Correction Chapter 45

“Haa. I’m exhausted.”

Trudgingly—he walked into the already dark hospital lobby and sat on a chair. Staring blankly outside, Jungmin let out a long sigh.

Youngmin had kept going on and on about alphas.

‘Alphas don’t know. You don’t know how hard childbirth is, do you? You don’t know how hard it is to raise a child, do you? Why is everything pushed onto me?’ 

With words like these, he had unknowingly gouged Jungmin’s heart.

If you hated it so much, you should have given it to me—

“Looks like it’s over now, huh?”

Ji Soohan stood before Jungmin and smiled. Jungmin, who had been sitting slumped over, straightened his body and looked at him.

“You didn’t leave?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You always drink after you meet your brother. So I waited. Let’s go. For a drink.”

Soohan patted Jungmin’s shoulder, and Jungmin let out a disbelieving laugh as he got up from his seat.

✽✽✽

“Soohan hyung….”

His tongue already slurring, Jungmin couldn’t support his own body and collapsed onto the table, repeatedly calling Soohan’s name. Soohan knew that Jungmin drank more than his limit whenever he suffered a mental blow from Youngmin, so he drank moderately while dealing with the unraveling Jungmin.

“Soohan hyung….”

“Yeah. I’m right here, buddy.”

Jungmin, who usually called him ‘sunbae’ when sober and rarely ‘hyung’, would only call him hyung, hyung when he was drunk. The sight was rather cute… but the moment Soohan thought this, he once got goosebumps. It didn’t seem right to call an alpha who was over 180 cm tall ‘cute’, but now he just went with the flow of his thoughts, figuring what’s the harm in calling something cute, cute.

“Soohan hyung….”

“This won’t do. You drank too much. Get up….”

Soohan tried to lift Jungmin, who was now practically banging his head on the table, but was suddenly startled. Jungmin was crying. Tears were streaming down his face… It was the first time he’d seen him like this, so Soohan was inwardly flustered and sat back down across from him.

“…What on earth did your brother say to you earlier? Tell me.”

Jungmin would often listen to and counsel Ji Soohan and Sooeun about their stories, but he never clearly revealed his own inner thoughts. So, the only troubles and pains of Jungmin’s that Ji Soohan knew were related to his brother.

“Hyung….”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

He filled the empty glass, and Jungmin took it, crying, and drank. Then, tears started to fall again.

“Jungmin-ah.”

Soohan couldn’t bring himself to drink anymore and just looked at Jungmin pitifully. He wondered what kind of wound this guy was carrying. He seemed ordinary, and his personality seemed good. His interpersonal relationships were decent, and he had a certain level of skill as a doctor. His private life was clean. He also had charm as an alpha, and Soohan had heard nurses at the same hospital talk about Jungmin several times.

However, he did not love. This relationship with Sooeun was maintained precisely because he did not love her. For Sooeun, this was a blessing, but as a fellow alpha, there were aspects Soohan couldn’t understand. Despite being at an age of peak sexual activity, he was temperate and seemed to have absolutely no interest in omegas.

One day, a dominant omega in the throes of a heat cycle came to the emergency room, causing a problem. At that time, most of the alphas in the hospital were affected by the pheromones, yet Jungmin, without any such sign, calmly soothed and treated the omega. Other alphas and omegas had clapped and praised Mr. Shin’s incredible patience at the sight, but Soohan, who knew Jungmin well, knew that this was an act born from his genuine lack of interest in omegas.

One day, he got so curious that while drunk, he asked if Jungmin was a virgin. Jungmin had burst out laughing at the question and calmly recounted his experiences, saying there was no way that was true. It was Soohan who was surprised by that. So he has slept with an omega, he’d thought.

But, as expected, he said he hadn’t been with an omega recently. He claimed he was too busy with work to have the mental space for it, but in Soohan’s eyes, he was excessively temperate.

“Here, lie down here.”

In the end, Soohan brought the collapsed Jungmin to his officetel. It was near the hospital, making it convenient for work, so he chose it over a hotel.

He laid Jungmin on the bed and took off his jacket. He had no intention of removing any other clothes, even if they were uncomfortable. Instead, he tucked the blanket tightly around him. Soohan got up to drink a glass of water but turned back at a hand grabbing him. It was Jungmin’s hand.

