Chapter 141

He had spent most of his life believing bloodlines were filth that should have ended with him. Locked underground in childhood simply for carrying that blood, forced to live an existence no one wanted, he had never once regarded inheritance as anything but repulsive.

But mixed halfway with Seoul’s blood…

“……”

Do-hyeop could have shaken off the tiny fingers wrapped around his pinky with almost no effort. Nothing in the world could have been softer or more fragile; the slightest movement would have loosened them.

Yet that grip held him like an anchor weighing tons. Those bright eyes, still unable to focus properly, made him imagine a version of Seoul’s childhood he had never been allowed to see.

Ah.

Perhaps.

Maybe this child, who resembled Seoul so completely, could be shown an entirely different world.

Not Do-hyeop’s childhood, buried underground where sunlight arrived like an intruder. Not Seoul’s either, racing over barren hills beneath a merciless sun with nowhere to hide.

Something normal, by the standards of this broken world. A childhood stripped of needless suffering, drenched instead in Seoul’s upright love and impossible mercy. Trust built slowly, safely, one layer at a time, with Do-hyeop’s strength beneath it as an unyielding foundation.

Do-hyeop stood still, looking down at the child in his arms. Only Haedam moved, fingers flexing as his cheeks worked steadily around the bottle.

If he carried Do-hyeop’s blood and yet resembled Seoul this much, how could the result be anything but a blessing?

It was absurdly obvious once the child was actually in his arms. Do-hyeop himself had inherited that hateful blood and still crossed from death back into life after meeting Seoul. A child who began life already carrying half of Seoul could never be condemned to the same curse.

Thinking about the twenty years Seoul had spent beneath other people’s feet still made Do-hyeop furious. It hurt to imagine someone who was only now learning what it meant to win having endured a childhood defined by loss after loss.

Haedam looked like a miniature Seoul. Do-hyeop would not allow those same trials to touch him.

This was a chance to let the most lovable parts of Seoul grow up loved from the beginning—stronger, freer, unscarred.

Do-hyeop parted his lips, voice unexpectedly quiet.

“…Haedam.”

A newborn could not possibly understand his own name. The twitch at the corner of Haedam’s mouth was only reflex.

“He just smiled looking at me, didn’t he?”

“…Pardon?”

The nurse, hovering nearby in case Do-hyeop decided to repeat the upside-down-doll maneuver with an actual infant, blinked.

“Didn’t you see him fucking grin after recognizing I called him? Isn’t this kid a genius?”

“Ah…”

Her answer died in her throat. She should have explained that newborn smiles were reflexive. Somehow, telling him the truth felt like a good way to end up held upside down by the ankles herself.

“Taking after Geum Seoul in every single way, this little guy.”

Do-hyeop finally lifted his eyes from Haedam toward the window, where Seoul was watching from the other side.

Seoul was smiling so brightly that relief seemed to shine from him. The sight stole Do-hyeop’s breath for a second before his own expression softened in answer.

“He looks like you.”

Do-hyeop murmured it gently, eased the emptied bottle away, and shifted Haedam higher against his broad frame, resting the infant’s shoulder exactly where the nurse had demonstrated.

Pat… pat.

Do-hyeop’s hand covered nearly the whole of Haedam’s back. Watching him pat with only the tips of his fingers, brow furrowed in intense concentration, the nurse finally ventured a correction.

“He’s this tiny and you want me to hit harder? What if he vomits?”

“B-but this is too gentle. Would you try stroking downward instead…?”

Still unconvinced, Do-hyeop glanced through the glass at Seoul. Seoul nodded encouragement. Only then did Do-hyeop alter the motion, sliding his palm carefully downward. Haedam’s back was so tiny there was scarcely any distance to travel.

Do-hyeop paced slowly in front of the glass so Seoul could see, patting the baby with awkward care. It was a gesture he performed on Seoul every day without thought, yet here he had to calculate every ounce of strength because nothing he had ever handled had been this small.

“…Burp.”

The tiny burp that finally emerged was so ridiculous in its smallness that Do-hyeop laughed before he could stop himself.

Haedam did not remain awake long. Do-hyeop’s original assessment—that the kid’s present responsibilities consisted of eating, sleeping, and dirtying diapers—proved accurate enough.

He held Haedam as instructed, met his unfocused gaze, fed him, and patted his back. Before long the baby began yawning again and drifted asleep in Do-hyeop’s arms as if this were perfectly natural. Do-hyeop lowered him onto the mattress with excruciating care, then left the nursery.

Click.

He had entered without hesitation. He came out nearly on tiptoe. The moment the door clicked shut and Do-hyeop straightened, Seoul folded himself into his arms. Do-hyeop lifted him effortlessly from the floor.

“Director…”

Seoul’s arms tightened around his neck. Do-hyeop glanced once toward the nurse’s hastily retreating back, then supported Seoul beneath the thighs and kissed his cheek.

“What is it?”

“…Haedam takes after you a lot, doesn’t he?”

“What? His hair?”

To Do-hyeop, everything except the dark hair belonged to Seoul. But Seoul clung to him and insisted in a small voice that Haedam’s eyes, nose, and mouth all looked like Do-hyeop’s instead.

