, I squeezed out about half a bottle of body wash and scrubbed my whole body. I lathered and washed, then rinsed it off once more, and then once more cleanly, in case any pheromone scent I had released while excited remained.

An hour had passed since I finished my elaborate bath.

Only after checking my face and complexion in the mirror did I carefully open the locked bathroom door. I was worried about how I should face Hae-ah right away, but fortunately, Hae-ah was not in bed. He must have woken up in the meantime and gone out of the bedroom.

Quickly wiping the moisture from my whole body and putting on a gown, I wandered around the bedroom, sniffing. I concentrated all my nerves and smelled, but fortunately, my pheromone scent was nowhere to be found.

Rather, Hae-ah’s scent was stronger than mine. Since becoming pregnant, he had not taken a single suppressant pill, so Hae-ah always had a sweet and affectionate scent.

I took a breather for a moment, savoring that soft scent.

Then I realized. I went back to the steamy bathroom and crumpled up my pajamas, which were stained with my sweat and a slight scent of semen.

The place I headed to right away was the laundry room. I paused the washing machine, which was already running vigorously, and put the pajamas and underwear I had brought into it to destroy the evidence.

Only then did I hear the sound of the shower water dripping from afar. Slowly coming out into the living room and looking around, I saw Do-jin lying prostrate in front of the bathroom door on the first floor in the distance. The only person Do-jin would wait for in such an unmoving posture was Hae-ah.

Since I was using the bathroom in the master bedroom, he must have decided to use the guest bathroom on the first floor.

‘Did I make him wait too long…?’

I was embarrassed at the thought that I had been lost in a daze and didn’t even realize that Hae-ah had woken up and was waiting for his turn to shower. Scratching the back of my head and wandering around meaninglessly, I let the shame fly away with time.

They say the first time is the hardest for stealing. The same was true for masturbation. By the second, third, and fourth time, morning masturbation had become my daily routine.

Today was the fifth day. I woke up first and checked on Hae-ah. Showing his white and cute front teeth through his slightly parted lips, Hae-ah was fast asleep. I admired that pretty face for a long time, then very quietly stepped out of bed.

I went straight into the bathroom, took off my clothes, and checked the time, which was two hours earlier than usual. For several days, Hae-ah had been using the guest bathroom on the first floor every morning. I was worried that he might be missing his shower time because of me, so I was planning to wake up early and quickly shower to give him the space.

I put lotion all over my palm and went into the shower stall, turning on the shower water. And I familiarly released my desires. While recklessly shaking up Hae-ah in my memory.

Next, I thoroughly cleaned every corner of the bathroom. I even sprayed perfume in the shower stall to get rid of the pheromone scent. I wiped the moisture from my whole body with a towel, found a clean shower gown to put on, buried my pajamas and underwear in the laundry basket, and even picked up the basket and opened the bathroom door.

All of that took less than 30 minutes.

But the bed was empty. Hae-ah, who should have been there, was gone.

‘Huh.’

Bewildered, I checked the clock once more.

Six fifty.

Kang Hae-ah-ssi, the sleepyhead, was supposed to be crumpling the bed sheets, saying, ‘Why are you waking me up at dawn….’ And he had an hour and thirty minutes more to sleep.

Tilting my head to the side, I went down to the first floor. Then Do-jin came wagging his tail towards me. I lightly stroked the head of the guy who was stretching, extending his front paws on the carpet, lowering his chest, and raising his buttocks high.

“Do-jin-ah. Where did your dad go?”

While saying that, I went to the laundry room and dumped the clothes I had brought into the washing machine.

After finishing his morning greetings, Do-jin walked far down the hallway, making the sound of his claws, tot, totot. Then he lay flat in front of the guest bathroom door.

I watched the guy who didn’t move for a moment, and then the familiar sound of water captivated my ears.

‘He’s already showering.’

Hae-ah must have woken up because of me and is taking a shower while he’s at it. Thinking that, I moved my steps. I was planning to go out to the garden and get some fresh air to get rid of any pheromone scent that might be lingering. However, the steps I was moving lightly stopped abruptly due to a strange sense of déjà vu.

‘Yesterday, the day before, and the day before that, he did this.’

Today is the fifth day. Hae-ah deliberately goes into the guest bathroom and showers at the same time as me.

Until yesterday, I didn’t think it was strange. Because it was similar to his usual wake-up time. I thought I had taken the bathroom when Hae-ah was trying to shower. So today, I was going to wake up early on purpose, use the bathroom, and leave the space for him….

Kang Hae-ah Doryeon-nim, who is so hard of hearing that I could carry him away without him knowing, happens to wake up an hour and thirty minutes earlier today and deliberately uses the guest bathroom, putting off his morning sleep?

The coincidence was very coincidental.

After that, a strange thought captivated me. Led by a strange energy, I slowly approached the guest bathroom door. Do-jin tilted his ears back and forth, wondering if my appearance, approaching quietly while suppressing my footsteps, was strange.

I put my two feet next to Do-jin, who was lying down like a rice cake that someone had dropped.

And I put my ear to the door.

Amidst the sound of the shower water, shwaaa… ringing out for a long time,

“Haa, um….”

A faint moan was heard.

“…….”

A demon must have possessed my ear. That’s what I thought at first. I thought it was purely because the shower water was warm and he felt good, so he was making a sound meaning, ‘Ah, it’s refreshing!’

Even so, my insides were boiling, so I pressed my ear even closer to the door.

Soon, a voice more familiar than anyone else’s was heard more clearly than before.

“Euh, um….”

That sound, as if savoring the sensation, was definitely a moan.

Without even having time to think, I grabbed the doorknob and quietly turned it. Thanks to the fact that it wasn’t locked, the bathroom door opened very smoothly without a sound.

When I put my eye to the crack in the opened door, I saw Hae-ah lying in the bathtub.

Hae-ah, who firmly believed that I was showering on the second floor, was very defenseless. His brown hair, leaning against the back of the bathtub, was wet, and his head was facing the wall, so his reddened ears and dry nape were very visible. Bending his knees, curling up his body, and holding the showerhead tightly in his left hand… Hae-ah was masturbating.

The sound of rubbing his flesh with his right hand, sseuk, sseuk, the noise of the water pouring out and immediately draining through the drain, the friction sound of his feet sliding on the bottom of the bathtub, and his heavy breathing were all tangled together.

“Ah…, heok, heueu…, ah….”

My name was mixed in with Hae-ah’s suppressed moans.

“Ah, Tae-rim-ssi…, eut!”

Then he dropped the showerhead. As the overturned showerhead fell to the floor, the stream of water shot upwards, towards the wall. Without the mind to clean up the meaningless hot water being sprayed, Hae-ah kept panting.

“…Heu, eut, eung….”

The busy movement of his shoulders made me imagine his hand holding and shaking his genitals quickly. His left hand, which had gone up above his neck and gently down, seemed to be staying on his chest. Hiding his face in the corner of the bathtub as if he was imagining something, Hae-ah shook his body greatly until his hair was all shaken.

“Ah…!”

I was surprised as if I had been slapped on the cheek by that shrill moan.

Opening my eyes wide, I very slowly moved my body to the side of the door. Closing the door, which had been opened by a hand span, and blocking my mouth with both hands.

Strangely, I was embarrassed.

I was so embarrassed that I felt like my heart would burst.

If I could, I wanted to jump into the bathroom right away. I wanted to bite, suck, lick, and devour Hae-ah, who was caressing his chest and genitals and masturbating.

But I couldn’t do that. I had to endure with all my might. I mustn’t startle Hae-ah in any way. If he found out that I had secretly caught him masturbating, Hae-ah would be ten times more embarrassed than I was. He would be surprised, say ‘Ack,’ and be ashamed while sobbing.

And if he lost the baby, it would be a big problem. Because Hae-ah is literally carrying a baby, I had to be even more careful.

“…….”

The inhalation and exhalation were all so hot that my nostrils were about to get hot. My palms were already damp with sweat. Wiping the slippery hand lines on my shower gown, the garden I went out to for a breather was chilly.

Pretending that nothing had happened, pretending that I hadn’t seen anything, I grabbed the water hose. And I watered the trees and flowers, keeping my gaze as far away as possible.

Before long, Do-jin came running, panting, stepping on the grass. I knew what the gesture of the guy, who was opening his mouth towards the air, meant, asking me to spray water on him too. Hae-ah had come out of the bathroom, so he had stopped waiting and regained his freedom.

Glancing back, sure enough, Hae-ah showed his face in the living room. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were flushed, his gesture of tightening the waist tie of his gown was somewhat awkward, and his gait was slow.

“Did you sleep well?”

Pretending to be nonchalant, I waved my hand at him. Then Hae-ah also waved his hand awkwardly.

“Eung….”

His voice was very small, barely audible.

That… hand.

He masturbated, holding and shaking his cock with that hand. And he called my name while doing that….

Even the ‘ppodeuk’ friction sound from his feet stepping on the bottom of the bathtub made my heart hot.

I’m going crazy. I really feel like I’m going crazy. The sexual desire that I thought I had resolved well enough by masturbating alone was wriggling again, showing off its presence. It swelled up even bigger than before. It became suffocatingly large, causing heat to gather in my lower abdomen.

I felt the pheromones flowing out of my excited body sharply.

‘Damn it.’

To hide my body scent, I grabbed the water hose and ran to the end of the garden. I was grateful that Do-jin, who understood my gesture as a signal to ‘play,’ ran up to me excitedly. Thanks to that, I was able to wash away the scent that had flowed out of my body by pretending to play with him and splashing the hose water here and there.

After playing by spraying water recklessly for a few minutes, Do-jin and I were all soaked. The body scent, which was just right to arouse suspicion, was hidden by the smell of grass coming from the wet lawn.

Keong!

While eating the hose water stream, Do-jin, who was excited, barked vigorously.

At that sound, Hae-ah in the living room laughed ‘Haha.’ While smiling playfully along with him, and while shooting the hose water into the wide-open mouth of Do-jin, who was running at my knees, I couldn’t get out of the unfamiliar sensation.

At that moment, irrational suspicion dominated me. I don’t know why, but Hae-ah seemed to be feeling it along with me. He was feeling the sensation along with me, and he couldn’t stand that desire, just like me, and he was hiding in the bathroom at the same time as I was, and he was masturbating alone and releasing it, just like I was.

It took exactly half a day for suspicion to become certainty.

At night, after turning off the lights and lying side by side with Hae-ah in one place, I conducted a very childish and dangerous experiment. After waiting for the sound of Hae-ah’s breathing to deepen, I moved my hand into the blanket. And very slowly, I groped inside my pajama pants.

Slightly pulling down my underwear and pants, I took out my penis and touched it. If Hae-ah caught me, it would be quite embarrassing and my face would burn, but I thought it would be okay.

‘Because that would be a tie….’

I had already spied on Hae-ah’s masturbation.

Trying not to wake the sleeping Hae-ah, I was inwardly ashamed of lying next to him and masturbating. I even thought that I might not get an erection because I was embarrassed.

However, my body was more faithful to instinct than reason. With my gaze fixed on Hae-ah’s sleeping profile, just looking at his closed eyes, flushed cheeks, round nose, glossy nose tip, and slightly parted lips made the flesh in my hand swell straight up. My palm quickly grew warm. Sweat gathered on my spine.

“……”

Struggling to hide my excited breathing, I breathed through my nose, gradually moving the hand gripping my penis faster. Hae-ah’s defenseless sleeping face was too lewd. If I released the tension in my lower abdomen, I felt like I would ejaculate immediately.

‘Is it all, useless…?’

Hae-ah’s sleeping expression was blank. Right, it was a ridiculous suspicion from the start. That Hae-ah would be aroused when I was in heat…. I felt like a fool for even thinking that.

Just as I was about to stop the nonsense,

“Umm….”

Hae-ah seemed to furrow his brow, then opened his mouth before closing it silently. Above his tightly closed eyelids, I could read the signs of his eyeballs shaking from side to side.

“……”

Holding my breath and listening closely, I could hear Hae-ah’s panting breath loudly. His previously comfortable, even breathing became somewhat rough, and the slender neck stretched across the pillowcase tensed.

Soon, he seemed to toss and turn slightly to the left and right, then Hae-ah turned his back to me.

That was a really, really strange reaction. He wasn’t the type to turn his back and ignore me, even in his sleep. When he was uncomfortable or having a bad dream, Hae-ah would mumble ‘Tae-rim-ssi’ with his eyes closed. The way he would burrow into my arms headfirst and snuggle close was lovely; that was Hae-ah’s sleeping habit.

Seized by a puzzling feeling, I caressed the thing in my hand with a little more care. Instead of roughly stroking it like before, I masturbated with a care I had never taken before in my life. Trying not to make a sound, I gently caressed from my flushed glans to the end of my stiffly erect shaft.

Even then, my gaze was fixed on the back of Hae-ah’s head. Unaware that I was staring intently at him, Hae-ah slowly moved his arm, which had been lying on the blanket, downwards. That movement, which was definitely not that of a sleeping person, gave me certainty.

Hae-ah was awake.

And he was clearly bothered by something, hiding his front while ignoring me.

Admiring Hae-ah’s round ears, which had instantly turned red, I readjusted my grip on my penis. I stimulated myself, imagining touching Hae-ah’s penis as it was.

I pressed the tip of my thumb against the end of my glans, which was dripping with precum, and pressed down hard. Hae-ah is particularly sensitive in this small urethral opening. If I covered the opening with my fingertip and rubbed it hard, he would be beside himself with pleasure. If I scratched it in circles with my calloused finger, he wouldn’t last long before ejaculating white semen.

