OMF 13

Such a Seowoo was seducing her innocent son.

After that, Seowoo’s life was literally hell. The stepbrother, who had visited once or twice a year, gradually came more frequently, and whenever that happened, Seowoo had to endure the hands that subtly touched him. It was even more agonizing after the stepbrother left. His biological mother’s torment grew more vicious day by day. It seemed like he could no longer bear it. But Seowoo, who had been accustomed to abuse since birth, could not even think of leaving that place.

Nevertheless, Seowoo longed for his biological mother’s affection. A warm gaze, a gentle touch, a kind word. Even though he had never experienced it and did not know what it was, he blindly craved it. He wanted to receive affection just once. It felt like that one time would make him forget all the time he had endured so far.

However, his biological mother’s rampage continued, and at the time when the stepbrother’s touches on Seowoo were becoming increasingly bold, someone came to the house. It was Manager Kim.

Seowoo remembers the joy that spread across his biological mother’s face as she checked the bankbook handed over by Manager Kim. It was the first time he had seen her smile so brightly. She packed Seowoo’s belongings right away, fearing that Manager Kim might change his mind. The belongings were nothing more than a few worn-out clothes and some underwear. She crumpled them haphazardly into a shopping bag and thrust it into Seowoo’s arms, bowing deeply to Manager Kim without even looking at Seowoo.

To the end, she did not meet Seowoo’s eyes.

On the way out of the dilapidated multi-family housing complex where he had lived his entire life since birth, Manager Kim examined the contents of the old shopping bag and threw the whole thing into a trash can. In that way, Seowoo entered the Juwon Group’s mansion wearing only a single threadbare shirt.

Seowoo huddled in one corner of the sofa, biting his fingertips and rolling his anxious eyes. If the alphas chased him away, he would surely have to return to that place. Even when leaving that place, Seowoo had hoped his biological mother would hold onto him. As he descended the steep hill, he turned back countless times. She always hit him and treated him harshly, but still, she was his mom. Even after entering the mansion, for a while, he had shed tears yearning to return to the narrow multi-family housing complex.

But now, he hated it. The alphas were just as scary, but they were different from his biological mother. Seowoo learned how to share body heat. When their bodies touched, when they delved into him and ejaculated. It was a feeling of something filling up deep in his heart. When held in a firm embrace, nothing in the world seemed frightening.

Lately, he felt his chest flutter with excitement at the alphas’ attitudes that had changed little by little. Taegwon, Taegang, and Taeseong all seemed to have grown a bit closer. It felt like he could finally sense a little warmth… Seowoo, curled up tightly, hid his face in his own arms and blamed himself.

At that moment, the closed door burst open. Seowoo, startled, lifted his wildly shaking eyes. Standing in the doorway was Taeseong, his eyebrows deeply furrowed.

“Tae, Seong-ah…!”

Confirming it was Taeseong, Seowoo urgently rose and ran out.

“Ah…!”

His body bumped into the table, and the glass cups shattered with a crash, but Seowoo paid no mind and ran toward Taeseong. His gaze was filled with desperation, as if Taeseong was the only one who could save him now. A shard of broken glass deeply embedded itself in Seowoo’s sole, and red blood flowed out.

“Taeseong-ah…!”

Taeseong was bewildered by Seowoo, who called out to him so desperately and threw himself into his arms, but he first patted the finely trembling body.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Hn…”

“Did you have a bad dream or something?”

“…You, hn, you won’t abandon me, right? Hnng…. Yeah? R, right?”

“What nonsense is that.”

Taeseong’s gruff speech gave more comfort than ever. Seowoo put even more strength into the arms hugging Taeseong’s body and buried his face in the solid chest.

“Hey, wait a second. Look at your foot. It’s bleeding, damn it.”

“It’s, hn…. It’s fine….”

“It’s fine, my ass, damn it.”

The brusque Taeseong slipped his hands under Seowoo’s armpits and lifted him up. He had been held like this in Taegwon’s arms once before, but it was still an awkward and uncomfortable position. Seowoo’s body stiffened rigidly.

“You’ll fall like that. Hold on tight.”

Seowoo fumblingly raised his hands to wrap around Taeseong’s nape and gradually leaned his body against him. Taeseong supported Seowoo’s hips and walked toward the sofa.

With one hand, Taeseong roughly swept aside the messily placed items on the table and sat Seowoo down on it. After sitting facing him on the sofa, he pulled up the small foot. The white foot was soaked in red blood.

“Tsk.”

Taeseong, wrinkling his brow and clicking his tongue, picked up his phone.

“Bring some medicine and bandages.”

