...No way.
Hanbyeol sat alone on the hospital bed, wearing the face of a raccoon that had just washed its cotton candy, mind gone completely blank.
Is this really allowed?
I’m a chaebol heir, aren’t I? An only son, no less!
And they stripped the chaebol name tag off me in a measly three minutes. There was no rule that said they could do that.
Does a rich villain look like a joke to you? Take the money away from a villain and all that’s left is a public nuisance.
Any drunk in a convenience store or lunatic on Subway Line 1 can pull off being a nuisance!
“Hah, haah...! The patient! Where’s the patient, huh?”
Right around the time he was clutching his head and bemoaning his demotion to instant-curry status.
The doctor came charging into the room, late and then some, and looked around with a flustered expression. Only about as long as it takes to boil a cup ramyeon had passed since Hanbyeol pressed the call button, but if it had been an actual emergency, the patient would have crossed over to the afterlife and back by now.
“Haaah...”
“...You’re awake?”
“Should I go back to sleep, then?”
...No, hold on, that’s not how I’m supposed to answer.
The barbed tone had come out on pure reflex, a habit built up over years. Hanbyeol tapped his own lips a few times, shook his head, and started over.
“Sorry. I’m a little out of it... do you know why I collapsed?”
“Well, your guardian—”
“They’re probably not coming back. I’m an adult anyway, so I’ll just hear it from you directly.”
“Ah. In that case, if you don’t mind, would it be all right if I explained in a consultation room a little later? There’s some material I’d like to show you, and the ward isn’t really the place for...”
At the calm question, the doctor adjusted his glasses and answered. As it happened, he said, he’d been checking a few things about exactly that until just a moment ago.
The way he let his sentence trail off set Hanbyeol’s heart pounding for no good reason. Growing uneasy, Hanbyeol rolled his eyes around and asked.
“...Don’t tell me I’ve got some fatal illness? Like, something incurable—”
“There’s nothing wrong with your health. And nothing is certain yet, either.”
The doctor went on evenly. They’d already run every test worth running when he was brought in, so there was nothing left to add. However, since he’d been unconscious for over a day, he’d like to ask just a few simple questions — and promptly launched into a full census of Hanbyeol’s existence.
He asked everything, from Hanbyeol’s name to where he was right now. Then: squeeze my hand, were there any unusual symptoms before you collapsed, any dizziness or headaches, are you on any medication...
And after all that he tacked on questions about family history and his parents’ traits, and only once he’d shone a light in Hanbyeol’s eyes to check his pupil response—
“Right. No particular problems. Get some rest, have your dinner, and I’ll see you later. If anything feels uncomfortable or out of the ordinary, press the call button by your pillow.”
With that, the doctor bustled out of the room. This time the minute hand had moved exactly five notches.
Five minutes.
He’d remembered a past life, been read the riot act by his parents and had his cards frozen, and been put through a full census by a doctor, and not even ten minutes had gone by.
At a total loss over what to do next, he sighed and sighed, then clapped both palms against his cheeks.
No. Pull it together, Dan Hanbyeol. This is no time for that.
Even the time spent flailing in confusion felt like a waste. Hanbyeol retraced his memories, one step at a time.
He’d never believed in past lives or reincarnation or any of that nonsense, but now that he’d lived it himself he had no choice. ...Which naturally meant that the novel, or whatever it was, was real too.
“So where — where are we right now?”
That unhinged gay novel he’d read in scattered patches, skipping around, purely for the sake of a book report.
Hanbyeol groped through the plot with a focus he’d never summon again in his life. In his defense, he had at least read up to his own death, skipping a few chapters at a time, so as to keep track of the general thread.
“The oil drum... no, I’m pretty sure I slept with him and then lied about manifesting as an omega. Did I fake being pregnant, too? Urk, hrk...”
Blegh!
Hanbyeol’s face went pale at the wretched mental image. His stomach really had turned; he genuinely felt sick.
Had his love for Taeseo been that flimsy? It was as though he’d been under someone’s control all this time — the instant he remembered his past life, his heart went stone cold, enough to startle even himself.
And the same went for the future he’d just dredged up out of the novel.
He couldn’t believe he’d done things like that.
“Ugh.”
He’d spent days at a hotel tangled up with Kang Taeseo, who had hit his rut cycle. The details were hazy since he’d read it so patchily, but a few weeks later he’d handed over some kind of ultrasound photo, claiming he’d manifested as an omega that day and gotten pregnant.
That got the two families to come to terms, and preparations began for a hasty wedding before he started showing, while the relationship between the main couple, Taeseo and Raewon, was driven to its absolute worst.
The problem was that watching Taeseo try to hold on to Raewon made him snap completely. He’d dragged things all the way to a marriage, and his husband-to-be couldn’t have been colder about it, so he’d tried to have Raewon sunk and only half succeeded, leaving him comatose instead...?
“Oof.”
Hanbyeol whipped his head from side to side, shaking the thought loose. Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey.
And after that, well, as he’d already recalled...
He’d set off on a delightful expedition to the bottom of the sea. For an indefinite period.
He’d barely read any of what came after his death; it had upset him too much. Stitching together what little he had: supposedly the whole thing, from the omega manifestation to the ultrasound photo, had been a lie from the very start.
He had no idea whether Taeseo had bribed a doctor in order to win Raewon back, or whether it was the real thing, but it was probably the real thing.
Tap, tap. Still following the thread, Hanbyeol drummed his index finger against his thigh.
“So the biggest problem of all got half sidestepped, at least.”
...But I’m still standing right on the edge of a cliff, aren’t I?