Licking my dry lips with my tongue, I suddenly gripped my tautly erect penis hard.

“…Ah!”

And I was startled by the groan that burst out. Hae-ah, who had made the sound, seemed even more surprised than I was. Even just looking at the back of his head, I could tell what his expression was like. The movement of raising the hand hidden under the blanket to cover his mouth was quick.

Curling up like a shrimp, Hae-ah very quietly, slowly crawled to the edge of the bed. He seemed ready to leave the bedroom and run away at any moment.

But I had no intention of letting Hae-ah go like this. So I gripped my penis hard again, almost painfully. And I masturbated, moving my hand with the force to squeeze out the semen, even forcibly.

Now, not only Hae-ah’s earlobes but also his faintly visible cheeks and neck were all flushed red.

“…Haa, eugh….”

Just before reaching climax, I stopped moving my hand. I endured the ejaculation, tightly blocking the urethra at the end of my glans with my thumb.

Then Hae-ah trembled very slightly. Like someone who was very uncomfortable, he buried his face in the pillow and groaned. The sound of his breath, muffled in the pillowcase, was ‘hoo-euh, hoo-euh’.

Soon, very carefully, as I did every morning, Hae-ah took one foot out of the blanket. Unaware that I was masturbating behind him, his movements were slow as he tried not to wake me from my sweet sleep.

After confirming that he had found and put on a slipper while flailing his white legs, I jumped up from the bed.

“Heok…!”

Hae-ah looked up at me with surprised eyes. At the same time, my hand touched the blanket covering our bodies.

“Tae, Tae-rim-ssi.”

I tried to pull the blanket away, and Hae-ah resisted, scratching and gripping it tightly with both arms. His face was flushed red, and his eyes were full of embarrassment, making him look like he was about to cry. Not only his eyes but also the tip of his nose, both cheeks, and even his lower jaw were red. His lips were a perfect red color, swollen as if he had bitten them repeatedly.

“J-Just a moment…. I, the bathroom…. I want to go to the bathroom….”

Hae-ah stammered and made excuses. It was difficult to find out anything through words from him, who habitually lied.

Instead, I used force. I gripped the blanket very tightly with my right hand and pulled it away with force.

“Ack…!”

As the thick winter blanket fluttered and was pulled away, Hae-ah screamed in surprise. At that moment, I even forgot the obvious fact that I shouldn’t startle him. Rather, the stimulation given by Hae-ah’s body, which was revealed before my eyes, was even greater.

The maternity dress skirt had already been pulled up to above his belly. His slightly protruding lower abdomen was slightly visible, and the erect thing that was touching that belly was pink.

“……”

The maternity dress hem was soaked with so much precum that had dripped down. A map made of liquid had formed on the sheet, as if he had leaked fluid into the groove of his buttocks.

I froze at the stimulating sight.

Hae-ah moved in a fluster a few seconds later. His hands, which were pulling the crumpled hem back down to cover his lower body and hide his erect penis, were hurried to the point of being rough. He shook his head busily, pressing his erect thing between his legs.

“D-Don’t look….”

Hae-ah pleaded, and

“Why are you holding back?”

I asked.

“…Pardon?”

Hae-ah looked up at me with a face that looked like he would burst into tears if I touched him. His tightly closed lips were constantly twitching as he tried to hold back his tears.

“I, I don’t really know what you’re talking about….”

Hae-ah trailed off in a clumsy voice, and

“Why are you holding back?”

I repeated the same question.

And I grabbed the hem of Hae-ah’s dress and pulled it up. Because I failed to control my strength, there was a sound of tearing from the bottom of the maternity dress. If there was a penalty for ruining the pajamas that Hae-ah had been enjoying wearing the most these days, I was willing to accept it later.

Right now, Hae-ah’s pink thighs and erect penis were more important.

“You… did you feel it?”

At my question, Hae-ah looked like he was about to cry, making a walnut pattern on his lower jaw.

“Why are you saying such… why are you saying such things?”

Without much thought, I reached out and grabbed Hae-ah’s penis. It was something I used to touch more often than my own until a few months ago, but Hae-ah was so surprised by the long-awaited hand job that his shoulders bounced. The way he stuttered and called my name, ‘Tae-rim-ssi’, was cute. It’s a really strange expression to use for an Omega whose belly is swollen with my baby, but it felt like… the first time.

I gently, very tenderly stroked Hae-ah’s tautly erect penis. Hae-ah only hung his head, not resisting, as if he liked the affectionate touch. I was flushed to the top of my head by his attitude, as if he was ashamed to show his body, as if this situation was unfamiliar and shy.

Suppressing the urge to bury my head between Hae-ah’s legs and suck his penis, lick his hole, and bite his butt, I tried to lower my voice.

“Every time I masturbate, you, did you feel it?”

“Pardon…?”

“Every time I shower, you shower too.”

“I don’t really know what you mean, ah, I don’t know.”

As I stimulated his reddened urethra with the joint of my fingertip, he whimpered, curling up his knees. If it were normal, he would have crawled out of bed and run away, but I found Hae-ah, who couldn’t do that today, cute. He was so lovely, with his heavy belly, numb arms and legs, and sluggish movements.

In the end, my patience reached its limit. I lowered my head and put my head under the hem of the already torn maternity dress.

And I opened my mouth wide.

“Ah, Tae-rim-ssi, Tae-rim-ssi, no…!”

Hae-ah’s hand, pushing my head away, was rough. I felt sorry for his pitiful cries and gestures, but I couldn’t hold back any longer.

Ah.

I bit Hae-ah’s penis in my wide-open mouth.

And as I sucked so hard that it made a sound, Hae-ah’s thighs bumped against my chest. He trembled and jumped, resisting roughly.

Since our first meeting, Hae-ah had never succeeded in rejecting me even once. It was even more impossible with his sluggish body like today.

“A-An, an… no, no.”

After struggling and pushing me away a few times, Hae-ah’s hand lost strength. Instead of giving up resisting, he spread out the hem of the maternity dress and completely covered my head. And he made a sobbing groan.

I grabbed Hae-ah’s thighs with both hands and brought them together. So that he couldn’t pull his body back or push me away with his feet, I firmly pressed down on his slender lower body and sucked, licked, and poked the urethral opening with the tip of my tongue.

Each time, a satisfying groan burst out.

“Tae-rim-ssi, ah, ah, ah…!”

The movement of his hips, which were jumping and throbbing, was lewd. And his thighs, which were tightly gripped in my palm, trembled. Recognizing the signals his body was giving, I opened my mouth very wide. And I stuck out my tongue and licked the bitter-tasting glans with my tongue.

Unable to withstand the final stimulation, Hae-ah ejaculated. He screamed in surprise, unable to pull his firmly held body back even a little, and spewed white semen into my mouth. The pheromone scent emanating from his dry body was surprisingly heavy and intense.

Taking a deep breath through my nose and inhaling his body scent, I swallowed the semen in my mouth. And I gave Hae-ah’s exhausted penis a series of kisses. Hae-ah groaned for a long time, shaking his still-excited thing.

“Eugh, heueueuk…, euek….”

Moving my head like a dog, I lifted the hem of the dress that was covering the back of my head.

“Do you feel good? You came more than usual.”

“……”

As if he didn’t have the mental capacity to answer, Hae-ah only looked down at me with unfocused eyes. Resting my chin slightly on his round belly, my two hands were busy. Spreading Hae-ah’s thighs, which had been obediently gathered together, to the left and right, I slid the middle finger of my right hand into the groove of his buttocks.

“We weren’t supposed to have sex. The doctor said….”

Hae-ah scolded me in a voice that had gone quiet in a short time. I retorted like a rebellious child.

“I’m not going to have sex.”

Then Hae-ah frowned like Do-jin and made a face. A deep conflict could be felt in his expression, which was a mixture of hot lust, the satisfaction of affectionate acts, worry about the baby in his belly, and some fear.

Afraid that he would reject me with his pretty lips, I stroked the dense wrinkles around his already wet hole. At the same time, I spoke as gently as possible, hiding the perversion inside me.

“It’s because I like you…. Hae-ah. It’s because I want to comfort you…. That’s why.”

“……”

“So answer me.”

How did I used to shove my penis all the way in? I wondered, as I slipped one joint of my middle finger into the small hole, then pulled it back out. Inevitably, his gaping behind was waiting for me, for the waves of pleasure that only I could give him.

“Every time I masturbate, you masturbate too?”

“…I don’t know, things like that….”

Very carefully, paying more attention and slowly, I inserted my middle finger. There was no need to loosen the hole by increasing the number of fingers as usual. Because my goal today wasn’t sex. It was to excite Hae-ah and make him ejaculate again; that was all.

“Eugh, eut, ah….”

It was a different kind of fun to watch Hae-ah, who was moving his hips first as if he was impatient. Whether he was anticipating the pleasure that seemed like it was about to come or whether he was afraid, Hae-ah constantly whimpered and asked me.

“Tae, when did Tae-rim-ssi… masturbate?”

Stirring the inside of the inner wall that was tightly biting my finger with my middle finger, I laughed.

“Every morning, while showering.”

Then Hae-ah squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head hard. With a stifled groan, he seemed to drip semen from the end of his penis, then immediately ejaculated.

I grabbed his wrist, which was struggling to escape from the pleasure, and pulled it taut. With his arm caught by me, Hae-ah could only wiggle his hips and couldn’t run away.

Again, bending my finger, I searched for his sensitive spot and pressed down on it.

“Ah!”

Hae-ah was desperate, raising both knees and pushing the sheet away with his toes. With all his senses dominated by one finger, he intermittently spewed semen, crying out, ‘Please’ and begging without thinking.

“I, I did it…, I did it…!”

And he nodded his head busily and said.

“Ah, I did it every morning, I masturbated…. While showering.”

I was moved by the confession he had made while shedding tears, and my chest grew hot.

“Really?”

“Yes, yes…. Really, really.”

Intoxicated by an unknown emotion, I pulled my finger out and shoved it back in. And I pressed down hard on the inside of Hae-ah’s lower abdomen, a strangely protruding spot. As if the continuous stimulation was painful, Hae-ah made a crying groan. He erected the penis that had just ejaculated, sniffled, and cried.

“N-Now, s-stop it. I told you everything!”

“Who said you can stop if you tell me everything?”

“Pardon?”

I was breathless and my heart fluttered at his reddened neck and angry face, his cheeks and lips glistening with tears, and the sweet scent emanating from his whole body.

Panting, unable to hide my excitement, I whispered lowly.

“You’re really, cute right now. Hae-ah….”

Then Hae-ah trembled at the arm that was firmly held in my hand. With his tearful eyes wide and glistening, his mumbling voice was faint.

“Tae-rim-ssi…, your eyes are strange.”

It was a criticism that was too late. My eyes had already been driven crazy by him for a long time.

I picked up the maternity dress hem, which was soiled with various bodily fluids, and hid my head in it again. Hae-ah let out a long scream, ‘Aaaah’. As I kissed his swollen belly and tickled his side, his scream was mixed with laughter.

“Ah! Haha, ah…! Stop, stop, ah, pervert!”

I hugged his two wiggling thighs with both arms and lay down. After kissing his belly for a long time while savoring the intense scent of flesh, I put my head inside and burrowed in, putting my head all the way up to his shallow chest so that the spacious clothes became cramped.

While being careful not to press down on Hae-ah with my weight, I rubbed my dick against his penis and against his swollen lower belly.

“Pervert…, y-you pervert….”

Hae-ah’s whispers gradually became smaller and eventually faded away.

“Haa…, ha….”

In the end, only his heavy breathing filled my ears.

Like a greedy person, I grabbed both penises. While smelling the scent of flesh emanating from Hae-ah’s chest, sucking on his hardened left nipple and making a sucking sound, I masturbated.

Masturbating for two people was very satisfying.

At the hospital that we had found again after much deliberation, Hae-ah’s doctor observed Hae-ah, whose ears were red, and me, who was calmly explaining the unusual sensation I had experienced last night, for a long time. Then she led us to the reception room.

“Could you wait here for a moment?”

As soon as she left, Hae-ah let out a long sigh and adjusted his sitting position. His two hands, deeply hidden in his coat pocket, looked unstable.

It was fortunate that I had bought banana milk from the convenience store on the first floor in advance. When I took it out of my bag, inserted a straw, and handed it to him, Hae-ah quickly took out his two hands, which had been hiding tightly, and quickly took it. As he quenched his thirst with the sweet milk, his hardened expression also became much more relaxed.

As the doctor had said, the wait was very short. Before the banana milk ran out, we were able to meet another doctor. It was none other than a psychiatrist.

With a rather serious face, he listened to our condition, nodding and taking notes with a black pen in his hand. And he talked about the pheromones of Alphas and the psychological problems of Omegas, and about cases where those two things acted in combination.

“The pregnant Omega is empathizing with the Alpha partner’s erogenous zone. It’s also called ‘sexual resonance during pregnancy,’ but it’s a very rare case.”

Hae-ah’s brow furrowed at the unfamiliar term.

“Sexual resonance during… what now?”

“I’m actually seeing it for the first time myself. It’s so rare that it could be used as research material.”

Adding the last words, he subtly glanced at Hae-ah and me. Having no intention of becoming a psychiatrist’s special research subject, I widened my eyes and stared straight at him.

Then, he quickly cleared his throat and changed the subject.

