VDN Ch 21

“…….”

Seo-oh turned his back on Nam-woon, who remained silent with his head bowed.

His steps as he walked forward were steady, but his entire focus was on the man standing behind him.

“Parasite, bug.”

In the past, Seo-oh wouldn’t have cared if Seok Nam-woon called him a parasite or a bug but today, he felt an unusual surge of anger. He wanted to hurt Seok Nam-woon.

He wanted him to know that his words had made him this angry. He already knew that Seok Nam-woon was someone who constantly spoke ill of others, yet he was still disappointed.

Because I had expectations of a guy like that. Like a fool.

Seo-oh scoffed at himself. Don’t mind it. He was walking forward, repeating that thought dozens of times in his head, when. Thump. A dull sound, as if something had fallen, came from behind him. At the noise, Seo-oh unconsciously turned his head slightly. Where they had been arguing earlier, a long figure lay fallen.

“…Seok Nam-woon?”

Seo-oh, standing still and blinking, quickly rushed over. He approached closer and opened his eyes wide after confirming the man’s identity. Seok Nam-woon’s face was covered in blood.

Seo-oh urgently knelt down and stretched out a trembling hand. It was the moment he was about to gently lift Nam-woon’s neatly styled bangs.

“Ah.…”

As soon as Seo-oh touched him, Nam-woon groaned and shrank back. Even in his disoriented state, he seemed to be struggling to endure something. His body was shaking violently, and even a brief touch of his fingers felt scorchingly hot.

“Seok Nam-woon!”

Despite Seo-oh’s shout, he still couldn’t regain consciousness and kept his eyes closed without responding. Seo-oh reached out again and gently lifted Nam-woon’s bangs.

“….!”

There was a fairly large wound on Nam-woon’s forehead. He didn’t know how he got injured, but the wound looked quite deep.

There was no time to think further. Seo-oh lifted Nam-woon onto his back. The blood that had flowed from Nam-woon’s face stained Seo-oh’s white shirt. Seo-oh, who didn’t care about it, bit his lip at the heat he felt on his back. Nam-woon groaned and seemed to try to push away from Seo-oh’s body.

“It’s okay, Hyung. You’ll be okay.”

Seo-oh repeated words he didn’t know who they were for as he ran towards the nearest hospital.

***

Nurse Young-min at Godong Hospital was enjoying an unusually quiet time. Was it possible to have a day without patients? It was almost eerie.

On the hospital TV, a gangster movie was playing, with handsome men covered in blood fighting each other.

That’s when it happened. The hospital door burst open, and a tall man appeared. Young-min covered his mouth. ‘What? A movie shoot? An actor?’ He thought about this for a moment, but then quickly guided the man carrying a blood-covered person to a bed.

“Doctor!”

The hospital director began to examine the patient. When he told the man who carried the patient in to wait outside for a moment, the man sat down heavily in a chair, still gasping for breath. The nurses gathered in a huddle, whispering as they looked at the man, who was also covered in blood from bringing the patient. One colleague asked Young-min, an Alpha,

“The man who collapsed, he’s an Omega, right? The one who carried him in looks like an Alpha at first glance…”

Another colleague frowned and said,

“It’s truly the end of days. There are still guys like that?”

A new recruit, who had recently joined, fidgeted and picked up the hospital phone.

“Uh, what should I do? Should I call the police? Now?”

Young-min calmly dissuaded him while glaring at the man.

“Just wait for now. We need to finish treating the patient. We don’t know what kind of ruckus he might cause.”

Meanwhile, Kwon Seo-oh stared at the hospital room where Seok Nam-woon had been taken, nervously clenching and unclenching his fists. Then he looked at the blood on his hands.

Why did he suddenly collapse? Was he already unwell? And what’s with his forehead? How did he get hurt like that?

Could it be that bastard Director Moon did something?’

Or…did I do something wrong?

Kwon Seo-oh constantly replayed the events at the perfume shop. He hadn’t realized it at all because Seok Nam-woon’s bangs were so well-groomed today, but judging by how much blood he was bleeding, Seok Nam-woon’s injury must have been severe since he was at the perfume shop.

“Haah…”

It was when Kwon Seo-oh sighed deeply.

“Seok Nam-woon’s guardian, please come in.”

Kwon Seo-oh paused for a moment. It was unfamiliar. The words, ‘Seok Nam-woon’s guardian.’

“Guardian?”

“Yes.”

Seo-oh stepped into the treatment room.

***

Seo-oh entered the examination room and sat in a chair. The doctor pushed up his glasses and stared intently at him. Seo-oh urgently asked, “Is he okay?

“Is he okay?”

