The man with his elbows on the table drawled his words and flicked a short glance my way.
This time I felt his whole body go rigid. The eyes looking down at the man no longer kept the cool, screen-between-us distance you’d give a villain irrelevant to real life. Even so, the man wouldn’t stop—like someone who can’t take his own life and instead goads another to kill him for him.
"I’m not hung up on present-day fame. If it’s a piece by an Omega like this... I could reserve everything you’ll paint for the next two or three years, you know? You’re that irresistible... so what if you’d already drawn a single line on a blank canvas."
"......!"
A large palm clamped the man’s face just as it was leaning in toward me, sly and close.
[thud]
Right after the blunt smack across his face, the glass in the man’s hand hit the hall floor and shattered with a burst.
Everyone nearby jolted and reflexively stepped back a pace. I, too, stiffened at the suddenness of it happening right under my nose. Keeping his eyes locked on the man, he slid a hand across my lower abdomen and eased me back as if to tell me to move away.
It happened in an instant.
He struck beneath the man’s right shoulder and into his side. It was an attack that seemed to deliberately avoid the exact vital points, but even that was enough to send the man crashing to the floor. The range of motion wasn’t even large. His movements were so economical that it almost made the man’s writhing look like theatrics.
Screams, curses, and a rising buzz followed. The man didn’t bleed a drop, but he curled around his stomach and squirmed on the floor, hunching tighter and tighter, unable to even scream and leaking only a strange groan.
Jane and Connor rushed over at once to take control of the situation.
Even after putting the other man down, he was heaving, shoulders jumping with rough breaths—he was not in a normal state. The fist clamped tight looked like restraint, as if the only thing keeping him from charging in to hit again was that tension.
It was strange to see him like this, unable to regulate himself. I couldn’t even approach him rashly. The man I knew until now was the type who would handle something like this far more deftly, a person at the apex of reason and savvy.
Two burly staffers, answering Connor’s call, hurried over and hauled the man out of the hall like an escorting arrest. Connor followed. A few people who'd been at the table stepped up to Jane to explain what had happened. Jane nodded and apologized to them on his behalf.
"No. Honestly, everyone’s been putting up with it because he spends a lot, but no one here is going to blame Mr. Lau. He treated his own affiliated artists like whores you can buy with money... how are we supposed to sit there and listen to that?"
After hearing them out, Jane looked in turn at him, still standing and breathing hard, and then at me behind his shoulder.
She gently coaxed him that we should go to a private room and rest a bit. Up to that moment he looked like all his focus was on keeping himself from running away with it. He slowly turned to me.
Then, without a word, he reached out and took my hand. I didn’t know what to say; I just held tight to the hand he offered first.
Jane, after asking Connor to take care of things in the hall when he returned, led the two of us down the corridor into a room. It was a small sitting room with a comfortable sofa and a table for tea.
He and Jane sat side by side on a three-seater sofa, and—just as Jane suggested—I took the armchair across from them. He didn’t want to let go of my hand, but Jane talked him down that this would be better for now.
"We’re in the same room. Ihyeon is right in front of you. It’s okay. There’s no danger. It’s okay."
She offered him whiskey without ice and a cigarette. I worried whether offering alcohol to someone in that state was wise, but by the time he finished a cigarette with a glass of whiskey, his eyes had nearly returned to normal.
He let out a long breath, shoulders slumping.
"Sorry. To cause a scene in Jane’s home...."
"I heard the whole story. Don’t apologize. What’s unforgivable isn’t the scene in my home; it’s that filth being spewed in my home."
She spoke firmly as she poured hot water from the electric kettle on the bar cart in the corner.
"Even if I’d heard nothing, I know you would never do that without reason."
Patting his back twice, she glanced between me and him with a careful eye.
"Ihyeon, you’re the Omega he’s bonded with, right?"
"......."
She was cautious, but she asked with conviction.