“It’s just that it’s a very unique and special case… That’s what I meant.”

Silence filled the spacious reception room for a moment.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about at all…”

Hae-ah’s openly disgusted muttering, the sound of sucking on a straw, and the noise echoing from the empty milk carton swept across the coffee table.

Even I, the CEO of AOM, had only read about sexual resonance during pregnancy in academic journals and had never considered it as a research or business topic. That was because it was such a rare case. It was a level of belonging that was above seduction through pheromones, physical restraint through knotting, or mental domination through imprinting.

In other words, it meant that Kang Hae-ah as an Omega was being strongly and surely led by the nose by me.

I was quite satisfied with that fact. I felt so happy that I felt full. I wanted to hug Hae-ah tightly right away and give him about thirty kisses on the crown of his head and forehead.

Beside me, Hae-ah asked a mature question.

“Still, it won’t be a problem for our baby, right?”

Then the Doctor nodded his head vigorously, saying, “Ah, yes, of course.”

As soon as the confirmation was given, he let out a sigh of relief and stroked his stomach, a gesture that was terribly lovely.

“Still, you heard what your doctor said, right? You should continue to refrain from direct sexual activity.”

Hae-ah’s eyes narrowed quickly at the naturally following warning. Then he glanced at me slyly. Following him, the Doctor also looked over my physique with a worried expression.

I shrugged off all the glares. Anyway, as a good and upright Alpha who had endured well without engaging in ‘direct sexual activity.’

17 weeks.

At the hospital where we visited for the tenth-odd time, we confirmed Cheon Woo-joo’s gender and secondary gender at the same time.

We had already vaguely guessed the gender through several tests before. They said that it was likely to be a boy. The test result that the Doctor handed over today stamped that possibility with 100%. Without a doubt, Woo-joo was a boy.

I was a little disappointed. While imagining what kind of child Cheon Woo-joo would be like a thousand times, I had hoped that he would be a girl about six hundred times. Among them, I had hoped and imagined that he would be a girl who resembled Hae-ah about five hundred times, and I had seriously worried about what I should do when she had her first love in ten years.

Hae-ah, holding my hand as I only made continuous humming sounds with the test result in my hand, comforted me instead. He said that the child’s gender did not matter.

“Because he’s our child, I like any child.”

Thanks to Hae-ah, who smiled brightly while saying that, I also liked my son. He would surely be a baby Angel, with Hae-ah’s eyes, nose, mouth, skin, and personality, and only without wings.

The next test result I received stated Cheon Woo-joo’s secondary gender. Handing over the diagnostic result, which had a more than 99% chance of being a Dominant Alpha and was the first to be issued in Seoul this year, the Doctor smiled, showing his teeth, and said, “Congratulations.”

Hae-ah liked the fact that Woo-joo’s secondary gender was the same as mine even more than when he found out the gender. He couldn’t easily leave the hospital even after leaving the examination room. He stood by the window as he had on the day he first found out about the pregnancy, smiling brightly and looking at the diagnostic result over and over again. He also stroked Woo-joo’s square ultrasound photo several times.

“The world has become so much better… In our time, it wasn’t this accurate.”

Hae-ah had suffered a lot because of that. I quietly stroked his head.

“You like our Woo-joo being an Alpha that much?”

As soon as I asked the question, Hae-ah nodded his head.

“Of course!”

And he narrowed his eyes like threads and said with a bright smile, showing his teeth.

“Living as an Omega is hard. You never know when someone might ignore you, and the heat cycle is scary… If he looks like Tae-rim-ssi, our Woo-joo will be very beautiful. What if someone teases or harasses him?”

“Hmm…”

Well… If he was a boy who looked like me, Cheon Woo-joo would have a sturdy build and dark eyes. He would definitely have a more mature impression and a dirty personality compared to his peers. If I were to assume such a Woo-joo, I thought it would be more meaningful to worry about whether he would tease or harass someone.

Still, I kept my mouth shut and nodded, agreeing with Hae-ah’s words. No matter how strong my genes were, and so even if the child’s secondary gender was completely Dominant Alpha, as long as even one drop of Kang Hae-ah’s blood was mixed in, Cheon Woo-joo would be a beautiful Angel.

“Hoo…”

Letting out a long sigh, Hae-ah added a word as if joking.

“And getting pregnant isn’t easy either. It’s a relief that our Woo-joo won’t have to do this.”

I didn’t miss the playful words. I quickly wrapped my arms around Hae-ah’s waist and pulled him close to me.

“Does your back hurt?”

Then Hae-ah widened his eyes. He looked up at me in surprise as if he was seeing a psychic, then nodded his head.

“Yeah… A little.”

He only said that, but he seemed quite uncomfortable as he leaned on me and walked, refusing my support.

I wanted to pick up Hae-ah and run to the parking lot without caring about other people’s eyes. No, if possible, I wanted to take the baby pouch from his slender, delicate, and soft body and attach it to my stomach.

I wanted to take over everything, from the heavy stomach and the tingling calves that made him pant, to the insomnia that made him wake up in the middle of the night and toss and turn because his organs were being pressed up and down, to enduring the rudeness of people’s eyes openly fixed on his stomach as he came and went.

Hae-ah was bright, whether he knew that I was upset by my inability to do so or not.

“Tae-rim-ssi, you’re happy too, right? That our child is a Dominant Alpha.”

“Yeah. I’m happy.”

My reply was very quick. It was a reflexive and quick answer, to the point that Hae-ah chuckled and said, “What is it?” And it was a lie.

I had always thought that it would be good if our child was an Alpha, Beta, or Omega, but I had hoped that he would not be a Dominant Alpha. It might sound like a luxury to the ears of Korean parents who pray for their children to be Alphas and are overjoyed even if they are just Dominant, but I was like that. I sincerely was.

‘Now… what should I do?’

I was worried about the rut that would come soon, and a black hole was drilled in my head.

Chairman Kang Jun-il was even more excited by the news that the first Dominant Alpha in the Han-seong Group family would be born. I ignored all the calls and gifts he sent through his secretaries. That was because I had lost even the leeway to calculate relationships and maintain appropriate friendships.

The atmosphere in the Kang family was literally a festival, but the atmosphere in our family was the opposite. My parents and I, whom I had visited secretly without Hae-ah knowing, had to go through a second meeting on the subject of the pregnant Hae-ah.

From the day I first announced the pregnancy four months ago, Father had been worried that the grandchild in Hae-ah’s belly would be a Dominant Alpha. Dominant Alphas were physically superior to others and easily had the modifier of genius attached to them. Others might point fingers at me, asking what was wrong with me even though I was going to see such a talented grandchild. However, that was only other people’s perspective. The reality of a Dominant Alpha family was very complicated.

When Mother, who was an Omega, was pregnant with me, who was a Dominant Alpha, Father had his first unstable rut. Usually, when it was rut season, Alphas would lose their reason and move according to their instincts. At this time, the existence of a Dominant Alpha would clearly come as a threat to an Alpha who had become hypersensitive due to excitement. That was the same even if it was the child in the belly that his partner Omega was carrying. He would feel threatened even by his unborn child and instinctively react against it.

Even Father and my Mother, who were known as a loving couple, recalled that the rut at the time was terrible. Father was violent in front of Mother for the first time in his life. Mother fled from Father to the bathroom and called paramedics to barely calm Father down. By forcibly injecting an amount of drugs that would knock out even a rhinoceros.

The more I knew, the further instinct was from purity. Rather, it was very filthy. Everyone lived by covering up their filth with clothes, books, and rules.

For me, an Alpha, a syringe and suppressants were additionally needed for such concealment.

The solution that Father presented was simple. In order to prepare for the rut, he said that I should stay away from Hae-ah from today.

However, at the end of the world’s simplest solution, Father let out a hollow laugh.

“But it’s an absolutely impossible method.”

I, Mother, and Father, the speaker, agreed with that statement.

There was no Alpha anywhere in the world who could leave his partner Omega, especially a pregnant one. I was at the point where I would rather bite my tongue and die.

I knew as well as I knew the palm of my hand how Hae-ah would think and what a terrible night he would spend if I frankly revealed this problem and packed my bags and left the house. It would be fortunate if he only felt lonely. I didn’t want him to be swept away by unnecessary worries, self-blame, stress, and depression and spend the dawn in tears, so that kind of night should never happen again in Hae-ah’s life.

So I prepared plenty of extra syringes and Alpha-only suppressants. The problem was in my reason, which would be cut off every time the rut came as a surprise. Even if I injected the suppressant in time, I couldn’t eliminate it until the moment I lost consciousness. I was afraid that I might unknowingly do something terrible to Hae-ah in the short time that I lost control.

‘Can’t I get stimulants?’

It was unexpectedly Vice President Kang Hae-in who reached out to me as I was trying to find even illegal drugs.

“I think I have a way to help you.”

Kang Hae-in said, with her right arm crossed over her left arm and the tip of her left hand resting on her chin. On the table in the CEO’s office where I greeted her and served coffee, there were stacks of files, and the issues that needed to be discussed were put on the back burner.

Her voice, whose eyes, nose, and mouth resembled Hae-ah’s because they had inherited the same genes, but whose atmosphere and impression were completely different, was rather cold no matter what she said.

“You’re not the only CEO with the character Cheon in your name, are you?”

Then she talked about other business connections she knew. She said that there was a CEO who ran a legal casino and distributed illegal drugs, that Kang Il-hae had quickly become addicted to the drugs he made, and that she knew that he had gone to jail because of that.

To be honest, I had no interest in her story. I didn’t care whether the person who had sent Kang Il-hae away was Han Cheon-ma of Shinsan City or CEO Cheon of the rumor mill.

‘Hmm… Would Hae-ah understand a village unit joke?’

And I suddenly became lost in thought.

‘If he knows the song ‘Dokdo is Our Land,’ he might understand. Kang Hae-ah singing that song… It would be so awkward and cute.’

The thought made me laugh, and I chuckled. Vice President Kang Hae-in’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me like that.

“…You’ve changed a lot. CEO Cheon.”

She was right.

I had changed a lot.

Until last year, I hated trivial small talk and useless jokes. As if I was the son of Cheon Hee-jung, who was called ‘the prosecutor general who was the furthest from politics,’ I lived with the words, ‘Let’s skip the jokes and get to the point.’ Si Eun-cheol evaluated me as ‘no different from a math textbook.’

So at one time, meeting with Kang Hae-in was comfortable. Vice President Kang Hae-in had said the same thing to me.

But now it was different.

“It feels like I’m talking to Kang Hae-ah.”

Kang Hae-in’s eyes were strange as she said that. She seemed to think that her younger brother, Kang Hae-ah, had contaminated a high-performance robot with humanity.

Slyly twisting her lips, she seemed to hesitate for a moment, then Kang Hae-in continued the words she had stopped.

“That CEO in Shinsan City is famous for doing drugs himself. But it’s not drugs, it’s… suppressants. He’s a Dominant Alpha.”

“……”

For a moment, I closed my mouth. ‘Dominant Alpha’ and ‘suppressants.’ The topic was quite interesting. The problem was what her intention was in telling me this story.

‘In the end, it’s a fight for position. Even though Kang Il-hae is in that state, Chairman Kang Jun-il is still obsessed with his son, and Hae-ah happens to be pregnant with a Dominant Alpha….’

My gaze reached the documents piled up on the coffee table. The thick steel files contained the business that Kang Hae-in had carefully prepared. It had been forcibly taken away from Kang Il-hae as if he had stolen a finished meal, and it had barely returned to the original owner’s hands after he had stepped down from the front lines.

Vice President Kang Hae-in had good business skills and was very capable. Even she had to have her brother cause an accident involving drugs in order to push out her brother, who was loved by her Father. The possibility of the same miracle happening twice was slim. So, as much as possible, she had to solidify her position as Vice President as soon as possible. So that she wouldn’t be shaken even if Kang Il-hae shamelessly returned.

To do so, collaboration with me was essential.

Kang Hae-in wiped her mouth with her hand, perhaps embarrassed by my long silence.

“I misspoke. Please forget what I just said.”

“That drug.”

I asked, staring straight into her eyes.

“Can you get it right away?”

I myself had no intention of letting Kang Il-hae return to the front lines. If Kang Hae-in was trying to actively push out her brother by using me, it was welcome news for me.

Besides, it was even better that I could get a powerful suppressant.

“How much?”

Kang Hae-in asked, bowing her head towards me and lowering her voice.

I didn’t hesitate for long.

“Enough to knock out a rhinoceros.”

Then Kang Hae-in laughed out loud. Then, a beat or two later, she changed her expression as if she understood that my words were not a joke but the truth.

I added one more request to her. To get me stimulants together, something very powerful that could wake up even a knocked-out rhinoceros. It didn’t have to be harmless to the body, I said.

Two hours after Kang Hae-in left after exchanging business greetings, a delivery driver wearing a black helmet arrived. He handed over a black, flat rectangular case and left as quickly as he had come. He said that the payment had already been made.

Thanking and rewarding Vice President Kang Hae-in was a matter for later. Before going home, I closed all the blinds in the CEO’s office and rolled up my shirt sleeves. And I filled the syringe with the suppressant I had received, and after a very brief hesitation, I stuck the needle into my arm.

Almost immediately after pressing the pistol, a very unpleasant feeling swept through my body. Lethargy and a stuffy feeling were common side effects of suppressants. But this drug was too much. I felt like my throat was blocked. A tingling headache wrapped around my brain. My heart seemed to beat too fast, then calmed down very slowly.

