Just then, the family came rushing out from the kitchen as if they’d been belatedly washing their hands.
“You’re here?”
“You must be tired from the trip~ Come in and sit down.”
“Oppa!”
It was Mom, Uncle, and Doa. I was happy to see them all, but I just wanted to rest for now.
I forced the corners of my mouth up into a smile.
Won Dogyeong bowed in greeting but seemed unable to stop worrying about me. He appropriately handled the family’s greetings while opening my bedroom door and pushing me inside. It was fortunate, if anything, that my room was right in front of the entrance.
“You don’t look well—is Jeongwon sick?”
Won Dogyeong, who was holding the door and leaning against the doorframe, hesitated for a moment before explaining, “His morning sickness is severe.” Everyone instantly seemed to realize something and closed their mouths. As I headed toward the bed, I could feel the silence flowing from behind me, and my face burned.
“Right… get some rest.”
“Dogyeong, you stay with him.”
“Right, that kind of situation.”
“Morning sickness…”
With Doa’s shocked remark as the finale, Won Dogyeong closed the door and slipped inside. He too seemed embarrassed by this situation and awkwardly ran his hand through his hair.
I pulled back the neatly arranged blanket and wriggled my way in to lie down. Won Dogyeong rummaged through my drawer with familiarity and pulled out comfortable clothes.
“It’d probably be better to change.”
“I’ll do it in a bit.”
“I’ll leave it here for you.”
He placed sweatpants with an elastic waistband and an oversized t-shirt in the corner at the foot of my bed.
I stared at the ceiling and just gasped for breath. It was much better than before, but the queasiness was still there. I kept swallowing deeply to push down the rising sensation. I was in absolutely no mood to eat anything.
Knock knock.
Someone knocked on the door and a moment later, the door cracked open and Uncle looked at Won Dogyeong and gestured slightly for him to come out for a moment. He went outside reluctantly, dragging his feet.
I could hear them murmuring outside the room. What were they talking about? I pricked up my ears, but gave up on understanding with all the muffled voices.
Thinking I might as well change clothes, I undid my belt buckle under the blanket and squirmed out of my pants, throwing them on the floor. I didn’t have the energy to fold them neatly. Groaning while trying to change with minimal movement, I grabbed the sweatpants from the corner. After somehow managing to pull on the pants, I was drained of energy and tossed the top aside again.
That’s when Won Dogyeong returned to the room with a strange expression.
“My pheromones are supposed to be good for morning sickness.”
Huh?
“Huh…?”
“Oh, I mean, the baby’s father’s pheromones are supposed to help with stability.”
“…Really?”
“I don’t know either. That’s what they said…?”
Won Dogyeong sat on the edge of the bed and took out his phone. When I sneaked a peek at what he was doing, he was typing “morning sickness pheromones” into the search bar.
Curious about the results, I turned on my side and he turned the screen toward me. When he pressed the search button, countless blog posts appeared in a row. It seemed everyone in the world knew except us.
It’s not like I hadn’t searched about morning sickness before, but in a world where trait-holders other than Betas were rare, this kind of specialized information didn’t come up easily with casual searching. When I clicked on a couple, they only talked about when morning sickness occurs between which weeks and what foods are good, so I didn’t look it up after that.
Until now, I’d thought pregnancy was something for the distant future, so I’d never really paid attention to what people around me said about it.
Dogyeong’s uncle was also an Omega. Seeing me struggling, he must have realized something and called him out to tell him.
“I should’ve searched for this kind of thing instead of just foods good for morning sickness.”
Won Dogyeong seemed to be in the same boat as he scrolled down and muttered in a flustered voice.
“…Maybe I should’ve searched harder.”
He spoke with an apologetic air.
“I didn’t know either.”
I shrugged my shoulders. I knew better than anyone that Won Dogyeong had been looking things up. Just looking at the daily deliveries coming to the house showed that.
From nutritional supplements to some kind of de-puffing device—he’d bought such a variety of things that I doubted whether we’d be able to use all the accumulated auxiliary supplies before Yongyong was born.
I’d thought about buying and reading books related to childbirth too, but I’d been too busy and put it off, never imagining it would bite me in the back like this. These days, most things come up when you search, so I’d been thinking complacently.
It wasn’t like I’d put it off that long, but I felt unfairly wronged anyway.
“I’ll release a little, so tell me if it feels weird.”
“Okay.”
Won Dogyeong placed his hand on my forehead and slowly released his pheromones. Along with a gentle mint-like scent, the pheromones floating in the air flowed in through our overlapping skin.
At first, I wasn’t sure I could tell, but as I closed my eyes and some time passed, it felt like my churning stomach calmed down somewhat.
Morning sickness was completely whimsical—eating an orange might help today but be useless tomorrow, and even when you felt like dying, it would sometimes go away for no reason. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could do anything about. In the midst of all that, for such a clear solution to appear—I felt like I wanted to bow down to Uncle.
