M 216

Side Story 3 Episode 19

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3. Very Berry Strawberry (2)

One peaceful night, after the nausea that seemed like it would never end, and the violent coughing that felt like it would spill all the organs in his stomach, Sehwa abruptly opened his eyes.

Earlier, he had been so, so sleepy that he had been too busy collapsing into bed to properly greet Ki Tae-jeong, who had just returned from work. He remembered being woken up in between to take his nutritional supplements and medicine, and barely managing to swallow them… Hae-rim snuggling into his arms and kissing him, patting his stomach with his small hands and talking to Sunshine, and Ki Tae-jeong gently stopping him… and the two of them whispering and giggling… Only some specific scenes remained as faint afterimages, and everything else was as if someone had snipped away the fragments of his memory with scissors.

And right now, Sehwa, who had woken up at the time he should really be sleeping, was blinking his wide-awake eyes. He couldn’t sleep anymore. It was as if all the gravity in the world had been placed on his eyelids had never happened, and he couldn’t come to his senses.

He had fallen fast asleep from early evening, so it was natural that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, but these days, Sehwa’s sleep pattern was far from normal. Reflecting on his past experiences, he knew that as soon as he complained about not being able to sleep, he would suddenly doze off at some point. From the moment the nausea subsided, drowsiness came over him frequently, and waking up and sleeping at odd hours had become a familiar occurrence.

“…What is it?”

But today seemed a little different.

His mind was clear as if he had poured caffeine into his veins. He carefully tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position to fall asleep, so as not to wake the man sleeping soundly next to him, but whether it was because of the movement or not, even the slightest bit of sleepiness he had left had completely disappeared.

What should he do? Should he just not sleep? But he didn’t get to see Lieutenant General and Hae-rim properly in the evening, so he wanted to see his family’s faces and talk to them in the morning… Sehwa, agonizing over it, squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Well… there would be days like this too. There was no one to scold him even if he became nocturnal like an owl, so what if he just stayed up a little for one day? And if he calculated the total amount of sleep he had accumulated while he was hospitalized, wouldn’t he be able to stay up all night for the next few days? So there was no need to stress about it.

Sehwa took a deep breath through his nose and followed the meditation breathing he had seen in the pregnancy app. He tried to empty his mind, which was already filled with random thoughts, by imagining himself lying on a hammock on the beach and watching the stars, and he also imagined the sound of insects chirping in the forest. But he couldn’t concentrate for even a minute and ended up going off on a tangent again.

By the way, where did he put his phone? No, Captain Na said that it’s not good to rely on the phone too much. Then should he read a book? No, he couldn’t sleep anyway, so he should just go to the study and write in his diary… Ah, that’s right! He received Sunshine’s hologram today! He had to show this to Lieutenant General too….

It probably had been sent to Ki Tae-jeong as well, but Sunshine’s expected growth chart, which he had checked for the first time during the day, was really… amazing.

‘Th… wow…, woow….’

Captain Na, looking at the hologram on the screen, couldn’t say anything for a while and only made ambiguous sounds mixed with admiration and sighs. That was because-.

‘Wow, he looks just like Lieutenant General… He’s a complete copy….’

Sunshine was Ki Tae-jeong, only smaller. Sunshine looked exactly like him, to the point that Warrant Officer Choi, who was standing a little further away, had a slight seizure. Even though the child in the hologram was smiling brightly and diligently wriggling like a baby, Ki Tae-jeong’s aides trembled as if they had seen something they shouldn’t have.

‘It would be better if he was expressionless or frowning, but wearing Lieutenant General’s shell… Ah, I’m sorry. Th… he has the same face as Lieutenant General and is smiling so prettily… it’s even scarier.’

‘Hmm. But Lieutenant General smiles like that every time, doesn’t he…?’

‘…….’

‘Ah, isn’t that right…?’

When he added timidly, ‘Isn’t that right…’, the aides turned their heads away as if to say, ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ and only widened their nostrils. Sehwa smiled awkwardly and stroked the newly released hologram.

It was a historical moment in its own right, so Ki Tae-jeong would have been there if it were a normal day, but today he had an important meeting that he couldn’t miss. It was to the point that his father, of all people, had earnestly asked, ‘Lieutenant General Ki, please keep your seat at this officers’ meeting.’, so this morning Sehwa had personally pushed him away and coaxed him to see him at home in the evening. But as soon as he held the hologram in his hand, he had the childish thought that it would have been better to postpone the checkup date and see it with Ki Tae-jeong.

‘Ah, and based on the current situation, Sunshine is highly likely to be a male body capable of pregnancy. This will be confirmed in a few weeks, so we will re-examine and tell you then.’

‘R-Really? Then what about other things… I mean, are there any other… constitution problems?’

A male body capable of pregnancy… Sehwa felt his heart sink. He had been taking his medicine well without any problems, and the injections and IV fluids had an immediate effect, so he assumed that there would be nothing wrong with the baby in his stomach. Hae-rim didn’t inherit his strange constitution, so he thought Sunshine would be the same… but could it be that it wasn’t?

‘Other problems… Ah, you mean you want to check if he has a constitution like the madam’s, where medicine doesn’t work?’

‘Ah, yes… that would be a big problem….’

‘Don’t worry. Judging from the fact that he’s absorbing all the nutrients for the fetus, the probability is very low.’

As if he had stolen a peek into Sehwa’s mind, which was quietly heading towards self-destruction, Captain Na immediately gave him a positive answer.

‘Still, doesn’t a low probability mean there’s a possibility….’

‘I’m a doctor. I said that because I’m in a profession where I shouldn’t be 100% sure in any case, and you can assume that there’s nothing wrong. If there were any signs of that, I would have reported it to you first.’

His voice, emphasizing once more that the baby in his belly was fine, was filled with firm belief.

‘Don’t worry. Rather, the fact that Sunshine looks exactly like Lieutenant General… I wonder if that won’t be a cause for concern in the future, I….’

‘Yes? Why…? Isn’t he pretty…?’

‘Ah, yes. Of course, he’s pret… ty. He’s too pretty, but… that’s….’

Captain Na, who trailed off with a sullen look, came to mind, and Sehwa scratched his temple for no reason. What did Captain Na want to say? Well, from an aide’s point of view, no matter how pretty he was, the child of their superior, who looked exactly like their superior, might be uncomfortable to see….?

Anyway, if Captain Na, of all people, said that much, there would be no problem. If the fact that he had been so sick until just before was because there was a problem with the baby in his stomach, especially if he had inherited a unique constitution like him, he wouldn’t have been able to lift his head….

“You seem to be like your big daddy in many ways, right…?”

Sehwa tapped his stomach, which didn’t even look like he was pregnant, and whispered. He believed that since his ears had formed, he would be able to understand his little daddy’s voice.