“Hoo…”

I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the unpleasant feeling to disappear. I prayed that the rut would be pushed further away, hopefully past Hae-ah’s due date, because I would be in pain instead.

I didn’t want to inflict any pain or threat on Hae-ah, who had barely survived the stable period filled with nightmares. It was a hundred or a thousand times better to suppress, postpone, and crush the rut as much as possible and torment myself.

As much as I trusted Vice President Kang Hae-in, I also trusted the drug-addicted CEO she was talking about, although it was a funny thing to say. Alphas, especially Dominant Alphas, had something in common, whether they liked it or not. The desire to be a safe nest next to my partner, my Omega, even though I sometimes acted like a beast in front of others and went crazy like a rogue.

Who but an Alpha would understand that feeling?

20 weeks.

Damn it.

The rut had come.

It was a rut that hadn’t come even after three weeks past the due date. Foolishly, I was relieved. While injecting a potent suppressant into my forearm, while gritting my teeth at the immense pain from the side effects, I thought the drug was definitely working. Throughout the scheduled rut period, I felt not even a hint of heat, but rather a terribly sinking mood and even a slowing heartbeat.

The rut, which I had tried to postpone even by using illegal drugs, came crashing down on me as if feeling betrayed.

In the middle of the night, I woke up in a cold sweat. The hair all over my body was already standing on end. A feverish desire filled my head with a fiery red.

Next to me, panting and dripping with cold sweat, Kang Hae-ah woke up with a slight cough. Then, he looked at me with wide eyes. Overwhelmed by the pheromones flowing out of me, it took him a long time just to get out of bed. That’s how fragile Hae-ah was.

“Tae-rim-ssi.”

With a calm face, Hae-ah understood the situation and tried to soothe me.

Trying to escape from the bed to avoid him reaching out his white hand slowly, I fell. I crashed to the carpeted floor, hitting my shoulder first, and gasped for breath. Then, I crawled backward.

I was afraid of losing my reason. My vision was blurring, and I felt like I was about to faint. The fear of what my body, my hot desire, my filthy instincts might do to Hae-ah if I lost consciousness was terrifying.

“Tae-rim-ssi, are you okay?”

Groaning, Hae-ah got out of bed. The hand holding his round belly looked very delicate and weak. As Hae-ah tried to approach me, dragging his heavy body, I growled lowly at him.

“Don’t come.”

Then, his pure white feet stopped abruptly.

Gritting my teeth, I pointed to the bedroom door.

“Get out.”

With wide eyes, Hae-ah stared at me silently. Even in this situation, I worried that my voice might sound too cold. Crawling across the floor to open the safe in the bedroom nightstand, searching for the stimulant hidden inside, I was worried about Hae-ah.

So, I said breathlessly, “Please, please. Hae-ah. Get out of this house. Get out and… don’t come back. No, come back. Everything will be okay by tomorrow morning. It’ll be okay…”

“Tae-rim-ssi.”

“Please, Hae-ah.”

Then, I tore open the lid of the white pill bottle with my teeth, poured several stimulants into my mouth, and chewed. Hae-ah, seemingly bewildered by the presence of the unfamiliar drug, peered at me. He tried to approach me, offering to give me a suppressant injection instead, but then he looked down at his belly and hesitated.

My kind Omega, my Hae-ah, was smart. He couldn’t have forgotten that this was a time when knotting, let alone sexual intercourse, was not allowed. He would occasionally play with my hands and let me suck his cock, but he would always wave his hands, saying that sex was absolutely forbidden because he had to listen to the Doctor. He would sing lullabies to the baby in his belly, saying, ‘Our Woo-joo, our Woo-joo,’ and whisper love, saying he wanted to meet him soon in good health.

As if having decided what was more important right now, Hae-ah slowly backed away. He walked out of the bedroom, and even his shadow disappeared.

Left alone in the room where he had disappeared, I felt relieved. With trembling hands, I filled a syringe with the suppressant, stuck the needle into my forearm, and pressed the plunger while gritting my teeth and screaming. The instinctive rejection was even worse today. I spent a long time groaning with my head buried in the floor.

Dragging my shivering body, I tried to get up. But my legs wouldn’t move as I wanted them to.

Hot tears, sweat, and saliva soaked my entire face.

The rut that had been forcibly postponed was that much more severe.

Still, it was fortunate that the stimulant was working. Even though I felt the crisis that the fuse was about to blow, I didn’t lose my reason. Even when my vision turned dark and my breath caught in my throat, I regained my senses after enduring it for a few seconds.

Getting up, I rushed into Hae-ah’s dressing room. Then, I knelt down and collapsed on the clothes Hae-ah had taken off. I buried my whole body in Hae-ah’s coat, T-shirt, jeans, jacket, underwear, and long maternity dress.

“Huff…, huff….”

My Omega, my Hae-ah, I inhaled, chasing after the scent of his pheromones. But the satisfaction was short, and the pain was immense.

I wish someone would kill me.

That thought came to me involuntarily. I wish someone would just shoot me in the head, stab me in the heart, kill me.

I wish Hae-ah would hug me….

“Hae-ah.”

I gathered the clothes and hugged them to my chest. Burying my head in the pile of fabric and panting, I coughed like someone who was short of oxygen.

It’s painful.

The rut, which I faced raw without losing my reason, was dozens of times more painful. It felt like needles were stuck in every pore of my body. The pheromones escaping from my body felt violent. In moments when I felt even the sensations I didn’t need to feel, even breathing hurt.

“Kang Hae-ah.”

I tried to get up. I tried to chase after Hae-ah, even belatedly. If I told him not to leave, if I begged him to stay by my side, Hae-ah would run to me. And he would spread his legs. He would accept me. He would forgive me no matter what I did.

Because that’s Hae-ah. My Omega, my husband, my Hae-ah….

With a loud thud, I collapsed to the side. Even though it felt like all the strength in my body was draining away and I was about to faint, my mind was still awake. The damn stimulant was working well. Gritting my teeth, I hit the floor with my fist. I slapped my cheek with my palm.

A little. Just a little more.

I just had to wait a little longer. If I just wallowed in this mess a little longer, the effects of the suppressant would spread, and the rut would end. Until then, until sunrise… it would be over if it was painful enough to die.

But something strange happened. I had only wallowed in the pain of my lungs being torn apart for about ten minutes, and there was no way the sun had already risen, but the pain that had been tormenting me suddenly stopped.

The heat that felt like it was about to burn off my face, which was covered in sweat and tears, disappeared completely.

My limbs, which felt like every joint had been twisted and bent, felt comfortable.

Wind entered my lungs, which had shrunk like a dry rag because I couldn’t breathe.

I raised my head and opened my eyes. But my vision was still dark. It wasn’t because I had lost consciousness and fainted. It was because my face was covered by a low chest.

Hae-ah was hugging me.

Hugging my head, stroking my thick waist, patting my back soaked with sweat… Hae-ah was hugging me.

“It’s okay, Tae-rim-ssi. I’m here.”

Why did you come back? I tried to ask that. But my lips wouldn’t listen to me. Only my consciousness was clearly awake, but my body was possessed by the rut and doing whatever it wanted.

A low cry burst out from my slightly open teeth.

“Kang Hae-ah.”

I tried to push Hae-ah away with both hands. I wanted to easily escape from his fragile embrace and keep him far away again.

But my arms moved in the opposite direction. I wrapped my arms tightly around Hae-ah’s waist. My head burrowed into the center of his chest as if craving affection, and burrowed deeper and deeper. I was afraid that his chest would be punctured.

“Yes, Tae-rim-ssi.”

I was so worried about him that I felt like I was going crazy, so I cried and cried, but Hae-ah was calm. In such a calm and gentle manner, he hugged me, literally with his whole body. He hugged my head with both arms and wrapped his legs around my waist.

That kindness scared me. I could feel the blood in my whole body bubbling and boiling with desire. I was terrified that I would tear Hae-ah’s clothes to shreds, injure his ass in the same way, shove my genitals into his womb, which contained the baby house, and knot like a beast, so I felt like I was suffocating.

“It’s okay, I’m here.”

Please, run away!

I shouted inside my mind, but only painful groans leaked out of my mouth. Crying streams of tears, I burrowed into Hae-ah’s arms. I hugged Hae-ah tightly, rubbing my lips, nose, and ears haphazardly against Hae-ah’s cheeks.

Damn it.

Hae-ah, unaware that my reason was still awake, acted cruelly. Seeing me as a pure, crazy Alpha, believing that I wouldn’t remember the perilous embrace he was engaging in.

“I love you, Tae-rim-ssi.”

He said words he shouldn’t have said,

“It’s okay. I trust Tae-rim-ssi.”

He showed trust that shouldn’t have been shown.

Kang Hae-ah is crazy. He’s not just crazy, he’s insane. I was so sure of it. Saying he would give the whole world to ‘our Woo-joo.’ Finding something about the same size as the baby in his belly and playing with it on his upper belly every day. Saying he already loved that child so much. Then how could he do this? How could he not abandon me, who was crying and having seizures while chasing after his scent for just one day, and allow me to ruin you with my own hands?

“Don’t worry.”

Liar.

Such Kang Hae-ah was a terrible liar. Just by looking at his eyes, I knew. His brown eyes, which were wiping my cheeks as I sobbed like a beast and kissing me, were filled with a frighteningly great affection.

If I tore his cheeks off like this, if I ruined everything we had achieved so far, if I faced a hellish tomorrow, Kang Hae-ah would lie.

He would say it wasn’t my fault.

He would say that he was wrong, that he accidentally fell down the stairs, that it was just that….

“Huff, huff….”

Please abandon me.

Every time I opened my mouth to say that, I became more miserable.

Rubbing my rough body, with its stiff muscles, all over Hae-ah’s body, tearing off the shoulder seams of his pajamas and unbuttoning them. Burying my nose on Hae-ah’s skin, I inhaled and absorbed his body scent with all my might…. Such me was not Cheon Tae-rim. I was just a beast.

Unable to overcome the scent of pheromones flowing from my body, Hae-ah sweated and blushed. Even so, he acted surprisingly calmly.

In a calm manner, he took off his clothes. So that I could lick, bite, and taste his bare skin.

Then, he even took off my clothes. So that I could take out my genitals trapped in the hot underwear and rub them against his body even more beastly.

What on earth are you thinking?

After caressing me, who couldn’t believe this situation, for a long time, he grabbed my genitals with his right hand. He covered my trembling, drooling lips with his lips. Then, with his remaining hand, he patted my back, patting, patting.

Constantly stroking, kissing, and patting, he soothed my excitement.

“It’s okay, Tae-rim-ssi. It’s okay….”

Panting, I moved my waist. To cope with my increasingly rough movements, Hae-ah made a sound of surprise, ‘Ah,’ and used both hands. He gathered both hands and grabbed my cock, then attached his genitals to my genitals in his grip….

‘…….’

Then, a strange sensation soared up my spine. The moment my sexual sensitivity swelled exactly twice as much, my mind turned bright red.

Sexual resonance during pregnancy.

That word suddenly came to mind. The physical and mental, higher level of belonging that a pregnant Omega showed to their partner Alpha….

Why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? That if an Omega could do it, an Alpha could do it too. That just as Hae-ah was my Omega, I was his Alpha. That just as Hae-ah felt along with me, I could feel along with Hae-ah….

It seemed that the separated reason and instinct stuck together for a very brief moment. Just as much as the happiness I had enjoyed while reminding myself that Hae-ah was my, only my, Omega, the satisfaction of realizing that I was his, only his, Alpha at this moment was immense.

It was so good and satisfying that I forgot my worries for a while.

“Huff, huff….”

Panting like a beast, I rubbed my cock inside Hae-ah’s palm. Unable to withstand my movements and strength, Hae-ah’s body kept being pushed back, back. In the end, he was cornered under the clothes rack, in the deepest corner of the dressing room.

With his legs spread and his belly protruding, Hae-ah sat down, and I kept rubbing my genitals against his two hands. Every time his genitals, held together, were pressed against the hard pillar of my flesh, and my bright red glans tapped his navel, Hae-ah groaned.

“Ah….”

He frowned as his hands gradually became numb and the pressure became too much. Panting heavily, he tried to release his hands, but my two hands covered Hae-ah’s hands. Then, I started knotting without penetration.

While swelling my genitals on his belly instead of inside his belly, I called out Hae-ah’s name over and over like a possessed person. Even so, I was not me. I was not me, forcing Hae-ah to grab my greatly swollen genitals with his hands and thrusting my waist up and down haphazardly.

None of that was my intention.

I couldn’t control my actions.

“Huff, huff….”

“Ah, ah, ah…!”

Hae-ah trembled and shook his head because his genitals, forcibly gripped in both hands, hurt. I also convulsed slightly, following him.

It felt like all our nerves were connected. I could feel the affection filling his chest. The warm feelings towards me, the firm belief, the pitiful heart, excited me.

Panting, I grabbed the back of Hae-ah’s head. The action, done not by reason but by instinct, was unbelievably rough. When I grabbed his hair so hard that his scalp tingled, Hae-ah groaned and lowered his head. While hitting his lips and cheeks with my glans, I thrust into the air.

And I ejaculated.

“…Ah….”

While I opened my mouth wide and ejaculated wildly, intoxicated by the orgasm, Hae-ah also ejaculated with glazed eyes. Without even knowing that his eyelids, nose, and even his mouth were covered in semen, he was just busy panting like me.

It would have been nice if it had stopped there.

