Chapter 56

The very first thing Gi-hyeon did upon officially moving to Ilsan was sign the contract for a new car. Needing a spacious backseat for a car seat inevitably led him straight to an SUV. Back when he lived in Seoul, the sheer nightmare of parking, combined with the fact that Jo Yeon-oh usually chauffeured him or Manager Yoo handled his transportation, meant owning a car was entirely unnecessary. But the moment he relocated to the Gyeonggi province suburbs, the lack of a personal vehicle became instantly, paralyzingly inconvenient.

He was incredibly grateful Beom-hee had so willingly lent him her car. He figured he could simply suffer the sheer embarrassment of driving the flashy convertible until his new SUV arrived.

—…Yeah, actually. A car like that might be safer for you. It’s so obnoxiously loud and flashy that people will actively avoid getting near it.

Even as she tried to spin the positive angle, half-resigned to her fate, Gi-hyeon kept his new address a strict secret from Beom-hee. Ironically, she was the one who had practically begged him not to tell her.

—If that Dick-oh bastard decides to interrogate me, he’s relentless. He’ll instantly read it on my face if I know anything. It’s infinitely safer for both of us if I genuinely have no idea where you are.

Gi-hyeon completely agreed with her logic, so he hadn’t bothered to offer his address. Instead, Beom-hee had worried about something else entirely: wouldn’t he be desperately lonely? Gi-hyeon had merely tilted his head in mild confusion. He honestly didn’t know. It wasn’t that he was ignorant of what loneliness felt like; rather, that hollow, aching state of being had been his default setting for so long that he could no longer tell if he was lonely or just existing. Knowing him all too well, Beom-hee had simply offered a bitter, resigned smile, muttering, “You’ll figure it out…”

…Perhaps, he thought, the chronic, bone-deep isolation he had dragged around for years would simply burn away the moment the baby was born. Even now, he already felt the profound presence of two souls. He occasionally toyed with the idea of speaking aloud to the baby, but an overwhelming wave of embarrassment always choked the words back. Despite his repeated failures, he knew it would eventually become entirely natural as the weeks went by.

Thinking of the child growing inside him, mutating into an Omega wasn’t entirely a tragedy. 

If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have just gotten married and started a family ages ago. 

Even if his heart was anchored elsewhere, Gi-hyeon would have been fiercely devoted to his family. In fact, he likely never would have spared Jo Yeon-oh a second glance. If he had lived that life, he might have missed Yeon-oh fiercely for a day, reminisced fondly for two, and perhaps, after a year, the memories would have faded into a hazy, painless blur. He could have spared them both the agonizing, pathetic torture of the last seven years. He might have even been able to return the friend he had stolen from Yeon-oh. But it was a spectacularly useless fantasy. As if he could have ever loved anyone else while Jo Yeon-oh existed in the world.

Back then, the sheer terror of not loving Jo Yeon-oh had been suffocating. Ever since he was old enough to understand the concept, he had loved the man. That deeply ingrained devotion had fused to his very bones, making it violently agonizing to try and tear it away.

“That will be 98,300 won.”

“Ah, could I also get a standard garbage bag, please?”

Thankfully, the sheer volume of daily tasks required to keep himself alive kept his mind mercifully occupied. Even if he could never completely erase the man from his memory, the fragile hope that things would gradually improve began to take root.

Though he lacked the vibrant energy of someone who had fully recovered from a long, devastating illness, a newfound sense of profound lightness often graced his features. Even the small, genuine smile he offered the cashier as he handed over his card was proof of that.

Life in his new home was steadily stabilizing.

Aside from the items Jo Yeon-oh had explicitly purchased, he had brought nearly everything from his Seoul apartment. And thank God he had. He could still catch the impossibly faint, lingering traces of Yeon-oh’s pheromones clinging to his bedsheets, pillowcases, and blankets. He fully intended to aggressively negotiate with the fetus, begging it to tolerate those pathetic scraps for the time being.

The real problem was his own restless nature.

While he was financially secure enough to never work another day in his life, Gi-hyeon possessed the kind of temperament that rapidly spiraled into depression when left idle. As a result, scouring the Physical Therapy Association’s portal and hospital job boards had become his new daily ritual. There were plenty of lucrative positions available, but the crushing guilt of knowing he would inevitably quit immediately after giving birth made scheduling an interview feel entirely impossible.

There were several part-time positions seeking licensed physical therapists. He briefly debated taking one for just a single month, but ultimately closed the browser, firmly reminding himself to play it safe until he reached the elusive stable period.

With far too much time on his hands, he resorted to bizarre hobbies, like researching English immersion kindergartens in his neighborhood. He even found himself spiraling down the rabbit hole of early childhood education videos online. It was utterly ridiculous—he was aggressively planning an academic curriculum for a child so incredibly small it didn’t even have a detectable heartbeat yet.

