Chapter 76

Jo Yeon-oh is here? Right now? Gi-hyeon scowled deeply.

Mumbling a quick excuse, he turned on his heel and marched straight out of the greenhouse. The midday air outside was brutally, suffocatingly hot.

Releasing a heavy sigh, Gi-hyeon scanned the area. It didn’t take long to spot him. Dressed in a dark brown pique polo and ivory chinos, sporting a pair of cheap leather sandals he had undoubtedly scavenged from God-knows-where, Jo Yeon-oh was a glaring anomaly. The absolute madman was shielding himself from the sun using a black lace parasol—the exact kind favored by the local elderly women—with a pair of sleek aviator sunglasses perched on his nose, flashing a brilliant, arrogant grin.

“…What the fuck are you…”

Gi-hyeon wanted to demand exactly what kind of psychotic performance art he was currently engaged in, but Yeon-oh closed the distance before he could finish the sentence. Acting as if he had absolutely zero interest in whatever Gi-hyeon was about to say, Yeon-oh aggressively shoved a manila envelope into his chest. The pristine white envelope prominently displayed the Haeseong Hospital logo.

“What is this?”

“Do you think I handed it to you to use as a fan? Read it, Dr. So,” Yeon-oh drawled, lazily tilting the lace parasol to cast shade over Gi-hyeon.

Gi-hyeon stared at Yeon-oh for a long second before pulling the documents from the envelope.

It was a highly classified case conference report, officially stamped by the Head of the Pheromone Department and the Head of Obstetrics at Haeseong Hospital. The core thesis explicitly detailed that in order for a male Omega to successfully carry a pregnancy to term, continuous exposure to an Alpha’s pheromones was an absolute biological necessity.

The report heavily cited international case studies, explicitly warning against the catastrophic risks associated with pregnancies in late-manifesting Omegas. In overwhelmingly unanimous consensus, the primary prescribed treatment was conservative therapy via sustained Alpha pheromone exposure.

“You read it, right? Do you finally understand how catastrophic those fucking garbage supplements you’ve been swallowing are for the kid?”

“This report clearly states the risk factor is 30 percent—”

“Oh, 30 percent? That’s fucking massive. Terrifying, isn’t it,” Yeon-oh cut him off, flashing a cold, sarcastic grin.

It was infuriating, but Gi-hyeon couldn’t deny the truth: a 30 percent chance of catastrophic side effects was legitimately terrifying. Hell, even a 10 percent risk would have paralyzed him with fear. While Jisu and the local doctor had casually dismissed the dangers, claiming the supplements rarely harmed the fetus, it was entirely possible they had simply relied on survivor’s bias and blind luck.

Furthermore, the empirical evidence was undeniable: after Yeon-oh had slept in his bed last night, Gi-hyeon had woken up feeling miraculously, inexplicably healthier. He had genuinely believed he was sleeping well since arriving in the countryside, but realizing last night was the first truly restorative sleep he had experienced made the clinical statistics printed on the paper impossible to ignore.

Shoving the documents back into Yeon-oh’s chest, Gi-hyeon demanded,

“…What is your endgame here?”

“I already told you. Since the bastard who knocked you up is completely MIA, I’m stepping in to take responsibility.”

“Why?” Gi-hyeon asked bluntly.

He desperately needed to understand the underlying logic driving Yeon-oh to abandon his life in Seoul just to throw this deranged tantrum in the countryside. Only then could he even begin to process the situation. Slipping his aviators up to rest on his head like a headband, pushing his hair back, Yeon-oh narrowed his eyes and smiled again.

“…Why? Because you’re my…”

“Because I’m your what.”

As if waiting for their cue, the cicadas in the mountain behind the greenhouses erupted into a deafening, frantic chorus. Having spent years buried in the dirt just to scream for a single summer, their cries were desperate and shrill. Fighting to be heard over the cacophony, Gi-hyeon pressed his interrogation.

“You’re the one who demanded we break up, so we’re not lovers. And I’m the one who demanded we permanently sever ties, so we’re not friends either. So what exactly is our relationship to justify you doing this?”

“…”

“Why the hell did you come all the way down here? Why did you track me down?”

