DASH-Chapter 2Vol . : Side Story - 2

“What? So you made someone who's pregnant take care of an injured patient this whole time? During the ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) most critical period when they’re supposed to be resting and staying stable? You should be the one taking care of him! Jaekyung, how can you be so thoughtless?”

When Jiheon tried to say it wasn’t necessary and refused the suggestion that at least until Jaekyung’s shoulder healed he should be commuting from home, she shot back that in that case, at the very least, someone else should be handling pick-up for training. And for the hospital, he should just have Minwoo take him. She repeatedly insisted that Jiheon should try not to worry about Jaekyung’s condition as much as possible. Because that was stress too.

“Wow, she sounds like a good mother.”

At Nam Daeri’s comment, Team Leader Lee offered a tip: “She’s one of the very few sane, cultured guardians in this field.”

“But then why didn’t you listen to her? I mean, she even brought it up first.”

“Well, I couldn’t really let anyone else handle pick-up for training, no matter what.”

Jiheon wet his lips again with water.

“At the time, Kwon Jaekyung’s shoulder wasn’t fully healed yet. It wasn’t just about dropping him off at the pool—you had to monitor his condition during training, adjust the workload, even change up the training menus. Could Minwoo do that? Could anyone?”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point.”

Nam Daeri clicked his tongue and crossed his arms.

“He’s kind of... difficult. No, I mean stubborn. I mean—well, you get it.”

Nam Daeri acted like he’d misspoken, but still got his whole point across.

“It’s not that he’s difficult or temperamental... He’s just passionate about his discipline. He’s fiercely competitive... and well, I think a gold medalist should have that kind of grit, right...”

Jiheon mumbled as he stared into his empty water cup. Nam Daeri gave him a look like, ‘Well well, would you look at this guy?’ and Team Leader Lee smiled softly, resting her chin on her hand.

“Anyway, that’s how it is. This doesn’t really have anything to do with my personal life.”

Jiheon deliberately set down the cup with a clink.

“Back then, and even now, I’m only doing what I need to do. If it were something I could hand off to someone else, I would’ve.”

And that was the truth. If Oliver had been in Korea, Jiheon would have entrusted Jaekyung’s training to him without a second thought. But since Oliver wasn’t here, the only person who knew athlete Kwon Jaekyung as well as Oliver did was himself. There was no choice but for him to step in.

“Daeri-nim said, ‘you came all this way,’ but honestly, I felt like it was only natural that I do it at this point.”

Nam Daeri rolled his eyes, like, is that so?

“Anyway, I’ve been acting as Kwon Jaekyung’s manager for almost a year now. I know his physical condition, his training style—better than anyone. With just a hundred days left until the Olympics, handing him off to someone else wouldn’t make any sense.”

And that would’ve been true even if it weren’t Jaekyung.

“If I’d spent a year as someone’s manager and helped plan out their training, and then they got injured just before the Olympics and were in an unstable condition... I mean, even if I were pregnant, unless I were truly unwell and couldn’t come to work, I think I’d still have looked after them until the Games were over.”

“Yeah, I probably would’ve done the same.”

Team Leader Lee nodded in understanding.

“But that’s only because you didn’t realize how hard pregnancy is. It’s one thing if you’re on your own, but if you’re pregnant, you really can’t overdo it. I think that’s probably what Daeri-nim meant too.” freewёbnoνel.com

Nam Daeri nodded enthusiastically like, exactly!

“Yeah, I’m not overdoing it. I’m actually keeping super regular work hours.”

Jiheon explained that most of the actual work was being handled by the legal team, and he was mostly just attending strategic meetings. Nam Daeri winced.

“Ugh, that’s the part that makes me want to puke.”

“So, how’s Kwon Jaekyung doing?”

“He’s fine. His recovery’s going well.”

The inflammation had already completely subsided, and his collagen fiber regeneration was happening at such a fast pace that the doctor even joked he should be a research subject. Thinking about how they’d forcibly braced his shoulder and kept him from moving made it clear—hospitalizing him had been the right call.

“How long has he been in the hospital now? About ten days?”

“He was admitted the Friday before last... so yeah, around then.”

At Jiheon’s answer, Team Leader Lee commented in surprise, “Still, I’m amazed he’s stayed put in the hospital this whole time.”

“With that temper, I figured he’d be grumbling for three days straight and then storm out against orders.”

“Right?”

Jiheon chuckled. Out loud, he agreed, but inwardly, he knew exactly why Jaekyung had stayed holed up in the hospital so obediently.

