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Join the Server“Wait, calm down, Eun-gyeol.
You idiot!
You couldn’t even open your eyes for ten whole days and you’ve only just woken up.
You can’t overdo it!”
The moment he heard his father’s urgent voice, Han-geon immediately grasped what was happening inside the hospital room.
After lying down all this time, he must have been trying to force himself upright.
Cha Eun-gyeol, you fool…
Just as Han-geon, who had been catching his breath, was about to rush into the room, he heard it.
“Han-geon…
Choi Han-geon…
I need to go… find him…”
Eun-gyeol’s voice, barely clinging to life, leaked out beyond the door.
Han-geon froze in place.
“I have something to say… to Han-geon.
I need to go quickly… and say it… so…”
It was a voice fluttering weakly with desperation, yet still carrying unyielding resolve.
It was the same voice Eun-gyeol had used days ago, when he drifted through unconsciousness and desperately tried to apologize to him.
Han-geon bit his lip hard and grabbed the hospital room’s doorknob.
Then he flung it open.
The moment Han-geon appeared in the doorway, both pairs of eyes widened as far as they possibly could.
“H-Han-geon…”
Eun-gyeol’s father looked utterly stunned.
He quickly stood up, rubbed at his bloodshot eyes, and said he would step out before leaving the room.
Once even the medical staff who had been checking on Eun-gyeol followed him out, the room was finally left with just the two of them.
Eun-gyeol, who had been sitting on the bed, tried to lift himself and get off it.
Han-geon rushed over in a single stride and firmly shook his head, stopping him from getting up.
Instead, he stepped in close to Eun-gyeol’s side.
The gaze that lifted upward immediately found Han-geon.
“…Han-geon…
Han-geon…”
Eun-gyeol barely parted his lips, swallowing hard as they trembled again and again.
“You’re Han-geon…
Choi Han-geon… right?
Is it really you… the one I’m seeing?”
Eun-gyeol’s pale hand slowly reached out.
This time, Han-geon didn’t retreat.
The hand that had once flailed helplessly through empty air finally reached him.
Starved for warmth and substance, Eun-gyeol’s hand roamed over Han-geon’s body in a daze.
It traced his side, his arm, and then the belly carrying their child, desperately yet carefully.
Han-geon waited, letting him fully confirm his existence.
And then he gave him the answer he hadn’t been able to give before.
“…Yeah.
The one you’re looking at right now… it’s me.”
Eun-gyeol couldn’t say anything and simply stared at Han-geon.
His eyes, fixed in disbelief, trembled like the surface of a lake struck by a thrown stone.
Until clear water welled up and finally overflowed, the two of them couldn’t look away from each other for even a moment.
“Han-geon.
When I woke up… there was something I really wanted to say to you.”
After a long silence, Eun-gyeol finally spoke.
“While you were gone, I thought about it endlessly.
About how I could make you happy.
About what I could do so that the wounds you got from me might heal, even just a little…”
“…..”
“When I met you again, you said you’d be happier without me.
After hearing that, I couldn’t bring myself to hold on to you…
So I let you go, right in front of my eyes…
But then…”
Eun-gyeol’s throat bobbed unsteadily.
When he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, deep sorrow pooled between them.
“I just couldn’t endure it.
So… I couldn’t keep the promise I made with you.
Just watching you from afar—if I didn’t even do that, I felt like I would really die.
So I followed you…”
“…..”
“…I’m sorry, Han-geon.”
The emotions that had been violently surging spilled out of his eyes and fell.
Eun-gyeol’s eyes and cheeks were quickly soaked in grief.
“Even while hearing you say you’d be happier without me… I couldn’t give you up.
That was the one thing I absolutely couldn’t do.
I know just seeing my face must have been hard for you.
I know disappearing from in front of you would have made things easier for you…
But that… I really can’t do that…
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for thinking only of myself and acting selfishly again…
But…”
“…..”
