The team leader asked delightedly. Since it’s someone Yoo Seonjae has acknowledged, plus someone who might become a client, the formula “Kim Yeonghyo = money” probably established itself in the team leader’s head.
“Tell him to stop by the office sometime.”
“He said he’d stop by soon anyway. I guess he sent this as a greeting.”
“Then we should gratefully accept it. Since it’s come to this, shall we have a little tea time?”
At the team leader’s words, the team members started moving excitedly. Until they arranged the flowers in a vase and prepared the fruit, I couldn’t hide my inexplicably unsettled feeling. Even while moving and smiling with them, I kept harboring anxiety at the feeling that something inside was changing.
A gentle ripple spreads through the daily life I’ve built up until now.
A ripple that’s… not welcome at all.
*
My steps heading to the Trait Medicine Department were urgent. The excuse that I was going to the hospital because I wasn’t feeling well yesterday naturally worked on Yoo Seonjae. However, I didn’t tell him it was the Trait Medicine Department. When he said he’d go to the hospital with me, I adamantly refused, saying I’d stop by after going to a meeting so it was fine.
[Then, is it okay if I pick you up when you come out?]
I couldn’t refuse him coming to meet me though.
While waiting in the waiting room, my hands kept sweating. I kept having a bad feeling. If I were pregnant, I should be happy, but the fact that I wasn’t made me uncomfortable. I felt guilty toward the child who might or might not exist for no reason.
The fact that my first thought upon seeing the possibility of pregnancy was “surely not” rather than “could it be?” felt like it was saying “you don’t deserve to have a child,” so my stomach kept churning.
“Han Yeoul-nim.”
When my name was called, I staggered up from my seat and entered the examination room. Professor Yeonwoo looked at me with a startled face, got up from his seat, and rushed over.
“Yeoul, what’s wrong? Your face is pale white.”
“What?”
“Your face is completely white. Aren’t you dizzy? Let’s check your blood pressure first. Sit down.”
As soon as Professor Yeonwoo finished speaking, a nurse came and took my blood pressure.
“It’s a bit low, but there’s no major problem. I was startled, what’s wrong? Your regular checkup ended the day before yesterday.”
“Professor…”
“What, what is it?”
“Can an extreme recessive omega get pregnant?”
At my question asked with labored breathing, Professor Yeonwoo said nothing for a moment. I raised my head and looked at Professor Yeonwoo’s face. I couldn’t read his expression. He was always kind, with a smiling face, but at that moment he had no expression.
“I’ll ask again. Can an extreme recessive omega get pregnant?”
“Yeoul. What do you…”
“Should I ask again? Can the extreme recessive omega Han Yeoul get pregnant?”
The silence between us deepened.
“I actually know everything, Professor. That I’m an extreme recessive omega.”
“Yeoul, that’s-“
“Telling me to feel free to knot with Seonjae, telling me not to give up hope even though it’s 1 percent—all of it was said knowing ‘it won’t happen anyway,’ wasn’t it?”
“Yeoul.”
“Because it won’t happen anyway, because it’s impossible. Just to make me feel comfortable, that’s why…”
Professor Yeonwoo just looked at me like that without saying anything, then let out a deep sigh.
“But, you know. When something that shouldn’t happen happens, what should I do then?”
“What do you mean by that…?”
I took out the pregnancy tester I’d brought from my pocket and placed it on the professor’s desk.
“All nine showed two lines.”
“…What?”
“In the regular checkup, Professor, you didn’t say anything to me. This… can you explain what’s going on?”
Professor Yeonwoo’s expression was still unreadable. He was a professor who always greeted me with a smiling face, but he was so unfamiliar that I wondered if this person had this kind of face too. But that expression didn’t last long and returned to the face of Professor Yeonwoo I knew.
“Did you have any changes in your body? Why did you suddenly try a pregnancy test?”
“What?”
“No. There was nothing special in the regular checkup, but you suddenly appeared with this, so I’m asking too.”
“…”
What should I answer? To say there were changes in my body, only two days have passed since the regular checkup. I couldn’t call this a change. Though I could call it a “whim.”
“No. Not that, but I was just a bit different from usual.”
“Different, how?”
“Just… things related to food.”
