Chapter 116: Life And Death

A light flicked on above the operating room that had been frozen cold.

Seeing the indicator switch to [In Surgery], Han-geon collapsed to the floor right where he stood.

There was no strength left in his legs at all.

The medical staff passing by helped him up when they saw him sitting there in a daze at the entrance and guided him to a seat in the family waiting room.

Even so, Han-geon was so far gone he didn’t even know who was supporting him.

By the time he came back to himself, he was sitting on one of the waiting room chairs.

Tears poured down without end until his eyes grew dry and sore and the corners reddened and inflamed.

None of that mattered.

He couldn’t think.

He couldn’t act.

A beastlike groan bubbled up from his throat.

Unable to even lift his head, Han-geon did nothing but cry on the chair.

He couldn’t remember how he’d managed to contact the manager and even Eun-gyeol’s parents.

Only fragments remained.

His hands shaking inside the ambulance.

Dropping his phone over and over again.

The manager’s voice, heavy with shock.

Eun-gyeol’s father, unable to say a single word.

His tear-blurred gaze drifted vacantly toward the surgery board posted in one corner of the waiting room.

Even with one character of the name covered, Eun-gyeol’s name stabbed painfully into his eyes.

That alone made this unreal reality crash back into him with renewed force, and Han-geon let out a long, broken moan as he covered his face with both hands.

A fragment of memory he had tried to bury deep in the back of his mind, yet had never truly forgotten even once, revived painfully beside his ear.

“If it’s not you, I’ll die, Han-geon.

I can’t live without you….”

Eun-gyeol’s desperate voice was as vivid as if he had just heard it moments ago.

Han-geon clenched his fists until his fingertips turned stark white.

“I’m happy without you.

No, I’m finally happy now that you’re gone.”

He had said those words while cruelly shaking off Eun-gyeol as he clung to his legs.

At the time, it had been the best thing Han-geon could say to him.

And until now, he had never once regretted saying it.

They were people who could not coexist.

If he was to push away the fragile Eun-gyeol and let them each find their own happiness, there had been no other way.

But now, for the first time, Han-geon regretted saying those words to Eun-gyeol.

It felt as though everything had come to this because of the cold way he had driven him away.

Because he had mercilessly rejected Eun-gyeol when he begged desperately for affection and said he would die without him, Eun-gyeol now seemed to be teetering on the fragile boundary between life and death….

He knew, rationally, that it wasn’t true.

And yet, Han-geon was in agony.

His heart hurt so badly he couldn’t bear it.

He had firmly pushed away Eun-gyeol when he said he couldn’t live without him, but he had never imagined a situation like this would come to pass.

The more he thought about it, the more impossible it was to accept this lie-like situation as reality.

If… if.

It was too horrific to even want to imagine, but if—if by some chance Cha Eun-gyeol didn’t make it….

Just the thought was enough to drive him insane.

He didn’t want to imagine anything beyond that.

But his cursed imagination was mercilessly quick, and even as Han-geon shuddered, he couldn’t escape it.

The paramedics moving frantically.

The shocked expressions on the medical staff.

The attending surgeon shaking his head grimly.

All of it clung thickly to his mind and refused to fade.

As those cruel, horrifying images closed in around him, tears fell with soft, dull sounds.

Unable to suppress his sobs any longer, Han-geon let them spill from his mouth as he collapsed entirely toward the abyss.

He hated Eun-gyeol, but he never wanted him to be unhappy.

He had vowed to live a life unrelated to Cha Eun-gyeol, but that wish had only been possible under the natural assumption that Cha Eun-gyeol was walking somewhere in this world along a parallel line that would never intersect with his own.

A world without Cha Eun-gyeol….

It felt like a contradictory sentence in itself.

A fictional world built on a premise that could never exist.

There was no way he could live in such a place.

No, that couldn’t even be called a world.

Clenching his fists until his wrists and palms went numb, Han-geon shook his head desperately.

Right.

That won’t happen.

Who did Cha Eun-gyeol think he was.

There was no way he’d let go of Han-geon over something as trivial as that bastard.

The Cha Eun-gyeol who had been so obsessively attached to him would never give him up this meaninglessly.

Even before, his fixation on Han-geon alone had been frighteningly strong.

That same man had clutched his hand and regretted everything down to his bones.

