TIN 70

When I first went to the villa with the child, I think I avoided everyone except the child and Logan. The bodyguards stationed around the villa, the employees in charge of housework, the chef who prepared the meals, and so on. If our eyes met, I would quickly turn my head to the side, and unless the child called me, I wouldn’t even come out of my room, fearing that I might run into someone.

My actions, which were closer to wariness than shyness, were naturally noticed by the child within a few days. After all, whenever the child was talking to them, I would grab onto the child’s clothes and focus my gaze blankly to the floor. My efforts to hide behind someone a head shorter than me must’ve looked ridiculous even to a six-year-old.

‘Do you hate the adults?’

Fortunately, the child didn’t laugh at my behavior. Instead, he even said something unusually considerate, as if trying to comfort me. Saying that they were all his people, that they only did what he told them to do anyway. Most of it was arrogant talk, but it was reassuring nonetheless.

‘So, it’s okay if you’re with me.’

As if to prove those words, the child protected me in his own way whenever he happened to talk to them. He would straighten his shoulders and block my path, take the hand gripping his clothes and hold it first, or cover my face if someone approached.

I’m only saying this now, but I think the child secretly enjoyed those situations. Sometimes he would even deliberately stop passing employees even when he had no business with them, so it was impossible not to notice. It was too difficult for the child, who was young and honest, to hide his subtly elated, smug expression.

The reason I didn’t hate it was because I knew that the child’s actions weren’t intended to torment me. I guessed that he felt excited as if he had become an older brother, whenever I relied on him.

However, it wasn’t long before I realized that the employees at the villa wouldn’t harm me in any way. To be precise, I realized that most of them had no interest in me at all. It was only natural, as they would glance at me as they passed by, but they didn’t talk to me or bother to come close.

And so, when I finally stopped avoiding anyone in the villa, the child asked me this as I stared blankly at the gardener.

‘…You’re not hiding behind me anymore?’

Would it be a mistake to say that his face looked disappointed as he asked that? He seemed not only disappointed but even sad that he could no longer act as my protector.

At the same time, seeing me follow him around like a motherless duck, I was probably right in my guess. The situation was instantly reversed, and it was the child, not me, who grabbed the clothes of the person walking ahead. It might sound like a mean thing to say, but it was also true that I found that side of the child cute.

Well, all of this was ultimately a fragment of the past. The child of my childhood was no longer there, and neither was I, who used to find him cute. The alpha who was telling me to kneel between his legs and spouting nonsense could never be called young, not even as a joke.

‘Is there a reason why I can’t vent my anger on hyung?’

Yes, so there was no need to be newly disappointed by such words.

‘I think hyung has forgotten.’

After that day’s sex, Joo Do-hwa reached out to me whenever he had the chance. In the evening after work, in the afternoons when there was free time, and sometimes even right after waking up in the morning.

‘Ugh…Hngh…’

The sex, which continued as if he were venting his anger, was always overwhelming for me, and the more it was, the stronger the force pressing down on me became. It wasn’t every day, but if you counted the number of times, it was more than the number of days. Naturally, I had no other choice but to become accustomed to that overwhelming feeling.

‘…Look.’

‘Huk, uh…’

‘Because we do it so often, huff…It’s a little softer, isn’t it?’

At first, Joo Do-hwa would at least loosen me up down there in a perfunctory way, but after a few days of repetition, there were often cases where he would just insert it after confirming that the hole was loosened. I didn’t know whether to be relieved that he didn’t tell Henry to loosen me up or to say that it was cruel of him not to give me time to prepare. Either way, I couldn’t help but feel like shit.

Was it because of that? A subtle change occurred between him and me. It wasn’t as if we had ever had a very friendly relationship, but there was an even more noticeable distance between us. If I had to pinpoint it, it was a change on my side, because I belatedly realized that I needed to be wary around him.

It was just simple stuff, after all. Not stubbornly trying to imitate his hyung, but genuinely doing as I was told. Trying not to let my guard down as much as possible and being careful not to make slip-ups. I had neither the need to protest unfair things nor the ability to fight back, so from now on, when told to strip, I would be forced to just strip.

It was not a protest but a reflection, not a grumble but an understanding of his place. It would be a lie to say I didn’t feel bad, and it was inappropriate to say I was hurt. I was merely resolving to completely separate Joo Do-hwa, who bought me from Oceans, from the child I had spent my early years with.