My body, intoxicated with lust, didn’t know how to stop. Panting roughly, I grabbed Hae-ah’s head with both hands. As I picked it up as if handling an object, his neck, dirtied with white and fishy liquid, stretched out long. Looking straight at that pretty face, flushed and dazed, I took a deep breath. As it was, I shot water on Hae-ah’s bulging belly.

“…….”

Panting hotly, Hae-ah quietly took the water I had shed. His whole body was covered in my pheromones, so dirty that even his existence, let alone the existence of the Alpha in his belly, was vaguely erased. His blinking eyes were dull, as if he didn’t quite understand the situation.

I put his ear in my mouth. Licking my tongue against his ear canal, I licked, bit, and sucked his auricle and earlobe. Each time, Hae-ah only twitched his shoulders. Intoxicated by the strong body scent and exhausted by the arduous act, he couldn’t resist or react much.

And, that was all.

In the end, I didn’t hit Hae-ah. I didn’t forcibly penetrate Hae-ah. I didn’t harm Hae-ah’s baby at all.

However, I grabbed Hae-ah’s ankle, which was covered in my body scent, and dragged him to the center of the dressing room. Exhausted, Hae-ah was easily dragged along, sticking to the floor. And he was laid down like a prop in the center of the pile of clothes I had created in a frenzy a little while ago.

I buried my head in his arms. I put his chest in my mouth and curled my whale-like body like a shrimp.

That was really all.

It was two hours later, at five forty-five in the morning, that my body began to listen to me.

As soon as I realized that my fingertips and toes were being bent as I wanted, I jumped up from my seat. Hae-ah’s arm, which had been hugging my head, was pulled up along with me and then fell onto the pile of clothes with a thud.

In the middle of the chaos, Hae-ah was dozing off. His face, looking at me who had finally regained the body possessed by instinct and had escaped from the circle made of clothes, was dazed. His cheeks, neck, shoulders, chest, and belly were all dirty with bodily fluids.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

Gritting my teeth, I immediately asked this first.

“Why the hell. Why?”

When I asked a second time, emphasizing it, Hae-ah hesitated. A light quickly flashed in his brown eyes, and the sleepy look disappeared in an instant.

It was a very different reaction from when he was dealing with a crazy person in heat just two hours ago. Like a child caught doing something bad, his expression quickly turned sullen.

Even so, Hae-ah tried to lie to me.

“What… are you talking about?”

At his innocent voice, I closed my eyes tightly. What was left in the place where the rut had passed was a fever caused by worry.

“Don’t try to deceive me.”

“…Tae-rim…ssi. I don’t know what you’re talking about, I….”

“Kang Hae-ah!”

That shout was purely impulsive. I wanted to excuse it as being due to the rut, but I couldn’t. The voice of reason, trapped in my throat all night, suddenly burst out, and I was clearly the guilty one who couldn’t control my voice.

Even I was surprised by the loud noise I made. Hae-ah, needless to say, was even more so. He let out a bizarrely rough gasp, “Huh, huh,” then staggered to his feet.

“Tae-rim-ssi.”

He called out to me like that, then,

“I’m….”

And then he backed away.

Hae-ah immediately ran away. With that body that had embraced my head, which was out of its mind due to the rut, Hae-ah staggered and fled.

I snapped out of it a beat late and chased after him.

As soon as I rushed out of the dressing room with thumping footsteps, Hae-ah glanced back at me once. Then, giving up on escaping out of the room, he quickly hid in the bathroom.

Bang.

In an instant, a sound of the door closing, followed by a ‘click’ of the lock, was heard.

“Hae-ah!”

I hurriedly ran to the door and grabbed the doorknob. The silver doorknob only shook slightly and wouldn’t open easily.

“…Hae-ah.”

Trying to lower my voice, I said,

“Open this, Hae-ah.”

My heart was pounding as if it would burst.

‘Kang Hae-ah!’

His name that I shouted seemed to echo back to me belatedly.

The emotion Hae-ah had shown at the moment I angrily shouted was deeply etched in my mind like soot. It was fear. A pure fear that he had never shown even to me, who was drooling and panting, having lost my reason due to the rut.

“Open this… Just open this, okay?”

I pleaded, knocking on the bathroom door with my palm.

“I’m really sorry. Hae-ah. Open this door. Please.”

But there was no reply. I realized for the first time that if regret is too great, your vision darkens.

‘I shouldn’t have shouted like that….’

Knowing full well what kind of existence I am to Hae-ah. Knowing how much Hae-ah loves and respects me, often surprised and realizing it anew every day….

It was because I realized for the first time that Hae-ah was someone who could even endanger the child in his womb for my sake. It was because I hated Hae-ah for trying to appease me even by doing that. It was because I wanted him to cherish himself, even if only a little, just a little. I was worried about Hae-ah trusting me so easily and throwing himself at me, so I was so angry at that moment.

“Hae-ah….”

Grasping and shaking the doorknob meaninglessly, I took a deep breath. And said.

“…Hae-ah. I’m going in.”

I applied force and broke the doorknob as it was. The silver doorknob fell roughly from the door with a cracking sound. Throwing the pulled-out doorknob behind me, I slowly pushed open the bathroom door.

Hae-ah was seen sitting with his back against the outer wall of the bathtub.

It wasn’t that he didn’t open the bathroom door. It was that he couldn’t open it….

His two knees were collapsed to the side while bent, and his two hands were dropped haphazardly. His complexion was pale without a trace of blood. He didn’t even have the strength to move a finger.

I’m sorry.

Hae-ah opened his mouth first, facing me who was about to say that.

“I…. I threw up.”

Only then did my eyes go to the liquid on the bathroom floor. He had thrown up a few sips of juice and stomach acid that he had drunk for dessert, but the amount was small and the smell was bitter.

It was only a month ago that he was happy that his morning sickness seemed to have completely disappeared. It was the first time Hae-ah had vomited since then. It wasn’t because of morning sickness, indigestion, or the whims of his body.

It was because of me.

“I’m sorry. I won’t shout in front of you again.”

As I took a step closer, Hae-ah flinched his shoulders. My whole body turned as cold as ice at that small reaction. My fingertips and toes were frozen and I couldn’t move any further.

I was vaguely afraid. That Hae-ah would reject me. That he wouldn’t forget the sight of me getting angry and shouting at him. That our castle, built with all our heart and love on the barren sand in his heart, would collapse.

My heartbeat sounded strangely loud. It was as if someone was hitting me inside my chest, and my ribs were all ringing.

Leaving me frozen in embarrassment and worry, Hae-ah covered his naked body while raising his knees.

“I, p….”

His lips opened, then closed again with a sob. After catching his breath with a ‘huh, huh’ sound, Hae-ah said in a very small voice.

“…I also peed….”

I felt like my heart was tearing apart at the confession he gave with reddened eyes due to shame.

The fact that I, Cheon Tae-rim, was the one who ended up surprising, scaring, hurting, and making Hae-ah cry was shocking. I had been sticking needles into my arms until my arms were bruised to avoid doing that, but it was worry, not the rut, that drove me crazy.

It was clear reason, not a rutting instinct, that scared Hae-ah.

“I’m sorry…. I’m really sorry. Hae-ah. I’m really sorry….”

As I said that, I slowly lowered my posture. As I knelt down on the bathroom floor, Hae-ah stared at me with trembling eyes. Looking into his teary brown eyes, I crawled on the bathroom floor towards Hae-ah.

It was the moment when I finally reached the feet of the frightened Omega and reached out my arms to hug him.

Hae-ah pushed me away.

That gesture, weak and purely desperate, was a traffic accident to me. I thought Hae-ah was finally rejecting me. I was so shocked that it was hard to come to my senses.

But Kang Hae-ah was Kang Hae-ah.

“Go away.”

With an awkward posture that couldn’t push my shoulders, which were frozen in surprise, any further away, nor pull them closer, he shook his head and said.

“It’s dirty…, I’m dirty….”

Unable to bear it any longer, I hugged Hae-ah tightly. My eyes closed involuntarily in relief. Two drops of tears, which I didn’t even know were welling up, fell, drip, drip.

“I’m sorry for getting angry….”

Hae-ah struggled for a while, trying not to get soiled by me, who had splattered his face with semen and his stomach with urine like a beast. He tried to loosen the arms pressed tightly against my chest, and shook the shoulders tightly trapped in my arms.

For a long time, I hugged him and he tried to get away from me.

I was always the one who won in a fight of strength.

Hae-ah seemed to be exhausted after a brief struggle and stopped moving. Then he didn’t say anything. Only the sound of his lips moving out of sync could be heard from his lips against my ear.

His silence was repentance to me. It was regret, and it was pain. Because I could feel Hae-ah’s shoulder blades and lower back, which were thinner than before, under my thick arms, and because the skin covering the slender frame was all soft and tender…. How big must my angry appearance have felt to Hae-ah like this?

Thinking about that tore my heart apart. I was so sorry that I couldn’t breathe. If I could, I wanted to tear out that page of me from Hae-ah’s memory.

“Anything is fine, just say something.”

I pressed my right cheek tightly against Hae-ah’s left cheek and asked like that.

“Hit me instead. Get angry at me for why I did that. Even swear at me.”

Then Hae-ah said to me.

“I love you.”

That confession was so close, so overwhelming in size, that I ended up sobbing.

“I love you, Hae-ah….”

We spent that time, naked, soiled with sweat, tears, semen, and urine.

It was a reconciliation that was possible because it was us.

After the sweat had cooled and the tears had dried, I was the first to come to my senses. I gently picked up Hae-ah, who was exhausted and stretched out with his chin on my shoulder. And sat him in the bathtub. I adjusted the water temperature of the shower to exactly match his body temperature, and first rinsed my hands clean.

Taking time and effort, very slowly, I washed Hae-ah’s face, receiving a little water in my palms. After wiping away the tear marks left on his cheeks and the traces of semen dried on his lower jaw, a faint vitality finally returned to his beautiful face.

Next, it was time to wash his body. I wanted to fill the bathtub with warm water and give him a proper bath. Then Hae-ah’s fatigue and startled heart would melt away…. I was sorry that I couldn’t do that because he was pregnant and had to be careful about bathing.

Still, I was able to create foam so that the shower ball was completely covered. I rubbed Hae-ah’s stomach first, as gently as possible, taking out as much strength as possible. Only then did Hae-ah lean his tired head on me.

“……”

To make him even more comfortable, I put half of my upper body into the bathtub. I hugged Hae-ah’s upper body and washed him with all my heart.

Even after I carefully soaped him with all my effort and rinsed him cleanly with warm water, my pheromone scent vibrated from Hae-ah. Fortunately, Hae-ah felt a sense of stability from that scent. By the time I had completely dried him with three or four shower towels, his eyes were dim.

Only after drying even the moisture from his soft hair did I move Hae-ah to the marital bed. I laid him straight in the inner seat, and lay down with him, embracing his shoulders and back.

I couldn’t easily say good night, so I remained silent. While ruminating on the day that had passed blankly, I could only think that maybe it wasn’t a dream. All the elements that made up today were that shocking and stimulating.

Hae-ah comforted me once again.

“Stop being sorry.”

Kang Hae-ah always surprises me. Others mistakenly thought that I was the pillar supporting him, but the reality was different. As I emphasized to a certain Omega CEO, I am the one who is more fortunate to have met him.

In fact, Kang Hae-ah was the anchor holding me.

“Tae-rim-ssi… I knew you wouldn’t hurt me at all. Because Cheon Tae-rim loves me.”

The sight of me rummaging through the dressing room in search of his scent, calling his name, looking for him, and longing for him seemed like a beast to me.

But Hae-ah said that even that was love. Slowly turning his body to face me, wetting his already sufficiently moist eyes even more, he met my gaze directly.

And said.

“Tae-rim-ssi, trust yourself a little.”

“……”

“When that doesn’t work… trust me.”

Slowly reaching out, I cupped Hae-ah’s right cheek.

“I trust you.”

While gently wiping the corners of his eyes, which were sure to be swollen when he woke up, I repeated his words.

“I trust you, Hae-ah….”

Then the silence became affectionate.

As if satisfied with my answer, Hae-ah fell into a long-delayed sleep. I spent time looking at Hae-ah’s naked body. I caressed, stroked, and checked every single part of his slender body, from his cheeks and lips to his fingertips and toes, with my eyes and hands.

Hae-ah was not hurt at all. Even after spending the rut with me, he was fine.

He was just docile, comfortable, and warm.

After carefully covering him with a blanket up to his white neck, I put my hand on the particularly high mound.

“Just be born safely.”

While patting the round belly placed under a layer of blanket, I sent telepathy into it, making a request that wasn’t a request.

“Other than that, do whatever you want. You can have the whole universe, Woo-joo. You can do that…. I won’t ask you for anything.”

So just stay healthy.

Keep making my Hae-ah happy.

The morning filled with prayer was bright.

23 weeks.

As the speed at which his belly grew increased, Hae-ah became a patient. He lived with pregnancy anemia, dizziness, and cold hands and feet. Sometimes he was short of breath even while sitting, and the frequency of going to the bathroom increased.

Every morning and evening, I steamed Hae-ah’s belly and hands. I was glad that even if I couldn’t take the pain for him, I could be his butler. I read books to Hae-ah, who was living in bed due to dizziness, so that he wouldn’t be bored, and I organized the doodles I had scribbled on loose sheets of paper.

