Chapter 78

Tonight’s dinner menu featured grilled pork belly and spicy young radish noodles. Gi-hyeon watched in sheer amazement as the standard young radish kimchi they occasionally pulled from the fridge to eat with instant ramen was miraculously transformed into a sweet and spicy gourmet noodle dish. When Gi-hyeon asked how he achieved that specific flavor profile, Yeon-oh casually mentioned he had scored some homemade grape vinegar from the ‘Tile-Roofed House Grandma.’

“Who the hell is the ‘Tile-Roofed House Grandma’?”

“She lives in the lower village. You don’t know her?”

Completely unaware he even lived in an ‘upper village,’ Gi-hyeon merely shrugged.

Apparently, Yeon-oh hadn’t just been wandering around poking his nose into everyone’s business; he had actively started accepting odd jobs from the local elders. He would occasionally get dispatched to construct support stakes for cherry tomato vines or repair ripped weed-blocking vinyl in their vegetable gardens.

Gi-hyeon didn’t find this particularly strange.

Yeon-oh was inherently highly competent at practically everything. Regardless of the task, he possessed the terrifying ability to flawlessly replicate a process just by watching someone do it once over their shoulder.

Therefore, witnessing a filthy rich Seoul aristocrat excelling at manual farm labor didn’t even register as an anomaly. If anything, this relaxed, adaptable version of Yeon-oh powerfully resurrected memories of their high school days, back when Yeon-oh was far more easygoing.

That nostalgia was pure poison to Gi-hyeon. Returning to the genesis of his feelings would only reveal an even deeper, darker abyss waiting for him, its depths silently whispering for him to jump back in and drown. He absolutely needed to intercept and terminate those regressive memories. Yet, how? Gi-hyeon occasionally found himself acutely aware of how profoundly exhausted his heart had become after years of relentless resistance.

Yeon-oh’s voice shattered his reverie.

“Father of the child, why aren’t you eating more?”

Frowning deeply at the bizarre, archaic phrasing, Gi-hyeon stared at Yeon-oh while taking a sip of water. He quickly averted his gaze. In that brief second of eye contact, Gi-hyeon couldn’t read a single emotion in Yeon-oh’s eyes.

Because he had deliberately refrained from asking how long Yeon-oh intended to stay, he had zero intelligence on how much gallery business Yeon-oh had actually delegated. Deciding it was time, Gi-hyeon carefully broached the subject.

“How much longer are you going to stay here?”

“There you go with that again. I told you, I’m going back up to Seoul with you.”

“Right. So when is that?”

Yeon-oh, who had been answering with bored indifference, suddenly looked at Gi-hyeon with genuine surprise. He clearly hadn’t anticipated that specific counter.

“…Why, do you hate being here now?”

“You’re busy.”

There was absolutely no way Yeon-oh’s grandfather—a man who threatened to hand the conglomerate over to the cousins if Yeon-oh stepped out of the office for a few days—was tolerating an absence this prolonged. The fact that Yeon-oh was still loitering down here suggested he was pushing his luck dangerously far for no good reason.

Tapping the screen of his phone resting next to the table to check the date, Gi-hyeon resumed eating without much enthusiasm. He could feel Yeon-oh intensely scrutinizing his reaction, but Gi-hyeon focused entirely on emptying the plate Yeon-oh had prepared for him.

The subtle, suffocating silence persisted even after the meal concluded. While Yeon-oh cleared the table, Gi-hyeon went to brush his teeth. Emerging from the bathroom, Gi-hyeon lightly tapped Yeon-oh on the back, fully aware that the water dripping from his hands would instantly soak into the fabric of Yeon-oh’s t-shirt. The man, usually possessed of nerves of steel, looked surprisingly startled by the sudden physical contact and whipped around. Gi-hyeon spoke, his voice entirely devoid of inflection.

“Go wash up. I’ll clean up the rest.”

“…”

Yeon-oh stared at Gi-hyeon intently before silently retreating into the bathroom without a single word of protest. The fact that he didn’t demand ‘Why?’ indicated he was deeply preoccupied with their earlier conversation. The topic Gi-hyeon needed to discuss with Yeon-oh wasn’t suitable for the dinner table, so he had simply bided his time.

He had debated abandoning the conversation entirely. He genuinely didn’t want to be that cruel. However, witnessing Yeon-oh looking so dangerously comfortable these past few days had solidified his resolve; it was time to drop the guillotine.