Instead of answering, he lifted his head and looked at me. The meaning in his gaze was hard to read. It could have been nothing more than a simple, empty look, or a deep appeal trying to convey complicated feeling.
"Wasn’t it that your protective instinct for the Omega you’re bonded with got triggered?"
Otherwise, no matter how insulted you are by someone beneath contempt, a man with his kind of self-control wouldn’t have tried to resolve it with violence. She seemed certain of that.
"...No?"
"......."
Doubt crept into her certainty.
He still didn’t answer, just stared at me for a long moment. His hollow gaze, like someone stripped of everything and drained of the will to resist, seemed to ask me to answer instead. To say whether I was an Omega, a Beta, or something else.
Hong Kong. Right after the first penetration and the knotting—when he scratched at himself inside me like someone out of his mind, apologizing over and over—the eyes he had then overlapped with the eyes now. A clear sorrow, so clean it made that big, solid man seem for a moment like a helpless, fragile boy, seemed to lay bare the bottom of his soul.
But even the bottom I looked into was transparent. Not that there was nothing there. It was so clear there was nothing to see.
After staring for so long it became pointless, he pulled his gaze away in an instant, without lingering. He hunched, slumping back into the cushions, and looked down at his own hands like they were unfamiliar objects. Then he gave a faint, crooked smile.
"No. He’s a Beta."
Startlement showed on Jane’s face.
"Really? Then I made a big mistake.... It’s just your reaction a minute ago looked... exactly like that. I’m sorry, Ihyeon. I jumped to conclusions."
"It’s fine. Truly... please don’t worry."
Unlike the blonde man earlier, Jane’s guess hadn’t carried any offensive intent, so there was no need for her to feel sorry. Just as I unconsciously take everyone to be a Beta, she judged me an Omega by standards formed from her own experience. I told her, more than once, that it really was fine, and she finally managed a small, relieved smile.
"He is... someone precious to me, though."
"......."
Both Jane and I turned our eyes to him.
He’d always been unreserved in showing me affection. But it was the first time he defined my meaning that clearly in front of someone else.
Pretending not to notice our looks, he raised his glass and drained what little whiskey was left.
"Is that so?"
Jane’s face lit up. She looked giddy and pleased, like a mother being introduced to her son’s first love. But she didn’t roll out the stock questions that cling to couples like ceremony—how long it’s been, how it started, who confessed first, and so on.
I didn’t know how to respond to Jane’s mischievous little smile and bright eyes, so I fumbled my gaze away and let a long, silent breath ease out of me.
"A lot of people got a good impression of you today. Whatever you decide, Connor and I will back you. And don’t give a thought to what just happened. If that’s how he’s been acting in the art world all along, there are far more times it went unexposed."
He isn’t someone worth your concern, she added, saying that by now the man had probably figured out who you are and was tearing his hair out on the other side. She squeezed his wrist once, encouragingly, and let go.
"If you’ve lived throwing your weight around, making people miserable for the fun of wielding the little strength you have, then meeting a different kind of strength and being the miserable one for once might not be so bad."
He said he was sorry only for causing trouble to the others gathered, to Jane, to Connor... and to me; he wasn’t thinking about the blonde man. Jane laughed, nodded, and stood up.
"You two rest a bit longer and then come out."
Even after she left, we said nothing for a while. He stared at his empty glass; I wrapped my hands around the cup of warm water Jane had given me to help me settle and let the heat soak in, each of us buried in our own thoughts.
No—“thoughts” wasn’t it. All my awareness was fixed on the person sitting across from me. Despite the small commotion, the party music went on, its thump, thump traveling faintly through the wall.
He broke the silence. Tap, tap—he patted the seat beside him. But the way he looked at me said he wasn’t sure I would grant what he was asking.
I glanced back at the door she had gone through, hesitated, then rose and moved to sit next to him. He just stared at me, openly. With a look that very much wanted to touch me. That wanted to touch me a lot, but didn’t dare because he didn’t know how I would feel.
