For about two minutes there, I got to hear many things about those two years in Boston that probably no one in Phantom knew about—not even Inu or Shushu.
Even though he didn’t go to school and did homeschooling, letters and gifts never stopped coming; Ellen said it felt like living in the same house as a superstar. After he left, she felt empty for a while. On top of that were stories like how “Never Smile Boy,” persuaded by Ellen and Marcus whose hobby is running marathons, entered a half-marathon and, at the finish, showed a bright smile for the first time—and how powerful that was—and the ten-line letter that taciturn boy left on the day he parted from them to return to Hong Kong for good.
As Ellen and Marcus unraveled their stories, he sometimes scratched his brow, sighed, or swept a hand over his face, clearly mortified. He tried several times to steer the topic elsewhere and failed.
I know him as someone who, with anyone at all, deftly guides a conversation where he wants it or, if he doesn’t like where it’s going, can shut it down by rather rough, mischievous means. So seeing him flustered yet willingly offering up his own past as a topic felt new and strange to me.
To Ellen and Marcus, who are into their mid-sixties, he seemed like a son or grandson. And though I don’t know for sure, it occurred to me that most ordinary grandparents would probably be just as happy as they were now, reminiscing about a grandchild’s childhood after a long time apart.
“After Kun left, Jonas took it especially hard. At first he hated him, called him an arrogant, antisocial brat, but within a month they were sticking together like brothers.”
With a gentle smile, eyes lowered to the tabletop as if recalling a good time gone by, Marcus spoke. Ellen, patting the glossy back of Ted, who was weaving between the legs of the people gathered around the table, teased Marcus lightly.
“What are you talking about? You had it harder than Jonas did. You moped for a month like someone who’d been dumped.”
Jonas was Marcus and Ellen’s son.
When I first heard about Jonas at dinner yesterday, I couldn’t help getting excited. Two years younger than him and now working in the city of Pittsburgh as a researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Jonas was, literally, a miraculous being—born to Ellen, a female alpha, and Marcus, a male beta.
I learned last night for the first time that, unlike a beta woman’s, a female alpha’s uterus, ovaries, and ova are often not fully mature—but the degree varies by individual, and while the rate is very low, pregnancy is possible in some cases, and medical help can raise that possibility.
Marcus and Ellen wanted a child, and Ellen was fortunate enough to have mature eggs. After several hard failures, they miraculously had Jonas without using a surrogate.
Of course, the conditions Ellen had at the time were very favorable, but even though nearly thirty years have passed since Marcus and Ellen conceived Jonas, the success rate is still low and the cost astronomical—an intervention with high barriers. Because demand is small, progress and availability have inevitably lagged—that was how Ellen and Marcus explained it.
Whether More and Hyung knew anything about that procedure, what they would think if they learned it existed—or, no, whether they even wanted children—none of that was something I could know yet. But once we were back in Seoul, I planned to send them materials by email with help from Ellen and Marcus—and from him.
I don’t think having children is the completion or proof of love, but the fact that they might be given even a faint possibility, an option, made me giddy.
If they were to proceed, it would require a considerable amount of money... but if the two of them wanted to know their odds with precision through testing, I was seized by a firm conviction that Dr. Im must gladly cover the cost. It was a will as intense and definite as hostility and a thirst for revenge. And whether or not holding that position was like me, I had no intention whatsoever of regretting it or withdrawing it.
By the time we had walnut pie for dessert, emptied several bottles of wine, the little candles placed here and there on the table had burned short, and a few flames had gone out, Ted began circling the same spot with a fretful whine. Saying he needed to go, Ellen rose in place of a rather tipsy Marcus, and he volunteered to go with her.
He did glance my way for a moment, perhaps uneasy about leaving me alone with Marcus, who was high-spirited and chatty, but then he set down his wineglass and stood up, saying Marcus should probably stop drinking now.
“Ah... I’ve become an old man too, haven’t I. When Kun first came to this house I was a vigorous forty-something, and I could raise a ruckus past midnight and still be fine.”
Watching his sturdy back as he left the dining room sweetly with Ellen, Marcus gave a small shake of his head, smiling with satisfaction and a touch of sadness.
