Side Story - This Was the Gender-Reversed World I Wanted (Happy Ending)
Side Story - This Was the Gender-Reversed World I Wanted (Happy Ending)
※This side story is an alternate version of the conclusion with a 180-degree different interpretation.
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Even when she first brought that man by the hand to a certain family home—one she had prepared in advance just in case this day would come—saying it was now their home to live in together, she had no intention of letting Kang Cheol go.
He was like a lighthouse, the only bright light in her hollow, monochromatic world.
She knew full well that her way of loving was wrong, terribly wrong, but she wanted to keep Kang Cheol in her embrace, even if it had to be this way.
But Kang Cheol, who she thought had let go of everything, couldn't forget Kim Ye-rim as time passed, and her love gradually twisted from love into obsession, and from obsession into violence... Both Kang Cheol and she herself began to warp...
[Congratulations, Selena Kim-nim. The test results confirm that you are pregnant.]
"I-I'm pregnant...?"
Around the two-week mark of being with that man.
Her expression contorted bizarrely upon receiving an email after her usual monthly check-up.
Pregnant.
The fact that a new life—something she had so desperately wanted—had taken root within her felt so unreal she couldn't tell if this was reality or a dream, and she even felt a thrill knowing that this new life was created between her and Kang Cheol, and no one else.
But for some reason, her expression held not only joy but also despair simultaneously.
[Give Oppa back. No, please give him back... I'm pregnant with Oppa's child. I'll kneel if you tell me to kneel, I'll become your dog if you tell me to be your dog. Please, give Oppa back!!!]
The shocking news of pregnancy that came from Kim Ye-rim, who had been persistently pleading for Kang Cheol's return just the day before.
When Selena didn't yet know she herself was pregnant, she had simply ignored Ye-rim's pregnancy news, but now that she too was pregnant, her feelings underwent a change.
The sensation of carrying the child of the man she loved became another light in Selena's world, which had only ever shone with Kang Cheol's rainbow-colored brilliance, and she could no longer ignore the feelings of Kim Ye-rim, who also carried that man's child.
She didn't want to let him go.
But at the same time, the sentiment of Kim Ye-rim—who, despite having lost Kang Cheol, still monopolized his love—shook her heart through that text message.
It was a broken love.
She wanted to have him, and to have him, she hurt that man deeply and she herself fell apart as well.
'What... should I do...?'
Selena Kim, a broken woman who had lost the precious thing called emotions because she was born having everything.
Not knowing how to love, she finally realized true love within the noble blessing of conceiving a new life, and simultaneously gained the ability to understand others' emotions.
'...I want to be with that man right now!'
She turns away.
She now understands Kim Ye-rim's feelings, but she turned away from them.
But...
Fumbling, fumbling
'Where... did he go...?'
It was an ordinary day.
No, it should have been an ordinary day.
A week ago, knowing Ye-rim's circumstances but turning a blind eye, she had held Kang Cheol in her embrace several times before falling asleep as always. Seeing his tired body and his still-unforgotten search for Ye-rim and the aphrodisiac wounded her deep inside as she fell into a deep sleep, but for some reason...
It was unusual for her to wake up, as she typically fell into a deep sleep until the morning sun rose. It was truly strange that when she reached out habitually toward the space where Kang Cheol should be, she couldn't feel him.
'The smartphone is gone too...'
Rising hurriedly with an inexplicable sense of unease, she stepped out of the bedroom and saw the figure of Kang Cheol, whom she had been desperately searching for, on the dark living room floor.
"I-I have to escape!"
His horrified expression and trembling fingertips, shaking like aspen leaves, were pointed toward her smartphone that had disappeared along with him.
'Ah, so he's found out everything...'
In an instant, the fact that she had finally gotten Kang Cheol in her grasp and had been careless enough not to delete that trash Viper's text message flashes through her mind.
This was karma.
The retribution for selfishly turning away from the love between Kim Ye-rim and Kang Cheol after finally regaining her emotions.
Despite her cold, sunken mood, her body blocks Kang Cheol's path toward the smartphone.
"Hmm... Where do you think you're escaping to, Kang Cheol~?"
Even though she knows where the man's heart lies, her selfish desire not to lose him again is projected in her cool voice.
And at her voice, his hand reaching for the smartphone freezes.
"H-how?"
"I just woke up thirsty and didn't see you where you should be beside me, so I came out. But... did you see it?"