After completing the series of fairy tale paintings that he had been working on for five months, Hae-ah only painted portraits. The people realistically depicted, as if he had ever been an abstract painter, were all me. A notebook was filled with my face from a very young age through adolescence to my current face.

In some paintings, another me was drawn next to me. It was strange to see the adult me and the childhood me drawn side by side.

“Why are there two of me?”

To the question I asked, wondering if one wasn’t enough, Hae-ah made a sulky expression. He widened his eyes and pouted his lips, then pointed at me in the picture with his index finger and said.

“This is Tae-rim-ssi.”

His finger slipped and the conte smeared sideways.

“This is our Woo-joo.”

So, ‘me as an adult’ was me, and ‘me as a child’ was Woo-joo. It took me ten seconds to understand that.

Suddenly narrowing my eyes, I slammed the notebook shut. And I admired it again, flipping through it from the first page, one by one. The doodles filling the notebook were all of my face. The loose sheets that fell onto the sheet while fluttering were the same.

Picking up a piece of paper with a picture of me from exactly around the age of ten, I was dumbfounded.

“You… weren’t you drawing me?”

“Yes.”

Hae-ah’s answer was light.

“I was drawing our Woo-joo?”

I felt a surge of weak jealousy at that. I thought he was drawing my face even though he was with me all day, that he really liked me a lot, but it turned out he was drawing someone else.

Next, I was worried about Hae-ah. I wondered what he would do if our child, who was born, looked different when he wanted such a specific appearance.

Logically, wasn’t that more likely?

“He might look like you instead of me.”

To the sound I made with a ‘huh?’ attached,

“No.”

Hae-ah answered immediately.

“Our Woo-joo looks exactly like Tae-rim-ssi.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can know. I just know.”

Then he fidgets. I quickly supported Hae-ah’s back with a U-shaped cushion. Then Hae-ah tilted his head back and let out a very long sigh, ‘Hoo….’ His back was pressed against his round belly, and it seemed that not only his waist but also his tailbone hurt.

“Still, don’t be too sure.”

While straightening his crumpled legs, I said.

“A baby’s face can be like this or like that.”

While combing his brown hair with my fingers as a comb, I deliberately said lightly as if it was nothing.

In my heart, I was very worried. Our child will look exactly like Hae-ah and be as pretty as an Angel and as cute as a puppy, but what if he only draws children with thick eyebrows and handsome faces like me…

Sometimes, on days when the weather, condition, and appetite were good, Hae-ah would put his hands on his waist in front of the mirror and examine the contours of his body. He would talk to Woo-joo in his belly to himself, and he would look for snacks saying, ‘Woo-joo wants to eat it,’ and he would pick up a book and call me, saying, ‘Woo-joo wants to hear it.’

Cheon Woo-joo in his belly was slowly entering the stage of being able to feel the five senses. Hae-ah was ready to do anything for the child. He filled his day with songs, movies, and foods that were said to be good for prenatal care.

From Monday to Sunday, he lived as Cheon Woo-joo rather than Kang Hae-ah.

But unfortunately, Woo-joo didn’t appreciate Hae-ah’s efforts.

After a busy week, on the night of waiting for Monday again, I slowly took Hae-ah’s hand. That was my own way of asking if it was okay to touch your belly now. If Hae-ah held my hand and stayed still, it was a refusal he didn’t like, and if he pulled my hand and put it on his belly, it was an approval he liked.

Today, Hae-ah just held my hand and only looked at it.

It was the fourth rejection today.

The problem was with our cold Woo-joo. Hae-ah had been waiting with bated breath for the day he would feel the fetal movement, but he had never felt Woo-joo’s gesture.

Because of that, Hae-ah had a lot of worries and became unnecessarily discouraged. Despite the doctor’s opinion that there was no particular problem and that the fetus seemed to be particularly quiet, he blamed himself. He said it was all because of him, that Woo-joo was weak because his body was weak, that the cigarettes he had smoked until his mid-twenties were the problem, and that the wine he had enjoyed was the problem.

Honestly, I was more concerned about Hae-ah waiting for the fetal movement than the fetal movement of the baby in his belly.

Hae-ah was sulky because he hadn’t had a prenatal dream yet. Now that there was no fetal movement, it was a difficult time to endure for Hae-ah’s personality, who was delicate in mind and sensitive to stress, and easily became friends with anxiety.

I became somewhat depressed, thinking that he was in a bad mood today because he couldn’t feel the fetal movement. I held Hae-ah’s hand tightly and rolled my eyes, pretending not to care, but,

“Pfft.”

Hae-ah suddenly burst into laughter.

Following that, making a pleasant sound, ‘Ahahaha,’ he put my right hand on his belly.

“Why are you looking at me like that? I’m Tae-rim-ssi’s.”

I was only worried that Hae-ah might get hurt, but it seemed he misunderstood my glances. He said I could touch him as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted, and even pulled my left hand to place it on his stomach.

So I pretended, pretended that I just wanted to touch his stomach.

“After Woo-joo is born, shall we go on a trip?”

Kang Hae-ah whispered, lightly pressing his soft lips to my cheek. I liked the sensation of his lips, so I returned one kiss fivefold.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Then Hae-ah smiled, wrinkling his forehead.

“Looking at you, Tae-rim-ssi, I wonder if you’re really the company president. You used to be so busy, but these days you often take half-days off. It’s amazing that AOM is still running.”

AOM wasn’t just running. It was running very well, at super speed.

“How can the company grow so well when the president is slacking off like this?”

His murmuring voice made me feel a pang of guilt. I had been so focused on Hae-ah that company matters had long been neglected. It was hard to pinpoint it to the pregnancy. From the moment everything in my world began to exist for Hae-ah, business and success became less important to me.

Hae-ah was right. AOM was running well even without my attention. I could just sign documents roughly, attend meetings adequately, and respond appropriately to greetings, and it would still work.

The development team leader, Kim Min-soo, said I was like a ‘Sims character with well-distributed stats.’ I had never played the Sims game, but I could roughly understand what he meant.

“A trip. Where do you want to go?”

I asked, leaving a sixth kiss on his fair cheek, and Hae-ah hummed. I was worried he would point out my change of subject, but only for a moment.

“I want to see the sea.”

“The sea? Okay, let’s do that. Let’s go see the sea.”

“Taking a plane is fine, taking a boat is fine, taking a car is fine… Anything is fine as long as I go with Tae-rim-ssi.”

As he said that, the face he made while crinkling his eyes looked a little lonely and very dejected.

These days, Hae-ah was struggling even with long car rides. He got carsick more easily than before and had to go to the bathroom frequently, so he rarely went out for more than three hours.

“The sea…”

I thought for a few seconds. Then I got up and lifted Hae-ah up like a princess.

His arms wrapped around my neck familiarly. He was so cute for not even asking where we were going, since I carried him around as I pleased so often. He just accepted it, and his body, completely entrusting himself to me, was warm.

It was definitely the weight of two people, but Hae-ah was so light.

The place we headed to was the guest bedroom at the end of the second-floor hallway. It was the room Kang Hae-ah, who used to be accustomed to working alone all night, would enter in the late hours of the morning so as not to wake me. It was a small, narrow, dark rectangular space. I sat today’s Hae-ah on the very bed that used to hide him as he slept curled up like a shrimp.

‘If I had known this would happen… I should have gladly accepted when Hae-ah offered to make a theater room.’

I set the room’s heating to the warmest setting and unfolded the beam projector screen that was rolled up like a decoration. I brought the sound bar from the first-floor studio and placed it on both sides of the room, and even brought a silent fan from the storage room, plugging in the power cords here and there.

Hae-ah’s eyes were wide as he watched me busily preparing things.

The preparation was complete when I brought a laptop from the study. Finally, I opened the door wide and called Do-jin.

“Cheon Do-jin! Come here.”

Do-jin, who came running in wagging his tail, immediately went to Hae-ah’s side and sat down with his butt touching him.

Only after adjusting the angle so that the breeze from the fan set to a gentle setting would go over Hae-ah’s head did I sit down next to him. And I pressed the space bar on the laptop.

From all sides of the small theater that had been hastily created,

Swish…

The sound of waves, the sound of wind, the sound of birds rang out.

The square space was all blue because of the sea on the screen. Hae-ah quietly stared at the horizon created by the beam projector. The weak breeze from the fan blew Hae-ah’s bangs back.

I put my arm around his thin shoulders and struck a pose, and his small body fit perfectly into my arms. The smile he made as he slowly blinked his eyes was pretty. It was a face I saw every day, but it was still heart-flutteringly pretty.

If I ever have a heart attack, it’s all because of Hae-ah. It was amazing how a person could always be prettier today than yesterday.

Do-jin lay down next to him and snorted. It was funny to see the dog squinting at the screen as if he understood the whole situation and was enjoying the video.

It felt like we were on a warm spring beach.

Cheon Woo-joo was definitely a gift to us.

Hae-ah fell asleep first, intoxicated by the languid atmosphere, and just as my mind was becoming comfortable with the sound of Do-jin’s and his soft breathing,

“……”

I suddenly opened my eyes wide. A light flashed in my head as if I had received some kind of revelation. Without even thinking, I reached out and stroked Hae-ah’s stomach.

And, thud.

Thud, thud…

A faint fetal movement touched my palm.

It was a signal sent by a very small and very fragile being showing off its vitality.

“Hae-ah.”

I took Hae-ah’s hand, who was asleep, and quickly placed it on his stomach. My body kept shaking because I was laughing.

“Hae-ah. Wake up. Quickly.”

As I whispered in a small voice, Hae-ah slowly lifted his eyelids, saying, “Mmm.”

Smiling so wide that my cheeks were pulling, I moved his palm and pressed it close to the spot where the faint knock was ringing.

Soon Hae-ah’s eyes widened in surprise. He opened his mouth wide, and the smile he made, showing all his lower teeth, was bright. His eyes sparkled, moved by the faint movements and kicks of the baby in his belly.

I now know that the color of tears of joy is different from that of tears of sorrow. Hae-ah sobbed with joy. He leaned his forehead against my shoulder, stroked the back of my hand that was on his stomach, and the sound of his laughter, “Haha…” as he felt the fetal movement again, was moist.

Soon Hae-ah grabbed Do-jin’s front paw and put it on his stomach. Because of that, I ended up laughing loudly, very foolishly, until tears streamed down my face.

33 weeks.

After 29 weeks, Hae-ah showed his face at the writers’ gathering. It was an outing that lasted more than three hours, and of course, I accompanied him. If he got tired and developed a fever or mild fever, he wouldn’t be able to hide his body scent. It was a time when he shouldn’t even take aspirin, let alone Omega-specific suppressants.

So it was my duty to follow Hae-ah around with my eyes wide open.

Unlike me, who was full of worry, Hae-ah was happy about today’s outing. The gathering had rented out an entire Western-style restaurant with a quiet atmosphere, and they had even obtained consent from the restaurant to bring a dog.

“I felt bad for Do-jin because I couldn’t take him for walks, but this is really great.”

“Well, he goes out for walks six times a day…”

“Still, Do-jin likes outings with me the most, right?”

Today, Hae-ah wore a loose-fitting ivory sweatshirt with a burnt sienna cardigan. Even the material of the eco bag he slung over his shoulder was soft.

“…Are you going out like that?”

“Yes. Why? Does it not suit me?”

“No. It’s too cute.”

I didn’t know because he was always wearing indoor clothes and living only at home, but when he dressed up, Hae-ah looked ten times cuter and younger.

Because he couldn’t go to the hair salon due to his reclusive life, his hair had grown quite long and slightly covered the back of his neck. I had thought that a short hairstyle made Hae-ah look younger, but it seemed I was mistaken. With his hair slightly disheveled, he looked almost like a college student. No, you could even mistake him for a high school student.

As expected, the acquaintances at the gathering place were shocked by Hae-ah’s cuteness. They were full of praise, saying he looked too cute and somehow younger.

Hae-ah sat me next to him and had light conversations with his acquaintances. He ate well-done fish instead of rare steak, and drank warm water and vitamins instead of leaf tea. In between meals, he would take out chicken breast snacks that he had prepared in advance and give them to Do-jin.

It was a gathering of renowned master writers, professors, and critics. Im Geon, who was like a thorn in my side, was not visible. So I was in a good mood.

It was a little strange to see the people who would normally discuss great theories or difficult aesthetics curious about Hae-ah’s due date and the baby’s gender.

Well, Woo-joo was already destined to live as a Dominant Alpha with a 99% probability from before birth. As the child of AOM’s president, Cheon Tae-rim, and writer Kang Hae-ah, who broke a new record at last year’s art auction, it was only natural that there would be a flood of curiosity.

After talking about Woo-joo for a long time, the topic shifted to works of art.

“I heard that writer Kang has already finished working on a new series?”

Hae-ah had been living at home for nearly eight months. I had canceled all the activities he had previously contracted and paid the penalties, and all other appointments were managed by Hwang Ok-hye and Driver Oh without exception. So there was no Kang Hae-ah’s schedule that I didn’t know about.

Therefore, Hae-ah had as little exposure as a fish in the deep sea.

But somehow, his acquaintances already knew about his world of art. They would ask, with sparkling eyes, what the exhibition schedule was, whether they could see the paintings first, whether he would participate in next year’s Hong Kong auction, and which gallery he had decided on.

I was about to cut them off, saying that it was a fairy tale drawn for our Woo-joo and not a painting for sale, but Hae-ah quickly spoke in a bright voice before I could.

“Well, I haven’t come up with a title yet. If I do an exhibition, I’ll do it in Paris first.”