After saying only what he needed to and hanging up immediately, Taeseong grabbed the ankle and examined the sole. The glass shard was embedded deeper than expected. He had roughly dressed the sleeping Seowoo in just underwear and a T-shirt before leaving the room, and now he wondered if he should have put shoes on him too.

Before long, a man in a suit entered, handed over an emergency kit, bowed politely, and disappeared. With clumsy skill, Taeseong removed the glass shard from Seowoo’s foot and poured antiseptic on it.

“Eeek…!”

Seowoo scrunched his eyes at the stinging sensation as if the entire sole was being torn apart. Taeseong firmly gripped Seowoo’s ankle, applied the medicine, and even stuck on a bandage.

“…Tha, nks….”

“Are you an idiot? Letting yourself step on that.”

“I thought… you just left….”

As Seowoo continued speaking, the tears that had stopped welled up in his eyes again. Seowoo quickly wiped away the tears dropping one by one under Taeseong’s gaze, which looked at them as if they were tiresome.

“Hn…. I won’t, won’t cry anymore….”

Taeseong let out a sigh, not fully understanding but roughly grasping the situation. From the moment he had turned Seowoo’s body toward him and inserted himself, the room had contained only the two of them. With a single glance, Taeseong had dismissed everyone else in the room. He had no intention whatsoever of showing Seowoo’s lasciviously erotic appearance—even he himself found it spine-tingling—to anyone else. Seowoo, who had lost his reason while shaking his hips, looking only at him, apparently did not know that fact.

After roughly wiping down Seowoo’s body, who had fallen asleep as if fainting, Taeseong went to shower. Taeseong was the type who could not tolerate anything sticky, and this place had a private shower room. He had even ordered the driver-cum-guard who had brought Seowoo here just in case to stand watch at the door. But seeing him in this state, he thought maybe he should have just woken him up and gone straight home.

Taeseong, rising from his seat, extended his index finger long and poked Seowoo’s bulging forehead. Seowoo’s head fell back and then returned, and he rubbed the poked forehead while gauging Taeseong’s expression.

“Let’s go.”

Taeseong glanced down at the white foot plastered with bandages and lifted Seowoo’s body.

⛤⛤⛤

Seowoo lay blankly staring only at the ceiling. He had not wandered around the mansion much to begin with, but when bored, he would stroll down the long corridors or go out to the garden to pass the time. For Seowoo, who had nothing to do but wait for the alphas, the daytime hours when they were all out dragged on slowly.

With his foot injured, he could no longer even do that much wandering, so the day felt excessively long. Seowoo gazed vacantly at his own foot wrapped round and round in bandages. The white toes not covered by the bandages wiggled slightly.

On the night he returned to the mansion in Taeseong’s arms, the family physician came to see Seowoo. It was about an hour after Taeseong had tossed Seowoo onto the bed like discarding him and gone to his own room without a word.

The family physician, who entered the room following the servant, carefully lifted Seowoo’s foot. After removing the haphazardly applied bandages and meticulously examining the wound, he praised Taeseong’s emergency treatment. He said that if the glass shard had not been removed and disinfected immediately, the scar would have been much larger. Even though Taeseong was not there to hear it, the physician went on praising to an excessive degree, making Seowoo feel inexplicably proud for no reason. He was in such a state that the instructions to avoid getting the wound wet for a while and not to use the foot did not even enter his ears.

Seowoo, glancing at the family physician treating his wound and the servant standing indifferently, stealthily slipped his hand into the bandages roughly thrown onto one side of the bed. They were the ones Taeseong had applied to his foot. Seowoo hid the bloodstained bandages in his pocket and could not hide the corners of his mouth lifting up. This bandage, the first one Taeseong had ever applied to him, would be kept in the very bottom drawer of the dresser. That place held the treasures Seowoo had collected so far.

Seowoo, standing on one foot, hopped across the room on a single leg. Leaning against the top of the dresser, Seowoo panted for breath. Whether because hopping on one foot was hard or because his stamina had declined further, he was already out of breath after moving that short distance.

“Haa…”

Seowoo sat down carefully so that the bandaged foot did not touch the floor and opened the dresser with an excited expression. Inside the drawer was the bandage Seowoo had placed there last night. Seowoo picked up the frayed bandage, soaked with blood that had darkened over time, as if it were something precious, and stroked it with his ragged fingertips. His flushed cheeks puffed up.

“Hee.”

Letting out a short laugh, Seowoo carefully set the bandage down again and rolled his eyes. His personal treasure box was still mostly empty, but the few items inside were more precious than anything. A handkerchief Taegwon had once handed him, a shirt Taegang had left behind, things like that were Seowoo’s treasures. Seowoo pulled out the handkerchief and buried his nose in it, inhaling deeply into his lungs. The now-faint pheromone scent of Taegwon made him feel wistful.