She glances at the smartphone in the direction Kang Cheol's fingertips are pointing and makes a bitter expression.
"So... you said you're escaping? My love, Kang Cheol?"
"Shut your filthy mouth! Love? You call this love?! Deceiving me who was happily in love with Ye-rim and locking me up in a place like this, and you call it love!! That's not love, it's obsession!"
At his enraged shout, she—who normally would have flared up in anger and swung her hand first—for some reason maintains a somber expression and crouches down to meet Kang Cheol's gaze.
"Why can't it be me? Why are you so gentle with that woman Kim Ye-rim but can't do the same for me...?"
A deep sadness, recognizable at a glance even to someone other than Kang Cheol, surfaces in her blue eyes, which normally couldn't read emotions.
It hurts.
Why did it have to be now?
Why did she, who had lived a cursed life for over 30 years where her own emotions and others' emotions felt meaningless, only come to understand emotions just when she met the precious man she had so desperately wanted?
Her strength drains away under Kang Cheol's gaze, filled with nothing but anger upon realizing the false truth, and her head bows.
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"Even after all this, you're looking for that woman...? That my love is just obsession...? Hic..."
Drip, drip, drip...
'...Is Selena crying?'
Tears falling one by two beneath her bowed head.
I was seeing it for the first time.
Selena, who had been angry and violent toward me for not being able to forget Ye-rim and relying on aphrodisiacs during those three weeks.
I condemned her, saying it wasn't love but obsession, but was that really not love?
She was a broken woman.
A woman who lost her emotions because she was born having everything.
In a way, the love I criticized as obsession might have been real love to her, and perhaps Selena simply didn't know how to love.
"...Go. Go back to that woman Kim Ye-rim..."
She straightens up from her crouched position and hands me a key with a resigned expression.
And with one arm, she's stroking her belly as if hugging something precious.
"That hand... don't tell me?"
"About three weeks along."
Now that I think about it, she who frequently hit my abdomen during sex hadn't been using violence lately.
I thought it was just her whims, but was it because of the baby in her womb...?
"I only found out recently. We were pretty rough on the yacht, right? I wanted it, but it actually happened..."
I'm confused.
A child? To me, who isn't even from this world, an orphan abandoned by my parents, who knows the preciousness of life better than anyone?
"Don't look at me like that. I still don't want to let you go. But... I've come to realize it now? That love, that emotions, can be this painful and beautiful... Damn it, I had to realize it now..."
"Then why. Why are you letting me go so easily...?"
Separate from the joyful feeling of being able to return to Ye-rim, I wondered why she, pregnant with my child, was letting me go so easily.
Not only was it the first time I saw Selena's tears, but I could clearly feel the sadness and pain of separation reflected in her blue eyes that were cut off from the world and impossible to read.
If it's that, that painful, why is she letting me go?
Click
Without answering, she picks up the smartphone that had fallen to the floor and shows me a certain text.
[Give Oppa back. No, please give him back... I'm pregnant with Oppa's child. I'll kneel if you tell me to kneel, I'll become your dog if you tell me to be your dog. Please, give Oppa back!!!]
"Y-Ye-rim is pregnant too?!"
"Timing-wise, it seems it happened about a day, or maybe a week before mine... So go now. To Kim Ye-rim, that woman you kept calling your true love..."
My head spins with the chaotic situations unfolding.
Selena's dramatic change from being like a demon, and the fact that both women are pregnant with my child simultaneously.
It's beyond complicated.
As I struggle to grasp what to do, she personally places the key in my hand and pushes me outside.
"Truthfully, I still don't know if letting you go like this is the right choice. But... if it's for you, the one I love, even now, I think this is the right choice."
The sincere expression of the woman named Selena that I had never seen before.
Her expression, seemingly on the verge of tears, regretful yet relieved, was truly beautiful.
Leaving Selena behind like that and returning to Ye-rim, I lived a happy life as if those three weeks had been a night's dream, and as months passed and Ye-rim's once-slender belly became as big as Namsan Mountain around the time...
[Selena, let's meet.]
We had a meeting.
Not me and Selena, but Ye-rim and Selena and me.
It was the first time the three of us had met together like this, and...
"Let's get married, Selena..."
Selena makes a bitter expression at Ye-rim's blunt statement that gets straight to the point before even greetings.
"So that's how it turned out... Did you call me to congratulate you? Should I give about 1 billion won as a wedding gift?"
At the somewhat mocking tone, I finally sigh and intervene between them.
