By Zephyria 
‘Boss….’
The man slowly opened his eyes. His surroundings were blurry, as if shrouded in fog. As he lowered his gaze, a small head tucked against his side entered his field of vision.
‘I’m back. I brought some salty marinated crab; they say the crabs are especially plump these days. They’re full of roe. The seasoning is delicious, too.’
The man looked down at the small, chattering lips. His own face looked as if he had been struck bluntly in the back of the head with a hammer. He looked vacant, as if a starving dog had chewed through the back of his skull.
He slowly moved his lips to ask if he had returned.
‘Uh-huh, were you looking for me?’
The man twisted his lips into a sneer. As if that were even a question. He had searched like a mad dog, overturning every inch of the beach in the open sea, wondering if the boy had been buried alive.
‘Aw, I didn’t go anywhere…. I have nowhere else to go without you, Boss.’
He whispered, chirping as if sharing a secret. He smiled, pushing up his plump, rounded cheeks. White teeth peeked through vivid red lips. The front teeth were large, with smaller teeth clustered neatly beside them. Each one looked as luscious as a well-ripened fruit.
‘I only love you, Boss. I won’t go anywhere.’
Eun-myeong rubbed his cheek against the man’s lower abdomen, wrinkling his nose cutely. He was as adorable as a puppy, and the man reached out to scratch under his chin.
But then, he noticed something. The man’s middle finger was snapped clean in half.
Why on earth? As the man narrowed his eyes in confusion, sweet words that sounded like they could melt one’s ears flowed from below.
‘Boss, please hold me. Put your tongue in my throat and rub it; shove your thing into my hole so hard it hurts, until I’m worn out like a rag….’
Eun-myeong’s lips fluttered with that innocent face of his.
‘I want to get pregnant with your baby, Boss. And I want to marry you. I want to go to Seoul and live with you.’
With lips so red and erotic that it seemed all the blood had rushed there from his flour-dough-white skin, he rattled off words of utter vulgarity.
‘And later, if I die first, please make sure to have me taxidermied….’
Ah, for the man, this was exactly what he had desperately desired. He was filled with such mental pleasure. He experienced an intense orgasm of shame, something he had never known in his entire life.
‘I love you….’
Eun-myeong smiled brightly, as if a flower were about to bloom in full. He soon grabbed the man’s hand and brought it to his mouth.
Sticking out a soft, plump tongue, he sucked on the short middle finger.
‘Boss.’
His lips fluttered again. With a bright smile that suggested ruining a human being was nothing, he moved his tongue, which looked as soft as the flesh of a freshly sliced fish.
‘…Can I, do….’
What? The man asked back, as if possessed, like a fool.
The things Eun-myeong said were usually predictable.
…Please love me, I’m pretty, aren’t I? I’m cute, aren’t I? I’m lovely, aren’t I? I want to have sex while pissing myself as you fuck me from behind, things like that….
‘Boss, you can wake up now.’
However, the words that followed were of a completely unexpected kind. In an instant, the man’s sluggishly unraveling consciousness was sucked into a single point.
His thick fingers twitched. As he opened his eyes, bright light poured over his eyeballs.
The man was lying on a cold operating table. His mind gradually cleared. The anesthetic that had been weighing down his body was slowly diluting. He had awakened from the anesthesia.
“President Kang, the suturing was completed very successfully.”
A doctor in a white robe murmured beside him.
“The severed surface was joined more cleanly than before, so it will be aesthetically very pleasing.”
…Yes, the man gradually regained his sense of reality.
It was because of the rain that had fallen for several days. The man’s middle finger began to throb. His middle finger trembled like a rattlesnake.
The bone felt poked, and the surrounding skin felt as if it were burning, like a thermal burn.
Why.
Why on earth was this happening now, after being quiet for over ten years? It felt as if it didn’t even belong to him.
The doctor said there seemed to be nothing wrong, but the man simply could not accept this situation.
It was his own body; how could it escape his control?
So, the man had gone so far as to slice off the finger again. If it was wrong, if it was flawed, couldn’t he just cut it off and sew it back on?
And so, he lay on the operating table.
‘I will count to ten.’
He was under general anesthesia, and he felt the sensation of a sticky liquid crawling up from his forearm to his shoulder.
Soon, his vision went white.
And so, for the first time in a very long while, the man fell asleep.
“…….”
Just a dream.
It was only a dream. Eun-myeong had not returned. He looked down at his side.
All the delusions vanished the moment he woke from the dream, like smoke fluttering from a candle.
Throb—this time, it wasn’t his finger, but somewhere else in his body that throbbed. The part that had been cut and reattached was the finger, so why did the area around his ribs feel so searingly hot?
If he could, he felt like splitting his own belly open and ripping out the bones.
