Chapter Four
It takes no time at all for me to adjust to living in Hyunwoo’s apartment.
With all the time I’ve spent here over the years—crashing on the couch after late-night gaming sessions, raiding the fridge after workouts, practically living out of the guest room on weekends—the place was already my second home long before I moved in.
The only difference now is that my clothes are folded in the dresser drawers instead of stuffed into an overnight bag, and my toothbrush sits in the bathroom holder permanently instead of being shoved into a ziplock in my gym bag.
My sneakers line up next to Hyunwoo’s designer shoes by the front door.
My protein powder takes up a whole shelf in the pantry.
My controllers are plugged into the gaming system in my room instead of being carted back and forth every visit.
It just feels like I finally stopped pretending I don’t live here.
After that first encounter—which I’ve mentally filed under “experiences I will never speak of again”—Hyunwoo and I are both content to wait and see if it took, and he doesn’t attempt to touch me again.
In fact, after the ache fades over the first few days and I stop limping, which takes longer than I’d like to admit, it’s more or less like it never happened.
We don’t talk about it. There’s no lingering awkwardness when we’re sitting next to each other on the couch, no loaded glances across the kitchen counter, no weird tension when we’re changing in the locker room at the gym.
We just go back to being Yugyeom and Hyunwoo, the way we’ve always been.
The limping does earn me some curious looks from Ye-eun at work, though. She catches me wincing as I lower myself into a chair behind the front desk on my first day back and narrows her eyes at me and I have to come up with half-assed excuses about pulling something during training.
I go to work from Hyunwoo’s apartment every morning, sometimes getting a ride in the Maserati if Hyunwoo is heading out himself, or going with him to the gym since he still works out there before my shift starts.
We fall into an easy rhythm that feels less like a new arrangement and more like an extension of what we were already doing.
Hyunwoo picks me up after my shift too, pulling up outside the gym in whatever car he feels like driving that day—the Maserati, or sometimes the black Range Rover he keeps for when the weather is bad or he’s feeling less flashy—and we go out to dinner at whatever new restaurant he’s earmarked on his phone, or we head home to play video games until one of us passes out on the couch.
Sometimes we get up early or go out after I get off work to jog with the dogs on the river path near the apartment, Kal and Machete loping ahead of us on their long leads with their ears pricked and tails high, while Hyunwoo and I keep pace side by side.
Those are my favorite parts of the day, honestly.
The dogs are happy, the air is cool, and Hyunwoo is less insufferable when he’s out of breath and can’t talk as much.
The only real changes are small but noticeable.
I can no longer drink with Hyunwoo. I was never supposed to anyway, since it’s technically illegal for omegas to consume alcohol, but I’ve been quietly ignoring that law since college and Hyunwoo never cared enough to enforce it.
Now, though, he won’t let me near anything with a percentage on the label.
He doesn’t want to chance anything in case I’m pregnant, and the one time I reach for a beer out of habit during a gaming session, his hand shoots out and plucks the can from my fingers without his eyes ever leaving the TV screen.
“Nice try.” He sets the beer on the far side of the coffee table, well out of my reach, and replaces it with a can of sparkling water that he produces from seemingly nowhere. “Drink that.”
I stare at the sparkling water. “You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” He doesn’t look like anything, because he’s still staring at the screen, his thumbs working the controller. “Drink your water, Yuggie.”
I drink the water.
He also insists on making sure I take my prenatal vitamins every morning.
He leaves the bottle on the kitchen counter next to my protein shake, positioned right where I can’t miss it, and if I try to walk out the door without taking them, Hyunwoo materializes in the hallway like he has some kind of sixth sense.
He holds the bottle out and shakes it, the pills rattling inside, his eyebrows raised in a look that says he can do this all morning.
“I was going to take them,” I say, even though we both know I wasn’t.
“Sure you were.” He shakes the bottle again. I sigh, pop two pills into my palm, and swallow them dry while he watches to make sure they actually go down my throat. Then he nods, satisfied, and goes back to whatever he was doing.
Three weeks pass. The days settle into a comfortable routine that I find myself sinking into more easily than I expected.
