Woosung Alpha’s Sour Grapes

Chapter 43

How many minutes had passed since entering the hotel room? 

There was a knock at the door. 

When Hyeon-woo, curled up on the bed, ignored it, the hotel manager entered with a spare key and quickly approached upon seeing Hyeon-woo.

“Ah! You’re still here. 

Excuse me. 

We’ve been trying to contact you for days about check-out but got no response. 

The check-out-“

The manager, who was explaining, grabbed the back of his neck when he saw the blood-stained state of the bed.

…Check-out?

He had just arrived. It had only been a few minutes since he sat on the bed.

Hyeon-woo picked up his phone to check the date. 

It was Sunday afternoon.

Two days had passed without eating or sleeping, just staring blankly.

After being practically pushed out of the hotel, he went to the general hospital across the street for emergency treatment. 

When the doctor asked about his injuries, he lied that his dog had done it. 

The doctor didn’t seem to believe him but fortunately didn’t ask further.

After finishing treatment and before leaving the hospital, he went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. 

His neck and collarbone were covered with white gauze. 

Tae-geon would surely demand to know what happened. 

As Hyeon-woo searched for an excuse, he suddenly burst into laughter.

“Haha…”

It was pathetic. 

Tae-geon was the one who had driven him to this precipice. 

And here he was, trying to come up with excuses to reassure Tae-geon. 

Thinking of Tae-geon pretending to be worried, acting like he was the only one who cared, stirred up resentment. At the same time, a deep sense of self-loathing overwhelmed Hyeon-woo.

He knew his resentment towards Tae-geon stemmed from petty jealousy. 

Tae-geon had never once asked for his love. It was an emotion he had cultivated on his own. 

The weight of his feelings, growing in significance each day, had snowballed to the point where he felt suffocated, as if about to be crushed.

Was it my fault?

Did I betray you?

It was unbearable without blaming someone. 

Whenever he tried to assign responsibility by weighing right and wrong, the arrow of blame always ended up pointing at himself.

If he hadn’t loved, he wouldn’t have been hurt.

This feeling he harbored for Tae-geon felt like a calamity. 

At the same time, he pitied it. 

He knew well that this feeling, which had taken root in him of all people only to be despised, should actually be considered more noble and precious than anything else in the world.

While his own affection was being carelessly trampled, the thought that the omega’s was proudly blooming in Tae-geon’s embrace made his heart feel like it was spitting blood.

Standing still, clutching his chest and breathing heavily, Hyeon-woo blankly headed to a nearby clothing store with empty eyes. 

He bought a large coat with sleeves that came down to his hands and turtlenecks in various colors that covered his neck.

He changed into the new clothes in a nearby public restroom. 

It would only be a temporary deception, but it was better than doing nothing.

The shameful behavior he had shown so far was enough. 

He didn’t want to show Tae-geon his completely broken, descending-into-madness self.

Hyeon-woo felt the time had come. Time to leave.

He no longer had confidence in maintaining his sanity while staying with Tae-geon.

*

Thud, crash.

Tae-geon, who had hurriedly entered Hyeon-woo’s room at the loud noise shaking the floor, made a strange expression. 

The floor was so cluttered with odds and ends that there was no space to step, as if everything from the closet and drawers had been pulled out. 

In the middle of it all sat Hyeon-woo, sorting through items by eye and transferring them into garbage bags.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning.”

“……”

“It’s winter now. I’m sorting out off-season clothes and thought I’d clean the room too.”

Tae-geon raised one eyebrow. The word ‘cleaning’ coming from Hyeon-woo’s mouth in this situation was very unfamiliar.

Hyeon-woo and cleaning.

Tae-geon thought to himself that it was truly an ill-fitting combination.

He was a young master who had grown up pampered, as accustomed to being cared for as breathing. It was always Tae-geon’s job to clean Hyeon-woo’s room, where he wouldn’t lift a finger even as black mold grew on half-eaten bagels, and to change Hyeon-woo’s bedding seasonally – thin comforters in summer, microfiber in winter.

He had never pointed this out because he was quite satisfied with the fact that all the comfort and luxury Hyeon-woo unconsciously enjoyed originated from him. He wanted Hyeon-woo to simply enjoy the comfort he provided without any hardship. At times, it felt like he was the one being tamed rather than Hyeon-woo, but he didn’t mind.