This Ye-rim, when did she ever say women should talk nicely among themselves? Jeez...
"I don't know if one can give a wedding gift at their own wedding, but Selena, listen carefully. 'We' should get married."
"No, so you're saying you and Kim Ye-rim are getting married... W-wait, 'we'?"
A look of 'could it be?' spreads across Selena's face, which had been using an irritated tone as if this situation displeased her greatly.
Yes, by now even clever her would have noticed.
That the 'we' me and Ye-rim mentioned included Selena, her as well...
"W-what do you mean suddenly 'we' should get married?! I, I... did such terrible things to you..."
"I'm glad you know! Oppa, you should just discard this wretched woman..."
"Stop tormenting her, Ye-rim. The idea of all of us getting married together came from you first, jeez..."
That's right.
The idea of having a Joint Wedding including Selena came not from me but from Ye-rim's own mouth, and today's meeting was also arranged because Ye-rim strongly pushed for it.
"Ugh, what if Oppa says it! I was trying to establish discipline with the concubine woman as the legal wife~!"
I let out a light chuckle at Ye-rim's words that clearly don't reflect her true feelings.
Ye-rim didn't make this decision from the beginning.
On the contrary, when she saw me return after three weeks, she made a fuss about needing to send Selena, that woman, to hell—she certainly didn't come up with the absurd idea of all getting married together.
But as months passed, Selena's actions—not only not harming us but adding beneficial perks to Ye-rim's broadcasting activities and continuously providing work to her mother's company—gradually changed Ye-rim's thoughts about Selena, and ultimately, with one month left until childbirth, she made the bomb declaration of a Joint Wedding.
Fortunately for me, who had been carrying guilt in my heart over Selena's sincere expression at the end, this was truly a fortunate turn, and that's how we ended up meeting together for the first time as three people.
"...Is it really okay for me to be included between you two? Will our babies have a father...?"
Can a person change this much?
Even though this marriage news is closer to a one-sided announcement without any consultation with her.
Without putting up any pride, rather relieved, Selena hugs her belly where twins are stirring and tears well up in her eyes, while Ye-rim fake-coughs and reddens her own eyes as well.
And so 'we' held a modest but fuller-than-any-other wedding ceremony in secret, inviting only their parents (excluding me, an orphan), and a month passed...
"Gggguuuuhhh...! Why does it hurt so much when it's smaller than Oppa's thing?!"
Kim Ye-rim, what are you saying in the noble delivery room?!
"Ha.ha.ha~ Our Ye-rim must be in a lot of pain to be talking nonsense? Heh!"
I grit my teeth tightly under the nurse's gaze, who widened her eyes upon hearing Ye-rim's words while I was helping with her delivery and looked at my crotch.
Just you wait, Kim Ye-rim!
Delivery room.
As you might guess just from our location.
Today was the day the precious 'son' created between me and Ye-rim would be born, and simultaneously...
"Haa haa... What kind of woman has no pride, getting stabbed by a man is nothing to brag about... Hggguuuuhhh~?!"
Unlike a normal delivery room where Ye-rim is spouting nonsense, on the other side Selena is also giving birth to twins.
"Selena, I can't give birth later than that concubine... Hggup!!"
"Concubine?! You might have gotten pregnant first, but if I deliver faster... Gggut!!"
"Mothers, please stop saying strange things and just push!"
Damn it, what's the big deal about the legal wife position that you're acting like this even in the delivery room!
Amusingly enough, in this world where the birth rate of boys is low, Ye-rim was pregnant with a precious boy, and Selena was also pregnant with twins—one girl and one boy, fraternal twins.
Therefore, who delivered a boy first would determine the legal wife position, and in that moment.
"Waaah! Waaah!"
"Waaah!"
The cries of newborns filling the delivery room at what could be considered simultaneous timing.
"Both mother and baby are healthy!"
"Selena-nim, just a little more push...!"
"Waaah~!!!"
"The twins have also been delivered completely!"
With the cry that all three children were born healthy, three wrinkly babies still covered in amniotic fluid come to me wrapped in clean cloth.
"Father-nim. Would you like to cut the umbilical cords?"
"F-father..."
The word "father" that I had never even thought about in my life.
In this Gender-Reversed World that isn't even my original world, I became the 'father' of two wives and three children.
"Y-yes!"
I force strength into my trembling hands and cut the umbilical cords of the three children.
And I thought.
This was the Gender-Reversed World I had hoped for...
-happy ending