The start of this maddening situation goes back to not long ago.
Saehyeon opened his eyes with sharp pain. His head rang as if the back of his skull had been repeatedly struck with a hammer, and his eyes felt gritty.
His limbs were heavy like waterlogged cotton and ached at every joint. He wondered if this was what it would feel like to be trampled by an elephant.
Still, though there were differences in degree, even this wasn’t particularly unfamiliar.
After becoming a college student, exams and assignments were joined by damn team projects and all sorts of drinking gatherings. Living day by day like that, he couldn’t help but become accustomed to this physical state, whether he liked it or not.
But he didn’t think he could put this in the category of familiarity.
“Daddyyyyy… don’t dieee… *sob*!”
The sight of an incredibly pretty young child sitting in front of him, crying their heart out, was highly unusual. This absurd big event was a first in Saehyeon’s entire life.
Or was it the second time? He vaguely seemed to remember comforting a half-sibling who had suddenly dropped into his life.
Anyway, since the child kept crying in front of him, Saehyeon hurriedly sat up. The moment he pressed against the floor, his elbow bent weakly, but he had no time to worry about that.
He wasn’t affectionate toward children and his personality wasn’t particularly good either. But he wasn’t such a callous adult that his conscience would allow him to ignore a crying child.
“Uh, *cough*. U-uh, Daddy’s perfectly fine.”
That was all he could manage to squeeze out, scraping his parched and cracked throat that tasted of blood.
Only after getting those words out, such as they were, could Saehyeon finally regain his senses somewhat.
His surroundings, which he instinctively looked around, were full of unfamiliar things.
A yellowed ceiling with fluorescent lights exposed as if the covers had been sold off somewhere. Below it, unfamiliar, worn furnishings were placed here and there throughout the small house like still lifes.
An unfamiliar house. A very unfamiliar house. A physical state resembling a terrible hangover, an unfamiliar environment, a child he’d never seen before.
Saehyeon combined these elements and reached one conclusion.
‘Did someone pick me up after I got blackout drunk and became a street drunk?’
It was a bit strange. His drunken instinct had something in common with pigeons. The saying that they return home even on the verge of death.
Honestly, he’d drunk more because he believed in that. Because whenever he woke up, it was always a familiar ceiling.
Still, there are exceptions to everything, so there was plenty of possibility that someone had kindly taken in his drunk self.
This child was probably… either that someone’s late-born younger sibling or an early-born child. Seeing how he was looking for his daddy, it seemed closer to the latter.
Having thought that far, Saehyeon muttered blankly.
“…I don’t remember hearing about anyone among my classmates or seniors raising a child.”
Especially one this big.
The child sniffling in front of Saehyeon looked to be around four or five years old at a rough guess. He didn’t know children well so he couldn’t be certain. In any case, what was surprising was that the child was big enough to properly express himself.
At the same time, he could roughly guess why there hadn’t been talk about it in the department. Whether they’d had a child at a young age or were living with a late-born younger sibling in a house like this, he would have kept his mouth shut too.
Once words left your mouth, they couldn’t be taken back, and as they passed between people, they easily lost their original form. That’s why Saehyeon tended to think it was best to spare words in complicated situations.
“Ahem, *cough*. Where did Daddy go?”
There was no special reason for asking about the child’s father’s whereabouts. It was because he’d been left alone with the child.
After first meeting whoever brought him here—the child’s father or older brother—he planned to apologize for being a burden and treat them to a meal at least.
Additionally, regarding various situations, he planned to read the room and say he would absolutely keep quiet about everything.
But the child’s reaction was completely outside Saehyeon’s expectations.
“D-Daddy… Daddyyyyy…”
Upon hearing Saehyeon’s words, the child’s eyes went wide. The already large eyes became truly round, and it seemed like the glass-bead-like pupils would roll right out with a tap.
As if a dam’s floodgates had opened, tears poured out from those eyes. If before it was sniffling, now it was wailing.
An enormous show of sorrow that seemed determined to wring out all the moisture collected in that small body as tears.
“Why, why are you crying? Huh?”
Flustered, Saehyeon stammered and waved his hands in the air. Wouldn’t this make it look like he was the one who made the child cry?
No matter how much he tried to comfort him, the child wouldn’t stop crying. Calling for daddy the whole time was the basic option.