As he said that, Hae-ah chattered about very specific plans. He said he was planning to hang the new series of works in an open gallery with a huge window in the ceiling. He said he was also planning a participatory exhibition so that children who came as visitors could participate in the large space.

My eyes widened at the sound of something I was hearing for the first time.

“You never said anything like that.”

When I interjected, the voices that had been going back and forth stopped in an instant. Hae-ah looked straight at me and slowly blinked his pretty eyes. And he said.

“Then what did you think my paintings were?”

It wasn’t a criticism or a sneer. It was a voice asking out of pure curiosity.

Knowing Hae-ah like that, I shrugged and said.

“I thought they were doodles you were scribbling because you were bored at home.”

My honest answer silenced everyone. You could almost hear the sound of ants walking by.

“Oh,” Hae-ah said, pursing his lips and exclaiming. Then he poked my side with his elbow and said.

“Tae-rim-ssi is exactly right. It’s exactly that concept. I hope my paintings look like that to children too.”

I could see the hair sticking out from Hae-ah’s ear, so I pressed it down with my hand and brushed it back. As I did, I muttered.

“Does that mean you have to deliberately not draw well?”

“Yes.”

“The art world is difficult.”

Then Hae-ah laughed like a child.

At the same time, the strangely frozen atmosphere was resolved. The acquaintances who had been watching us glanced at us and let out fake laughter, saying, “Ahahaha…”

“Oh my… I was surprised because I thought you two were fighting.”

At those words, Hae-ah and I tilted our heads to the side at the same time.

“Why?”

“Why?”

Our voices merged into one.

“……”

However, there was no easy answer.

I couldn’t understand which part of our conversation looked like a fight, so I lightly twisted my lips. The expression on Hae-ah’s face, which I glanced at, was exactly the same as mine.

After staring at our couple for a long time, the old professor said to himself.

“I’m really curious to see what kind of child will be born.”

The sound of Do-jin yawning at our feet, “Awoo…” erased the awkward silence.

On the way out of the restaurant after the gathering, my arms were full of gifts I had received for Hae-ah. When I put all the dozen or so paper bags down on the sidewalk, Hae-ah let out a sigh. Then he sat down on the box that was the heaviest and largest of them all.

“Are you tired?”

When I asked,

“Yes.”

He flicked the corner of the orange paper bag with his fingertip.

“Would it be nice if they asked me what I needed before buying me things? They only give things to people who have everything… If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have bought baby supplies in advance.”

I agreed with that. As of today, Hae-ah and I had received a total of five baby food grinders as gifts. Not to mention the other supplies. With the same items piling up in the warehouse six or seven at a time, I was wondering if I should reinstall the used goods trading app that I had deleted.

While I was constantly stroking and brushing back Hae-ah’s hair as he was tired and catching his breath, I pondered, “Hmm.” If I carried all the luggage and went to the car together, Hae-ah would probably get carsick because of the smell in the underground parking lot. His bloodless face already seemed to be feeling indigestion. He had just eaten delicious grilled fish, but if he threw up, he would be in a bad mood until dinner.

Do-jin’s attitude, sitting at Hae-ah’s feet, was steadfast. Thanks to that, I finished my long deliberation and made a decision.

“I’ll get the car in one minute. Just stay here for a moment.”

“Okay.”

“Hold your phone in your hand.”

“Okay.”

“Call me right away if anything happens.”

“Okay.”

I tied Do-jin’s leash tightly to the hand of Hae-ah, who was good at answering, and kissed his round forehead.

Then I quickly moved my steps. I ran down to the underground parking lot and immediately pulled out the car, and it took a little less than 50 seconds to park next to the sidewalk where Hae-ah was sitting.

But in that short time, a strange man was staying next to Hae-ah. Surrounded by paper bags full of luggage, he slowly approached the dazed Hae-ah with a hesitant attitude.

I quickly lowered the passenger seat window. Then I heard the man’s voice softly.

“Um… If you don’t mind, can I carry your luggage for you?”

“Yes?”

Hae-ah, who had been looking down at the floor tiles, finally turned his head and looked at the man. Even though he was wrapped in a long coat, his round, swollen belly could not be hidden. Looking at Hae-ah from any angle, he was a pregnant, very beautiful and cute, and lovely Omega who made your heart feel warm just by looking at him.

Next to such Hae-ah, the strange man cleared his throat and said.

“I thought you couldn’t move because the luggage was too heavy. I’ll help you.”

“……”

Without answering, Hae-ah just stared blankly at him. His expressionless face, tightly closed mouth, and high nose bridge made him look aloof and cold.

Do-jin, who was protecting the pregnant Hae-ah, had his tail and back hair standing on end. He lifted his black upper lip to reveal his well-brushed front teeth, standing his ground so that the stranger could not approach any further.

“……”

“……”

As Hae-ah’s silence grew longer, the man shifted his feet slightly in place, as if he was embarrassed.

“Um, that’s…”

‘Enough now.’

I couldn’t stand to watch the situation any longer, so I slammed open the driver’s seat door and got out of the car.

“Hae-ah.”

I opened the passenger seat door wide towards the sidewalk, and Hae-ah slowly got up from his seat, hugging his belly with both arms. Whether the strange man turned around and widened his eyes or not, Hae-ah was strangely uninterested in him. He walked towards me with quick steps and handed me the leash, then,

“You came really fast, didn’t you?”

He sat his heavy body in the passenger seat.

Click.

I gently closed the passenger seat door, then opened the back seat door. Smart Do-jin found his place and got into the car.

And I walked towards the strange man with heavy steps. He flinched and took a step back.

I stood face to face with him so close that shadows fell on his flustered face, and looked straight down at his face.

“……”

I silently spent about ten seconds like that.

Then I picked up all the paper bag handles left on the sidewalk with both hands. It was instantaneous to load them into the trunk of the car.

Thud.

Until I closed the trunk door with force, the man left on the street was motionless. Judging by the fact that he didn’t even budge, as if he had become a stone statue, he was a recessive Alpha. Instinctively, he was falling behind me, and his steps wouldn’t fall because he was overwhelmed by my momentum. It was clear that if I shouted loudly at him like this, he would run away with his tail between his legs.

There was no need to start an unnecessary fight with a recessive Alpha. Thanks to the reliable Do-jin, he didn’t even get close to Hae-ah, and he didn’t rudely spread his body scent. Besides, he looked quite young. Maybe he was about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Maybe he mistook Hae-ah for a college student of his age and struck up a conversation.

…He’s not a bad guy. Knowing that, I barely held back from cursing him, asking how dare he talk to anyone, whether he looked in the mirror before leaving the house, and how dare he try to seduce such an angelic and pretty Omega with his status.

As I got into the driver’s seat and started the car, I stared at Hae-ah. It seemed his shaggy hair was the problem after all.

‘He’s too cute. How could anyone not try to talk to him looking like that?’

I casually asked Hae-ah,

“Hae-ah, was that someone you knew just now?”

I was curious about his intentions, why he just stared at the strange Alpha without saying anything.

Hae-ah shook his head at my probing question.

“No.”

Then he tilted his head and said,

“I think he was a new kind of pickpocket.”

“……”

“He kept trying to take our luggage, so I was wondering what to do.”

“……”

What that man was trying to take was Kang Hae-ah’s phone number, and his attention…

I was baffled that he misunderstood the situation as a pickpocket. No… I was about to tell him the truth, that you’re so pretty that he was trying to flirt with you, why are you the only one who doesn’t know that, but I shut my mouth.

Maybe it’s better this way. Even if everyone in the world recognizes Hae-ah’s beauty and wags their tails trying to win him over, he’ll just think, ‘I think he’s a pickpocket,’ and haughtily scoff. His unintentional iron wall seems to help put me at ease.

“Seriously, Hae-ah, you’re driving me crazy…”

Hae-ah, not understanding my sigh as I readjusted my grip on the steering wheel, pounded my arm with his small fist.

“You always say you’re going crazy. Don’t say things like that.”

Then don’t be so cute all the time. If you’re going to be cute, don’t be so pretty. If you’re going to be pretty, don’t be so funny.

I swallowed all the things I wanted to say. Next to me, Hae-ah opened the passenger window wide.

“Ah, I feel a little better now. I felt like I was going to throw up earlier!”

His profile, smiling in the wind, sparkled.

34 weeks.

Im Geon was still a thorn in my side.

Even when he wasn’t in front of me, he bothered me like a stray weed stuck to the bottom of my foot.

The problem was the gift he sent. More precisely, the problem was that the gift was so perfect that Hae-ah loved it. That upset me greatly.

I hated to admit it, but Im Geon was quite perceptive and had good sense. No sooner had Hae-ah, tired of the duplicate gifts, pushed away the mountain of baby supplies, telling Hwang Ok-hye, ‘Just leave me the best ones from each,’ than he sent Hae-ah the most necessary gift that no one else had given yet.

It was a prenatal massage therapist exclusively for male Omegas.

Hae-ah:

I got a massage coupon from Teacher Im this morning.

I just contacted him and he said he can come to the house right away!

6:23 PM

As soon as I checked Hae-ah’s text, I left work. Do-jin, wearing new baby socks on his front paws, greeted me as I returned home at the speed of light.

But the massage therapist was one step ahead of me.

Hae-ah was already lying straight on the living room sofa, entrusting his calves to a strange Beta. He was wearing only light underwear underneath a pure white bathrobe, with special oil applied to his shoulders and limbs.

As I approached, making noise with my footsteps, he smiled like a happy cat and greeted me.

“You’re home? Tae-rim-ssi.”

As I put down my bag, I frowned. Even though I was upset and in a bad mood, I had to say hello.

“I’m home.”

That was the rule in our house.

The massage therapist’s touch, which I glared at and observed over his shoulder, was very professional. He expertly loosened Hae-ah’s calf muscles and carefully massaged his soles.

I didn’t know this before, but pregnant people shouldn’t just get any massage. That’s why even I hesitated to massage Hae-ah’s body as much as I wanted.

Hae-ah, feeling good from the expert’s touch, closed his eyes with a languid expression. He praised the massage therapist’s skills, saying, ‘It feels so good.’

If Hae-ah was happy, so was I.

I was really grateful to the professional massage therapist for relieving Hae-ah’s fatigue.

…Still, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed.

“……”

After finishing the foot massage, the massage therapist placed a warm towel on Hae-ah’s fair feet. Then he adjusted his posture and placed his hands on Hae-ah’s knees.

At the same time, Hae-ah suddenly lifted his head.

And said,

“You can go home now.”

The massage therapist tilted his head at the sudden words. Slowly stepping back and wiping his hands with a towel, he asked, puzzled.

“There’s still an hour left in the course… Are you sure you don’t want me to do more?”

“Yes.”

Hae-ah answered immediately, and the massage therapist hesitated. His back as he gathered his tools looked very awkward. To the man who couldn’t hide his worry that his skills were lacking,

“The massage was good.”

Hae-ah casually left a word of praise. He picked up the wallet that had been placed under the sofa table lamp and handed over a thick wad of bills as a tip.

Then he looked at me and smiled.

“I’ve already achieved my goal…”

Unable to understand his absurd story, the massage therapist retreated, bewildered. He bowed politely and left a business card, along with a courteous greeting to call him anytime.

Unlike the innocent Beta massage therapist, I clearly understood the hidden intention behind Hae-ah’s words and actions. So, as soon as he closed the front door and disappeared, I threw the business card in the trash.

Hae-ah laughed out loud.

“Tae-rim-ssi. Are you jealous?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still jealous because of me?”

“Yes.”

“Even though I’m lying here with my stomach so big and my legs swollen?”

“Yes. I’m jealous. Terribly.”

Hae-ah had allowed Im Geon’s gift only because he wanted to see my reaction. He deliberately called the massage therapist to match my work end time, sent a text with a detailed explanation, and settled down in the living room. All his words, actions, and choices were determined by me.

The annoyance that had surged up in me melted away. Hae-ah was frighteningly indifferent to any problem that wasn’t about me, ‘Cheon Tae-rim.’ He didn’t even care about Im Geon’s lingering feelings or heart. He didn’t even know how haughty and cold his attitude looked to others.

I found Hae-ah cute. Enough to go to the sofa right away, hug him, and kiss him.

As I embraced him with open arms, I naturally supported him. When I firmly supported his back with both hands, Hae-ah leaned on me with a sigh, as if relieved of a heavy burden.

Tap.

Hae-ah said, lightly bumping his forehead against my shoulder,

“Do you love me, Tae-rim-ssi?”

“I love you.”

I answered before the question was even finished.

“More than yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“More than before I was pregnant?”

“Yes.”

Then Hae-ah laughed. Heaving his chest slightly, twisting his dulled waist at my touch that was reaching inside his gown, stroking my thigh with one hand.

I liked that smile, so I spoke even faster.

“More than yesterday, more than before you were pregnant… The most ever. I love you the most today.”

I liked Hae-ah’s smile. As if he had never been hurt in his life, his smile was warm.

37 weeks.

“Tae-rim-ssi, Tae-rim-ssi.”

Hae-ah’s voice was very bright.

“I had a dream. I had a prenatal dream. In my dream, the Milky Way was flowing down like it was about to pour out, and riding on it was a golden… whale-like, horse-like thing, with a horn, a Unicorn… It came to me, gasp… It came to me, and I hugged it.”

“Hae-ah.”

I gripped Hae-ah’s hand tightly.

And pleaded.

“Stop talking.”