If the organs were the problem, he wouldn’t mind finding new ones to replace them.
But that stupid piece of shit doctor just kept droning on that there was nothing wrong….
It had now been a full fifteen days since he disappeared. The man had scoured and poked through everything, like a dog licking its bowl clean.
…He had even looked into Eun-myeong’s birth. The biological father who provided the seed was already dead, and only the biological mother was alive, running a snack shop in a corner of Cheongnyangni, Seoul.
“Welcome.”
A woman greeted him. She looked back at him while fiddling with the gimbap she had been rolling until a moment ago.
The man scanned her thoroughly with his eyes.
A pale face, a thin body, brownish hair. This was the body that had conceived Eun-myeong. Indeed, he could find physical similarities to Eun-myeong here and there.
But nowhere could he find any trace that Eun-myeong was there.
“What can I get for you?”
He shook his head at her question. The man walked out of the shop immediately.
Did Eun-myeong know that the mother who gave him his bones and flesh was breathing and alive on this earth?
He thought everyone who shared his blood would be dead by now. To think there was still a place for Eun-myeong to return to. Tsk, he clicked his tongue coldly.
And on the way back to Gyeryong Bay.
The man sat alone in his hotel room and drank. By the time he came to, the alcohol was all gone, so he ordered a subordinate to bring more.
And the one who entered with the liquor bottles was not his subordinate, but some Omega he had never seen before.
“President Kang, I have been assigned to serve you starting today.”
A pale face, a modest demeanor, and a supple waist. The man let out a smirk. It was very obvious who had sent him.
Rumors that the man was overturning every corner of the country had reached Chairman Kang’s ears.
Chairman Kang had said that such things could be easily replaced, and had already sent several Omegas to the man’s hotel room.
Where on earth was Eun-myeong in that face? The fishy smell characteristic of Omegas was nauseating just to sniff.
“I heard you like them quiet….”
Normally, he wouldn’t have given them a glance. The problem was that this Omega touched the man’s body.
It was so disgusting. Unable to overcome the surge of nausea rising from within, he raised his hand with an expressionless face and slapped the cheek. Pulling money from his wallet and scattering it, he threatened to break the Omega’s arm if they emitted that smell again.
“……”
The Omega clutched their cheek and hurried out of the hotel.
And then, did he fall asleep in a drunken stupor? He lay down on the bed with a liquor bottle in his hand, and Eun-myeong appeared in his dream again.
‘Boss.’
The man, whose nerves had been stretched to a breaking point, finally smiled with satisfaction.
Until now, he had been so buried in work that it wouldn’t have been strange if his life thread were cut instantly, yet he had deliberately returned to Gyeryong Bay where Eun-myeong was.
Because only then did peace finally find him.
Like unbuttoning a stifling suit vest, like loosening a tightly wound tie, he placed Eun-myeong on his lap and found solace.
Ah, this time too, he will probably reach out to me, begging to be held and saying he loves me.
Yes, he believed it would be so. But Eun-myeong was weeping, tears streaming down and soaking his cheeks.
‘I… now, my heart hurts too much and it’s so hard that I, hic, can’t stay by your side. I’m going to go to someone else. I’ll go to… sob, the police.’
The man let out a sharp, choking sound. He must have dropped the liquor bottle he was gripping by his side.
Because he hated hearing it, he kissed Eun-myeong roughly, as if he were sucking the breath out of him, telling him to shut that mouth.
But that small face was shaking violently, saying he hated it; he was daring to reject him.
‘I’ve already gotten pregnant with that person’s baby. I’m a pregnant woman now. I’m going to get married, too.’
An unbearable rage swept over the man.
‘I’m going to run away with the police. I’ll run away to a place where you can never find me and live happily.’
Eun-myeong’s body, which had been held by the man, gradually faded into white.
‘Come here. Come to me.’
He tried to reach out to grab him, but his body wouldn’t budge at all. Like a person tied up somewhere.
‘If you run away like that, Baby, I will tear both of you to pieces and kill you.’
How could you possibly hide without catching my eye? I will take anything as a hostage to bind you to my side. Baby, just how do you think you could ever leave me?
He relentlessly spewed the poison within him, tormenting Eun-myeong.
Yet, inside…
The man wanted to slap his own cheek for spitting out such trash.
He already knew this method was wrong. It would have been better to shut his mouth, grab that wrist, pull him into his arms, and soothe him.
‘I’ll never say I love you again….’
Soon after, Eun-myeong disappeared from the man’s embrace. The man quickly sat up, panting for breath.
“Ha, haaa…!”
Looking around, he was in the hotel room. It was a mess, littered with all sorts of liquor bottles. His back was sticky, drenched in cold sweat.
“…….”
A sense of self-loathing of indescribable magnitude swept over the man like a tidal wave. Everything was a complete disaster.