So he worked even more desperately. He entered without hesitation even the rooms of customers that establishment people avoided. He did his best to act coquettishly as they wanted and received tips.
Anyway, customers didn’t want much from Lee Jeong, who couldn’t speak. Just to look at them with a poignant face and obediently submit. Lee Jeong willingly did so, and men captivated by Lee Jeong’s unique atmosphere or face endlessly sought out Lee Jeong.
‘The face and body are all good, but the pheromones really have no taste.’
However, there were also alphas who were disappointed. Lee Jeong’s pheromones, which had given off a sweet and alluring rose scent, had strangely deteriorated and only gave off a bitter smell of crushed stalks or leaves. Alphas who had embraced Lee Jeong expecting sweet omega scent frowned.
He heard somewhere that if forcibly separated from an imprinted partner, pheromones deteriorate while experiencing imprinting pain. Not satisfied with leaving a huge mark called Dokyung in his life, he was a person who left traces even in something like this. Wookyung was.
‘…I hate you.’
However, Lee Jeong helplessly thought of him every single day. He thought of him even when going to bed after finishing a hard day’s schedule, and when seeing Dokyung growing and increasingly resembling him, he naturally recalled him. The heart longing for Wookyung flipped on some days like flipping a palm to a heart that hated him to death, and on other days made him cry mournfully while calling his name in a small voice.
‘Ido.’
He was the person who called his name with the warmest voice in the world. If that person saw our baby, what would he say? Wouldn’t he smile with an expression of having the whole world? Wouldn’t he warmly embrace me, saying I really worked hard giving birth to and raising the child alone…?
He missed Wookyung so much. Even knowing the fact that he was abandoned by him, deep in his heart he helplessly longed for him. News that he was going strong hand in hand with the new head at Daneum became a knife stabbing, tearing, and roughly digging up his heart in tatters, but nevertheless, sprouts budded from the messed-up wound.
The heart toward Wookyung, far from fading as time passed, took root deep in Ido’s wound every day and just grew vigorously. It was more so because he saw Dokyung’s face, which resembled Wookyung so much, every single day.
It was one night while raising the child day by day like that.
It was an unusually cold day. After being devoured by men all night and trying to stop by the nursery with a tattered body to pick up the child, the nursery teacher stamped her feet saying she was going to contact him anyway.
‘Lee Jeong-ssi, the baby has had a blazing fever since dawn. Do something!’
Knowing Lee Jeong’s circumstances, the director lent another child’s name. Only after running to the emergency room and administering one round of fever-reducing IV did Dokyung’s fever drop a little. After spending all the remaining money in his wallet to pay the medical bill, Lee Jeong trudged out of the hospital holding the child. The doctor recommended hospitalization, but there was no more money to pay for medical expenses.
He had never hated his own incompetence as much as today. What did he believe in to give birth to a child when he couldn’t even hospitalize a sick child? While being unable to live without an alpha, when all he knew how to do was spread his legs to men, why did I give birth to a baby?
Why did I give birth to you and make you suffer like this…?
Tears dropped and wetted the cheeks of Dokyung, who was sleeping in his arms. He kept wiping the child’s face with his hand in case the coldly cooled tears would make the child cold, but tears kept flowing down. Crying hard, getting off the bus and walking, he saw a sign for a city-operated child support center before his eyes.
He walked toward it as if possessed. Though he couldn’t use such institutions because he was a being that didn’t legally exist in this world, he had to cling to even one strand of hair hanging as a last resort. Seeing the bright red face of the child wheezing with fever rising again, there was no time to hesitate.
Perhaps because it was lunchtime, people were gathering in threes and fives and entering the center. With the feeling of clutching at straws, Lee Jeong grabbed the arm of one woman among them.
‘What’s the matter?’
Lee Jeong desperately pointed to his mouth and shook his head. The woman, narrowing her brow and alternately looking at Lee Jeong’s face and the baby’s brightly flushed face, suddenly asked.
‘…Is the baby sick? Perhaps, is it a bit difficult for the guardian to speak?’
Lee Jeong nodded as if his head would fall off with a desperate expression.
‘Come in for now. Come in and consult.’
With the woman’s help, Lee Jeong and Dokyung could enter the warm center. Just entering the building that would block the cold wind already put his mind at ease.
The woman who entered the counseling room handed over a ballpoint pen and paper.
‘Well then, write here what you want to say.’
Lee Jeong wrote down character by character on the paper with the ballpoint pen.
[I have circumstances… I’m a person not registered as a resident. So it’s hard to receive legal help. The child is the same.]
The woman’s eyes reading Lee Jeong’s writing looked at Lee Jeong as if in disbelief. With a desperate expression, Lee Jeong finished writing.
He might be kicked out. With an awkward expression, she might say she couldn’t help. How could civil servants help him who wasn’t legally registered? So until now, while giving birth to and raising the child, he had never received the nation’s benefits even once. Even when sick like this, he had to borrow someone else’s name.
However. Right now, there was no other way but this.
He had to cling somehow. Praying with a heart more earnest than any other time in the world, Lee Jeong wrote with trembling handwriting.
[Please help. The baby is sick. Just once, please help…]
That was the first meeting with his first savior, Yoonkyung, whom he met in the midst of life’s abyss.
<To be continued in Volume 2>
