If You Want Me - Episode 59
<Episode 59>
Do-gyeom was grateful that he received full support from his parents and was able to manifest special traits by meeting another dominant. However, just because he received their support didn’t mean he thought they could dictate his life. He had absolutely no intention of meeting someone they wanted him to meet like a puppet.
“Don’t you think you’re forcing it when I say I don’t want to live that way?”
“Don’t think of it so negatively. Mom is just doing this for your own good…”
“Mother, I’m so tired today I even got an IV drip. If you want to talk more, I’ll get up now.”
“Ah, okay! Let’s stop talking about this. But…”
He didn’t feel like he could swallow any more food. Besides, he was getting more tired and his head just hurt more even though he had gotten an IV drip.
Do-gyeom pressed his eyes as if exhausted and tried to get up from his seat. At that, Mi-ae hastily grabbed him. She mumbled with her lips and then made an irrelevant remark.
“Then at least you shouldn’t have let a report like this come in.”
Report? Before Do-gyeom could even think about what she meant, Mi-ae rummaged through the bag she was holding and placed a small envelope on the table.
What was this? Do-gyeom looked at her suspiciously and opened the envelope to check the contents.
“This is…”
“You’ve been seeing that omega until recently. Do you know how annoying it was for the reporter to take pictures and clean up afterwards?”
Inside were several photos from the days he had gone to see Seo-won.
When they met in the countryside, the day he went to Seo-won’s house knowing he had briefly come to Seoul for the hospital, the day they went to the hospital together and were diagnosed with one-sided imprinting. And lastly, a photo of the day they met at the company.
The angles and quality weren’t good because they were secretly taken by paparazzi, but Do-gyeom and Seo-won’s faces were still clear enough to recognize.
“……”
He could have retorted that he had decided not to see Yoon Seo-won anymore, that there would be no more photos like this taken.
But those words wouldn’t come out as if they were stuck in his throat, and his mind was filled with other thoughts. That was because the way he looked in the photos was unfamiliar.
Yoon Seo-won had been with him for half his life, no exaggeration. So he thought he just considered Seo-won a little more special than others.
But the way he was looking at Yoon Seo-won in the photos was not just that.
‘I was…looking at Yoon Seo-won with these eyes?’
When Seo-won confessed that he had always liked him, Do-gyeom couldn’t understand why he confessed knowing it wouldn’t be welcomed. They had been together for years, so Seo-won should know his personality. Even if the pregnancy was understandable, wasn’t confessing his feelings foolish?
But seeing himself from an outsider’s perspective, he thought he knew why Seo-won confessed.
‘Because I was looking at Yoon Seo-won with these eyes.’
In the photos, he was gazing at Seo-won with yearning eyes, like a boy in love.
Why had he been looking at Yoon Seo-won with this face? He wanted to think his expression was good because he felt more upbeat and happy whenever he was with Seo-won, but the him in the photos wasn’t simply at that level. It was a yearning gaze as if looking at someone he loved.
His head denied a thousand times that he liked Seo-won, but his body didn’t lie. It was as if telling him he was mistaken. In the heat of the moment, he had vowed never to see Yoon Seo-won again and hadn’t contacted him once, but it was like his head was being hit, telling him he had made the wrong choice.
‘Did I really like Yoon Seo-won?’
The moment his thoughts reached there, the cruel actions and words he had done to Yoon Seo-won came to mind like a rewinding camera film. Suddenly his head ached as if it would split.
“Ugh…”
Do-gyeom groaned softly, holding his head.
What I did to Yoon Seo-won… It was strange to only realize it now. Since childhood, he had constantly paid attention to Yoon Seo-won, wanting to feed him delicious things, wanting to be with him, and hating to be apart even briefly, to the point of keeping him by his side under the pretext of being pheromone partners. He did that even though he just needed to sleep with him.
As Do-gyeom made a small groan, twisting his face, Mi-ae spoke her piece, crossing her arms dissatisfiedly as if she hadn’t seen it.
“I heard you even stayed the night at that child’s house this time? Do you know how much trouble I went through to sort out the photos that were taken?”
“……”
“I left it alone all this time because you said you kept him as a toy, but now…”
“Who’s a toy?”
He had been listening to her absentmindedly, his mind blank, but the word “toy” brought him to his senses.
As Do-gyeom took his eyes off the photos and looked at Mi-ae with a chilly gaze, she pressed her lips tightly together.
“He was never a toy, not even once.”
“Ah, Mom spoke too harshly, right? I said you weren’t meeting him out of sexual attraction, but Mom is just worried. I’m sorry if you were offended, but be careful.”
“……”
“You…know what Mom means, right?”
When Do-gyeom remained coldly silent, Mi-ae carefully asked for an answer.
The answer was set. That he wouldn’t see Yoon Seo-won anymore, so she didn’t need to worry. Whether it was a lie or the truth, he knew it would be easy to answer that way and move on.
But this time, it felt like something hot and large was stuck in his throat and he couldn’t speak. Just a few days ago, he had smoothly told her that he wasn’t even sexually attracted to fervent omegas, that he wasn’t meeting him in that sense, but now he couldn’t say a word as if that had been a lie.
Do-gyeom just opened and closed his mouth in vain and eventually got up from his seat, lifting his knees.
