#107

Kwon Myung-chul roared, his voice echoing loudly throughout the room.

“Do you even realize what you’ve done?! Go to Writer Kyung right now, get on your knees, and beg for forgiveness. If you don’t put everything back exactly as it was, you’re the one who will be leaving this house!”

Jung-hyun gripped the dresser and slowly straightened his body. A metallic taste of blood lingered in his mouth, as if his lip had burst.

“I was actually in the middle of discussing that with Mother.”

Jung-hyun wiped the corner of his mouth and spoke.

“Mother and I will leave this house.”

“……Do you even know what you’re saying right now?”

“You must have heard it from Mother. My manifested trait. And who caused that manifestation to happen.”

“Yes, Ki-hyuk did it. So what of it?”

Kwon Myung-chul growled. Jung-hyun looked at his biological father with an expressionless face.

He hadn’t expected the man to change, but seeing him exactly as he was 15 years ago made a wave of nausea surge up in his throat.

“Is that all you have to say to me?”

“What more is there to say?”

“Every single night since I came to this house, without fail, Kwon Ki-hyuk strangled me.”

The end of his voice trembled, as if he were truly angry.

“Whenever I woke up from fainting, there was an IV in my arm. Every time, I wished that tonight would be the night I finally strangled to death.”

Anger—it was a fact he hadn’t even realized himself. He had simply been soothing himself, telling himself he was okay, but in truth, he had wanted to be this angry all along.

“You never once acknowledged the scars on my neck. Even while you kept a doctor on standby right next to my room every night for fear that I might actually die, you acted as if nothing had happened every morning.”

“…….”

“You haven’t changed a bit since then.”

Somehow, he felt a sense of relief.

Since the day he was strangled by Kwon Ki-hyuk, since the day his mother turned a blind eye to his pain, Jung-hyun might have actually been waiting for this day for 15 years.

This day, when he could finally escape Myeong-jeong with his mother.

“That was simply your role at the time. To use that as a reason for ruining a settled engagement is utterly laughable.”

Kwon Myung-chul muttered, his voice still laced with indignation.

“Both you and Kwon Ki-hyuk, trapped in events from 15 years ago forever… Tsk. Foolish.”

Jung-hyun let out a short laugh.

“It’s that attitude of yours that keeps me and my brother stuck in 15 years ago. Do you really think you bear absolutely no responsibility for the eccentricities Kwon Ki-hyuk displays?”

“…….”

“You probably know it too. You’re just afraid to admit it because of your pride. But one day, you will pay for everything.”

“You brat. I’ve put up with enough…!”

Just as fury flashed in Kwon Myung-chul’s eyes—

“J-Jung-hyun…!”

Gwi-ran crawled on her knees and grabbed the hem of Jung-hyun’s trousers.

“H-hurry and beg your father for forgiveness. Hurry!”

His mother looked back and forth between Jung-hyun and Myung-chul, trembling like an aspen leaf.

“Honey, dear. Don’t do this. You know our Jung-hyun is a truly good boy. He’s just… having a hard time right now.”

“…….”

“You just had a little fight with Writer Kyung, right? Right, Jung-hyun? Tell him that.”

Without a word, Jung-hyun reached out and pulled his mother up from her knees on the floor. Even as she entrusted her body to his hand, she looked at him with anxious eyes.

Jung-hyun lightly straightened her clothes and spoke.

“Mother. I am not going to marry Writer Kyung. This is the only way. You know that.”

“Jung-hyun….”

“What is that supposed to mean? What ‘way’?”

“…….”

“……”

Jung-hyun and his mother exchanged glances. Reading the atmosphere keenly, Myung-chul’s face contorted and he shouted loudly.

“Take your hands off your mother, this instant!”

“I-it’s because of me.”

His mother spoke, her voice shaking.

“Everything Jung-hyun is doing is all because of me, so please don’t blame him, honey.”

“……Mother?”

“I… I deceived you.”

“Stop talking!”

Jung-hyun shouted urgently, but Gwi-ran’s confession came first.

“I faked Jung-hyun’s pheromone levels to bring him to Myeong-jeong.”

Though her body trembled violently, she looked straight at her husband.

“S-so, Jung-hyun did nothing wrong. The talk of breaking the engagement with Writer Kyung was also to protect me.”

Tears streamed down from her large eyes.

“I’ll be the only one to leave this house. So please, let our Jung-hyun stay in Myeong-jeong….”

Jung-hyun quickly read Kwon Myung-chul’s expression. However, there was no significant change in his face. That couldn’t be right….

It had been 15 years. He thought his father would be greatly enraged upon learning that his mother had deceived him for 15 years.