For the past ten days, Jaekyung hadn’t budged from his bed. He’d spent day and night glued to his phone, and eventually, he’d asked Shim Yeo-sa to bring over the laptop that had been lying around at his parents’ house.

This was someone who used to watch blockbuster movies just fine on a tiny phone screen—but now that small screen was apparently too frustrating, and he’d lugged in a laptop just to watch parenting videos.

It all started with pregnancy content. Sometime last Wednesday, Jiheon had casually mentioned something like, “I don’t know if it’s delayed morning sickness, but I’ve been craving sweets like crazy lately.” Jaekyung latched onto that and declared that he was going to learn the mechanisms of morning sickness for his hyung’s sake. What began as innocent research turned into a full-on binge, and after watching dozens of videos over two days about male pregnancy and childbirth—thanks to the YouTube algorithm—he finally made it to the child-rearing stage.

Jaekyung really, really watched everything. From videos with elementary-schooler titles like Why Do Newborns Look Like Aliens?, to ones so complicated the titles themselves were gibberish, like The Key to Newborn Immune Response T-Cells: Cytokine Secretion Reduction and the Dynamics of Interferon Gamma Requirements. (For reference, the answer to the first video was that newborn skin gets wrinkled from being soaked in amniotic fluid. As for the second one... Jaekyung turned it off after twenty seconds, so no one knows.)

Anyway, after undergoing this special training around the clock, Jaekyung had already become a self-declared master of baby bathing and diaper changing in his own imagination. He even set his sights on becoming the reigning champion of formula temperature adjustment—until he discovered formula machines existed, and promptly gave up in disappointment.

Instead, he decided he would take care of feeding Jini. That too, as a one-man, 24-hour task force.

“Hyung, newborns apparently eat like every two or three hours. Even at night, if they get hungry, they just start wailing, so I don’t think you’ll be able to sleep properly. So I was thinking, maybe it’s best if I just sleep in Jini’s room until he starts sleeping through the night. If the baby cries, I’ll just feed him formula right away.”

He said it so enthusiastically that it was hard to believe he was joking. So Jiheon responded with equal seriousness: You’ll die.

“You have to take turns. There’s no way you can do it alone. Do you know what happens to a person when they can’t sleep at night? You die. Especially someone like you, who’s been going to bed at ten and waking up at six for ten years. One week of that kind of lifestyle, and your whole body will fall apart.”

Even when Jiheon pleaded with him to stop spouting nonsense, Jaekyung wouldn’t back down.

“Then how do night shift workers survive? Obviously, they do it because it’s doable. That’s it. I’m taking care of everything, day and night. You just worry about your own stuff, hyung.”

Then he added, with this smug air, “Even if you say you want to see the baby at night, I’m not going to show you. You can see him all you want during the day.”

His reasoning was one thing, but it was so adorable Jiheon couldn’t help but laugh.

As expected, just remembering that conversation again had the corners of Jiheon’s mouth curling up. He quickly realized and forced a cough, trying to tense his facial muscles and keep it together.

“......”

“......”

But he locked eyes with the two people sitting across from him, both grinning meaningfully.

“N-no, it’s not—it’s not like that.”

“Not like what?”

Team Leader Lee smiled as if to say, We didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, seriously. We didn’t say a word.”

“So what is it, Deputy Jeong? Hm?”

“You weren’t thinking about that athlete in the hospital just now, were you? Of course not—who has time to think about athletes when they’re in their honeymoon phase, cooing over their baby daddy?”

Nam Daeri and Team Leader Lee teased him gleefully.

Damn it...

All he’d done was bring it on himself. Jiheon gulped down cold water, unable to come up with a retort—just in time for the food to arrive.

“Well, anyway, it’s a relief Deputy Jeong says he’s holding up.”

Team Leader Lee sighed as she squeezed lemon juice over her salmon rice bowl.

“To be honest, it’s not the physical toll—it’s the mental exhaustion, right?”

That much was true. Even though they’d basically already won, a lawsuit was still a lawsuit. Figuring out how to make things work more in their favor, which regulations brought harsher penalties in sports arbitration, whether different arguments might contradict each other, what the opposing side might say in response... All of it was enough to fry anyone’s brain.

“Exactly. Lawsuits are just stressful, no matter the kind. When you’re pregnant, yeah, physical strain is real—but stress is just as bad.”

At that, Nam Daeri said, “But still, doesn’t Deputy Jeong’s face look amazing right now?” with a tone of surprise.

“Seriously, the moment I saw you I thought, damn, look at how glowing he is.”

“That’s just... probably because I gained weight.”

Jiheon confessed bluntly.