Staring blankly at the bathroom door with an impassive face, Gi-hyeon waited. When Yeon-oh finally emerged with a towel draped over his head, Gi-hyeon patted the spot next to him on the bed.

“Sit down.”

“…This is fucking terrifying.”

Standing frozen in place, Yeon-oh muttered a curse under his breath. Gi-hyeon didn’t quite catch the words, but he lacked the curiosity to ask. Instead, he watched intently as Yeon-oh finally sat down next to him. Gi-hyeon reached out, took the towel from Yeon-oh’s head, and prepared to dry his wet hair. However, the attempt was immediately aborted. Yeon-oh violently snatched Gi-hyeon’s wrist.

“What kind of psychotic bullshit are you about to pull? Are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack?”

The eyes glaring back at Gi-hyeon were heavily bloodshot. Because drying Yeon-oh’s hair was a common occurrence back in Seoul, Gi-hyeon genuinely hadn’t expected such an extreme reaction. Then again, considering Yeon-oh had been throwing violent tantrums practically every time he looked at Gi-hyeon lately, he couldn’t exactly blame the man for being paranoid.

Wordlessly, Gi-hyeon gently dislodged Yeon-oh’s grip, picked up the towel again, and began drying his hair. Yeon-oh remained perfectly still, offering no further resistance. When Gi-hyeon finally lowered the damp towel, Yeon-oh lifted his head and locked eyes with him.

Gi-hyeon held the gaze, letting the silence stretch between them.

“…”

“…”

An agonizing, suffocating silence filled the room. Gi-hyeon was the one to finally shatter it.

“Were you being serious when you said you wanted to retract the breakup and the severing of ties?”

“…”

Yeon-oh simply stared at him, offering no response. The rims of his eyes were still red, but his pupils swirled with a faint, volatile heat and an indecipherable emotion. Convinced it wasn’t hesitation or regret, Gi-hyeon pressed forward.

“Even knowing I showed up pregnant with another man’s child, you can still be my lover?”

“…”

Again, Yeon-oh refused to answer. Gi-hyeon let out a short sigh.

“Or what, is this your twisted logic? You slept with someone else, I slept with someone else, so now we’re perfectly even?”

“…That’s not it, so just spit out whatever the fuck you want to say. What is your point?” Yeon-oh snapped, his tone turning razor-sharp.

Ignoring the deepening scowl on Yeon-oh’s face, Gi-hyeon didn’t back down, launching a completely different question.

“Aren’t you even slightly curious about the fact that I suddenly manifested as an Omega? Don’t you want to know why it happened, or when I found out?”

At that, one corner of Yeon-oh’s mouth hooked upward in a bitter smirk.

“Have you given me a single fucking second to be curious about that bullshit? Since I got down here, I’ve found out you turned into an Omega, you’re knocked up, your ankle was permanently crushed by some military bastards, and you spent years hiding that fact from me with the help of that piece of shit, Lee Beom-hee. Which one of those do you think commanded my immediate fucking attention?”

I honestly don’t know. Gi-hyeon didn’t have the answer. What would take precedence for Jo Yeon-oh: the infuriating reality of watching Gi-hyeon limp around for years without knowing the cause, or the mind-shattering revelation that his former Beta boyfriend—whom he had dated despite his violent phobia of Betas—had suddenly manifested as an Omega and gotten impregnated by another man? Watching Gi-hyeon’s silence, Yeon-oh’s face twisted into a grotesque, agonizing smile.

“See, Gi-hyeon? You still don’t know a goddamn thing.”

Jo Yeon-oh never explicitly told Gi-hyeon what he was allowed to know, or where the boundaries of his knowledge ended. He simply left Gi-hyeon to wander blindly in all directions, only to repeatedly hit dead ends and be forced to turn back. This psychological maze was the exact dynamic they had operated under for years.

Gi-hyeon had lived trapped in a confined space, entirely unaware it was a prison. If he had taken just one more step forward, he might have realized he was locked inside, but instead, he had spent years spinning in endless, pathetic circles in the exact same spot. Yes, his own stupidity was largely to blame for repeating the cycle. But who was the one standing there, silently watching him spin in those circles the entire time?

Enduring a brief, sharp pang of emotional agony, Gi-hyeon forcefully shook it off and finally voiced his resolution. Lacing the words with a microscopic fraction of his resentment toward Yeon-oh, driven by the absolute desperation to finally terminate this agonizing relationship, he addressed the old friend and ex-lover who would inevitably track him down and scold him no matter where he ran.

