KTS Ch 7

The regular breathing rising and falling behind his back was definitely not his own.

Woojung’s ragged breaths and Sa Gongjun’s slow breaths collided. Woojung’s smooth back and the muscular chest pressed together and pulled apart.

He wanted to go back to the small cabin. He wanted to rest in that small but comfortable place.

The moment he tried to move away from Sa Gongjun, Woojung collapsed back onto the bed. Then he froze in place. Sa Gongjun’s cock was still lodged between his buttocks. The penis, which filled him completely even after going limp, was terrifying.

He moved one leg forward. A viscous liquid trickled down through the gap that opened. He also felt the thin layer smeared on his inner thigh crack. The hand placed on the bed, the hand that had been near his chest, trembled violently.

He had knotted… but it wasn’t his heat cycle…. He had gone around saying he was a beta precisely because he was afraid something like this would happen…. Woojung’s fingers, fumbling through the events of last night, trembled pitifully. What do I do from now on, what do I do….

Woojung’s eyes, which had held the stars, filled with the color of water. What frightened Woojung more than anything was the thought of what he would do if the person behind him woke up.

‘It’s up to you, Mr. Cheon Woojung.’

Woojung bit his already torn lips again. Even so, he could not control the heart that was wildly racing after having tasted fear.

“…Ah!”

A hand came from behind him and covered Woojung’s chest. It touched the skin where a rash had bloomed and pinched the heavily swollen nipple between its fingers.

“I, now, I really can’t.”

“Shh….”

A deeply husky voice reached Woojung’s ear. And the scent that would soon pour out like a tidal wave made Woojung afraid. He was scared. The scent that he could feel no matter how much he breathed it in, the scent that showed no signs of fading even as time passed.

“Don’t… stop, I’m going to stop…. I want to stop.”

Woojung could not bear the sorrow that burst forth. Perhaps he had been thinking that it would be fine if he just went along with it to a certain extent. Thinking back on it now, he wanted to ask himself what kind of confidence that had been.

“I’ll just keep it in.”

The voice, heavy with sleep, was languid. It was clearly a sleepy voice, yet how did it know that Woojung was trying to escape, wrapping its arms and legs around him to keep him from moving.

“Please let go.”

Sa Gongjun, pulling Woojung into an embrace, buried his face in Woojung’s nape. After rubbing his head and shifting for a moment, he said abruptly.

“If you keep squirming like that, it will get hard again.”

“……”

“If you understand, then lie still and sleep. Don’t be a nuisance.”

After saying that, he quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Woojung did not know what to do with his arm held awkwardly in the air, and only after a pain as if his shoulder would fall off came did he lower his arm on top of Sa Gongjun’s. To be told to sleep in this state, it was an absolutely impossible demand. The vortex that had formed inside him created a massive storm.

A bad person.

A bad bastard.

…A bad son of a bitch.

Woojung spat out curses inwardly before falling asleep as if he had fainted. It was a slightly too difficult and exhausting night to stay up for two consecutive days.

🌸

Woojung’s father was a seaman. Whenever he went out to sea, he always returned with a full catch. Woojung sometimes followed his father out and watched the scene from the captain’s room.

The head of the village cooperative told Woojung’s father to buy a big boat. He kept inciting him, saying it feels good to have a full catch on a big boat, not a small one.

His father fell for his temptation. When Woojung was eight, his father became the captain of a big, nice boat. The boat’s name was the Woojung-ho.

One day, at the start of a new semester, the school conducted a survey of parents’ occupations. His father habitually started to write ‘fisherman’ then stopped. He scraped away the already written letters vigorously with an eraser. Then he wrote ‘captain’ again.

The shoulders of his father, who was lying on the floor writing the letters, went up. So did Woojung, who was next to him.

Woojung, with that ticklish feeling in his chest, shot up from his spot and climbed onto his father’s back. A ship’s horn blared from the floor, woo-oong. It was the father and son’s first voyage.

A change came to the father and son’s life.

Woojung’s father no longer took Woojung on the boat with him. If Woojung threw a tantrum, he would pretend to give in and take him along, but from some point on, he rarely gave in.

The number of people on the Woojung-ho gradually increased. They spent much more time with his father than Woojung did. Sometimes, they would eat and sleep at Woojung’s house for several days, waiting for a voyage.

Woojung thought his father had been stolen by people he did not know. He was wary. He was wary of the seamen who suddenly appeared, and he saw the people who took his father from him as bad. Woojung avoided them, and they did not acknowledge Woojung either.

It was one day at dawn. Woojung, who was going to the kitchen for a drink of water because he was thirsty, followed a strange sound coming from a corner room.

Through the crack of the door, which was open by about a hand’s breadth, he saw a bizarre scene. The seamen who were staying at his house were panting and rolling on the floor. The sight of them mating, with only their lower halves exposed, was strange. The sounds that leaked out like groans, the sounds of laughter, the sounds of crying, were all entangled. If not for the low laughter that could be heard, he would have thought they were sick people.

Does it feel good to rub between your legs?

Woojung stood in that spot and tried scratching his own underside with his hand. He did not feel anything at all.

His eyes met someone’s. They were bloodshot red eyes. The alpha, thinking an intruder had broken in, became wary of his surroundings. And the omega who had been lying underneath him cried out, letting out a sound like a dying roe deer.

Since he did not know the reason, his interest waned. Woojung returned to his room. Dealing with the sleepiness that was washing over him came first.

The next morning, the two men handed Woojung a one-thousand-won bill. It was two thousand won in total. Woojung was at an age where he knew that money could be used to buy snacks. He did not know what it was, but the two men’s moods seemed better than usual.