“For now.”

The doctor, who answered briefly, asked questions as if interrogating him.

“What’s your relationship with Mr. Seok Nam-woon?”

“…We don’t know each other.”

At his hesitant answer, the next question came immediately.

“The injury on the patient’s forehead, how did it happen… or what caused it?”

“I don’t know either.”

“When did he start feeling unwell?”

“…I don’t know.”

The more he answered, the darker Seo-oh’s face became. The doctor, who had been watching Seo-oh with a “Hmm” sound, spoke in a blunt manner.

“Has he been under a lot of stress or overworked recently?”

“…….”

Seo-oh remained silent. The doctor, looking at him with cold eyes, checked something on the monitor.

“Mr. Seok Nam-woon is a Beta, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re an Alpha?”

“Yes.”

The doctor then took off his glasses and placed them on the desk, looking directly at Seo-oh.

“As you, the guardian, know, Alphas are often physically superior due to their trait characteristics. However, forcing a relationship is a criminal offense. You’ve even sprayed Omega scent on a Beta. Did you get his consent?”

Although it was a principle not to interfere with a patient’s privacy, the doctor quickly pressed the man in front of him, who was persistently having poor answers. Seo-oh, who had been speechless for a moment, immediately denied it.

“No. It’s not like that…”

“Are you two in a romantic relationship?”

“We’re not in that kind of relationship. I just found him collapsed and brought him to the hospital right away.”

“Even so, Seok Nam-woon is currently…”

The doctor stopped speaking mid-sentence. The patient was overexposed to pheromones. Originally, Betas are not affected by pheromones, nor do they pick up as much of another person’s pheromones as Alphas or Omegas.

However, for some reason, this patient strongly exuded an artificial Omega scent, as well as the pheromones of the man in front of him. Although the man who kept denying things was suspicious, he seemed genuinely concerned about the patient. The first thing he asked upon entering the examination room was about the patient’s condition.

The doctor spoke expressionlessly.

“The patient is very exhausted right now. It seems he’s been overworked and under a lot of stress. The wound on his forehead appears to be recent, and it seems to have worsened because he overexerted himself without proper treatment. We’ve treated the wound, and I’ll give him an IV, so…”

The doctor spoke each word clearly.

“Please stay still.”

***

Click.

In the hospital bed, Seok Nam-woon lay as still as a mouse. Seo-oh approached him slowly. Nam-woon had a large bandage on his head and a big cotton pad on one shoulder.

Seo-oh looked down at him quietly. Nam-woon’s face was much paler than usual. With no color in his face and his eyes tightly shut, Kwon Seo-oh felt an inexplicable anxiety.

He put effort into his hair today.

Perhaps he was trying to cover the wound on his forehead.

“The patient is very exhausted right now. It seems he’s been overworked and under a lot of stress.”

He hadn’t been able to say anything when the doctor asked if he had been under a lot of stress or overworking himself.

Seok Nam-woon had been coming to pick him up every day recently. Seo-oh suddenly remembered Nam-woon’s nape, sweating profusely as he pedaled on a hot day. He also remembered that Nam-woon had climbed uphill with a heavy bag of rice and refused to take the rice money.

He remembered Nam-woon hitting Director Moon, threatening the shop’s manager, and bowing his head to his own words not to hurt Se-han.

“……”

There were still bloodstains visible on Nam-woon’s neck and face. Seo-oh stared at it blankly for a while, then looked around. He picked up a tissue from the room and brought it to Nam-woon’s face. He tried to wipe off the bloodstains, but they had already dried and wouldn’t come off easily.

As he was going out of the hospital room to get wet tissues, his eyes met with Deok-chil, who was sobbing and holding onto a nurse. As soon as Deok-chil saw Seo-oh’s face, he ran over and grabbed him by the collar.

“You bastard! Because of you…”

Hospital staff, watching from afar, gathered again.

“It seems like that person grabbing the collar is the real husband. He was crying and trying to pay the hospital bill.”

“Then what about the Alpha that was carrying the patient in earlier?”

The new recruit asked with a surprised expression.

“Just look at that Alpha’s face. Just standing there, he could seduce anyone.”

“They say reality is worse than dramas, it seems like it’s true.”

“Well, if you stay here for a few years, you’ll see all kinds of things.”

Young-min clicked his tongue. It was true. In just a few months here, you could experience all kinds of people. There were many people in the world who looked normal but did crazy things.

Meanwhile, Yong-deuk, who was holding onto Deok-chil’s arm, said,

“Go inside without causing trouble to others.”

“You follow too. You bastard.”

Deok-chil said, roughly releasing Seo-oh’s collar.