“Kun, and Jonas too—when did those teenage boys who were struggling and wandering to define themselves become such fully grown young men? They’re not even in their twenties anymore. They’re all grown.”
“......”
“In my lifetime I never thought I’d see Lau Wikun bring a lover home.”
Leaning forward from where he’d been lounged back, Marcus put an impish stress on the word lover. He also talked about how, knowing his personality, he realized just how special this was. He said he was many times happier that he’d visited with me than if he had come alone.
I smiled silently and drank more of my share of wine, thinking that at least the people around him all held the same view of his love life.
Recalling the conversation we’d had about Jonas last night, Marcus asked a few questions about More and Hyung. Since the people in question weren’t present, he didn’t pry, but with just a few brief mentions he could infer the crux of things—he was a man rich in experience and wisdom.
“It wasn’t easy for Ellen and me either.”
Palming the lower part of his wineglass, Marcus dropped his voice a little.
“The fact that we had a son together and stayed together for decades, into old age like this... it’s still hard to believe sometimes... there was a time I wasn’t confident in our future.”
Watching Marcus smile like someone newly in love, not like someone speaking of a spouse of many decades, a quiet smile touched my lips too.
“Was deciding to study pheromones... largely because of Ellen?”
I took courage and asked. Marcus, still smiling, nodded slowly.
“As a beta, I can never experience the force of pheromones myself... but even if only in theory, I wanted to know her and understand her.”
In the quiet room, where the only sound now and then was the soft crackle of spent candles, Marcus went on in a low, calm voice.
“From the time I first met her in high school she was already a Golden who could control her pheromones almost perfectly, so while I was with her I never needed to be conscious of them at all... but as I kept studying... despite claiming to love her... I realized I’d treated pheromones like a fantasy that had no effect on her—like something that might as well not exist—just because I couldn’t feel them and because she didn’t complain.”
Marcus paused and finished the last little bit of wine on the bottom. I looked down at a candle in its holder, trembling precariously with little life left, and waited for the rest.
“Becoming Golden doesn’t make pheromones disappear. It only means they’re being suppressed. Even if I can’t experience pheromones directly... the stress and burden you feel when you have to force yourself to control hunger or sleep—that much I, a beta, could imagine and empathize with.”
“......”
“I realized I had been treating her with an utterly beta-centric mindset.”
His words felt like being clubbed across the skull. I went dizzy, light-headed, ashamed. My eyes couldn’t face Marcus across from me and fidgeted in the air.
“For about a year I couldn’t find my balance. Suddenly she felt distant, like an existence from another dimension or planet I could never understand, and I wasn’t sure I could do well. Looking back now, I was so weak and emotional it’s hard to forgive. Until then I’d never thought deeply about her as an alpha, so everything was that confusing.”
I pressed my lower lip between my teeth and stared vacantly at the traces left in the chair beside me where he had risen. The plate wiped clean, knife and fork set neatly, the napkin on the empty chair—each and every thing made me think of him.
He had never once asked me to understand him as an alpha.
“If I were an omega, I could have made a perfect pair with her. If I were at least an alpha, I could have understood pheromones with her not just in theory but in practice. Why am I... just one of the countless, common... betas like ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) dust. I even fell into that sort of pathetic self-denial.”
I lifted my half-filled glass and threw back the wine like water. The haze of alcohol that had been spreading lifted in an instant and my mind cleared; that meant I needed more to drink.
“Among betas, people emphasize only the animalistic impulses, the negative side of pheromones, but that’s really just about a few problem alphas and omegas who neglect pheromone management. Most alphas and omegas, unless they’re Golden, live their whole lives taking medication to control pheromones.”
For a beta, it’s like someone living with a chronic condition such as asthma or diabetes.
Whether from drink or fatigue, Marcus rubbed his face with his palm and added in a parched voice. His light brown eyes, fringed with gentle lines at the edges, even looked a little bloodshot.
“Learning that pheromones aren’t just a dangerous drug that incites sex crimes—that when they act between an alpha and omega who love each other, they can draw out the highest communion and give a freedom close to release—made it harder to endure. Even knowing she doesn’t commune with anyone but me, just the fact that there is a deep world of communion within her that I can never reach, and that there is no possibility I can share it, left me tossed by objectless jealousy and feelings of inadequacy.”
