Chapter 63

Since that day, Gi-hyeon had practically become a full-time employee. Because Jisu was perpetually MIA, Gi-hyeon had to learn the ropes from the bank teller. His shift ran from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, exactly when the banks closed.

It completely baffled Gi-hyeon.

If Jisu never bothered showing up, when the hell did the bank employee ever sleep? Yet the man looked so chronically exhausted and utterly shattered that interrogating him felt cruel. Confident he wouldn’t get a straight answer anyway, Gi-hyeon swallowed his curiosity. Besides, pushing the issue risked prompting the inevitable counter-interrogation: And why did you wash up in this shithole? Maintaining a strict vow of silence was the most profitable strategy.

A full month had vanished working under Jisu’s phantom management.

While he had initially spent every non-working hour desperately sleeping and eating, he had finally adjusted to the grueling routine, allowing his deferred anxieties to creep back in. The glaring issue of pheromones demanded an immediate solution. He had never forgotten the grim medical reality: his unborn child required its biological father’s Alpha pheromones to develop stably.

That single terrifying fact had plagued him the entire journey down.

Should I beg another Alpha for help?

However, his life experience dictated that Alphas operated on a completely alien wavelength from Beta common sense.

It was akin to an insurmountable cultural or generational divide, as they simply possessed fundamentally incomprehensible traits.

Blindly asking a random Alpha to douse him in pheromones felt like walking through a minefield blindfolded. He had no clue how such a demand would be perceived. The target might take grave offense, or worse, completely misinterpret the request as a sexual invitation. Still in the volatile first trimester, he possessed zero means to defend himself if things went sideways.

Avoiding danger altogether was paramount. Yet crawling back to Jo Yeon-oh presented its own brand of peril. Handling Yeon-oh himself wasn’t the issue. The bastard had blatantly ignored Gi-hyeon’s declaration of severed ties and moved into the adjacent building; Gi-hyeon refused to be the only one making concessions. Furthermore, claiming he had conceived the child after their breakup neutralized any immediate threat. Considering how violently hypersensitive Yeon-oh was regarding infidelity from either party, a post-breakup pregnancy shouldn’t technically violate his twisted rules.

Besides, it’s not like Jo Yeon-oh ever loved me, Gi-hyeon reasoned, confident the man wouldn’t suffer any genuine feelings of betrayal.

The hollow shell of a relationship they had dragged out for years had been a pathetic, embarrassing charade anyway. Even if Yeon-oh reacted with absolute bewilderment initially, it would still be infinitely better than the thermonuclear fallout of demanding a permanent severing of ties. By that agonizing logic, Yeon-oh remained the most stable option. If he could convince Yeon-oh the bastard child wasn’t his, he might simultaneously deceive Jo Gyu-deok long enough to secure his safety, though the ruthless patriarch might orchestrate another break-in to steal genetic material for testing. If the situation deteriorated completely, he could simply flee the country. Securing a life abroad wouldn’t be a cakewalk, but it beat the living hell out of trying to survive in Korea once the Haeseong family uncovered the truth.

Weighing his grim possibilities, Gi-hyeon finalized his dinner menu. Since replicating the precise braised chicken felt too ambitious, he settled for a spicy chicken stew. Thoroughly washing the prepped poultry, he tossed it into a pot, burying it under a mountain of onions, potatoes, and green onions. After aggressively circling the mound with soy sauce, he dumped in red pepper flakes, minced garlic, sugar, and a generous pinch of MSG before slamming the lid down and cranking the heat to a rapid boil. He abstained from adding extra water, strictly adhering to the method Yeon-oh had taught him.

Lately, random cravings for the specific meals Yeon-oh used to cook ambushed him. While he could clumsily replicate the recipes he had gleaned from hovering around the kitchen, the dishes he had simply consumed remained impossible to recreate. Whenever he failed, a bizarre, suffocating emotion seized him. He couldn’t articulate the feeling, but it closely resembled a profound sense of disappointment or hurt. It made absolutely no sense; So Gi-hyeon possessed zero right to feel slighted by Jo Yeon-oh. If anything, vanishing into the countryside without a single word should have inflicted that pain on the other man.

Yet Gi-hyeon desperately wanted to utilize this exile to untangle his own messy heart. He had explicitly demanded a clean break, but judging by Yeon-oh’s terrifyingly calm reaction, the bastard would never accept it. Therefore, Gi-hyeon needed to mentally prepare himself to play the perfect, platonic friend Yeon-oh so desperately demanded.

Regardless of the trauma, they had been inexplicably tethered to each other since childhood. With half his existence founded on Yeon-oh, completely excising the man felt biologically impossible. Furthermore, the child growing inside him was an undeniable physical extension of Yeon-oh.

When he had uttered those words of finality, he had genuinely intended to vanish forever. Yet the isolation had painfully revealed just how much of his own identity was irrevocably forged from the time they had spent together. Preparing to revert to the friendship Yeon-oh craved didn’t seem entirely disastrous. If he failed, he could simply enforce the permanent break he had already demanded. If he succeeded, he would secure a lifelong ally.

