M 115

Unconsciously, he lifted his head, then dropped his cheek back onto the pillow. Though it was a small movement, there was no way Ki Tae-jeong hadn’t noticed it. Sehwa traced the tiny shoes with his eyes over and over. Even knowing that he was blatantly revealing he wasn’t asleep, he couldn’t stop his body from twitching involuntarily.

It’s probably just a decorative item, or maybe it could be a toy…. he tried to look away belatedly like that, but it was not enough to overcome the certainty already filling his mind. Even rubbing his eyes and looking again, they were indeed shoes that babies wear.

Why did he suddenly buy something like this? After the surprise, bewilderment, and confusion subsided, a pitch-black question spread like ripples.

Of course, Ki Tae-jeong had been buying expensive childcare equipment every day, but that wasn’t for the child’s sake. How could one interpret it as an act of caring for the child when he was spending money like water and putting pressure on him without even asking his opinion?

But this.

Those baby shoes that Ki Tae-jeong had brought himself, without any fancy packaging…

“Go to sleep.”

It was the most subdued voice he had ever heard from him. Neither drunk nor sleepy, in a low but clear pronunciation, Ki Tae-jeong whispered for him to go to sleep.

Then he stretched out his arm, touching various parts of Sehwa’s stiff body, and carefully held the back of his hand. He felt a small weight on the crown of his head, a slightly warm breath. He wasn’t sure if he was resting his chin or burying his cheek… but anyway, it seemed he was trying to sleep, overlapping their bodies as he always did.

“You have an examination tomorrow morning.”

Sehwa closed his eyes while holding his breath. He squeezed them so tightly that it felt like his thin skin might stick to his eyeballs, then suddenly lifted his eyelids. Simultaneously, he pushed away Ki Tae-jeong, who had been covering him like a blanket, and abruptly sat up.

“Sehwa.”

In the dim darkness, the man who had shamelessly been trying to sleep beside him again seemed a little surprised by his sudden action.

It was just yesterday that he had asked him to give up custody. Yet he was trying to intertwine their bodies like a vine again as if nothing had happened, and even brought something like that…

Telling him to sleep now, to sleep comfortably in his arms…. Ki Tae-jeong’s low voice that seemed to be pulled from his toes, his incomprehensible actions, struck Sehwa’s heart hard.

He had tried so hard not to get excited. He had been trying to empty and unload everything that could be named emotion….

Ki Tae-jeong effortlessly pulled off the mask that Sehwa had been barely wearing. As if telling him not to be detached alone, as if saying let’s roll together in this hell… he seemed intent on poking at the various festering emotions he had been trying to ignore all along.

“What are you doing right now?”

Sehwa started unbuttoning his top with hands that trembled like small convulsions. No, he tried to.

“What are you trying to do?”

Grabbing Sehwa’s hands that were flailing pathetically, unable to move as he intended, Ki Tae-jeong’s face turned ashen.

“Let’s do it. Sex. You like that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“If we’re not… going to do that, why are you and I, why am I… sleeping together with you?”

Ki Tae-jeong, who had sat up following Sehwa’s aggressive behavior… froze at his words and just stayed like that. He didn’t hold his wrists and tell him to stay still, nor did he wrap his arm around his waist telling him to just go to sleep quietly. And Sehwa found this Ki Tae-jeong, responding in this way, even harder to bear.

“Holding each other tightly like lovers, sleeping… that’s not something we, no, people like you and I… should be doing.”

Did he think his heart would change if he bought something like that now, if he pretended to care about the child even a little? Did he expect him to be moved like before?

He hated Ki Tae-jeong for thinking he could appease him with something like baby shoes, and he was disgusted with himself for his heart instinctively aching as soon as he saw that tiny thing, even though he knew what he was up to.

“Just do it. Stop doing things that don’t suit you… Spread my legs and fuck me.”

When he was hiding in the second ring, he had been so desperate to inflict even a small wound on Ki Tae-jeong. But when the words he spat out became arrows and spears that pierced his body, he forgot even his hatred. The poison he had been clumsily spewing out… he just swallowed it back. He decided to take it into himself and crush it all. If his insides were all melted and scraped away… then maybe he wouldn’t feel the pain anymore.

Only then, after his mind had been thoroughly jumbled and he had temporarily lost his voice, barely regaining his senses now, could he appear outwardly composed.

But Ki Tae-jeong wouldn’t even allow that. He arbitrarily stripped away the calmness Sehwa had painstakingly wrapped around himself, turning his insides upside down in a way he never expected.

“Don’t do this.”

“Let’s do it, why, don’t you want to?”

The top button of Sehwa’s patient gown came off in his violent struggle.