“I’m going to make a call for a bit.”
“……”
As he unnaturally got up from his seat as if avoiding an answer, Mi-ae raised her head and looked at Do-gyeom.
Her gaze following him was dripping with a perplexed look, asking why he wasn’t answering. Do-gyeom tried hard to ignore that gaze and turned around to leave the private room.
Click, thud.
Do-gyeom closed the sliding door behind him and let out a small sigh.
“Ha…”
He walked out like that, took out his cell phone from his pocket, and pulled up Yoon Seo-won on the screen.
He was about to press the call button when he suddenly remembered Yoon Seo-won’s face as he tearfully begged, as if pleading, never to contact him again and to make it so they never had to see each other again.
He looked so hurt that Do-gyeom wondered if he shouldn’t contact him. But now that he knew he liked him, wouldn’t it be okay to contact him?
Having reached that conclusion, Do-gyeom slowly pressed the call button.
“The number you have dialed does not exist. Please check the number and call again.”
But the voice heard over the phone was not Yoon Seo-won’s, but that of a machine.
“…Damn it.”
Do-gyeom irritably hung up and stared at the phone screen with burning eyes.
It was a familiar flow. Last time too, Yoon Seo-won had said he would end their partnership and changed his cell phone number first. As if he had expected Do-gyeom to call.
Why was he making things complicated when he knew very well that Do-gyeom could find him if he wanted to…? He wanted to hear his voice right away and felt frustrated and irritated that he couldn’t.
It wasn’t because of the one-sided imprint that he felt this way, as if hearing his voice would relieve his pheromone buildup.
It was because he liked him. He wanted to hear Yoon Seo-won’s voice.
He almost threw the useless cell phone on the floor, but remembered there were restaurant customers and employees nearby. Barely stopping his violent action, he came to his senses and called Secretary Bae, who would be waiting nearby.
“Find out Yoon Seo-won’s contact information. Right now.”
Do-gyeom growled his order and hung up the phone.
There was something he had to tell him.
* * *
After Do-gyeom returned to his seat, his mother didn’t say a word.
She was clearly giving off the air of not wanting to talk about that topic anymore, but she usually pried, pretending not to know. He wondered if something had changed while he stepped out briefly, but she was quiet.
He didn’t know why she suddenly changed, but he was glad, since he had been planning to get up and leave if she brought up that story again.
After barely shoving the food he couldn’t swallow into his mouth and finishing the meal, Mi-ae turned to look at Do-gyeom as they came out.
“Son, I ate well. Thank you.”
“Yes. Then go on in.”
“…Do-gyeom.”
As he was about to part ways and return to the company, Mi-ae softly called his name.
The atmosphere was unusual, as if she had something serious to say. As Do-gyeom quietly turned to look at her, she hesitated noticeably, unlike her usual blathering self. Her red lips thickly painted with lipstick parted a few times.
“No. Never mind. Don’t overdo it.”
“……”
But what came out of her mouth was a trite statement.
He was curious what she had been trying to say, but somehow he felt like she was going to talk about the blind date again, so he didn’t bother asking.
Do-gyeom saw his mother off until she got in the car, and only when her car was no longer visible in the distance did he ask Secretary Bae about what had been on his mind.
“Did you find out Yoon Seo-won’s number?”
“No. There was no cell phone registered under Yoon Seo-won’s name.”
“…Is he using a burner phone?”
In this day and age, not having a cell phone was unthinkable. It seemed so difficult to live that way that he first thought of the possibility of a burner phone.
Hearing the muttering that sounded like he was talking to himself, Secretary Bae shook his head slightly.
“That doesn’t seem like something Yoon Seo-won would do, given his personality.”
“……”
That was true. Yoon Seo-won was far from breaking the law. He didn’t have the guts for that either.
Quickly convinced, Do-gyeom looked at Secretary Bae and asked something else.
“But why are you only finding out now that he canceled his phone? Did you think I was waiting to hear that he canceled his phone?”
“I apologize. You told me to stop all the tracking last time… Should I assign someone to him again?”
“……”
Right. He had Seo-won stop being tracked after he said never to see each other again on the day of the confession.
He regretted having it stopped in the heat of the moment. When Do-gyeom remained silent with a stiff expression, Secretary Bae quickly noticed the mood and opened his mouth.
“I will look into it right away.”
“No need. It’s one of two places.”
Do-gyeom shook his head, saying there was no need. He would either be at his parents’ house or at the countryside house.
Do-gyeom knew Seo-won preferred time alone at home to going out and meeting friends. Especially since he was pregnant. He had been sickly even before pregnancy, so he had to take care of his body afterwards and wouldn’t be wandering around.
Do-gyeom stopped searching for Seo-won’s whereabouts and checked today’s schedule. There was a meeting for a new project in the afternoon that he couldn’t miss.
Of all days… A sigh escaped him, but Do-gyeom quickly swallowed his regret. Yoon Seo-won wasn’t going to fly into the sky, so there was no need to rush. This evening. He could go find him then.
Having made up his mind, Do-gyeom returned to the company. As time passed, an inexplicable urgency came over him, but he tried hard to ignore it, telling himself his heart was just hastily rushing for no reason.