I wake up in a bed that doesn’t have a spring poking into my spine, in a room that was decorated specifically for me, in an apartment where the fridge is always stocked and the hot water never runs out and two enthusiastic dogs greet me every morning like I’m the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to them. It’s a far cry from my old studio.
Then Hyunwoo goes out of town for a few days to meet with developers and surveyors in the countryside about his glamping resort property, and I have the apartment to myself.
I enjoy the solitude more than I probably should.
I walk the dogs on my own, letting Kal set the pace while Machete trots beside me with her tongue out.
I sprawl across the entire couch to game without Hyunwoo hogging the good controller or elbowing me every time he dies.
I eat cereal for dinner standing over the kitchen sink because no one is there to judge me or suggest we order from some restaurant I can’t pronounce the name of.
But when Hyunwoo comes back, barely through the front door with his overnight bag still in hand and his shoes not even off yet, the first thing out of his mouth isn’t hello or I’m home or even a greeting for the dogs who are spinning circles around his legs.
“It’s been three weeks,” he says, dropping his bag on the floor and looking at me where I’m sprawled on the couch. “You should take a pregnancy test.”
I blink at him. “Can you at least take your shoes off first?”
He kicks his shoes off without looking down, sending one skidding across the hardwood, and points at me. “Test. Now. I bought a box before I left, it’s in the bathroom cabinet.”
So that’s how we end up standing together in Hyunwoo’s bathroom, waiting while the test develops on the counter between us.
I lean against the wall with my arms crossed, trying to feel indifferent.
Hyunwoo stands over the test like he’s watching a stock ticker during a market crash, his fingers drumming against the marble impatiently, his jaw tight.
The timer on Hyunwoo’s phone goes off with a sharp chime that makes us both flinch, and we look down at the result.
One line. Just one. Sitting there by itself in the little window, singular and definitive.
Negative. Not pregnant.
We glance at each other. Hyunwoo picks up the test and holds it up to the light, tilting it at different angles, squinting at the result window as if the second line might be hiding somewhere just out of sight, maybe tucked behind the first one or printed in invisible ink that needs a special light to reveal.
“It’s negative,” I say flatly.
He sets it back down on the counter with a sigh. He runs a hand through his hair and stares at the ceiling for a moment, then looks at me.
“Well,” he says. “Guess we’re going to have to try again.”
I groan, my head dropping back against the wall hard enough that the thud echoes off the marble. “Fuck me.”
Hyunwoo pats me on the back with a firm, companionable hand. “That’s the idea, buddy.”
I turn to hit him and he dances back out of range, holding his hands up with a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes because I can tell he’s genuinely disappointed by the result. He recovers quickly though, dropping his hands and jerking his head toward the door.
“Come on, we’re both free tonight, so let’s just go get it over with. No point in delaying.”
I follow him out of the bathroom, my stomach already tightening with dread, but when we reach Hyunwoo’s bedroom doorway, I stop. My hand catches the doorframe, and I plant my feet.
“I’m going to go shower first,” I say. “I need a minute to mentally prepare.”
Hyunwoo shrugs, already moving toward his bed. “Whatever makes you comfortable. I’ll be here.”
I take my time in the shower. Longer than necessary, if I’m being honest. I stand under the hot water with my palms flat against the tile wall and my head bowed, letting the spray beat against the back of my neck and shoulders while steam fills the stall around me.
The memory of the first time is still vivid in my body, if not my mind—the burning stretch, the tearing pain, the feeling of being split open while I bit down on Hyunwoo’s expensive sheets and tried not to scream.
My hole clenches involuntarily at the memory, a ghost of that ache flickering through my pelvis, and I blow out a hard breath through my nose.
I do not want a repeat of that. But one negative test means we have to try again, and standing in this shower until the hot water runs out isn’t going to change that fact.
I turn off the water, towel off, and don’t bother putting on anything but a pair of gray sweatpants.
There’s no point in getting fully dressed just to get undressed again.
My hair is still damp, water droplets trailing down my neck and across my shoulders as I pad barefoot down the hallway to Hyunwoo’s room.