Chapter 3: Today is your birthday

I never imagined that I would experience something like this in my life.

Me, pregnant! Me, a healthy, average Korean man, about to experience childbirth!

Hearing this unrealistic story, I felt that this situation was simply absurd. No, wasn’t it strange from the very beginning that I had changed?

“Miss, this is not the time to be like this, you need to prepare quickly! If you just stay still like this, it won’t be neither fish nor fowl!”

“Wh..,..at prepar..,.,,ation..,.,, do you mean..,..?”

I still couldn’t speak properly because of the labor pains. Seeing me like that, the old woman looked at me with a urgent expression and said.

“Honey, are you going to give birth in front of the door then? You need to go inside somewhere and lie down properly to give birth!”

That’s right. It’s difficult to give birth here. I can’t even get in the right position, and above all, wouldn’t everything be visible from the outside?

At that, I came to my senses and, with the help of the old woman, went back inside the house.

The old woman, after laying me down in the place where I had opened my eyes and woke up, searched for something in the house and soon returned to me.

“Miss, bear with it a little longer. I’ll make sure it’s over quickly.”

Ah, no. The labor pains are getting worse and worse, and I can’t hear the old woman’s words properly.

In the meantime, the old woman started putting things around me with something she found in the house.

I couldn’t see properly because of the extreme pain, but I roughly hung something above my head.

Also, she lifted my legs and placed them on a small wooden chair that she brought. Then, as if something was roughly prepared, she spoke to me.

“Don’t worry too much. It’ll be over soon.”

While saying that, she made me hold what she had hung above my head in my hand. Is this a handle made of cloth?

“Hold this and tighten your stomach. You need to listen to me well for it to end quickly. Got it?”

At those words, I could only nod my head. I just wanted to be freed from this pain quickly.

The old woman told me to tighten my stomach in time with the timing and kept talking to me from the side.

And I set foot on a battle that I couldn’t guarantee when it would end.

[LINE BREAK]

How much time has passed? Three hours? More than a day? Or just 15 minutes?

I continued to be in pain so much that I didn’t know how much time had passed since the beginning.

Even in the midst of that, I tried not to lose consciousness, and eventually the end was coming to this.

A sensation felt under my body. It feels similar to a bowel movement, but also different.

Intuitively, I realized that this pain would not last much longer.

“Yes! I can see the head! Miss, try a little harder!”

At the old woman’s words shouting from the side, I tightened my stomach as I had repeated so many times until now.

Soon, I felt something pushed out of my stomach.

Just a little more… just a little more ahead!

Now, I can get out of this soon!

Thinking that, I continued to tighten my stomach, and each time, something came out little by little.

And maybe this will be the last time. I poured out all the strength I had. The strength to the point where I could never exert such great strength again.

And after that fleeting moment that felt like an eternity.

[LINE BREAK]!

I could tell that something had completely come out of me.

I had no more strength to move, nor did I want to.

I just thought that it was all over.

Ah. Why did I use so much strength?

When I opened my eyes, I was in a completely different place from where I knew. Even in a body that was not my own that I knew.

Before I could even understand this situation, I experienced and endured pains that I had never imagined before.

In the face of this series of unrealistic events, I could only think of one person.

My mother. The mother whom this unfilial son left alone. Did my mother also suffer such terrible pain when she gave birth to me?

How could you love me even after suffering such pain?

As I was immersed in such thoughts, the old woman handed me something. It was like a large pea.

A very large pea with wrinkles all over its body. Objectively, it was not something that could be called lovely.

Even so, the moment I received it from the old woman and saw it for the first time, I received a strong feeling from this pea.

‘Cute.’

It seemed as if the pain I had felt until I gave birth to that little life was nothing.

Just the thought that this child was the child I gave birth to, and the thought that I wanted to see that child’s smiling face.

Only those thoughts remained in my head.

The old woman congratulated me, who had received the child and froze.

“It’s a healthy boy. You’ve been through a lot. So, do you have a name in mind?”

Name. A name, huh…

I haven’t named anyone else very often.

Therefore, I hesitated whether I could properly name a child that would last a lifetime.

But such thoughts were only temporary. When I looked at the face of the child I was holding, I had various thoughts.

The pain I felt for the first time in my life, the joy of seeing this child for the first time, the embarrassment when I first woke up here.

That’s right. You are everything to me in this body. A set of all my emotions.

I hope you walk the right path.

Ah, Mother. I was finally able to understand my mother’s heart in this faraway place, not where I used to be.

As atonement for the child who left my mother behind, I will protect this child and live here.

Even if I am not this child’s original mother, I will do anything for this child.

That’s right. My baby. Your name is…..

“Settrigh, Set.”