“You have a slight fever. When did this start?”
“It’s been going on for about a week now.”
“Were there any other symptoms?”
“My body feels a bit stiff and achy.”
The doctor finished wiping down the thermometer and put it away, then stared at the screen while tapping on the keyboard before glancing at me with a question. I’d been running a fever for several days, and my body had been feeling unnaturally heavy, so I’d taken a half-day off to come to the hospital.
At first, I thought it would pass after a day or two. But no matter how long I waited, the ambiguous low-grade fever showed no signs of breaking and had been getting on my nerves for a whole week now. It was definitely a severe body-aching cold.
I wasn’t the type to catch every little bug, but maybe my body had weakened as I got older.
Though I wasn’t even thirty yet.
I’d been feeling lethargic all along, but today I’d even started dozing off at the office. When a manager from the team next door passed by and tapped me awake, I thought I’d die of embarrassment.
I’d never dozed off even once during home economics class in high school when everyone else was sprawled out sleeping, and here I was, a proper working adult, making such a spectacle of myself.
I’d popped three peppermint candies into my mouth at once and crunched them down trying to stay awake, but it hadn’t been very effective. It had been hard to keep my upper body from wanting to collapse onto my desk.
“Have you been unusually tired lately?”
“Oh, yes. That’s right.”
How perceptive.
The doctor started tapping away at the keyboard again, then asked a casual question without even turning to look at me.
“Is there any possibility you’re currently pregnant?”
“No…”
My mouth, which had been mechanically spitting out an answer, came to an abrupt halt.
The accident from a few weeks ago flashed through my mind.
I recalled the creepy stimulation of pheromones that had filled the house so thickly the air felt heavy. Just thinking back on it made my skin crawl. The overwhelming sensation of something swelling inside me, blocking off the seed, briefly came back to life and set off warning bells.
Not… impossible.
Not impossible, but there’s no way.
…Is there?
No, there isn’t. There can’t be.
That really was an accident.
I kept my mouth shut for a while, just rolling my eyes around. The doctor leisurely scrolled the mouse wheel while waiting, but must have run out of patience because he soon turned to look at me. His eyes, worn down by fatigue, looked no different from mine, which was somehow a bit funny even in that moment.
“If there is, I think you should take a pregnancy test first.”
“Pardon?”
Pregnancy? Test? Kit?
Even though I clearly understood with my head, the words “pregnancy test” rang so unfamiliarly in my ears that I stupidly asked again. It was a phrase that shouldn’t have appeared in my life yet.
“They sell them at the pharmacy on the first floor, so test with that, or come back again. I’ll write you a prescription for medicine.”
“…What if I’m pregnant?”
“You’ll need to go to the OB-GYN.”
Good lord.
Feeling dizzy, I pressed my temples firmly with my thumbs. It didn’t help much.
“…Take care.”
I walked out of the examination room like a defeated soldier. When I glanced down, the buttons of my shirt tucked into my slacks were lined up neatly. Just like always, flat.
Whew. I let out a short deep breath and adjusted my backpack.
Calm down. Nothing’s been decided yet, so first I’ll go to the pharmacy and…
“Yeo Jeongwon-nim~”
“Yes?”
“I’ll help you with the payment. Today’s consultation is 5,300 won. You don’t have a prescription.”
“Ah, yes…”
The hospital efficiently extracted 5,300 won from my confused self.
Well… they did inform me about a new possibility, so let’s consider it payment for that.
I took the card after finishing the payment and headed to the elevator. As I nervously tapped my foot waiting, the floor directory posted next to the elevator caught my eye.
This building was quite a large medical building, and the internal medicine department where I’d just been examined was on the 6th floor. The pharmacy was on the 1st floor, and most helpfully, the OB-GYN was on the 7th floor.
I definitely hadn’t known there was an OB-GYN in the same building until just moments ago, but now I even knew what floor it was on—it made me let out a hollow laugh.
After a few seconds of pointless deliberation between the two pharmacy doors on the 1st floor, I opened the one on the right. Whichever one I entered, the item I’d buy and the test results wouldn’t change, yet here I was having all sorts of random thoughts when I was so busy.
Something I could have just asked the pharmacist for—a pregnancy test kit—I instead chose to search for by rifling through the store myself. In the process, I discovered a familiar face on some vitamin box and swallowed a sigh.
