This Book is Not Available for Subscription Under the Age of 18 - Chapter 204

Could you please be careful? (8)

Merson burst into laughter at my grumpy reaction. Then, suddenly, his hearty laughter stopped. His eyes, now closed, seemed to be seeing something. His expression changed rapidly, and he even flinched.

‘There’s a visitor. It’s time for me to go back, Erina.’

‘You should at least tell me!’

‘You’ll find out soon enough. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t know.’

‘Hey… hey!’

This had never happened before. Merson had never pushed me out of the boat.

The water engulfed me. The boat and Merson rippled away into the distance, and no matter how much I reached out, I couldn’t touch them.

Just as I was about to lose consciousness in the water, a blue flash erupted from where I had been standing. At that moment, I woke up from the dream.

“Gasp!”

“Uwack!”

“What now!”

A strange male voice made me blurt out irritably. My body was drenched in cold sweat. In the dim room, I brushed the clinging hair from my face.

Click!

The light turned on, and there was a man standing there, staring down at me. Then he shouted,

“Mom!”

“…”

…You said he wasn’t coming.

If all this was God’s prank, I swear I’d end God myself. Definitely. I pressed my aching forehead.

“Oh my, what happened?”

As I stepped out of the room, the aunt, who was startled by the noise, almost ran towards me. She had just woken up as her eyes were puffy.

Beyond the balcony, the atmosphere was settling, and the sunlight was making its way back home. I had thought I’d only dozed off for a moment, but it seemed much time had passed.

“This person! Who is this?!”

His closely cropped hair made his forehead stand out, and his thick eyebrows, raised in anger, were particularly noticeable.

The son’s finger was pointed directly at my face. That’s irritating. I pushed his hand aside, and he made a surprised “Huh!” noise.

“Why did you come home from school?”

“Is that what matters right now? Who is this person and why is she sleeping in my bed?”

“Of course it matters! And why do your lips look like that? Have you been fighting again?”

Ah, it looked just like that. His lips, as thick as his eyebrows, were painfully cracked with scabs forming on top. Additionally, there were small scratches near his eye, as if he had been grazed by something sharp.

Wasn’t he back from the military? Yet here he was, feeling more like a teenage boy who had just rolled in.

Neither the aunt nor her son backed down, each firing off their questions relentlessly. ‘Who is this person?’, ‘Why are you home?’

Standing between them, my ears felt like they were about to fall off. I wished one of them would just give in and answer calmly. But contrary to my hopes, they continued, spitting fire with increasing intensity. It seemed neither was going to back down anytime soon.

“I’ll go first!”

Like a referee during a sports match, I threw my hands up to intervene between them. Both sets of fierce eyes turned towards me.

“Please, calm down.”

I really mean it.

Finally, the voices quieted, and we could sit on the living room floor. The son plopped down with crossed legs while still eyeing me warily.

“My name is Mimi. I came to Korea to earn money, but things got complicated. Aunt helped me out when I was in a tough spot, so I’ve been staying here temporarily. If it weren’t for her, I might have been found as a second corpse in a house where someone had already died once.”

Of course, that ‘someone’ had been me. Moreover, with my current near-indestructible state, there wouldn’t likely be a ‘second corpse.’ But I phrased it that way to elicit some sympathy.

When the son just stared blankly without much reaction, the aunt smacked his thigh.

“Ah!”

“If you’ve heard her, shouldn’t you introduce yourself too?!”

Rubbing his likely reddening thigh roughly, the son grudgingly began to introduce himself.

“Kang Doyun. I’m twenty-three years old. And I’m the owner of that room!”

He pointed to the room I had been sleeping in.

“No! From now on, you sleep in the living room.”

“Ah, why!”

“Mimi is pregnant. Do you expect a pregnant woman to sleep outside?”

Doyun’s eyes widened in shock, and his gaze dropped to my stomach. However, seeing that my stomach wasn’t showing yet, he looked puzzled.

“Flat…”

“Do you think the belly is the first thing to swell when you get pregnant?”

This time, Doyun, who got a slap on the back, was trying to reach around to rub it, bending his arms backward and then downward in a fuss.

“Then she should go to her husband!”

Doyun shouted. The aunt didn’t hit him anymore but just glanced at me cautiously. Clearly, bringing up that the baby’s father was ‘beyond the heavens’ was a sensitive matter.

Feeling awkward for having turned the very much alive Merson into a deceased figure in my story, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. Sorry!

“….Did he run away?”

Catching the mood, the son asked hesitantly.

“If he did, I would find him and pull his hair out.”

“Ah…”

In just one word, I could sense the complexity of Doyun’s emotions. Feeling guilty about initially wanting to chase away a widow who came from another country, who was penniless, friendless, and pregnant. Doyun quieted down and just scratched the back of his short-cropped hair.

“…I didn’t know that… sorry.”

“It doesn’t change that I’m still a burden here.”

True, no matter my sad backstory as a struggling foreign worker, I had indeed intruded on this family’s life.

But neither Doyun nor the aunt seemed to think of me as a nuisance or a burden. In fact, I felt like I owed them thousands of apologies for deceiving such kind-hearted people.

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