“Don’t you look in mirrors? He’s the spitting image of you.”

“……”

Seoul shook his head but could not find words.

Emotion churned too thickly in his chest. Watching Do-hyeop cradle and pat the baby had sent heat rushing into his throat until breathing became difficult. He had not been able to look away from the two of them for even a moment.

There was no grand reason for it. To Seoul, Haedam simply looked so much like Do-hyeop that he could not stop thinking about the childhood Do-hyeop had survived—beaten by a grandfather where parental love should have been.

“…Director.”

“Yeah.”

Do-hyeop answered softly and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside the window, evening had begun to fall, and long amber rays stretched across the sheets like painted bands of light.

Seoul sat across his thighs with his chin resting on Do-hyeop’s shoulder. After a quiet breath, he extended one arm toward the window.

Sunlight pooled in his open palm. The skin there seemed to warm beneath it. Seoul gathered the light as though scooping water from a well, then pressed that hand to Do-hyeop’s back. Pat. Pat. Just as Do-hyeop had done for Haedam moments earlier, Seoul patted him gently in turn.

“I’m going to raise Haedam… thinking of him as you when you were little, Director.”

Do-hyeop gave a low laugh. He had thought almost the same thing while holding the child.

“That kid sure is lucky.”

This was how Seoul loved another person: with nothing hidden, every word sincere. And because Do-hyeop loved him, he had slowly learned to love in the same language.

There was nothing left to fear. Seoul would remain so painfully lovable that affection seemed to swell his organs, and Haedam would grow up absorbing every good thing Seoul carried within him.

“Should we go for a walk?”

Do-hyeop leaned back and opened his palm. Seoul nodded, tilted his head as though considering something, then wrapped his whole hand around Do-hyeop’s index finger. Do-hyeop burst out laughing and caught the rim of Seoul’s ear lightly between his teeth.

Patter. Patter.

Their footsteps fell side by side. After calling a nurse so the suite would never be left unattended, they went out into the garden hand in hand.

Twilight washed the sky in soft pink. Seoul, who loved looking upward whenever there was open sky above him, walked slowly with his head tipped back.

The immaculate gardens inevitably recalled the ruined hill where they first met. There had been no warm spring breeze there, no soft lawn underfoot, no drifting petals or marble fountains scrubbed clean of moss. Only a suffocating hillside where sweat turned greasy even after dark; weeds surged to waist height within weeks; garbage blackened the alleys between collapsing houses. Public speakers screamed day and night. Drunks and gamblers appeared, vanished, and reappeared elsewhere in search of the next vice.

And yet one thing had remained exactly the same.

Do-hyeop stopped and turned toward Seoul. The breeze lifted Seoul’s brown hair, and beneath it came the faint earthy-green scent Do-hyeop knew better than his own breath.

Seoul. Quietly, unmistakably Seoul—his pheromones finally returning, carrying the same clean integrity as the man himself.

“Let me hold you.”

“Okay.”

Do-hyeop drew him close and buried his face against the pale nape of his neck, breathing deep.

He no longer had to drag the scent into his lungs until they ached. It came at an easy, perfect strength now, washing the headache and tinnitus out of him almost at once.

The tension wound through his body loosened. Warmth rose softly from the soles of his feet and spread upward.

Any ground without Seoul on it was meaningless to him. The thought was not meant as some grand declaration of romance.

By a fate he had never chosen, Do-hyeop had already experienced most extremes a human life could offer. He knew violence. He knew obscene luxury. He knew what it was to live beneath the level of a corpse, steeped in narcotics and alcohol.

He had entered this world only to acquire the lawful power to crush other men into the dirt. In the end it taught him that elevation changed nothing; from every height, the landscape was still a wasteland arranged by predictable cause and effect.

Life had been as tedious as a film whose ending he knew before the opening scene. No matter where he went, the smell of earth and dust followed him. Nothing erased the migraines. Needles in his veins, fistfuls of painkillers—none of it could scrub that phantom grit from the inside of his nose.

Then Seoul had split the universe open. He was something Do-hyeop had never encountered and could never finish mapping. The more he learned him, the more even the smallest gesture became startling, scorching, beautiful.

Seoul’s ordinary existence was endlessly new. He alone could drag Do-hyeop out of stagnant indifference and make breathing feel worthwhile. Beside him, even inefficient things became persuasive; variables ceased to be irritants and turned into discoveries.

And now there were two people capable of pulling him toward emotions he had never charted.

With each breath, the weight inside him lifted. This, unmistakably, was what other people called happiness.

Seoul made happiness from things that should have died. He found life in stagnant places and coaxed a heartbeat from dead routines. A soft vibration stirred against Do-hyeop’s wrist.

● SYSTEM

// Heart Rate Stabilized //

● SYSTEM

// 60 bpm //

His pulse, sluggish for days, finally settled into a steady rhythm. Do-hyeop smiled. Seoul smiled back. A warm spring wind passed between them, and in that light, Seoul seemed to shine.

[END of VOLUME 5: SIDE STORY]