Even if he meant to live as quietly as a dead man from here on out, he’d come within a hair of sleeping with Kang Taeseo, so it wouldn’t be the least bit strange for him to go under at any moment. And even if he tried to bury it all, he’d caused far, far too much trouble along the way.
Finished taking stock of the situation, he flopped back onto the bed and clutched his head.
“Haah...”
I miss my noona.
Why am I an only child? My face and even my name carried over from my past life, so why is it only me who...
He lay on his side sniffling, miserable — and then, when he stopped to think it through, he was pretty sure he knew exactly why. He wiped his eyes.
Right. As misfortunes went, this one came with a silver lining.
Coming to his senses even this late was no small thing. First things first — whoever could survive had to survive.
“When you really think about it, it’s lucky I never turned into an omega or whatever in the first place.”
Why would anyone turn down a comfortable life, free of bizarre nonsense like pheromones and cycles?
Besides, betas made up roughly seventy percent of the world’s population to begin with. Whichever side you landed on, life was easier when the numbers were on your side.
“Or what? Have you been fooling around with that gutter trash so long you’ve decided to get cheap right along with him?”
The second that thought surfaced, his own words came back to him like a lightning strike.
“Agh!!! Aaagh!!!!!!”
He tore at his hair and rolled back and forth across the bed.
The shame of it.
Why on earth had he said something like that? For a good two hours he lay there sobbing that he’d honestly rather crawl back into his mother’s womb. And that was when it happened.
Clack.
The Grim Reaper opened the hospital room door and walked in without knocking.
“...”
“...”
“...”
No, scratch that. The main gong and shou did.
H-how did he even find out I was here?
Hanbyeol gulped. When all he managed was to open and close his mouth like a landed fish, Kang Taeseo raked a hand through his hair, irritated. Everything about his posture said his mood was foul.
“...Raewon. Do you really have to come here in person? Let’s just go, it’s not too late. Why bother giving that bastard the time of day?”
“...”
“If I just have the legal team file a suit—”
“Enough. Be quiet.”
“...”
The man who’d scream at him over nothing turned into a docile little lamb at a single word from Raewon.
So this was what Kang Taeseo looked like in front of someone he loved. Struck anew by the realization, Hanbyeol shifted his gaze to study Raewon, who was watching him in silence.
Warm brown hair, warm brown eyes. Soft eyes that sloped down gently at the outer corners. Milky pale skin, and cheeks flushed the faint red of a peach — adorable.
As if to prove the story that they were putting off the imprinting because a recessive omega’s body might not hold up under an extremely dominant alpha like Taeseo, Raewon was a compact thing, barely 170 centimeters if that, with a slender, delicate frame.
“...”
He himself, by contrast, was neither tall nor short, somewhere in the mid-170s. His hair was jet black and his eyes the same, though their color was a shade lighter, washed out somehow. And his face was more than a little fierce.
Not that I have a single complaint about my own looks.
Scratching his right cheek, where a tiny mole was dotted, Hanbyeol read the room, then slowly slid off the bed and made for the door.
“I’m warning you. Get lost.”
“Um...”
“Don’t even think about laying a hand on him. You know the reason better than I do, don’t you?”
“No, I—”
You’re the one who came to me, so why are you throwing a fit about me coming closer?
It was absurd, but he was the one with no leverage here, so Hanbyeol obediently took two steps back. A pair of bright amber-brown eyes followed him, their thoughts unreadable.
Gyeon Raewon.
For a rival he’d spent all that time working to keep in check, he knew remarkably little about him, since he’d never bothered paying attention. What he did remember was that Raewon had barely reacted at all, no matter how much of his garbage behavior he’d been put through.
Which made me even angrier, which is exactly why I used to lose it.
And that, in a nutshell, was the point.
Yesterday’s Hanbyeol, in whom objectivity had been wiped out to the last man, was a different creature from today’s Hanbyeol. Until now he’d believed, without a flicker of doubt, that the reason Kang Taeseo never lodged a serious protest against his way-past-the-line stalking was that deep down the guy loved him back.
...He’d stake anything on it. That was all Raewon, holding him back from the sidelines.
And that mattered. As everyone knows, the virtues of the poor protagonist in any romance come as a three-piece set: pitiful, simple-hearted, and just a touch slow.
Which meant.
First to the waterworks wins. First to the punch wins!
Thud!
“I’m sorry, I was wrong!”
Spot a hill you can lean on, and to stay alive you lean the ever-loving f*ck into it.
Just like that monologue of Taeseo’s he’d read in that crap novel. To nudge his odds of survival up even a hair, Hanbyeol dropped straight to his knees.
“It’ll never happen again. If you want, no, even if you don’t want it, I won’t come anywhere near the two of you. I won’t hit on Taeseo anymore either. I think I was out of my mind. I’m sorry for everything I put you through.”
“...”
“So please, forgive me just this one last time...!”
He bent so far forward that his forehead nearly touched the floor. Once the apology was out and his mouth shut, silence settled over the hospital room.
Raewon stood motionless for a while, then pulled Hanbyeol up off the floor. Going by the strange look on his face, the plan had landed. Taeseo, meanwhile, had started to drag Raewon away from the lunatic making sudden moves, and ended up frozen there in a half-finished, awkward stance.
“Haah...”
At the sight of Raewon letting out a deep sigh and dragging a hand down his face, Hanbyeol lit up inside.
Yes, exactly as predicted.
Grovel first and getting forgiveness out of that fragile-looking, certified-angel of a human being would be absolutely no trou—
Smack!
“...?”
That’s an ouch, though.
His head whipped to the side along with a stinging pain. Raewon’s mouth was set in a cold, hard line, and his palm was flushing red.
Huh?
...Don’t tell me that actually went ouch for real?