“What? Want some water?”

“…Shinwoo hyung….”

Shinwoo.

A name Jungmin sometimes uttered when he drank. So it wasn’t an unfamiliar name.

“For goodness’ sake, I’m not that Shinwoo or whatever, I’m Soohan. You punk. How many times do I have to tell you.”

Who the hell was this Shinwoo guy? He sometimes wanted to ask when Jungmin was sober, but he couldn’t, because it was a name he could only hear when Jungmin was this drunk.

“…An omega… hyung’s….”

“What?”

Jungmin was speaking in fragments, but Soohan couldn’t understand him. He bent down, bringing his face close to Jungmin’s. Tears welled up again in Jungmin’s closed eyes and fell.

“…A child… hyung’s child… I want to have….”

Soohan froze on the spot.

“I… Shinwoo hyung… hyung… why am I not an omega…. Why… is Youngmin….”

They were just a few words, but Soohan could understand everything Jungmin was saying. The thought that he might be in the same situation as his own sister, Sooeun, flashed through his mind.

He finally understood why he had been so temperate all this time. If he wanted to be an omega, it must have been hard to even look at other omegas. That must be why you fell apart like that after meeting your brother.

And the person named Shinwoo, who received your love… couldn’t accept your feelings because you were an alpha.

“You poor bastard….”

Soohan stroked Jungmin’s head. Then he slowly moved his hand down to wipe Jungmin’s tear-streaked eyes.

“Hyung… Shinwoo….”

“I’m Ji Soohan. Jungmin-ah.”

Soohan covered Jungmin’s lips, which kept forming Shinwoo’s name, with his hand. He didn’t want to hear that name anymore. He felt like he would get angry at a person he had never even met.

✽✽✽

“Ugh—my, my stomach….”

As Jungmin clutched his stomach in the hospital hallway, Soohan clicked his tongue.

“You okay? I knew it when you were chugging it down.”

“Save me….”

He had drunk several times his limit, and he really felt like he was going to die. He wanted to take the day off, but was that even possible for an intern? He was already receiving looks of envy and jealousy for being the son of the Shin family, and if he did that, he would undoubtedly hear talk of him using connections, even if it wasn’t true. He eventually dragged himself to the hospital, but pain was still pain.

Thanks to this, Soohan would run over to the internal medicine department where Jungmin was and check on him during his own free periods.

“Did you take the medicine I gave you earlier?”

“Yes… but I think it’s wearing off….”

He wanted to take another stomach pill, but as an internist himself, Jungmin knew better than anyone that it wasn’t good for him, so he endured. Thinking he should probably get some milk, Jungmin tried to get up but staggered. Soohan, who was sitting next to him, quickly supported him.

“This won’t do. Go inside and rest. I’ll talk to them.”

“I’m fine.”

Even though he said he was fine, he didn’t even have the strength to stand without Soohan’s support. Jungmin’s mind was solely focused on his stomach not hurting right now.

“What are you two doing~ I’m going to tell Ms. Sooeun!”

“You look good together!”

Nurses who had come back from lunch teased them upon seeing Jungmin and Soohan embracing(?). Jungmin laughed at their words, but soon let out a pained groan, “Ugh,” and Soohan hugged him even tighter. The nurses teased them even more, and soon, doctors from other departments, passing by with coffee in hand, saw them and joked about what two alphas were doing. Jungmin was in no state to respond to their jokes, and Soohan just shrugged his shoulders.

“sunbae.”

A low voice cut through the cheerful chatter. The first one to react to that voice was Jungmin. Jungmin, who had been hunched over, quickly straightened up and looked toward where the voice had come from. Naturally, the gazes of everyone there also shifted in that direction.

The nurses and the omegas present began to murmur. A man stood there, exuding an overpowering dominant alpha pheromone and a handsomeness so striking that the word “handsome” was insufficient to describe it, enough to make one sigh.

He was looking at only one person—Jungmin. Jungmin sighed and gently pushed Soohan away, stepping out of his arms. Soohan quickly grabbed Jungmin’s arm.