Professor Yeonwoo went “Hmm…” and crossed his arms, then looked at me and smiled brightly. It was his usual smiling face.
“I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t certain yet, but you have a more impatient personality than I thought. The baby in your belly.”
“What?”
“The gestational sac has just barely formed and isn’t even visible yet, but it’s already urging like this.”
“Then, I’m really…”
“There’s a possibility of pregnancy.”
Possibility of pregnancy? Does that mean it’s not certain? But the tester…
“Since Yeoul already knows, I have no choice.”
Professor Yeonwoo took off his glasses and rubbed his brow. Professor Yeonwoo’s eyes seen without going through lenses were warm but sharp. Those eyes were so sharp they made me think they could see through a person’s heart, making me think that perhaps the professor deliberately wore glasses to hide such eyes.
“Yes, as you know, you’re an ‘extreme recessive.'”
As expected… I didn’t hear wrong.
“The 1 percent probability is actually a lie.”
“…”
“Actually, it’s whether it’s even 0.1 percent or not.”
Then, does that mean I got pregnant breaking through that 0.1 percent probability…?
“But even if an extreme recessive gets pregnant, hospitals don’t tell the patient right away. That’s why I haven’t told you yet either.”
“…Why?”
Professor Yeonwoo looked at me and let out a faint sigh.
“Most cases end in miscarriage, and even if they survive, the stillbirth rate exceeds 50 percent.”
I couldn’t say anything. Stillbirth rate?
“Not miscarriage… but stillbirth?”
Professor Yeonwoo nodded.
“Miscarriage is before 20 weeks, but stillbirth is after 20 weeks. That means you have to give birth to a child that has already fully formed as a human but is dead. While experiencing the pain of childbirth.”
“…”
“Usually they wait for a natural miscarriage. If the miscarriage is past a certain point, measures are necessary, so eventually they’ll have to say something.”
Wait for a miscarriage? Because the child has a 50-50 chance of dying?
“It’s painful if you know about the child. Because you have to give birth to a child that was alive until recently, but dead.”
I wasn’t unable to understand what Professor Yeonwoo was saying. But why not tell the person involved? Do they just know among themselves? They judge among themselves whether the child will survive or not, and the person carrying the child just lives their whole life not even knowing whether they had a child or not?
Is that really for that person’s sake?
“Do all hospitals do that?”
I asked while picking at a hangnail on my finger. I didn’t have the confidence to look at Professor Yeonwoo’s face. Somehow he seemed like a different person from the one I knew today, and even this examination room that I’d been coming to for a long time and was familiar with felt so strange that I felt like I was floating, isolated in the middle of space.
“Well. When to tell depends on each doctor’s judgment criteria.”
“Then… that’s Professor Yeonwoo’s judgment criteria.”
“Huh?”
“Waiting for a natural miscarriage.”
I raised my head and looked at Professor Yeonwoo. The expression disappeared from his face once again. He looked straight at me for a long time without answering. Then he chuckled. It was his usual smiling face, but somehow that smiling face didn’t feel comfortable.
“Giving birth to a child that’s already dead is, Yeoul. Much more painful than you think.”
Professor Yeonwoo’s voice was cold. I was convinced that my thought that he wasn’t different from usual was my misconception. He’s different. He’s different from usual right now. He’s not the Oh Yeonwoo I know.
“How… do you know that, Professor?”
Professor Yeonwoo looked at me intently. Looking at him silent for a long time, I realized I’d said something I shouldn’t have said out loud. A smile like usual appeared on Professor Yeonwoo’s face again. Something… was wrong.
“Because I’ve given birth.”
I don’t know how I left the examination room. I vaguely heard that it’s 2 weeks pregnant, that showing symptoms already despite being an extreme recessive omega is an unusual case, and that’s probably because the partner is a dominant alpha.
Still, because I myself am an extreme recessive, I could follow the same course as ordinary extreme recessives, so Professor Yeonwoo’s prescription was to live comfortably as usual.
Saying to live as usual when there’s a high probability of something going wrong—I didn’t understand what that meant so I asked, and the only answer that came back was that in the case of trait-carriers, unlike betas, there are almost no cases where being careful or trying harder makes things better.