Having suddenly found himself in the position of a kidnapper who’d abducted a child from their biological father, Saehyeon stared blankly at the clear cheeks streaming with tears.
At that moment, this thought flashed through Saehyeon’s brain like lightning.
‘You comfort kids by holding them… Right. If I just pick him up and give him water, won’t he stop?’
He couldn’t repay with enmity the kindness of letting a drunk into their home, even if it meant exposing sensitive information.
Saehyeon sighed as if he had no choice and reached out.
“Ugh, nn… There.”
When he firmly grasped the small body and lifted it up, the child clung to him. He swayed for a moment but soon barely regained his balance, and Saehyeon sighed softly.
“Wow, Lee Saehyeon is totally done for. I should work out…”
The moment he lifted the child while feeling dizzy, Saehyeon had a gut feeling that something was seriously wrong. His arms dropped weakly and his knees buckled—he’d almost dropped the child or rolled on the floor and ended up meeting the guardian at the hospital.
Even if he was a bit big, for his limbs to tremble like aspen leaves just from lifting one small child. He thought he really needed to do one of two things: cut back on drinking or start exercising.
“Daddyyy don’t dieee… *sob* *waaah*…”
“N-no. I’m not dead. Not dead. Hey hey.”
Saehyeon walked toward the kitchen while gently swaying with the child in his arms. Then, after sitting him down near the sink, he poured water, brought it to the child’s mouth, and asked.
“Want some water?”
Whether he was startled by being suddenly picked up or whether another person’s body heat provided some comfort—he didn’t know. In any case, fortunately the child had stopped crying. After hiccupping and nodding his head, he even obediently accepted and drank the water, gulping it down.
It was fortunate that he didn’t seem likely to cry anymore.
There was a small plastic cup in the cupboard, seemingly for children, so he’d taken that out. After confirming that the small hands had firmly grasped the handle, Saehyeon relaxed and pulled back slightly.
He was thinking of going to look for his phone. Because the belated thought occurred to him that if the guardian was gone long enough to leave like this, they must have left a message beforehand.
“Nnn…”
That attempt was also thwarted with a feeling of his clothes being pulled. The child was firmly grasping his hem with one hand and wouldn’t let go.
When he glanced back, the child’s eyes that met his were still brimming with water and welling up. In the end, Saehyeon had no choice but to stand there like a faithful wife turned to stone. Still, he thought it was better than making the child cry again.
After standing still for a moment trying to gauge the time, Saehyeon lowered his head at the feeling of his sleeve being tugged.
“Done drinking?”
“Mm…”
After receiving the cup and pushing it into the sink, Saehyeon looked down at the child who was fidgeting.
Perhaps because he’d cried enough to break into a sweat, his hair was thoroughly soaked as if he’d applied gel wrong, plastered to his forehead. The cheeks below were streaked with tear tracks, and the lower half of his face below his nose was covered in snot.
Objectively, it was a completely messy appearance. But despite such a state, the round forehead, white face, and delicate features came together and he was still creepily pretty.
He had the impression of a small porcelain doll that a craftsman had painstakingly made and sold to collectors at a high price.
‘…Was there someone like this in our department?’
He suddenly thought it was strange. A face like this wouldn’t just suddenly drop from the sky, would it?
It was fully possible to infer that the producer’s face would also be considerably beautiful. And such people tended to be memorable even without deliberately trying.
Moreover, leaving a complete stranger alone with such a high-anxiety child wouldn’t be easy either. They must be at least acquaintances.
A beautiful face, acquainted with him, and old enough to have a child this big—someone older than 20. Put together like this, they were really an easy person to identify. But strangely, no face came to mind that would satisfy all these conditions.
“Daddy…”
Perhaps sensing the gaze staring at him, the child ghostly raised his head and met his eyes.
The pupils visible beneath eyelashes that hung down like an awning were dark gray. A strange color that looked black at a glance from afar, but showed a clear difference when examined closely.
His hair was also light brown, so it seemed his pigmentation was light overall.
As Saehyeon stared at that, a specific person flashed through his mind.
Someone with a face so pretty it seemed someone had carefully sculpted it, with overall light coloring as if slightly faded.
‘If it’s someone… like that.’
There was only one person.
A bastard who was really fucking annoying, and pretty enough to make your jaw drop.