Perhaps my resolution was conveyed because Joo Do-hwa didn’t bother me unnecessarily except when we had sex. He even meticulously provided me with alone time at night, as requested, allowing me to sleep alone. Thanks to that, I gained a half-baked freedom, but the problem was that I still couldn’t leave the mansion.

‘Have you ever seen an extremely dominant omega, hyung?’

Should I say he had a bad personality, or was he even more vicious than that? Joo Do-hwa started every day, every single day, with that kind of opening. At first, he would bring it up as if it were someone else’s business, gauge my reaction, and then smile languidly, mentioning ‘that’ name.

‘I’m talking about Yoon Ji-soo. I heard she’s an omega.’

‘…’

‘And an extremely dominant one at that.’

If Joo Do-hwa was the last extremely dominant alpha left in the world, then Yoon Ji-soo was said to be the last extremely dominant omega left in the world. Rare and unique traits, especially the kind of dominance that changed eye color, were almost gone now. The woman with eyes bluer than Lee Yuna was Yoon Ji-soo.

‘They say her eyes were so beautiful…’

He was the kind of guy who wouldn’t care even if they said they had embedded jewels, let alone that they were beautiful. If he liked dominant omegas, he wouldn’t have treated Lee Yuna that way, so naturally, his interest in Yoon Ji-soo would only go that far.

‘Is that why Father liked her too?’

And yet, I feigned innocence, revealing my curiosity with a pure face. I didn’t even know how I felt about each of those words, and the careless remarks he made were nothing but annoying.

Even worse, just when I was about to lose my mind, he would openly test me, dropping information related to Yoon Ji-soo one by one. She was abandoned by her family because she couldn’t have children, she disappeared at some point and fled across the sea, or she fell in love with an unknown beta. Most of it was information I was hearing for the first time, but some of it was similar to what I already knew.

‘Yoon Ji-soo is a fascinating person, though.’

That was why. I couldn’t dismiss the things he said in bed as nonsense. Even while I wanted to pass out, I gritted his teeth and endured, listening to the other man’s words. I couldn’t just block my ears because all of that information felt as precious as rain in a drought.

‘I hope she comes to the next party.’

The reckless beating of my heart at the mention of the next party was not just because of anger toward him. I couldn’t help but imagine the meeting with that person I had longed for my entire life.

They were parties that I couldn’t attend without that damned Joo Do-hwa. The faces of those who attended were as good as invitations, and the news that a party was being held wasn’t even conveyed to those who didn’t meet the standards. Joo Do-hwa was in a position where he couldn’t be classified by ‘level,’ but I alone couldn’t even infiltrate such events as an employee.

I also learned after coming to this house that the name ‘Yoon Ji-soo’ was famous among the upper class. I realized then how different the news here was, even though I had only crossed one street to get to this place. So how could I dare to leave his side?

Around the time my bitten lips had become chapped and scabbed over, the nighttime hours alone began to feel excessively painful. Once dusk fell and a quiet silence settled, I felt suffocated by my own powerlessness. I couldn’t bear the feeling of my insides festering, as if stagnant water was slowly rotting.

‘Hyung is afraid of the dark, isn’t he?’

I originally thought I was all better now.

But who knew I would end up dwelling on those words? I thought that being trapped in a box and endlessly waiting to be rescued was over when I left Oceans. I had thought that hiding under the covers in a cramped room was all over.

I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid of the dark, and when I finally did fall asleep, the people I missed made appearances in my dreams. Some days it was a child with golden eyes, other days it was a woman with blue eyes, and sometimes the two of them appeared alternately.

‘You were here?’

Even though I knew it was all a dream, I couldn’t help but rely on the comforting embrace that held me. That was why I even acted spoiled with the woman who patted my back and kissed the top of my head, something I had never done in real life.

‘…I thought you left me.’

‘Where would I go without you?’

The woman smiled kindly, as if I was uttering nonsense. Her eyes, blue as the sea, reflected my slowly blinking figure. It was a small, immature face, as youthful as the child I remembered.

‘I’ll be by your side until I die.’

Liar. You ended up abandoning me. You put me in a small box where it was hard to even breathe and made me cross the endless ocean.