‘Dokyung, you must stay healthy. Until I come get you… Please, you must do well. I’m sorry for having you born from an incompetent father’s belly and leaving after only making such a request to young you. I’m truly sorry, Dokyung….’
Inside the blanket was a note with the child’s name and Ido’s circumstances written on it. He had spent all the money he scraped together like a rat’s tail while working at the establishment on the surgery fee to give birth to the baby, and used the rest to make a bracelet for the baby. A bracelet with the baby’s name on it that would never come off unless cut. The key to the bracelet with a small lock was preciously kept in Ido’s bosom.
‘Oh my, goodness. On such a cold day….’
Hiding behind a streetlight, Ido shed tears watching the facility manager cluck her tongue while taking the baby from the baby box.
‘Heup, heu-eup, heuk, eu-heuk, heo-eong….’
The sobbing close to wailing didn’t easily subside. The Manager, who had brought him to the facility, drove the car silently. Sitting in the passenger seat next to her, Ido cried loudly. Even after returning to his room, he cried all night. He cried and cried until his eyes were all sore and peeled, pouring out sorrowful sobs until his throat was completely hoarse.
The baby who had allowed him not to be alone in the cave left his arms. The warm ember he had worried about abandoning because it was too hot now left his side, and Ido was left alone again in the dark, uncertain darkness.
And from the next day on, Ido lost the ability to speak.
*
‘…That time was the hardest.’
Perhaps the hardest moment in his life. The moment he realized the fact that he was abandoned by him, and the moment he turned away after leaving Dokyung in front of that facility.
Lee Jeong smiled faintly and looked outside. The outside scenery seen while sitting on the bus was peaceful. Despite the illness that still remained, he didn’t feel bad.
It was because gratitude welled up every time he recalled the past. Miserable memories he didn’t want to think about again. While leaving the blood-soaked infant at the facility, he felt pain as if the largest part of his body was falling off. Lee Jeong’s heart, which had already been left hollow with only an outline remaining when he thought he was abandoned by Wookyung, completely collapsed without even a trace left on the day he left Dokyung.
The Manager took Lee Jeong, who had become unable to speak, to the hospital. He received a diagnosis of selective mutism due to extreme stress and anxiety. Though it was a symptom usually experienced by many children, sometimes adults like Lee Jeong experienced it too.
Though he couldn’t properly recover his body after childbirth, Lee Jeong had to receive customers again. The broker cursed him as a useless bastard saying he had become unable to speak, but the beauty that was so outstanding it made him resent the parents who made his face didn’t easily lose its luster. As the broker said, Lee Jeong didn’t become useless. Men endlessly sought out ‘Lee Jeong.’
Lee Jeong. The fake name that had been so unfamiliar when he first came to the establishment had become familiar as if it had become his real name.
Several months passed like that. Like a doll, spreading his legs to men as instructed, he lived unable to die. He wanted to die countless times. The only thing that kept his soulless body like a ghost in this world was because of Dokyung, who would be waiting for him at the facility.
Then came the rumor that President Kim, the head of Yeodan, had died.
‘Did you hear? President Kim died.’
‘Wow, then what happens to us?’
‘President Kim died, but the organization didn’t collapse. It’ll just keep rolling along as is.’
After President Kim, who had sent Lee Jeong to the hardest and worst establishment just because he was imprinted with Wookyung’s pheromones, died, Yeodan completely turned off their interest in Lee Jeong. While experiencing chaos as the organization’s head changed, there was no attention to spare for a mere omega.
Feeling the surveillance toward him loosening, Lee Jeong gathered courage and asked the Manager. To let him bring the child he hadn’t been able to raise until now. That he would get a room near the establishment to live in, so he wouldn’t raise the child as an orphan anymore. The Manager granted the request of Lee Jeong, who had worked faithfully.
Thus, Lee Jeong could take back Dokyung, who was growing at the facility.
Lee Jeong still can’t forget the day he first brought Dokyung. How could he forget? It was the day he found again the heart that had been torn out. It was the day he regained what was more precious than anything else in this world.
[Thank you for taking care of him until now. Thank you so much. I will live my whole life repaying this grace without forgetting. Thank you so much for raising our Dokyung this much.]
He doesn’t know how many tears he shed just writing these few lines of letters on the note. As soon as he finished work after telling the Manager, he ran to the nursery. He spent the money he had worked hard to save and bought a large fruit basket. His hands holding the fruit basket and pressing the bell in front of the nursery trembled.
-Who is it?
To the employee who came out to greet him, Lee Jeong bowed his waist and handed over the fruit basket and letter. The employee’s eyes widened and mouth opened reading the letter.
‘You came to pick up Dokyung. Are you baby Yoon Dokyung’s guardian?’
Lee Jeong nodded as if his head would fall off.
‘Come this way. We need to verify the guardian’s identity first.’