The perfectly sculpted, affable smile on Yeon-oh’s face slowly warped, one corner hooking upward into a vicious sneer. His eyes, previously crinkled in gentle amusement, narrowed into a lethal glare. Beneath the suffocating, blistering heat, the two massive men stood frozen under the ridiculous lace parasol, locked in a tense, silent standoff.

Just as Gi-hyeon, feeling his energy rapidly depleting, prepared to release a heavy sigh and walk away, the tension broke. Yeon-oh, the rims of his eyes suddenly burning a furious red, finally unclenched the jaw muscles that had been visibly throbbing. As if his jaw legitimately ached from the pressure, he ran his tongue against the inside of his cheek before forcing the words out, his voice dropping to a low, raw gravel.

“…Cancel the severing of ties.”

“Yeon-oh, you can’t just do whatever you want all the time.”

“I’ll retract the breakup, too. So cancel it.”

A violent spike of irritation flared in Gi-hyeon. He fully understood that Yeon-oh harbored a profoundly deep affection for him, whether it was rooted in twisted friendship or something else entirely. And Gi-hyeon felt the exact same way. For the vast majority of his life, Jo Yeon-oh had been his entire world. But they had firmly, decisively agreed to end things. The fact that Yeon-oh was now desperately trying to rewind the clock and rewrite history infuriated him.

Forcing himself to weaponize the very truth he had desperately tried to keep buried, Gi-hyeon felt as though he were deliberately spitting on his own sacred, unrequited love.

“…You said you slept with someone else. That’s why you demanded we break up.”

“…”

“I explicitly told you I didn’t care, but you told me to stop spouting bullshit and ended it anyway. So why the hell are you doing this now?”

The cicadas, which had momentarily quieted, surged back into a deafening roar. The excruciatingly shrill noise violently filled the silence between them. Yet, neither man registered the interference. They both looked like men crushed beneath the weight of unimaginably agonizing crosses.

Standing in the shade of the lace parasol, Yeon-oh’s eyes were completely unreadable, his normally pale complexion drained of all color, looking deathly white. He looked exactly like a man who had just seen a ghost, a sight that dragged a hollow, disbelieving laugh from Gi-hyeon’s throat.

…Because seeing Jo Yeon-oh look so profoundly hurt is incredibly annoying. It was an expression Gi-hyeon was biologically hardwired to surrender to. It felt exactly like looking at the young Jo Yeon-oh standing alone in a summer garden—a boy so utterly terrified of abandonment that he aggressively weaponized his abrasive, thorny exterior just to protect himself. That vulnerability was Gi-hyeon’s ultimate, fatal weakness.

There was a long stretch of their childhood where Yeon-oh, mistakenly believing Gi-hyeon had abandoned him, aggressively ignored his existence. And despite Gi-hyeon’s stoic facade during those years, the rejection had deeply, profoundly wounded him. Recognizing that he had initiated this final break specifically because he was terrified of enduring that exact same agonizing rejection again was a pathetic, bitter realization.

Refusing to reinflate his punctured resolve, Gi-hyeon parted his lips, delivering his final compromise.

“…Give me the pheromones, or whatever. But nothing beyond that. I have absolutely zero intention of telling you who the biological father is. This arrangement only lasts until the child is born. Once the baby is a hundred days old, don’t try to hold onto me. I’ll settle down somewhere far away from Seoul, and I’ll let you know when I do, so don’t ever track me down like this again.”

Delivering his absolute final terms, Gi-hyeon turned his back on him. A massive, suffocating sigh remained trapped in his chest, making him feel like his lungs were going to explode from the pressure.

Just focus on the 30 percent risk factor, he desperately rationalized to himself. He aggressively ignored the tiny, mocking voice in the back of his mind pointing out the glaring hypocrisy of his actions. But honestly, what other choice did he have?

Suddenly, a quiet, insidious thought took root. Maybe spending a little more time by his side to properly, methodically organize the lingering feelings wouldn’t be so disastrous. It was the absolute best, most pathetic excuse he could manufacture to justify running right back into the arms of the man he had sacrificed everything to escape.