Previously, he had lived in sheer terror that removing Yeon-oh would obliterate the core pillars of his own life, given the terrifyingly deep intimacy they shared. However, executing that plan wasn’t on today’s agenda. For the first time in his life, Gi-hyeon had an absolute, unwavering ally forged from his own flesh and blood.

Driven by that maternal instinct, he aggressively repelled any negative thoughts. The stress would damage the child, and human nature dictated that dwelling on misery only drowned a person deeper into the abyss. He ruthlessly forced himself to focus solely on the positive. Perhaps the universe rewarded that agonizing effort, because days later, Jisu casually dropped a bombshell of vital information.

“If the pheromone deficiency is the problem, just pop some supplements,” the man remarked.

“They make things like that?” Gi-hyeon asked, genuinely shocked.

Jisu, who had miraculously decided to show up for work only to dramatically complain about dying of exhaustion, chugged two bottles of Bacchus energy drink back-to-back before tearing into an unpeeled peach and nodding.

He claimed he had scored the fruit from an acquaintance’s orchard, hauling in an entire crate specifically for Gi-hyeon after noticing his newfound craving. Yet, despite staring at a literal mountain of peaches, Gi-hyeon found himself anxiously calculating the remaining inventory in his head, painfully aware that Jisu had already devoured three.

Even when Gi-hyeon had confessed his bizarre transformation into an Omega and his subsequent pregnancy, Jisu had merely grunted indifferently. Now, spitting a pit into the trash, the older man elaborated.

“You Seoul bastards have top-tier medical facilities and a clinic on every corner, but we don’t have that luxury out in the sticks.” He implied that the sheer lack of accessibility had forced the rural population to engineer highly effective workarounds. “There are pheromone stabilizers specifically designed for recessive Omegas who struggle to maintain difficult pregnancies. Why don’t you just ride it out on those?” Jisu suggested, framing it as a perfectly trivial solution. “I’m no expert, but that’s standard procedure down here. From what I’ve seen, the kids all pop out perfectly fine. Ten fingers, ten toes, no major defects.”

“…Is that right?” Gi-hyeon murmured, cautiously nodding in contemplation.

While the solution sounded miraculous, the terrifying reality remained: leaving a digital medical footprint would instantly paint a target on his back. Plunged deep into paranoid calculations, he completely missed Jisu studying his face. Accurately decoding Gi-hyeon’s hesitation, Jisu scoffed.

“I’ve got fake IDs, so stop stressing.” Yanking open a desk drawer, the man produced a stack of grubby, faded identification cards.

Gi-hyeon opened his mouth to demand exactly why the hell he stockpiled stolen identities, but swiftly clamped his jaw shut. Learning the truth would absolutely not benefit his overall life expectancy.

Armed with his newly forged identity, Gi-hyeon set out for the obstetrics clinic Jisu had recommended. Located in a slightly larger town, the trip required a forty-minute commute, but he didn’t mind. Jisu had tossed him the keys to a beat-up scooter for grocery runs, which effectively shrank the distance. Clutching the fake ID in his pocket, he cruised toward the clinic on a terrifyingly uninsured two-wheeler, surprisingly enjoying the tranquil ride. The suffocating anxiety momentarily dissolved against the endless, vibrant sea of green countryside rushing past him.

His dread of getting busted for identity fraud proved entirely unfounded. The receptionist didn’t spare him a second glance, demanding his name and date of birth with bored apathy. Rattling off the identity of a total stranger, complete with a stolen resident registration number, Gi-hyeon slumped into the waiting room chairs until they called his turn.

“Patient An Dang-chan, please come in.”

Gi-hyeon remained blankly frozen in his seat for several seconds before the horrifying realization struck that he was An Dang-chan. Shooting up, he power-walked into the consultation room. The assistant visibly flinched at his towering height and robust frame, traits wildly incongruous with a typical Omega, but swiftly masked her shock under a veil of professionalism. Maybe I should have worn a hat, he thought, his guilt over the fabricated identity magnifying every perceived slight into a glaring red flag.

The consultation was shockingly brief. Even with the mandatory ultrasound, the initial checkup concluded in a fraction of the time his high-end Seoul clinic required. The elderly doctor, radiating the aura of a man who had seen every medical anomaly under the sun, treated Gi-hyeon’s bizarre case with utter nonchalance.

“Your condition is highly unstable, but we’ll monitor the situation while you take the supplements,” the physician diagnosed, waving off his concerns. “You should be fine for now, so don’t stress yourself out and come back next week.”

Gi-hyeon nodded gratefully as the doctor pecker-typed a few notes into the computer before dismissing him. The man’s profound apathy made Gi-hyeon’s earlier terror of being unmasked as a fraud feel utterly ridiculous. Bowing respectfully, he returned to the reception desk for his prescription. After picking up the miracle pills from the first-floor pharmacy, Gi-hyeon fired up the scooter and steered toward the local mart, deciding to knock out his grocery shopping while in town.

The moment was exquisitely, terrifyingly peaceful.