With an overwhelming heart, Lee Jeong entered the nursery. His heart beat as if it would burst. When he stopped by the director’s office to greet her, the director was very welcoming. He was so grateful to the facility that carefully raised a child who wasn’t even registered as a resident. Lee Jeong bowed so deeply his nose touched his knee.
To bring out Dokyung, he had to go through paternity confirmation and various procedures. However, seeing Lee Jeong take out a key that fit Dokyung’s bracelet from his bosom and accurately write on paper the situation and date of the day the child was admitted, the director nodded. It seemed she tacitly acknowledged that Lee Jeong was Dokyung’s biological father based on the circumstances.
Thanks to that, Lee Jeong could see the child’s face before going through formal procedures through the director’s generosity. While the employee went to the room where very young infants lived and brought Dokyung, Lee Jeong’s chest swelled as if it would burst.
Lee Jeong, who had been waiting briefly in the reception room, had no choice but to stand up abruptly seeing the child coming in with the employee soon after.
‘Dokyung, daddy. Daddy came.’
Seeing the child held obediently in the employee’s arms, Lee Jeong covered his mouth with both hands.
The fluffy hair was as thin as a chick’s feathers. Like Lee Jeong, the skin was so white that capillaries could be seen faintly through the cheeks. The red lips were triangular shaped like a small bird’s beak, and the wide-open eyes were looking up at Lee Jeong innocently and purely.
The plumply fleshed cheeks resembled Ido, being extremely pale. The distinct features resembled Wookyung heartbreakingly. Even without the bracelet worn on the chubby arm, it seemed like he could recognize his child at a glance.
Exactly 4 months had passed since giving birth to the child. In the meantime, the baby had completely shed the appearance of a newborn. But even so, he was still a baby who couldn’t even sit and only lay down.
The fact that he had left such a young thing and turned away became a sharp knife and harshly pierced Lee Jeong’s chest.
What should he do first when they meet? How should he greet him? He should hug him first. As much as he couldn’t hold him all this time, he should hug him to his heart’s content.
The resolution he had made like that crumbled away.
What sin do you, a perfect being, have to be born from someone like me who has nothing and is lacking? Young angel who was born borrowing my belly, what did you think when the person who gave birth to you left you in an unfamiliar place? Did you perhaps also tremble every night like me? Were you also cold, anxious, and afraid like me, though you couldn’t speak, fearing that your only blood relative in the world would never come find you again…?
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry Dokyung. Such, such a young you….
‘Ah… Heuk, ugh… Heuk….’
Only desperate wails that couldn’t become words melted into tears and flowed out. Before Lee Jeong, who prostrated himself and couldn’t even raise his head while wailing, Dokyung just looked at his father clearly with a face that knew nothing.
At the sight of Ido and Dokyung like that, even the employees standing around had reddened eyes. There were also people who finally turned their heads and shed tears. Compared to the father who prostrated himself crying desperately begging for forgiveness, the child he had abandoned was excessively innocent and pure in appearance.
‘Lee Jeong-ssi. The paternity confirmation is complete. Congratulations on being able to take the child.’
After going through tests several days later and completing paternity confirmation, Lee Jeong repeatedly bowed and thanked the director. Though they were two people not even registered in the world, because they couldn’t just hand over the child carelessly, it was a procedure the director had taken by requesting a hospital she personally knew.
‘Now you really… have to live well. And raise Dokyung well.’
‘……’
‘You can do well. Just by coming to find him like this, Lee Jeong-ssi is a good daddy.’
The child was found again like fate. Like finding his own star in the vast universe, Lee Jeong, who had been living like a dead corpse, gained the strength to live through the child. No matter how hard it was, seeing the child’s face automatically made strength surge up.
With the Manager’s permission, he got a small room near the establishment. Though it was an old house where cockroaches boiled at night and occasionally the sound of mice squeaking could be heard, just being able to be together while looking at the child sleeping peacefully next to him made him truly grateful.
Thanks to consideration for Lee Jeong’s circumstances, on nights when he had to go out to work, he could leave the child at the nursery. Until miraculously meeting Yoonkyung, Lee Jeong raised the child with the nursery’s help. But that was also just a temporary measure. Many children flooded into the nursery every day, and they couldn’t watch Lee Jeong’s child, who had a guardian, forever. Reading the situation every day, Lee Jeong anxiously raised the child.
On days when the floor was so cold that hands and feet were freezing, his heart ached so stuffily with apology toward the child that it hurt.
‘When you were at the nursery, you at least ate and slept in a warm place….’
It seemed like he made the child suffer by bringing him for no reason. No matter how much heating was done, the old house didn’t easily become warm. Looking down at the face of the young one sleeping well even with moonlight fully embraced on the face because they couldn’t afford curtains, Lee Jeong cried while holding his breath.