I grabbed the half-full wine bottle standing nearby and refilled my glass. Marcus pushed his empty glass forward too. I hesitated, remembering his words earlier worrying about him, but I couldn’t not pour.
From the back garden came Ted’s bark, twice. It sounded like Ellen and he were taking their first time alone since yesterday at a more leisurely pace. Marcus and I focused for a while on drinking in silence.
Everyone around him said he was a Golden alpha who could perfectly control his pheromones, a rare alpha who detested and avoided pheromonal interaction to an extreme.
He had never once hinted he would have preferred me to be an omega. So I was completely at ease. I forgot he was an alpha. At least I didn’t take it seriously. As Marcus said, I had a beta-centric mindset. I’d been that way with More too.
What are the traits of an alpha, what suppression is required, how heavy a burden is it... because they didn’t complain, I hadn’t tried to know, and if pheromones weren’t hindering their daily lives, I arbitrarily decided it was no longer an important issue in their lives.
And yet, on the other hand, the existence of an omega—someone who could savor his pheromones and touch his depths through pheromones—did bother me. As Marcus had been in the past.
But it wasn’t because he had shown me any ambiguous attitude. When you desire someone who isn’t yourself, the frail anxiety that rises inside can incite absurd imaginings. That’s probably an ugly facet of instinct that even a person with the most mature mind—someone like Marcus—would find hard to avoid.
“If she were with me, a beta, then as an alpha she’d have to live denying herself, suppressing herself, losing the chance at free communion all her life... with that thought I concluded I was someone with a defect that kept me from loving her wholly, and we were apart for about a year.”
Marcus rubbed the corner of his mouth and gave a self-mocking laugh. His short, neatly trimmed silver beard caught the candlelight and glinted. Swirling the glass he had refilled and drained past halfway again, Marcus smiled at me across the table.
“But now I think it may be precisely because we were alpha and beta... that even after being together long enough for everyday life to become our norm, we could keep from forgetting there’s no such thing as happiness that comes by default and could stay grateful for each other for a long time. To keep being together, to understand each other more fully... we can’t forget that being alpha and beta takes constant effort.”
Marcus glanced at the empty chair beside him where Ellen had been sitting. He smiled softly, as if she were still there, then stretched his arm across the table to offer me a toast. I gladly raised my glass.
A love that doesn’t take daily happiness for granted. That might be the hardest practice of love. Like how we don’t consciously think every day about the preciousness of sky, earth, and air. Even so, it isn’t impossible. No, it may be something most worth striving for—for the person you love most. More than filling special anniversaries with events.
With the sound of the back door opening and shutting beyond the hallway to the yard, I heard Ellen and his voices. Marcus hurried to drain the wine left in his glass, erasing the evidence. We looked at each other and laughed silently.
“What were you talking about? Bad-mouthing me again?”
He bent from behind to wrap an arm around my neck and kissed my cheek. At that display of affection, Marcus and Ellen widened their eyes at each other. Marcus in particular cleared his throat and gulped water instead of wine.
“At this rate I’m scared I’ll get dumped the moment we’re back in Seoul. Please, stop talking bad about me for real.”
With his joke, the long dinner drew to a close. So that Margaret could clean up easily the next day, we all carried the dishes to the kitchen and left the dining room. Marcus, who had seemed fine while seated, swayed a little as the intoxication hit him all at once. Out in the hallway his face had flushed a dark red. He tried to help him to the bedroom, but Marcus said it wasn’t that bad and disappeared first with Ted into the bedroom on the inner side of the first floor.
I watched Marcus’s retreating back with unease and was about to start up to the second floor when Ellen lightly took my arm. He, seeing that, said he’d go up ahead, gently cupped the back of my neck, and headed upstairs. Ellen, her face full of curiosity and playfulness as she watched him go, stroked my arm softly at the foot of the stairs.
“I always worried I might never see that kid pour his affection into someone and want that affection in return. He was so stubborn about refusing to let anyone into his life....”