“Without you… I really can’t live.
That’s not a life to me.
Without you… I can’t go on living, Han-geon.”
Swallowing a burning breath, Han-geon closed his eyes as well.
A world without him wasn’t a gentle one for him either.
No, such a world couldn’t exist at all.
He had realized that when Eun-gyeol hovered on the fragile boundary between life and death.
And now, Eun-gyeol’s sincerity—stripped bare of all pretense and laid out without any filter—was the same as his own.
In that moment, Han-geon understood.
The conviction he had held so tightly while running here hadn’t been wrong.
In a world where neither of them could live without the other, there was no way either could endure the other’s absence.
Their lives would only be complete if they existed together……
“…I still find it hard to forgive you.”
At Han-geon’s finally spoken words, Eun-gyeol bowed his head like a sinner.
“I told you I was happy now that you weren’t here, and that you should forget everything as if it never happened and live happily too…
But that was a lie.
I… I was never happy, not even once.”
His calm voice confessed the truth he had carried all along.
“I tried to live while forgetting you, but whenever I thought I might have forgotten, the wounds you gave me would surface again.
No, I couldn’t forget.
Even after I left you behind, there wasn’t a single moment when I forgot you.
My everyday life is already filled with nothing but the traces you left behind.
The time I spent loving you… that’s simply my life.”
“…..”
“To be honest, I don’t want you to forget me and the baby and be happy.
As long as I can’t forget you, I want you to be unable to forget me too.
I want you to not be okay without me.”
Like that, Han-geon slowly took off the armor of his heart, the armor he had worn while pretending to be fine and deceiving himself, his family, and Eun-gyeol.
And with the same raw, naked sincerity as Eun-gyeol, he faced him directly.
It felt light.
It felt freeing.
“It’ll be the same going forward.
I don’t know how much more time it’ll take before I can forgive you completely…
Maybe… it’ll take a very long time.
Even after I forgive you, resentment might still rise up from time to time.”
“…..”
“…But.”
Having said everything he wanted to say, Han-geon fell silent for a moment.
Then he took out something he had hidden away and sworn never to show Eun-gyeol.
“…Our baby’s nickname is Podo.”
At Han-geon’s calm voice, Eun-gyeol’s eyes widened as he lifted his bowed head.
“And when the baby’s born… you should come too.”
“…Huh?”
Eun-gyeol stared blankly, his mouth falling open in disbelief.
In his eyes, which wavered chaotically with confusion, Han-geon clearly saw joy rush in and fill them.
“You’re telling me… to come when you give birth too…?”
Eun-gyeol’s voice trembled uncontrollably, like petals fluttering in the wind.
“I didn’t hear that wrong, did I, Han-geon?
You’re telling me to come when you give birth… when our baby is born… right?”
He murmured the words over and over, as if he wasn’t in his right mind.
His eyes were still unstable, but unlike before, they weren’t shaking from anxiety or despair, so Han-geon calmly waited for his emotions to settle.
And soon, Eun-gyeol’s face bloomed like a flower.
The confusion, joy, and shock mixed together finally blossomed into pure elation.
“Thank you, Han-geon…
Thank you for letting me stay by your side, for letting me see the baby…
Thank you so much.”
Carefully, he lifted Han-geon’s hand and held it.
Pressing his face against the back of the hand that had been willingly offered, Eun-gyeol slowly closed his eyes.
His pale face, soaked with tears, glowed with a vitality Han-geon had never seen before.
“Thank you.
Thank you… I’m so… thankful, Han-geon…”
As he watched Eun-gyeol rub his face against his hand, Han-geon extended his other hand.
Slowly, he lifted it and brought it to Eun-gyeol’s hair.
He gently stroked Eun-gyeol’s hair as it brushed softly against his fingers.
With just a single touch from Han-geon, even Eun-gyeol’s breathing became calm.
Han-geon continued to stroke his hair like that, for a long, long time.
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