The cramped house was pitch black throughout. The only sources of light were the high-set window and the open door.
Amid the long diagonal lines of light cutting across the room, something incongruous caught Gil Taeseo’s eye. A fluffy gray blanket bulged as if something was tucked underneath. The identity was easy to deduce. It must be that child he’d seen in the photo.
Behind him, the door closed with a clattering sound. But Gil Taeseo stood frozen as if nailed to the spot, not moving an inch. From the doorknob he hadn’t yet released came a grotesque creaking sound. It was the sound of the twisted Alpha’s grip strength crushing the doorknob haphazardly.
“……Fuck. Which fucking bastard.”
He had already confirmed that Lee Saehyeon had a child. Since it was still a young child, it was natural for it to be in this house. But facing it directly felt more fucking terrible than he’d thought.
The state of this house, the child, and Lee Saehyeon struggling alone to raise it. But the worst of all was that Alpha bastard. That irresponsible son of a bitch who had run off, leaving these two in this situation. As Gil Taeseo imagined tearing that anonymous Alpha to shreds, a small murmur flowed through the room.
“Mmnngh.”
With that sound, the bulging pile of blankets squirmed and wriggled. The round lump crawled steadily bit by bit from the center of the blanket toward the edge. And suddenly, a ball of fluff poked its head out from under the blanket. The child rubbed their face vigorously with small hands and turned half-closed eyes toward the entrance.
The weak light pouring from the high window hit the child’s head and scattered. It was glittering hair that appeared golden.
As if guessing something, the man froze. His hand, losing strength, grazed the doorknob and fell to the floor.
“Daddy…”
Two pairs of eyes collided in midair. Eyes of exactly the same color, as if drawn from the same palette.
The more the eyelids blinked, the wider the man’s eyes opened. The same was true for the child. No other words were needed. Evidence more certain than words was on each other’s faces.
It was a father-and-son reunion after several years that no one had anticipated and that perhaps neither had even wanted.
Gil Taeseo, recalling that moment, laughed quietly. He wasn’t laughing because he was happy, but for precisely the opposite reason. The man, whose snickering laughter made him seem even more frightening, stared piercingly at Saehyeon. The gaze was thrown by the child as well, sitting slightly apart from Gil Taeseo.
The person receiving both identical stares was sweating buckets. He still felt like he was dreaming. That’s how surreal the sight of Gil Taeseo sitting in this shabby studio room he’d grown somewhat accustomed to was. And with the child right beside him too, his head was spinning. Saehyeon was certain. This wasn’t simple hangover but a mix of shock and horror.
‘Fu… Fucked.’
Even amid that dizzying situation, only one thing was certain. He was completely fucked. He desperately wanted to look away, but in this cramped studio, he couldn’t look away or avoid it.
When it was just him and the child alone, the room hadn’t felt cramped or full. But with Gil Taeseo sitting there, it felt relatively tight. It was partly his build, but also likely due to the pressure the man exuded. Gil Taeseo sat at the head of the pillow, leaning against the wall, tapping his forearm or knee with his fingers.
Saehyeon pretended not to look while sneaking glances at Gil Taeseo. Gil Taeseo looked tired and disheveled overall. Even more so than that dawn when he’d suddenly shown up asking to be bought a meal.
Through the roughly rolled-up shirt sleeves and between the several undone buttons, skin glimpsed. Combined with the faint shadows under his eyes and messily tousled hair, it gave off a different kind of looseness than before.
And that was… somehow strange to look at. Saehyeon rolled his eyes again, trying to look at the floor or walls instead.
But there were things in this world that couldn’t be avoided. Like the bills that flew in monthly to stick in an empty wallet. He couldn’t avoid Gil Taeseo himself or the words he spat out until the end.
“I think I’ve asked about three times now who that kid is.”
When he’d woken up in his 28-year-old body and discovered a child who was the spitting image of Gil Taeseo. And when, through the memo he’d left himself, he’d become certain that the child’s biological father was Gil Taeseo. Saehyeon could make two assumptions. Either Gil Taeseo knew of the child’s existence and was pretending not to care, or he didn’t know of the child’s existence at all.
Honestly, Saehyeon had been heavily leaning toward the former all along. Raising a ‘child’ was a considerably troublesome and difficult process. No one would endure that for someone they didn’t even love.
Moreover, the Alphas Saehyeon had experienced were originally that kind of breed. Whether it was lust, necessity, or love, they easily grabbed hold when they wanted, then easily discarded and left when their business was done. Hadn’t he seen clearly in his childhood the fate of Omegas left behind like that?
But surprisingly, Gil Taeseo seemed to be the latter. The problem was that even being the latter was just as troublesome. Why had he made that decision, and what had he been planning to do about it? As the 20-year-old Lee Saehyeon, he had no way of knowing.
“Did you at least manage to feed yourself?”
The thought that he needed to somehow break through this situation was input into his stuttering brain. The sip of honey water he’d gulped down before grasping the situation flowed like lubricant between the parts in his brain.
The conclusion he reached was this: First, deny everything and see. It was actually easier since he just had to give the opposite of whatever answer the other person wanted.
Saehyeon squeezed his eyes shut and spat out a pathetic response.
“He’s, he’s my son, okay.”
At least he wasn’t lying.
“Then who’s the dad?”
“Me.”