He had wanted to live making amends to Han-geon.

He had wanted, with all his heart, to be the baby’s father.

There was no way he would leave Han-geon and Podo behind in this world.

“…Why.”

Han-geon’s tear-soaked voice cut painfully through the air.

“…Why did you have to go that far….”

Eun-gyeol was someone who felt nauseated and uncomfortable at the mere sight of a fork.

He was someone who complained that it was suffocating and unbearable even to look at them.

On days when he happened to see a kitchen knife head-on, he would spiral into panic for a long time.

That man had looked straight at that long, bluish, razor-sharp sashimi knife and still thrown himself forward without hesitation to shield Han-geon and Podo.

And then….

Then, even with a knife lodged in his side, he had asked him—

“…Choi Han-geon.

Are you… okay?”

Han-geon thrashed and clawed at his chest.

He screamed as he sobbed.

Even while coughing up blood, even as his eyes were dimming, the way Eun-gyeol had looked at no one but him refused to fade.

The voice that had worried about him with such sincerity would not leave his ears.

In the end, Eun-gyeol really had been hovering around him.

Even after being rejected so miserably by Han-geon.

That was why he had been able to react so quickly to the attacker’s assault.

Abandoning the old, almost violently direct way he used to live, he had stayed at a distance, unable to come close, unable to touch, watching over him in desperate silence.

The Cha Eun-gyeol Han-geon had known had never been like that.

When Han-geon had first presented as an omega, Eun-gyeol had devoured him to soothe his own anxiety.

That was the Eun-gyeol who had chased Han-geon to the ends of the earth when he fled in exhaustion, clinging to him and begging him to come back together for his own sake.

He had been that selfish.

He had known only himself.

He had always been someone who knew how to be loved, and who believed that was only natural.

That was simply who Cha Eun-gyeol was.

And yet….

“I’ll give everything I have to you and our baby….”

Saying that, Eun-gyeol had dropped to his knees and cried.

He hadn’t just spoken his resolve.

He had truly thrown his body on the line for Han-geon and the baby.

He had opened his eyes wide and charged straight into the fear that had oppressed him his entire life.

Just recalling that moment made Han-geon feel like he would go mad.

He wanted to wake Cha Eun-gyeol right now and demand answers.

He wanted to scream that this wasn’t what he wanted.

He wanted to howl that there was no way he could live happily with their child alone, using the life Eun-gyeol had given in his place.

“…Please.

Please, Cha Eun-gyeol….”

The words he had spoken, asking Eun-gyeol not to hold onto him if he truly wanted to be a father one last time, now felt like the very knife that had pierced Eun-gyeol’s side, ripping his own chest to shreds as well.

Tears spilled through the gaps between the hands covering his face and splattered onto the floor.

Shedding tears like streams of blood, Han-geon collapsed completely and wailed.

***

While Han-geon kept watch in the surgery waiting room, people began arriving one after another.

The first to rush in were the manager and Eun-gyeol’s father.

After them came Yujin and Geonho, and then even Han-geon’s parents.

They embraced Han-geon, who couldn’t even form proper words, and soothed him as they cried for a long time.

No one pressed Han-geon for details about what had happened.

They simply held him as he stood on the verge of collapse from exhaustion.

Even in the midst of it all, the manager stayed busy coordinating with the police.

After ending a call, he informed them that not only the man who had attacked Han-geon and Eun-gyeol, but also the accomplice who had attempted to splash hydrochloric acid, had just been arrested in an emergency operation.

After that, time once again stretched into something that felt like eternity.

Aside from the occasional quiet sob or sigh, no one dared to speak.

Though he was nearly collapsing from exhaustion, Han-geon forced his eyes open and prayed endlessly for Eun-gyeol.

It was around the moment when consciousness and unconsciousness began to blur together—

“Oh.

I think the surgery is over!”

At Yujin’s tense voice, Han-geon’s eyes flew open.

The status that had read [In Surgery] had now changed to [Recovery Room Transfer].

The moment Han-geon sprang to his feet from the chair, the door separating the operating wing from the waiting area opened.

The attending physician who had performed Eun-gyeol’s surgery walked out, his expression worn with fatigue.

Han-geon rushed toward him faster than anyone else and waited, face tight with tension, for the doctor’s words.