“Need help?”

“No.”

Although Hyeon-woo shook his head as if to say not to worry about it, the weight of the full bags was considerable, so Tae-geon helped carry several bundles of bags outside.

The next day, Hyeon-woo visited the department office and submitted a leave of absence form without Tae-geon knowing. Then he emailed each professor. Not a single professor refused Hyeon-woo’s request to keep it a secret that he had taken a leave of absence for health reasons but wanted to continue auditing their classes if possible because he liked them, and didn’t want his classmates to know. Even after his leave was processed, Hyeon-woo attended classes with Tae-geon as usual.

They stopped by the library after lunch to borrow a book needed for an assignment. The book Hyeon-woo was looking for was on the bottom shelf. As he bent down, the gruesome scars inside his open collar caught Tae-geon’s eye. Tae-geon’s low voice spread to Hyeon-woo’s ear as he hugged the pulled-out book to his chest.

“…Come with me.”

Swallowing dryly at the somewhat ominous atmosphere, Hyeon-woo followed behind Tae-geon.

“What happened?”

“What?”

Tae-geon, who had brought Hyeon-woo to a secluded corner of the library, suddenly asked a question with unclear meaning. When Hyeon-woo responded stupidly, Tae-geon’s hand suddenly reached out and pulled at Hyeon-woo’s collar.

“…!”

Tae-geon stared with fierce eyes at Hyeon-woo’s miserable neck exposed through the stretched collar.

“This.”

“……”

“What is all this?”

What’s it to you? Don’t pretend to care.

He barely held back from snapping that. Knowing Tae-geon would persistently interrogate him until he answered, Hyeon-woo repeated the lie he had told at the hospital.

“My parents have been feeling lonely lately so they’re raising a dog, and this happened when I went home before. I guess it thought I was an intruder.”

“……”

Tae-geon’s expression subtly crumpled at Hyeon-woo’s answer. As Tae-geon reached for Hyeon-woo’s neck again, Hyeon-woo’s wary gesture of shrinking his shoulders and backing away caused Tae-geon’s hand to freeze in mid-air. Withdrawing his hand, Tae-geon didn’t ask anything more.

“Are we done? I need to finish my assignment today. Don’t bother me.”

With that rebuke, Hyeon-woo turned back towards the library. Tae-geon’s face looked somewhat complicated as he watched Hyeon-woo’s retreating figure.

Just as Hyeon-woo thought he was fortunate that the small confrontation in the library had passed without incident, he felt Tae-geon’s gaze on him become even more persistent than before. Chills ran down his spine at that gaze, which clung to him relentlessly as if monitoring prey.

Hyeon-woo focused his attention on both arms to keep from pulling his hands out of his pockets. One moment of carelessness and he didn’t know when, where, or how he might start scratching. Hyeon-woo’s forehead was always covered in cold sweat as he spent each day on edge, feeling like he was walking on thin ice, trying not to let Tae-geon catch him in the act.

It took tremendous mental energy just to forcibly hold onto his consciousness that tended to flutter erratically. But even Hyeon-woo couldn’t help what happened at night when his consciousness blurred.

Every morning, he started his day by replacing the bandages on his blood-caked forearms. He brought the blood-stained bandages to school and disposed of them in the incinerator, lest any traces remain at home that might tip off Tae-geon.

The severity of his self-harm was increasing day by day. Not only was it problematic that the wounds he faced every morning were getting deeper by the day, but Hyeon-woo was even more terrified by the fact that he hadn’t felt any pain until things had gotten this bad.

Following his battered body and creaking mind, now even his senses were gradually becoming strange. He felt like everything that constituted him was breaking down at the cellular level.

Hyeon-woo visited the bank and converted all the balance in his accounts to cash. He also suspended his cards. This was to avoid the risk of his location being pinpointed through usage records. He wanted to quietly hide alone somewhere unknown, away from Tae-geon for a while.

Who was it that said, out of sight, out of mind? Maybe if he stayed away from Tae-geon, he would gradually be okay again. Even if the opposite happened and his condition worsened to the point of being committed to a mental hospital, he didn’t want to show himself going mad like this. He also didn’t want to repeat the shameful behavior he had shown Tae-geon during each heat cycle.

When he thought about it, there were far more reasons to leave Tae-geon’s side than to stay together.