“They said you’ve been having trouble sleeping again lately.”
The new psychiatrist suited Wookyung quite well. After listening carefully to Wookyung’s symptoms for several weeks, Dr. Kim Hyunjin delicately adjusted his prescriptions to match his condition.
At first, he’d visited the place a few times with businesslike steps just to pick up medication. He remembered how he’d sharply put up walls when, at their first meeting, the doctor asked him in a gentle voice what had happened. If the doctor kept interfering with such nonsense when the office was quite far from the company, there would be no reason to keep coming here.
However, Dr. Kim Hyunjin keenly noticed the line Wookyung had clearly drawn at their first meeting. And he rarely tried to cross that line. He was a delicate and skilled doctor. Kim Minho told him later that he was quite famous for insomnia. Famous enough that it made sense—Dr. Kim Hyunjin adjusted medication and counseling in a way that made Wookyung comfortable. As a result, before long, even without Kim Minho watching Wookyung’s mood and struggling to squeeze in appointment schedules, Wookyung naturally came to seek him out on his own.
“Mm… Is there something new that’s worrying you?”
“There’s no particular change. It’s just…”
The doctor treated Wookyung naturally, like a friend or work colleague. With his skilled conversation techniques, Wookyung didn’t reach the point of opening up and telling his story, but at least he no longer felt much resistance to bringing up daily pleasantries.
“There’s a place I go to frequently for business, and there’s someone I’m worried about running into.”
The doctor’s appearance was relaxed as he spun his pen around in his hand. When their eyes met, he smiled broadly. It was a smile that always looked comfortable, but whenever Wookyung saw that smile, he thought the doctor was more someone who was good at his job rather than a genuinely kind person. Not in a bad way. He was just doing his job.
Skillfully, efficiently. And doing his best at his work. But he didn’t seem like a fundamentally kind and good person. The feeling that he didn’t seem like a good person from the start wasn’t based on precise evidence, but relied entirely on Wookyung’s animal instincts. But that was the conclusion Wookyung had reached about him after spending several weeks with Dr. Kim Hyunjin.
“I see. Is it by chance that omega who had the comforting scent?”
“Yes. We got tangled up in an… uncomfortable relationship.”
“In what way uncomfortable?”
“…Mm. Because he’s connected to my family.”
He listened carefully to each answer, nodding at every word. Sometimes he scribbled something on paper. Wookyung wasn’t naive enough to open his mouth unconsciously and pour out various stories just from seeing such things, but it was true that his heart was opening little by little to the man working hard. At least, he wanted to help this doctor do his job a little.
That was exactly the extent of his feelings. Anyway, even if he confided in someone, it wouldn’t lessen the pain in his heart. Even if he received empathy from someone and poured out the sadness in his heart, that child who no longer existed in this world wouldn’t come back to life.
Wookyung knew his symptoms well. It was pain to bear alone, and he didn’t want to unload it onto someone through conversation or counseling and feel lighter. It was a cross he’d implicitly promised himself to bear alone, stubbornly and painfully.
“If it’s uncomfortable, you don’t need to force yourself to meet them. Let’s slowly look for other methods.”
The eyes smiling from behind his glasses gave a gentle and benevolent impression. However, Wookyung’s eyes always keenly read some emotion lurking beyond those eyeballs.
It was an emotion hidden away very gloomily and secretly. It gave off such a dark and secret smell that ordinary people would never think someone with such a gentle impression and professional, altruistic occupation could possess it. However, to Wookyung’s eyes—someone who had spent a long time pushing people into whirlpools of pain, sadness, screams, and tears—that emotion was visible. A damp and mean-spirited emotion lurked in the doctor’s interior like a crocodile hiding its body deep in a black swamp.
This person’s interior might be very dangerous. That was Wookyung’s impression as counseling sessions continued.
But it didn’t matter. There would certainly be no occasion to face Dr. Kim Hyunjin’s pitch-black abyss. He and I are only connected in a business sense, as client and counselor. He helps me while wearing the mask of a doctor. I take medication that works well from him while playing the role of patient. The two will continue to faithfully perform their assigned roles, and there will be no occasion for him to remove that mask in front of Wookyung.
That’s what he thought. At least until a few days ago.
But now, what Wookyung was seeing beyond the door he’d smashed was Dr. Kim Hyunjin’s abyss that he’d carelessly dismissed as something he’d never see in his lifetime.
“…Ido…”
The moment he opened the door, Wookyung wanted to gouge out his own eyes rather than see what entered his vision.
Even though he was seeing with his own two eyes the sight of Ido crouched in a corner of the living room like he was dead, he couldn’t believe his eyes. No, it was a scene he didn’t dare want to think was real.
He saw Ido naked, wearing a dog collar, blood pouring from his nose and mouth. Judging by the swelling around his eyes and the bloodstains splattered all over his body, it seemed the man had severely beaten him.