He turned the now-empty glass in his hand, spinning it idly, searching for words.
"Are you afraid of me?"
It was a foolish question. I shook my head without a beat.
"Believe it or not... this is the first time I’ve hit anyone."
"......."
"I did learn a few self-defense martial arts from a very young age, but those are last-resort measures... You can’t use violence every time someone gets on your nerves. I was taught, alongside the physical risks of force, the value of the mind and reason that control it. I know... after what you just saw, that’s hard to believe...."
With a self-mocking, bitter smile, he dropped his gaze to the glass again. It felt strange to see him unsure in front of me, and it didn’t sit well with me either.
There was space between us wide enough for a child to sit. I cut that distance by half, sliding my hips across the plush cushion to move closer. I stroked up and down, light as a tickle, over the skin of his forearm where his shirt sleeve was rolled up, then drew my touch down toward his wrist.
He looked straight at me like he was watching something marvelous. Then, answering my movement, he set the glass down and offered me his hand. I slowly laid my palm over his, big and warm.
"I believe you."
A faint relief rose in his blue eyes. Like someone finding a thin thread of hope in despair, his gaze was desperate. Was this really something to make him this unsure of himself with me? It hurt to see him blame himself with more weight than needed.
"Please don’t be afraid of me.... I won’t do that again...."
Don’t despise me, he added in a pained voice.
Watching him fear that I might try to put distance between us, I remembered the early days after we met. Back then, I was nothing to him. A temp helping out for a while who would leave soon. And for the sake of his precious Phantom people, he’d even been wary of me.
Now I know. He isn’t the kind of person who shows unconditional kindness to people he barely knows. He prioritizes the people who are precious to him and focuses only on them. He isn’t someone who exposes and shares all of himself even with those precious people. So to someone looking in, he might not be a very good person.
For that very reason I felt a wall at first and got discouraged, but now... precisely because he is that kind of person, I held a monopoly on his affection, focused wholly on me.
It’s an interesting thing. The same personality trait in one person can first be the reason that makes things hard, then become the virtue you don’t want to see change. Once I got inside the world beyond his wall—the world that had left me feeling slighted and stoking an uncharacteristic rebellious streak—now there I was, relieved that he wasn’t kind to everyone. I, not he, let out a snort at my own shallowness.
I shook my head and laced my fingers with his where our hands overlapped.
"I’m not afraid. Everyone said it was a situation where it made sense. Being angry is natural. And... thank you for being angry for me. Honestly, I was... really angry too."
"......."
"I’m not trying to endorse violence... but no one can make perfectly rational, perfectly balanced judgments all the time in every situation. We’re human...."
The relief in his eyes deepened further.
"I didn’t bring you all the way here so you could be subjected to that kind of garbage.... I’m sorry."
He grimaced as he recalled the blonde man’s words.
"That’s... not something Awi... has any reason to apologize for, so please don’t say that."
He couldn’t hide the joy of being called by the name Awi, and a blurred smile surfaced. Through that name, he seemed to confirm that I truly had no intention of pushing him away over this, and only then fully relaxed.
Keeping his eyes on mine, he lifted our interlaced hands and kissed the back of my hand. Then he kissed each knuckle of my fingers where they arched over the back of his hand. It was a kiss like he’d gained something so precious he didn’t dare clutch it tight.
"It’s a relief you couldn’t smell that stench."
Relief ran with a blue-edged wrath in his voice.
I hadn’t noticed, of course, but the blonde man had probably opened his pheromones to me. If he mistook me for an Omega and tried to unsettle and lure me, sexually, with pheromones... it made it even easier to understand why he lost control and let his anger show that much. Almost no one could keep their cool watching, right before their eyes, someone they like getting lured—or insulted—in a vulgar way.
The man I met at the party at The Face Gallery in Hong Kong ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) (come to think of it, he had flamboyant blond hair too). When that man opened his pheromones to me, too...