Click—

At the sound of the closed door opening, Seowoo’s body jolted slightly. He hurriedly stuffed the handkerchief back in and closed the dresser. He did not want anyone to discover his personal treasure box. In truth, he was afraid of being mocked for hiding such trivial things. Seowoo swallowed hard and slowly turned around.

“Uh…”

Taegwon, leaning against the doorframe, was looking down at Seowoo. A flicker of puzzlement crossed Seowoo’s face upon seeing Taegwon.

“I heard you got hurt.”

“…Ah, yes…. But, it’s fine.”

Taegwon slightly furrowed his brows and clicked his tongue at Seowoo, who habitually said it was fine.

“It’s okay to say it hurts. No one will say anything over something like that.”

“Ah…”

Seowoo bit his lip, gauging Taegwon’s mood, which seemed unpleasant. Should he say right now that it wasn’t fine…. But it really was fine….

Taegwon let out a low sigh at Seowoo, who only watched his expression while gnawing at his lip, and relaxed his furrowed brow.

He knew that his biological mother had not been a particularly good parent. She was a woman who had gotten pregnant with Seowoo for money from the start. It was obvious how she had raised the child who had ended up entirely as her share when the deal did not go as planned. Moreover, when he had said he would take Seowoo, she had shown not a shred of hesitation and had even been pleased, or so he had heard. Seowoo’s behavior of always watching others’ reactions in everything was undoubtedly entirely due to his biological mother’s abuse.

“What are you doing there.”

Taegwon asked Seowoo with a much softer expression. It was strange to see the child, who could not move because of his injured foot, crouching in the corner of the room instead of on the bed. When he had opened the door and entered the room, he had seen Seowoo’s back as he hastily put something in his hand into the drawer. Taegwon glanced at the closed dresser for a moment before turning his gaze back to Seowoo.

Seowoo sat with his back against the dresser as if guarding it, biting his fingertips and watching his expression. Taegwon silently sighed and approached Seowoo, bending his knees.

He grabbed the small hand biting the plump lips and pulled it away, revealing fingertips thoroughly chewed and ragged all over. He took a handkerchief from his jacket’s inner pocket and wiped the blood beading on the fingertips. Seowoo gripped the handkerchief tightly like a baby showing a reflex. Even when trying to wipe other areas, Taegwon raised an eyebrow at Seowoo, who would not unclench his fist, and let go of the handkerchief as if there was no helping it. Seowoo hid the hand clutching the handkerchief behind his back and flushed his cheeks red.

“Did you eat.”

“…Pardon?”

“You probably couldn’t go downstairs because of your foot. Did the servants bring it to you?”

“Ah…, y-yes….”

Taegwon slightly furrowed his brows at Seowoo’s response. It was already late afternoon with the sun setting. Swallowing a sigh, Taegwon slipped his hands between Seowoo’s armpits and lifted the dry body.

“Wha-wha…!”

Startled only for a moment, he adjusted to the position quite familiarly after having been carried a few times. Seowoo carefully grabbed Taegwon’s shoulders and gently leaned his body against him.

As Taegwon carried Seowoo down the stairs, the servants, each doing their own tasks, looked up in surprise. Their wide eyes stared at the two overlapped as if one body, then soon turned toward each other. They exchanged glances among themselves and began whispering about the unfamiliar scene they were seeing for the first time in four years since Seowoo had entered this mansion.

Seowoo, unnecessarily cowed by the servants’ gazes, hid in Taegwon’s nape. On the other hand, Taegwon was nonchalant, as if he did not even sense the existence of such servants. To Taegwon, the resident servants were as natural as breathing. No matter what they thought upon seeing him, they could not influence Taegwon in the slightest.

Taegwon, carrying Seowoo, entered the dining room and sat him on a chair, taking the seat next to him. When a servant approached with surprised eyes, he shot a glance, and the meal was quickly prepared. Seowoo looked at the table being set only with his portion in bewildered eyes.

“Eat.”

“Uh… Hyu, Hyung, did you…?”

Taegwon shot an incredulous look at Seowoo, who, after starving all day, worried about him first, and briefly shook his head.

“I ate.”

“Ah…”

It was an expression that somehow looked disappointed. Seowoo fiddled with his spoon and began eating. Once the food entered his mouth, the hunger he had forgotten came rushing in. Seowoo ate, unaware that Taegwon sitting next to him was staring fixedly. He did not know how long it had been since he had a proper meal.