Wookyung’s massive body approached the two of them in an instant.
“You… this fuck, you…”
No more words came from between furious Wookyung’s teeth. Glaring at Hyunjin with bloodshot eyes while trembling violently, Wookyung drew back his fist and drove it hard into Hyunjin’s jaw.
The man who until now had been vigorously smashing Ido’s head into the dog bowl like a madman fell to the floor absurdly easily. With a bang, Wookyung mounted the body of the doctor sprawled on the floor and swung his fist hard once more. After several bursting sounds, Hyunjin’s eyes rolled back from the iron-like fist hitting his face and he passed out.
Wookyung came down from the unconscious man’s body without delay and hurried over to Ido.
“Ido-ya. Ido-ya…”
Wookyung pulled Ido into his embrace. His fingertips trembled severely as he felt Ido’s body, as if trying to confirm whether he was a living person. His eyes searched for Ido even while looking at Ido’s face without blinking once. Like someone whose mind had left them, he called Ido’s name while his hands fumbled wildly over Ido’s face, neck, and body.
“Ido-ya, I was wrong. I, I was too late. Ido-ya, Ido-ya…”
A small hand with feeble strength was resisting as if trying to push him away, but for Wookyung who wasn’t in his right mind, that resistance was too weak and feeble to notice.
With trembling hands like an aspen tree, he grabbed the face covered in bloody tears and turned it toward himself. Eyes that seemed to have their soul completely dead stared at him. When those eyes blinked once with tears making them bleary, a thick teardrop fell with a plop and flowed down along the temple toward the ear. Wookyung’s fingers frantically wiped away those tears so they wouldn’t enter the ear.
Then the pale hand squirmed up and weakly batted away Wookyung’s hand. Only then did Wookyung startle.
“I’m sorry, Ido-ya… I… I have nothing to say to you. I… I was wrong.”
“……”
“It was hard, wasn’t it. It was hard all this time. I, I’m sorry. Ido-ya, Yoon Ido…”
With trembling hands as if he couldn’t believe it, he stroked the small blood-stained white face over and over. Frantically muttering while hugging that small body as if it would break, then hurriedly separating him from his embrace worrying he might hurt, then carefully embracing him again repeatedly. When Ido coughed with a “kulleok,” Wookyung finally came to his senses and hurriedly took off his jacket.
He tried to put the large jacket on Ido to cover his naked appearance, but Ido shook his head side to side. Seeing Ido clearly showing signs of rejecting him, Wookyung bit his lip. The past years had been too harsh to be hurt by the sight of him pushing away—such emotions were a luxury for him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry… You hate me a lot, right. But Ido-ya. Even if you hate me… let’s get out of here first. Okay?”
“……”
“You need treatment… You’re hurt so, so badly…”
His throat choked up even as he spoke. Even though he knew now wasn’t the time to put his emotions first, tears burst out. Tears flowed down past his clenched lips and wet his chin. Begging in a tearful voice, Wookyung pressed his forehead against Ido’s forehead. With the heart of earnest prayer.
At that moment, Ido’s chest convulsed several times as if having a seizure. Then with a “uuk” sound, he turned his head to the side and began vomiting up food.
“Ido, Ido-ya…”
Wookyung’s hand carefully patted Ido’s back. And with his palm, he wiped Ido’s chin where vomit had dripped down. Wookyung’s hand, wiping Ido’s face and chest area with trembling hands, suddenly stopped frozen like a statue.
Wookyung’s gaze had stopped on the dog bowl. Food presumed to be the same as what Ido had just vomited up, not even digested, was contained in the bowl.
Wookyung’s eyes froze coldly in place.
Furious Wookyung’s hands trembled violently, unable to function properly. When he lifted the dog bowl, a fishy and sour male smell rose sharply and stabbed his nose. Anyone who wasn’t an idiot could immediately tell. The identity of the sauce-like substance sprinkled on the salad in the dog bowl.
“…Ido-ya.”
There was a blade set in Wookyung’s voice through clenched teeth.
“…Did that… bastard… make you eat this?”
At that moment, Ido’s chest flinched and trembled. With eyes squeezed shut and mouth tightly closed, Ido gave no answer. However, from Ido’s trembling eyes, tears finally flowed down in a single stream. From Ido’s appearance, Wookyung received his answer.
The tied dog collar, the dog bowl, and the food inside sprinkled with semen. The face swollen from being beaten and the blood flowing from his nose and mouth…
And next to it, a notebook thrown carelessly open.
He’d heard from Yoonkyung that he couldn’t speak… Then was this what Ido used to communicate? Wookyung put down the bowl with hands trembling uncontrollably and picked up the notebook.
And the moment he saw the content written in crooked handwriting on the open page, Wookyung’s heart crashed to the very bottom with a bang.
[I’m sorry. I’ll do well. Please don’t touch the child. I’m begging you like this.]