Obviously, researching newborn care was the vastly more logical priority, but every time he pulled up a video, the sheer, terrifying fragility of the infants paralyzed him with fear. Staring at those impossibly tiny beings, possessing bones so soft they looked as though they would shatter if he gripped them too tightly, summoned a visceral terror. It was a cold, paralyzing dread he had never once experienced, not even during the most grueling live-fire combat exercises in the military.

A relentless, agonizing question echoed in his mind: Can I actually do this? 

Whenever the anxiety threatened to drown him, he practically bolted out the door, pacing the pathways of the neighborhood park near his villa. Since his doctor had encouraged moderate walking, he made it a habit to log a solid walk before heading home. The simple, rhythmic act of walking often shrank the massive, crushing problems weighing on his chest down to manageable proportions. He fiercely reminded himself not to overthink the future. Nothing disastrous had happened yet, the baby was safely tucked inside him, and So Gi-hyeon was no longer truly alone in the world.

Yet, a dark shadow still lingered—his father.

When on earth was he supposed to drop the bomb that he was pregnant?

Aside from the mandatory, stilted phone calls on major holidays and birthdays, they hadn’t exchanged a genuine word in years. When Gi-hyeon’s ankle had been utterly destroyed, his father’s reaction had been one of profound, suffocating disappointment. And it was in the suffocating weight of that disappointment that Gi-hyeon finally realized he had completely despaired of himself.

That staggering chasm between them remained violently unfilled, and now, Gi-hyeon was expecting a child. Simply put, the revelation that So Gi-hyeon—a Beta male—had mutated into an Omega capable of bearing children would likely send his deeply conservative father into an apoplectic shock. How to even begin to broach the subject with such a man was a dilemma that endlessly tormented him.

His ultimate conclusion was to simply shove that problem into the future, too.

“What’s he going to do if I just show up and drop the kid in his lap? He can hardly tell me to shove them back inside,” he muttered to himself while throwing together a haphazard dinner.

Lately, simply ensuring he ate three meals a day was a full-time job, so he spent hours scouring the internet for pregnancy-friendly recipes and painstakingly cooking them from scratch. Because he had practically lived off hospital cafeteria food or whatever gourmet meal Jo Yeon-oh had whipped up for him, Gi-hyeon’s culinary skills were undeniably pathetic compared to his ex’s. He was a master at brewing a decent egg drop soup for hangovers, but everything else he touched usually ended in disaster.

Since he would eventually be responsible for feeding an actual human being, he treated every meal as a grueling practice session. Rationalizing that if he conditioned the baby’s palate now, they wouldn’t dare become a picky eater later, he simply choked down whatever weirdly seasoned concoction he managed to produce. The only blessing was that his morning sickness had significantly subsided since the move. Tonight’s ambitious project was spicy stir-fried pork. Convinced it needed an aggressive amount of green onions to be edible, he was busy aggressively chopping them when his phone suddenly rang. Wiping his hands on a towel, he stared at the screen in pure shock before answering.

“Captain, it’s been a long time.”

“Captain? Are you kidding me? Do you know how long it’s been since I ditched the uniform?” 

A hearty, booming laugh erupted from the receiver. It was Yang Jisu, a former captain Gi-hyeon had served with before his discharge. Gi-hyeon had texted him his new number ages ago, but having received no reply, he assumed the man had simply moved on.

“Have you been well?”

“Life has been absolutely spectacular since I got out. You sound exactly the same. What’s the occasion for the new number?” 

Gi-hyeon vaguely replied that some things had happened.

Yang Jisu had left the military shortly before the targeted bullying against Gi-hyeon had escalated into violence. After getting caught running a massive, high-stakes poker ring in the officer’s club and facing a brutal audit, Yang Jisu had immediately submitted his discharge papers and fled back to his hometown, where he promptly opened an illegal underground gambling den.

The sheer audacity of an army officer immediately transitioning into organized crime was morbidly fascinating. But despite his incredibly questionable morals, he was a fundamentally decent man. When Gi-hyeon had been brutally assaulted, Jisu was the one who had aggressively contacted their former peers, violently calling bullshit on the official “clumsy fall” narrative and fiercely taking Gi-hyeon’s side.

Despite Yang Jisu’s aggressive attempts to intervene, Gi-hyeon had simply taken his discharge and walked away in silence. He undeniably owed the man a debt.

“You should come down and visit sometime. Who was that friend of yours again? That insanely tall, ridiculously handsome guy. If you bring him down here, I’ll find a nice, high-stakes table and slot you guys in.” 

Gi-hyeon merely offered a quiet chuckle and murmured a vague agreement. The call ended shortly after.It was nothing more than a brief exchange of pleasantries, but it strangely lifted his spirits.

Meanwhile, the stir-fried pork had actually cooked down to a surprisingly appetizing color. He briefly debated washing some romaine lettuce to use as wraps, but ultimately deemed it far too much effort.

Dropping the hot pan directly onto the dining table, Gi-hyeon dug into his early dinner.

***