“Does it feel better?”
“Really?”
Won Dogyeong, who had been looking down at me worriedly, brightened up and rejoiced.
Well, he probably went through a lot of emotional stress taking care of me while I was ailing for the past few days.
“Yeah.”
I stared up blankly at Won Dogyeong and thought.
If I was going to be covered in pheromones, wouldn’t it be better to be closer?
Since it’s detected through skin, it would be better to take off some clothes and have skin contact… Would that be a bit much?
No, we already made a baby, so what’s the big deal about that.
My hesitation was brief. Right now, I was ready to do anything if it meant not suffering from morning sickness. I reached out and tugged at his clothes.
“Take your clothes off and get in here.”
“Huh? What?”
“It’s better if we’re touching. Just the top, just take off the top.”
And I sat up and struggled to take off my top, throwing it in the corner. Won Dogyeong had a dumbfounded look on his face, but he unbuttoned his shirt as told.
This guy’s really obedient.
I moved my body a little to make room and lifted the blanket.
“Get in.”
He had a complicated expression on his face, but obediently laid his body down next to mine. As if understanding what it meant to take off his clothes and get in, he wrapped his arm around my waist and pressed his bare skin against mine.
I was the one who told him to do it, but when bare skin actually touched my back, I felt a bit strange.
I could feel pheromones flowing out from behind me. Unlike before when it felt faintly like a thread, now with each breath I took, the gentle mint scent mixed in.
Won Dogyeong awkwardly had his arm around my waist at first, but soon rubbed his cheek against my hair and pressed his body firmly against mine. A small, worried question came from near my ear.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m, *keum*, I’m fine.”
Despite my stiff answer, Won Dogyeong pulled up the blanket that had gone down to around our legs and covered both of us.
Far from being cold, I couldn’t think of anything because I was too conscious of the voice I could hear right by my ear.
“Is it better?”
“Yeah… stay like this a bit longer.”
The queasiness was subsiding little by little. If I waited just a bit more, I’d probably be able to sit at the dining table. I should’ve tried this sooner.
“You’re in big trouble now.”
Won Dogyeong buried his face in the nape of my neck and mumbled.
“Why?”
“Now you have to keep clinging to me at home. Otherwise, you won’t eat or be able to go to work.”
“……I guess so.”
What’s the big deal if it makes the morning sickness go away?
“Are you going to strip me again?”
“…If necessary.”
“Should I just carry you around all the time?”
His tone was full of laughter. He must be dying to tease me.
“If you do that… I’ll kick you away.”
“Can’t do that. Now you can’t eat without me.”
It was frustrating, but not entirely wrong. Right now, Won Dogyeong was like a painkiller for a chronic migraine patient. You could live without it, but life would be hard mode without it.
“Are you happy about that?”
“Yeah.”
Won Dogyeong giggled.
Being with him always leads to playing around with jokes like middle and high schoolers.
Will we be able to raise our Yongyong well?
As I was dwelling on my usual worries, Won Dogyeong placed his lips at a distance that almost touched but didn’t quite touch the nape of my neck and asked quietly.
“Can I kiss you here?”
“……Isn’t that too underhanded?”
At a time like this.
“I don’t want to do this either, but you keep running away when I touch you. We’ve done at least a lap pillow before.”
He grumbled, rubbing his cheek slightly against my hair. The breath I felt from so close made my shoulder twitch. I clutched the pillowcase and retorted in a hesitant voice.
“That was different from now…”
“How is it different?”
“You’re… doing this.”
“So you don’t like it?”
“It’s not a matter of that……”
“Do I make you nervous?”
Of course.
Since the not-quite-confession, or more precisely, since that incident when we intertwined bodies for three days and nights, every time I faced Won Dogyeong, an indescribable discomfort scratched at my nerves. Even when he was out of sight, I was conscious of every little sound he made.
To the point where I wondered how I’d lived with him until now.
At the time, I suggested we just bury it without really knowing better, but looking back, it wasn’t something that could be buried just by burying it. Even if Yongyong hadn’t been conceived.
On top of that, Won Dogyeong’s attitude had noticeably changed since that day he stuck his head in the refrigerator and confessed he liked me.
It was fundamentally similar, but how should I put it—if before he sometimes seemed on edge, these days the needless prickliness had disappeared and his way of speaking had become… softer.
At first, he acted stiffly as if he too was awkward, but now he didn’t seem to have any intention of hiding anything. From one to ten, I could clearly feel him moving with me in mind, so it was usually me whose face would heat up instead.
But the fact that we’d spent twenty-some years as friends was also true, so the gap between my feelings of being conscious of Won Dogyeong and the days when I’d habitually treated him comfortably kept making me feel discordant.
“……Yeah.”