“I think you just like having me next to you. You just like possessing me, regardless of what form that takes.”

At that accusation, Yeon-oh glared at Gi-hyeon through his damp bangs, his eyes burning with terrifying intensity.

“Don’t step on the landmines, So Gi-hyeon. Only step on the right answer.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Nodding once, Gi-hyeon delivered the ‘right answer’ he had agonizingly concluded without a shred of hesitation.

“I have absolutely zero intention of staying by your side as a friend.”

As if he had already anticipated this exact rejection, one of Yeon-oh’s eyebrows ticked upward slightly. Refusing to break eye contact, Gi-hyeon delivered the killing blow.

“Sleep with me.”

“…What?”

Yeon-oh’s eyes blew wide in sheer, unadulterated shock. Gi-hyeon felt a wave of pathetic self-disgust that he had been reduced to uttering these exact words. He had tried everything to rip his heart away; he had fled to the edge of the earth, yet here he was, right back at square one. The cyclical futility of it all was exhausting. Gi-hyeon was ready to initiate the apocalypse.

“Sleep with me, or we cut ties forever. Pick one.”

Gi-hyeon already knew exactly which ending his co-star in this pathetic, absurd farce would inevitably choose. Yeon-oh might agonizingly debate it, he might even attempt to go through with it, but ultimately, he would violently reject the premise and storm off the stage.

Yet, Gi-hyeon realized he needed to expend this agonizing effort to force Yeon-oh to make that choice. If he simply begged for it to end without forcing this confrontation, Yeon-oh’s psychotic tenacity guaranteed he would never, ever let Gi-hyeon go.

This was the absolute cleanest execution strategy Gi-hyeon could engineer. Of course, if the relentlessly stubborn Jo Yeon-oh refused to acknowledge his true feelings and actually attempted to sleep with him, Gi-hyeon would be forced to absorb the full, devastating impact of Yeon-oh’s visceral disgust point-blank. That would shatter him.

Despite Gi-hyeon now possessing the biology of an Omega, he had been born and raised as a Beta male. To Jo Yeon-oh, who had stood by his side his entire life, Gi-hyeon would fundamentally always remain a Beta.

However, even knowing this strategy was the equivalent of violently sanding down his own heart, it was the only way to sever the bond. Gi-hyeon now possessed a crystal-clear priority; he needed to gather every microscopic scrap of his emotional energy and dedicate it entirely to the child growing inside him. Therefore, he had to completely eradicate Jo Yeon-oh from his life before the baby was born.

While formulating this suicidal strategy, a small, desperate part of him silently prayed Yeon-oh would simply slap him across the face, tell him to stop spouting psychotic bullshit, and leave immediately. He was so incredibly tired of this agonizing war of attrition where neither of them could ever win. However, So Gi-hyeon—a man cursed with notoriously terrible luck who practically never got what he wanted—was about to be denied yet again.

“Is that… what you really, genuinely want?”

Yeon-oh’s voice sounded like it was being dragged over broken glass. Half-resigned, Gi-hyeon offered a slow nod. The gaze fixed upon him intensified, turning terrifyingly obsessive. It felt as though Yeon-oh was meticulously analyzing him for any microscopic trace of deceit or bluffing. When Gi-hyeon maintained his deadpan, stoic facade against the suffocating scrutiny, Yeon-oh finally opened his mouth.

“Fine.”

“…”

“Let’s do it. Fucking, or whatever the hell you want to call it. We’ll do it until you’re completely satisfied.”

…See? I told you I never get what I want. Gi-hyeon let out a hollow, bitter laugh in his mind. A scorching heat clamped down violently around his wrist. Yeon-oh flashed a vicious, demonic smile. It felt exactly as if Gi-hyeon’s own pathetic love was actively mocking him.

“But Gi-hyeon. What are you going to do if, even after we fuck, your life is still a miserable fucking gutter?”

Yeon-oh seemed to have at least partially deduced Gi-hyeon’s strategy—that Gi-hyeon was intentionally summoning hell purely to engineer an escape. Gi-hyeon replied with absolute, chilling apathy.

“I don’t care.”

“…”

“It’s not exactly a joyride right now anyway.”

The blistering heat he had desperately craved, yet absolutely never wanted delivered in this horrific context, burned against his wrist. Within seconds, the suffocating, overwhelming density of Jo Yeon-oh’s Alpha pheromones violently packed the tiny, claustrophobic room, leaving absolutely no oxygen to breathe.