As if he couldn’t hear me, Hae-ah was rambling. With my dark figure reflected in his moist brown eyes, he began to recite the words he had just said from the beginning.

“I had our Woo-joo’s prenatal dream… I finally did.”

The hospital at dawn was noisy. It was quite different from the road I had driven down, wiping away tears. The lights were bright, the medical staff was busy, and the smell of medicine was so strong it seemed to be cleaning my lungs.

The only thing that remained unchanged was Hae-ah. Even as he screamed in pain in the passenger seat, even as he lay on the surgical bed with an IV in his arm, Hae-ah talked about the beautiful Milky Way and Unicorn that had come to him in his dream tonight. He was happy that he had a prenatal dream. He smiled brightly, very brightly, while shedding tears.

“Guardian, please keep talking to the patient.”

Meanwhile, the doctors and nurses prepared for the surgery. They got my signature on the consent form, checked the values by connecting medical devices to Hae-ah’s arms and legs, and checked how many minutes were left until they moved to the operating room.

It was still 21 days before the scheduled C-section date.

I was scared. I was scared that Hae-ah, who woke up from sleep as usual, was bleeding blood he had never shed in his life. I was scared that he was sweating and clinging to my arm, saying his stomach hurt, that he was distracting himself with beautiful prenatal dream stories and organizing his ragged breathing, that he was sighing in relief at the doctor’s words that the baby would be safe if he had surgery right away, I was scared of all of that.

Kang Hae-ah scared me.

Hae-ah, who didn’t even wonder about the dangers of an emergency C-section, as if nothing else mattered as long as the baby in his belly was healthy, scared me. Hae-ah, who was indifferent even though the situation had changed and the surgery was proceeding with general anesthesia instead of spinal anesthesia, Hae-ah, who seemed to think that his life didn’t matter as long as he could achieve the goal of childbirth, Hae-ah, who didn’t love himself, scared me.

“Our, Woo-joo, will look like Tae-rim-ssi.”

Until right before entering the operating room, Hae-ah talked about Woo-joo. To me, Kang Hae-ah, he was the only thing in the world, but Hae-ah was not. It seemed that Hae-ah’s head was filled only with Cheon Woo-joo, our child.

I rubbed my lips all over Hae-ah’s hand.

“I’m glad. You had a wonderful prenatal dream…”

And Hae-ah said something out of the blue.

“I was worried he would be ugly because he looked like me. I was scared that a nightmare would be a prenatal dream…”

Our baby will be a wonderful Unicorn that looks like you. So it’s okay.

…I barely understood those words whispered in French.

I couldn’t even feel any emotion, let alone answer those words. The medical staff, saying they were ready for surgery, began to pull the bed on which Hae-ah was lying.

In order not to let go of Hae-ah’s tightly held hand, I blankly followed them to the front of the operating room.

“The guardian will wait here!”

The nurse blocked me. At that moment, I was saddened by the fact that I couldn’t keep holding Hae-ah’s hand unless I cut off my wrist.

Even after the door closed right in front of my eyes, I couldn’t turn around or move. The words Hae-ah had said were stuck in my heart. Deeply embedded, drawing blood.

I knew Hae-ah, who had been drawing a child who looked like me all along. Now, I also knew the wish hidden in Hae-ah’s heart.

That wish made me sad.

‘What’s wrong with you, what’s so bad about you.’

I couldn’t come to my senses until my mother and father, who had run over with their coats in their hands, grabbed my arm and called my name a dozen times.

‘What’s wrong with a child who looks like you, what’s so bad about it.’

The cesarean section took longer than expected. While Hae-ah endured the arduous surgery, I could only stand in place, trembling. I couldn’t sit on the sofa, drink water, or even speak.

‘I want to raise a child like that. I want to wipe away his tears, soothe his loneliness, hug him and kiss him and love him all night long…’

Time passed slowly.

After an eternity-like dawn, morning came lazily.

Only then did the surgical nurse appear in the waiting room. Two doctors were with her, but they weren’t the attending physician. They referred to Hae-ah’s attending physician as teacher and said that he had just started suturing.

“Is our baby… okay?”

I asked slowly, as if standing in water. Then the nurse nodded with a bright face.

“Yes. There’s nothing wrong with your son, so don’t worry.”

“No.”

I cut off his words. Feeling the heat in my flushed eyes, I corrected the question I had asked.

“Our Hae-ah. I’m talking about Kang Hae-ah. Is Hae-ah okay?”

To me, the baby was only him.

It was Kang Hae-ah.

Cheon Woo-joo

The silver doors of the elevator opened with an alarm.

When I got off on the 13th floor, the area in front of the CEO’s office became busy. Yoon Eun-ah, who was guarding the desk, jumped up, and Si Eun-cheol in the office walked out at once and stood in front of me. Yoon Eun-ah seemed to have lost a little weight in the time I hadn’t seen her, and Si Eun-cheol’s hair was even longer in the back.

It had already been a hundred days since I had been working from home, taking care of the baby on my own. I had shown my face before to put out urgent fires, but today was my first official day back at work. Even then, I had taken a half-day off in the morning and came in the afternoon to process documents that required my direct signature.

Looking up at me as I gave a light nod instead of a greeting, Yoon Eun-ah gave an awkward smile.

“You’re here, CEO.”

And then came silence. Both Si Eun-cheol and Yoon Eun-ah hesitated for a long time, sparing their words. Without exception, their faces were full of embarrassment.

It was because of the white swaddle tightly fastened to my upper body, and the baby inside it.

“Your son came with you.”

Yoon Eun-ah craned her neck this way and that to see Woo-joo’s face, which was buried in my shirt. On the other hand, Si Eun-cheol, who had already met Woo-joo, was curious about something else.

“How is, Kang Hae-ah…? Is he still, you know… like that?”

Si Eun-cheol asked, unusually hesitant. At the carefully delivered question, Yoon Eun-ah’s gaze moved busily between him and me.

“……”

With my mouth shut, I looked down at the two of them. I didn’t want to talk about this if possible, but I was a little annoyed at Si Eun-cheol for asking me about Kang Hae-ah right away. Perhaps sensing my gaze, he scratched the back of his neck and looked at me.

“Yeah, he’s still the same.”

I said, swallowing a sigh, borrowing Si Eun-cheol’s expression…

“He’s still a little crazy…”

I had to admit it now.

My husband, my baby, my Kang Hae-ah was crazy.

Childbirth had further strengthened his bizarre tendencies. Now Hae-ah was no ordinary crazy person. He was a crazy parent who believed that the whole world revolved around our child, Cheon Woo-joo, who was convinced that Cheon Woo-joo was at the center of the solar system, not to mention the Earth.

Until a few weeks ago, I was most worried about Hae-ah’s health. After finishing the long surgery, Hae-ah had to have not only the baby removed from his belly, but also the womb. His womb, which had been miraculously created by awakening as an Omega, was thus separated from him along with his first child.

After completing the complicated surgery and childbirth at the same time, Hae-ah was very ill for a long time. Once weakened, his body did not recover easily.

Still, Hae-ah insisted that he wanted to hold Woo-joo himself and feed him formula himself. When I thought he had regained his strength today and held the small, light Woo-joo in his arms, Hae-ah lost his vitality within three minutes, his hands turning blue.

So, taking care of the newborn Woo-joo was solely my responsibility. My mother came to the house every day to help, and Hwang Ok-hye also rolled up her sleeves and helped, but it wasn’t of much help.

As if his constellation was the Owl, Woo-joo was a noisy child only at night. He was surprisingly quiet during the day when others could help, to the point where you’d wonder, ‘Is this really a house with a baby?’, but at night he would whine and look for me every fifteen minutes.

So, during the day, I took care of Hae-ah and helped with postpartum care, and at night, I fed Woo-joo with a bottle and took care of the baby.

That was why I took a long maternity leave of a hundred days.

“Hoo…”

Hae-ah, who had finally regained his health after putting in all his effort, no longer had bleeding gums. He couldn’t chew on ice yet, but he could drink cool water.

As soon as his body recovered, Hae-ah revealed his hidden colors.

‘I should have known when Do-jin put his snout in his mouth and sucked and sucked this way and that…’

It was all because of Cheon Woo-joo’s face.

“CEO…I carefully readjusted Woo-joo, who was soaking my shirt with drool right away. Only when I took him out of the swaddle and held him close to my chest did Yoon Eun-ah see Woo-joo’s face.

Unable to hide her embarrassment, she looked at Woo-joo once, then at my face. And asked.

“…Did you perhaps, have the baby alone?”

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear those words as a joke. Hae-ah and my son, Woo-joo, looked just like twins who were too late to the world, like me…

The baby already had thick eyebrows, clear eyes, and distinct features. Every time we visited the hospital, the Doctor and nurses marveled, saying they had never seen such a handsome baby.

My parents’ reaction was almost fainting. They held their grandson in their arms, saying, “Is this a dream?” and felt a strange sense of déjà vu. They were bewildered, saying it was as if Cheon Tae-rim had been reborn.

I thought our child would definitely look just like Hae-ah… I was sure and expected him to be as pretty as an Angel and as cute as a puppy…

My expectations were shattered miserably.

As I looked at Woo-joo in my arms with complicated feelings, Si Eun-cheol said,

“But what brings you out here alone with the baby?”

It was a question only he could ask, knowing our situation. Hae-ah, who had only gotten out of bed three months ago, now didn’t want to be apart from Woo-joo for even a minute, no, not even 50 seconds.

As I adjusted the crooked hat to cover Cheon Woo-joo’s thick hair, I muttered,

“Went to the department store.”

There was a baby’s layette, one of a kind in the world, specially made for a planned exhibition, and I had been waiting for months, and today it finally arrived in the luxury goods section, so I said I would go and get it right away.

‘But Hae-ah, Woo-joo already has five undershirts.’

‘This isn’t an undershirt. It’s a layette cardigan.’

Thinking of Hae-ah, excited like a child, and Driver Oh, who was busily chasing after him, a sigh escaped me. In my arms, as I let out a deep sigh, Woo-joo made bubbles with his mouth.

“He seems to resemble you more since I last saw him.”

Si Eun-cheol said, shaking his shoulders and speaking in an exaggerated tone.

“At this point, it wouldn’t be strange if one of you died. You’re like doppelgangers…”

Kim Min-soo, the development team leader, whom I met in the elevator a little while ago, said something similar. With a mouth that loved to talk nonsense, he repeatedly exclaimed in admiration, looking back and forth between Cheon Woo-joo and me.

‘You weren’t born with a pomade hairstyle, were you?’

He said something that I didn’t know if it was a joke or serious.

“Forget the coffee, get me a cup of honey tea. Hae-ah might be thirsty.”

Leaving simple instructions, I entered the president’s office for the first time in a while. Even if I sat down and started working right away, Woo-joo didn’t make a fuss and was quiet.

Watching me quickly flipping through urgent documents and scribbling signatures, Si Eun-cheol grumbled that I was going too far.

“Read it a little before you sign.”

He held honey tea for Hae-ah in his left hand and a rattle toy in his right.

While Si Eun-cheol, who was surprisingly good at soothing babies, took care of Cheon Woo-joo, I quickly finished the pending work.

Just as I was about to scribble my signature on the last document, Hae-ah arrived on the 13th floor.

“I’m here.”

His silhouette, greeting Yoon Eun-ah, could be seen beyond the blind curtain. He was carrying several paper bags with brand logos in both arms. He said he was only going to pick up the layette cardigan, but he must have shopped for a lot of cute baby clothes as he grabbed them.

Checking the time, I got up from my seat. Just as I had spotted him, Hae-ah seemed to have seen my figure beyond the blinds. He said ‘Tae-rim-ssi’ in an excited voice and ran into the president’s office.

And, I froze with my mouth open. I thought it would take quite a while, but he must have stopped by the salon in the meantime. Hae-ah’s shaggy hair had been trimmed short again.

He smiled shyly, blushing, and he was Kang Hae-ah from the day I first met him.

Breathlessly beautiful and heart-flutteringly noble, he left me speechless.

“……”

Instead of a tie, I adjusted the shoulder straps of the baby carrier.

Whether he knew my heart had fallen for him for the hundredth time or not, Hae-ah picked up Woo-joo on the blanket. He kissed the baby’s soft forehead and slowly approached me. Then he stood looking out the window behind the president’s seat.

For a moment, without saying anything, he looked down at the office workers passing by on the main street. Then he straightened his head and said,

“That building, is the construction finished?”

Only then did I look at the silver building across the street. It seemed like only yesterday that it was covered with blue construction tarps, but the exterior of the completed building was gleaming.

“I thought it would take a really long time…”

Instead of answering that, I took Hae-ah’s hand. As I slyly lowered one shoulder and stood crookedly, Hae-ah smiled and leaned his head on my shoulder.

He liked to look at the unremarkable scenery outside for a long time, he was truly a child to me. I had decided that already more than a hundred days ago. Hae-ah would raise the baby Cheon Woo-joo, and I would raise the baby Kang Hae-ah. I would take care of him only with love and stay by his side forever.

There was only one spell that moved my baby, Kang Hae-ah.

“Let’s go home now.”

With that one word, Hae-ah would stop what he was doing and be drawn to me. He would send all his attention, which had been directed towards the outside world, to me, his eyes sparkling and his lips drawing a curve.

“Okay. Let’s go home.”

Holding Hae-ah and Woo-joo in my arms at the same time, I smiled along with him.

To me, it was Kang Hae-ah, and to Kang Hae-ah, it was me. It was the whole universe.