“Stop this, Sehwa.”

After hesitating, Ki Tae-jeong finally embraced Sehwa. He tucked his arms under his armpits and thoroughly wrapped his sides and back, preventing him from using his hands freely. Momentarily speechless at his heavy presence, Sehwa soon shook his head, gasping for breath.

“Why, why won’t you…”

“I bought it a while ago, thinking you’d like it.”

“…”

“But my thinking was short-sighted.”

A deep sigh was buried in the man’s trailing words.

Moisture gradually welled up in Sehwa’s eyes, which had been devoid of luster, like a stone with its surface completely scraped off. His heart, which he thought had already been completely crushed, ached as if trampled on once again.

“…Brigadier General, you really… don’t know anything.”

How much he agonized before admitting that he liked him, what state of mind he was in when he thought of drugging him and leaving, and yesterday in front of the isolation room when he asked you to give up parental rights for the child…

“Even now, you’re, you’re acting on your own whims. Is doing whatever you feel like, is that what you think is being good to someone? Does that, does that solve everything?”

In the darkened night, Ki Tae-jeong’s expression wasn’t clearly visible. The shadows cast by his high nose bridge made it even harder to discern, but he could tell he was continuously moving his lips.

“Then… can everything be undone?”

“…That’s right, I don’t know anything. So you tell me.”

“…”

“I’ll try to fix it, no, I will fix it. Everything, all of it.”

“…”

“If you tell me, from now on, I won’t do anything to hurt you or the child…”

His throat stung as if covered in thorns. Sehwa, who had been taking ragged breaths, struggled again. His body, which seemed immovable, was pushed away surprisingly easily.

“Ah, ugh, urk…”

Sehwa let out a strange breath, neither crying nor retching, as he got off the bed. Then, staggering like a weak animal searching for a place to die, he walked towards the table.

“Who, this kind of… this kind of thing…”

Sehwa grabbed the object Ki Tae-jeong had placed on the table. He tried to snatch it up roughly, but even though he wanted to be violent, he couldn’t muster any strength in his hand.

“This kind of thing…”

He wanted to throw it back at Ki Tae-jeong, telling him to take this useless thing back. He wanted to shout that it was his child, and no matter how many of these he bought, Saessak would never wear them. He wanted to get angry and tell him never to stir people up like this again. But…

“This kind of thing…”

Sehwa raised his arm that barely moved. Ki Tae-jeong was still on the bed like a still life. So if he threw it now, it would work. It should… work…

“Who would… this, kind of thing…”

Sehwa’s hand dropped like a drained robot. The shoe, as small as a chestnut, fell silently to the floor.

…He couldn’t bring himself to throw it. The shoe in his hand was too… small. Small, yet also large.

Saessak is still in the incubator. It will be a while before he comes out, and even longer before he can wear shoes for walking practice.

But these shoes looked like they could only be worn after the child had passed his first birthday. It was ridiculous that Ki Tae-jeong, who had no interest or knowledge about newborn development, had thoughtlessly bought baby shoes thinking he would like them, and…

The traces of being handled for a long time felt all over the clutched shoes… made him nauseous. The softened decorations, the insides bulging with handprints… The tiny shoes brought by the man who had threatened to abandon the child in the 4-Hwan if he died recklessly, bore marks that couldn’t have been made by just a day or two of handling.

A brief silence passed, and then came the sound of bed sheets rustling. Ki Tae-jeong had gotten up and was walking this way. His movements were a bit slower than before when he had been uninhibited, perhaps due to the effects of alcohol.

“Rest. From now on, I’ll sleep outside.”

The man bent down to pick up the baby shoe that had fallen to the floor.

“And this…”

After briefly rubbing the toe of the shoe with his thumb, Ki Tae-jeong glanced around the bedroom.

That was all. He thought he would add some explanation, but Ki Tae-jeong turned around slowly without any excuses.

It was a while after Ki Tae-jeong had left his sight that he heard the bedroom door close and footsteps heading towards the living room. Sehwa, who had been standing rooted to the spot, collapsed as soon as the door closed.

“Huu… uu…”

After staring for a long time at the spot where the tiny shoe had been lying, Sehwa curled up into a small ball. Inexplicable tears poured out.

Tangled memories and all sorts of emotions knotted sharply, jabbing at his heart. Compared to the words Ki Tae-jeong had hurled at him and the things he had done, this should have been nothing. He couldn’t even be said to have acted coldly. But… why did a mere baby shoe make his heart ache so much? The man’s clumsy apology, which came far too late and didn’t even seem like an apology, shot through his heart like a heavy bullet.

Tears without purpose flowed tiresomely.

And so, a night where no one could sleep was passing by.