You did that kind of advertisement too?
My mind became twice as troubled, and I quickly turned my eyes elsewhere.
When I’d looked through about half the shelves, I reached for a pregnancy test that appeared before my eyes, then hesitated. There were three types.
Do pregnancy tests have different performance levels depending on the type?
I don’t know. Until this very moment today, such things had never been the object of my interest. Damn it.
In the end, I bought all three types.
Let’s try them all. It’s good to be certain.
After making that firm resolution, I was about to enter the bathroom on the 1st floor when I changed my mind and went back up to the 6th floor.
The 1st floor would probably have a lot of foot traffic, and wouldn’t it be better to do this somewhere quieter?
Since I’d paid at the internal medicine department, I decided to borrow their bathroom.
I entered the innermost stall and locked the door. I hung my bag on the door and solemnly tore open the pregnancy test packaging. The deeper I read into the instructions, the deeper my sighs became.
Ah, really… I thought this kind of thing was still years away.
Or that it would never come at all!
.
.
.
And 5 minutes later,
Before my eyes lay three pregnancy tests showing clear results.
“Two lines.”
I plopped down heavily on the toilet. My head felt numb. It seems when something too big hits you, your thinking doesn’t work properly. I was dazed, as if my entire brain had gone on strike.
That absurd accident really had been a first for me.
How could something like this happen on the first try?
One shot, one kill…
No wait, strictly speaking it wasn’t one shot, and come to think of it, it was hard to call it one kill either.
We made it, rather.
Multiple shots, one… life?
No, no. That’s not what’s important here.
Looking at the phone in my right hand, I suddenly thought of him. Just like me until moments ago, he would have no inkling of this situation.
Should I tell him?
I chewed on my lips. I should do it, but… I stared at my shiny shoe tips and the tiles, then suddenly stood up.
First, let’s go to the OB-GYN. Everything else can come after.
I shouldered my bag. I only had to go up one floor. There was no time to steel my resolve.
The OB-GYN reception desk I entered while wiping my sweaty hands on my pants was no different from any other hospital, which made my feelings even more complicated. Before seeing the doctor, I had blood drawn and underwent a pheromone test in the lab. Then after waiting briefly, I was called into the examination room.
“Please sit. Um… you came because you think you’re pregnant.”
The doctor clicked on my medical chart, checked something, then turned the screen to show me. He kindly pointed to some incomprehensible numbers with his hand.
“You’ll need to see the blood test results next time, but judging by your pheromone levels, it seems correct. This number here is much higher than the baseline.”
“…I…”
I nodded blankly, then hesitantly opened my mouth. The doctor turned his chair, which had been facing the monitor, slightly toward me.
“I’m a man, and I also took emergency contraception…”
“It’s true that male-type omegas have a much lower pregnancy rate, but looking at your pheromone test results, it seems you’ve been continuously exposed to an alpha’s pheromones. Is your partner dominant?”
“Part… Yes. We live together.”
My housemate was careless, so when he was at home, pheromones would faintly leak out.
Honestly, by now I didn’t even notice the amount that flowed out during daily life. Even now, it was something I only remembered belatedly, thinking, “Oh right, that was happening.”
“Continuous exposure to an alpha’s pheromones increases the possibility of pregnancy. Even more so if they’re dominant. You were also in a heat cycle during intercourse, right? It looks like you’ve been postponing it a lot with suppressants, but this can make it come on longer and more severely.”
“Ah…”
I know that too, but what can I do when I’m busy? And I never dreamed such an accident would happen.
“And if you spent several days of your heat cycle with your partner, there’s a high possibility you were already pregnant when you took the emergency contraception. It has no effect once fertilization has occurred.”
“Ah… yes…”
I kept my head down and just glared at the corner of the desk. I’d naturally thought it would be fine. As I said, I originally had a low possibility of pregnancy, plus I’d taken emergency contraception. I’d never once thought that the recent abnormalities in my body could be due to something like this.
Putting aside whether I liked it or not, I was flustered.
I wasn’t even married yet, and the person who would be the baby’s father was someone I’d never once imagined in that role.
Obviously, I was working at a company to make a living, and I was even somewhat busy. If I had the baby, I’d have to completely revise my life plans.
I also didn’t really know how that bastard, who was neither my partner nor anything else, would react to hearing this news.
…What should I do?