‘Thank you.’

Up close, they were clumsy with Korean. Woojung spoke Korean, and they spoke a different country’s language. A long explanation followed, but he could never figure out what they were thankful for. However, not many months later, he heard that the two would become parents.

‘Here, Woojung’s friend.’

Although the speech was slurred, he could understand it well enough.

‘Friend.’

Woojung nodded his head.

Because making a friend is a good thing.

His father’s time spent at sea gradually increased, and Woojung spent most of his time with the outsiders who stayed at the house.

While living together, he gradually became better at understanding their language. It was only later that Woojung learned that the foreign language he had heard with his soft childhood mind was Filipino.

Even after that, Woojung occasionally peeked into that room. While going for a drink of water at dawn, while going to the bathroom, and sometimes he would go and look for no reason at all.

It was not an act of knowing what he was doing. It was just an act done because he liked having people in the house.

Then one day, his father caught him. His father strictly warned him never to wander around at dawn again. Woojung did not answer. He hated his father for coming home after several days only to yell at him. That day, for the first time, he was beaten until his bottom was raw. Woojung cried endlessly out of sorrow.

After that day, his father began to take up drinking.

He was mostly drunk, but sometimes he would say, my Woojung, and stroke his cheek. Woojung thought all of this was because of the big boat that had suddenly appeared. His father changed after that boat appeared.

Maybe a bad ghost has attached itself to the boat.

That night, Woojung, intending to chase away the evil spirit, secretly snuck onto the Woojung-ho without his father knowing. He brought with him a peach tree branch from the entrance of the village.

The Woojung-ho, which went out to sea, met with another boat. On the other boat were children around Woojung’s age. Woojung confirmed that the children were crossing over to the Woojung-ho and hid inside a cabinet in the captain’s room.

There was no ghost.

Woojung returned, relieved.

As time passed like that, Woojung lived on, even forgetting the fact that he had secretly boarded his father’s boat.

His father worked for a few more years. Then, something went wrong, and he received a suspension of fishing operations and went to prison. That was the day Woojung graduated from elementary school. His mother, who had suffered from heartache, passed away from stomach cancer while caring for him in prison.

Woojung lived alone for a long time. At dawn, he delivered milk and newspapers in the village to earn a living. He went to school and studied, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

Then one day at dawn, a high fever flared up. At first, he thought he had caught a cold. However, he was so sick he could not even get up, so he stayed in bed for several days.

His homeroom teacher, who was worried about Woojung, came to his house, and the school nurse, who was called by him, also rushed to the house.

At sixteen, Woojung presented as an omega, all by himself. His usual life was so much tougher that he regarded his first heat cycle as nothing more than a cold.

‘Who on earth endures their presentation alone. You should have at least told your teacher.’

‘…I thought it was a cold, sir.’

‘What to do with this pitiful child.’

‘Something is strange. There are no alphas or omegas in my family. My late mother was a beta and my father is also a beta.’

‘Oh dear, Woojung-ah. You poor thing.’

It was only much later that Woojung learned that his presentation was due to acquired factors. It was said to be a very rare case where he had presented due to the influence of the pheromones of the alphas and omegas he had peeked at through the crack in the door at a young age.

And he also learned about the work his father had been doing. He was told that his father had been working for an organization that smuggled children who were trait holders and was caught.

It could only be seen as having been thoroughly caught in the scheme of a human trafficking organization. It was clear that they had incited an ordinary person who lived by fishing, lent him money, made him buy a big boat, and had him transport people instead of interest.

It was unfair, but there was nowhere to appeal.

Time passed.

It was during the winter vacation of Woojung’s second year of high school. The moment he was heading out to do his dawn delivery as usual, he came face to face with a vagrant with a senile appearance. It was his father.

He said, my Woojung, and patted his cheek.

And he said, you’ve already grown up so much.

Woojung hugged his father and cried his eyes out in the entryway.

He talked with his father, who had returned home, all night. Mixed in was the story of Woojung presenting as an omega. His father, upon hearing that story, wailed loudly. He could not even properly say he was sorry and kept hitting his head on the floorboards, and Woojung cried along with him.

His father held Woojung’s hand and earnestly begged him never to tell anyone. He said the world easily takes and tramples on what poor people have.

Woojung nodded his head, saying he understood. He wanted to listen to anything his father, whom he had met after a long time, said.

His father explained his words again. He said it would be harder for him because he was pretty, like his mother. Then he downed a case of soju.

After that day, his father could not get up from his bed very well.

Even though he ate warm meals and slept in a good spot, his complexion showed little improvement. It was the product of the shock of hearing Woojung’s news and the hardships he had endured.

By the time he forcibly dragged the person who said he was fine to the neighborhood clinic, it was very late. His father passed away from liver cancer not long after. It was only later that Woojung learned that his father had received a stay of execution of his sentence due to terminal liver cancer.

Woojung sold the Woojung-ho.

A portion of that money was used for funeral expenses, and most of it was used to pay off bank debts.

That night, loan sharks came looking for Woojung. They yelled at him for paying back money without knowing the order and resorted to violence. That day, for the first time, Woojung was beaten to the point of fainting.

As Woojung curled up and begged, the loan sharks lifted Woojung upside down and examined his body here and there. They said it seemed like they wouldn’t even get half of it even if they sold everything, so let’s think about it after he pays back the money first.

Woojung sold his house too.

That money was used for a debt-clearing feast, and Woojung moved to a gosiwon. He sold all of his valuable possessions. Still, there was a lot of money left to pay.

All he barely held in his hands were a few necessities like his school uniform, backpack, and sneakers.

Woojung, lying prone, wailed.

He missed his dad, and his mom.