“Are you an amoeba? Reproducing a kid alone by budding. You know that’s not the kind of answer I want, don’t you.”
……Would he get beaten if he just went ahead and ran with this? Cornered, Saehyeon’s mind began derailing strangely. For example, something like ‘I didn’t want to say this much, but. Actually, I’m an amoeba alien who came to invade the human world.’
“Fuck. ……Why. Why didn’t you tell me.”
‘How the hell would I know.’
A certain thought flashed through Saehyeon’s mind as it kept shrinking.
“But. Was there even anything to tell or not tell in the first place?”
Setting everything else aside, he wondered if this was even something to be interrogated about by that bastard. He had no memory, but honestly, the assumption that he would have known about the child’s existence had been spectacularly wrong.
“You call that an answer? At least,”
“What are we to each other? Did we even date or something?”
This was a topic he was a bit more confident about. There was no way he and Gil Taeseo were in a relationship where they loved each other and dated.
“……”
As expected, Gil Taeseo shut his mouth. His sharp gaze remained, but Saehyeon didn’t care.
“Marriage, no, we don’t even need to go that far. Did we even date?”
The more he woke up and his mind cleared, the more his insides boiled. I just went to sleep and woke up to find I’d been stabbed in the back and had a kid. Gil Taeseo was interrogating him as he struggled with responsibility without pleasure, and he couldn’t help but be irritated. Especially when they weren’t even anything to each other.
Lee Saehyeon had several chronic habits. When he got heated, he just went for it first and dealt with it later. That applied this time too.
“Most importantly, it’s not your kid, so butt out. Hey, how old do you think I am? You think you’re the only one I’ve been with?”
Honestly, thinking about it in various ways, he probably had only been with that bastard. Especially from be… hind. But there was no way he’d say something so embarrassing and disadvantageous himself. The essence of bluffing that Saehyeon believed in was an attitude confident enough that the listener would carelessly fall for it. Though it wasn’t really something to say while his pupils were shaking wildly and his lips were trembling.
“It’s not my kid.”
“That’s right!”
Anyway, no. If he said no, then it was no. Even if it was right, it was no.
Gil Taeseo, watching Saehyeon stubbornly insist, slowly crossed his arms. Deep vertical lines were carved on the thick forearms revealed under the black shirt. At the movement that seemed to say ‘try me,’ Saehyeon tensed up.
“Looks like I have an identical twin I didn’t know about.”
“……”
It was a proper counterattack. Gil Taeseo and the child looked like mirror images even when seen separately. Stuck close together at this short distance, they were truly a shrunken decalcomania. Enough that he couldn’t say ‘it’s not your kid’ to his face anymore.
‘…It might’ve been more believable to say a stork brought him.’
While thinking that, Gil Taeseo dropped another bomb.
“And you’re someone with a definite taste for fucking both of them.”
He’d expected yelling and scowling, but Gil Taeseo moved exactly opposite to expectations. The voice lowered to a small, sarcastic tone had a vulgar yet persistent quality.
“If I was so much your type, you should’ve said so. I would’ve made sure you couldn’t even think of another guy.”
“Wha, what……”
At the sexual vulgarity poured out at a timing when ‘you little cow, you little horse, you little fucker’ should have come out, Saehyeon couldn’t help but be flustered. While he just stammered, the child who’d been circling nearby peeking around suddenly butted in.
“Daddy fighting?”
Saehyeon, suddenly aware of the child’s presence, pulled the small body over and placed hands over the ears.
‘This bastard, and there’s a kid here!’
He didn’t forget to repeat inwardly that you shouldn’t learn things like that. You shouldn’t inherit his temper either.
“Don’t you watch your fucking mouth?”
“Whatever.”
The child who’d quickly climbed onto his lap laughing “hehe” and Lee Saehyeon hugging that child. Gil Taeseo’s gaze scrutinized that sight thoroughly. Just when he felt that somehow complex emotions seemed to settle in those sunken eyes, the thick eyelashes lowered like an awning then lifted, leaving only a sharp energy. He could see the cheek bulge then sink as if the thick tongue rolled once inside the mouth.
After a brief silence, Gil Taeseo suddenly reached out.
“I told you before. If words don’t work, I’ll do things my way.”
In an instant, the aching knees became light. The warm embrace that had felt like holding a hot water bottle now had cold air blowing through it emptily.
“So I’m borrowing him.”
“Huh, huhhh?”
What his wide-open eyes saw was the child tucked under the man’s side like a piece of luggage. The father and son’s eyes, floating with question marks, blinked while looking at each other.
Meanwhile, Gil Taeseo strode toward the entrance. He hesitated briefly upon seeing the white sneakers with heels crushed pathetically, but ruthlessly shoved his feet in and grabbed the doorknob. The bizarrely dented doorknob let out a creaking scream.
The sunlight stabbing through the crack of the open door cut diagonally across the beautiful kidnapper’s face and upper body. The remnant of sunlight lingered at the tip of the slightly upturned corner of his mouth then fell downward.
“If you don’t follow, you’ll never see the kid’s face again.”
Saehyeon, who’d been standing there with his mouth agape, jumped up at the sound of the door closing. He frantically shoved his feet into shoes and grabbed the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t open because of the strangely twisted handle.
After struggling for a while, Saehyeon shot out through the barely opened door and yelled furiously.
“Hey, you crazy bastard! What kind of human suddenly grabs a kid and runs!”