But his father merely looked at her as if she were a pitiful bird that knew nothing but how to cry in a cage with broken wings.

An unsettling sense of déjà vu crept up from beneath his feet.

His father often looked at his mother that way.

When his mother looked at him piteously, pleading for help against Kwon Ki-hyuk’s harsh words, or when she became unbearably anxious and lonely during his long absences from home.

Until now, he had thought that look meant his father disapproved of his mother’s weakness.

In an instant, a premonition chilled the back of his neck.

“……Don’t tell me you already knew?”

At the whispered words, his mother lifted her tear-streaked face.

“Since when…?”

“I first felt something was strange shortly after you became an adult.”

Myung-chul spoke slowly.

“You know that I’ve received reports on your pheromone levels every year. It was because I feared you might manifest as an Alpha late and become a threat to Ki-hyuk’s position.”

He knew that. While living in the US, his father’s secretary had organized reports on Jung-hyun’s pheromone levels and his life in America every year.

“If there’s a possibility of manifestation, the levels rise gradually, so I could tell immediately. But strangely, your levels kept getting lower.”

At the time, Jung-hyun hadn’t thought it was particularly strange. He had simply been disappointed, seeing the Alpha pheromone levels drop and assuming he would never manifest.

“If you were an ordinary Beta, your levels should have been similar from childhood until now. It was strange. So, I decided to investigate what I had missed when I brought you here. It was an ingenious method. I was inwardly impressed.”

“…If it was when I became an adult, that was almost 10 years ago.”

“Yes.”

“If you knew that long ago, why didn’t you kick me and my mother out then?”

At Jung-hyun’s remark, his mother’s face turned pale.

“At that time, I wasn’t playing the role of Kwon Ki-hyuk’s shadow; rather, I was a threat to him, so it would have been more beneficial to remove me and Mother from the family.”

“…….”

“If the late Chairman had known, he certainly would have done so.”

At Jung-hyun’s words, his father nodded nonchalantly.

“Yes, that’s why I kept it from the Chairman. I also destroyed the investigation reports to ensure no one knew.”

Jung-hyun’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t understand what Kwon Myung-chul was talking about. As if reading his thoughts, Myung-chul spoke.

“You must be wondering why.”

His father reached out to his mother. With a blank expression, she took his hand.

“Because I wanted your mother by my side.”

His father then wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Embraced in his arms, she looked up at him blindly with a damp face. That satisfied expression appeared on his father’s face once again as he looked at her.

“…Do you actually think that is love?”

It was skin-crawling.

“Look at Mother. She’s wasting away from worsening neurosis and panic, and the amount of medication she takes daily is countless. You made her this way. Mother can never be happy by your side!”

Myung-chul raised his thick eyebrows high.

“What a ridiculous argument. Your mother must have deceived me all those years because she wanted to be by my side as well.”

“…….”

At his father’s words, Jung-hyun lost his voice and looked up at his mother.

An expression he had never seen before was on her face. It was no different from a desperate believer who had heard God’s answer that all their sins were forgiven.

“……Mother.”

Jung-hyun called her softly. His voice sounded exactly like his fading voice on that night 15 years ago when Ki-hyuk strangled him.

Only after a long pause did his mother look back at Jung-hyun and give a gentle smile. Her face was pure white, as if all her worries and sorrows had been washed away and she had been completely reborn.

“Jung-hyun. Your father says he forgives everything. To think there is such a happy and fulfilling emotion in the world. I should have told him and asked for forgiveness sooner. If I had, I wouldn’t have suffered for so long.”

“……Mother.”

“Honey, please forgive our Jung-hyun too. Our Jung-hyun is a truly good boy. He’s a son who grew up upright without ever causing me grief. This incident was just a momentary mistake. Right, Jung-hyun?”

“…….”

“Jung-hyun will put everything back. The marriage to Writer Kyung, and the child in the womb.”

“……Mother.”

Jung-hyun called her once more.

But as if she couldn’t hear Jung-hyun’s scream at all, she clung to his father and spoke as if singing. She looked exactly like a bird singing while trapped in a cage.

“Jung-hyun, hurry and tell him that. Hurry.”

“…….”

“Jung-hyun…? Your father has forgiven both of us. There’s nothing left to worry about now.”

“…….”

“Then why are you crying…?”

His vision blurred instantly. Something hot wet his chin as it ran down his cheeks.

“……I can’t do it, Mother.”

His mother looked at Jung-hyun with her eyebrows slanted in worry. As if she were deeply concerned.

“What do you mean you can’t do it?”

“I can’t… I simply can’t do it anymore.”

Jung-hyun shook his head slightly and smiled. Tears fell from his eyes, splashing onto the floor.

108 – PUCK DROP