He flicked his ash and asked while watching me come back to my seat. For some reason, a lot of people had asked my height today.
“About 181.”
“Bigger than I expected.”
It was the exact opposite of what Yuni or Juhan had said. But even though he was the one who brought it up, he looked like he didn’t care.
The dining space, long and narrow with the table set lengthwise, sat between the living room and the kitchen. Because he had come home before me and turned on only the light above the table, the wide interior’s brightness pooled there alone.
It felt like a space made less for meals and more for drinks and close conversation; for the dining light the teacher had chosen a bulb that cast a soft, cozy orange glow.
Because the pendant hung low enough that I could bang my head if I sprang up, deep shadows fell over his face. Drawing on his cigarette with movements that looked a little tense, he slanted his gaze at me.
“Can I see the drawings you said you used to do?”
“......”
Unlike his half-hearted reaction after asking my height, the question about drawings was sincere. I never expected that someone who’d been not just indifferent but hostile toward me would, of all things, be curious about my drawings.
“No... I don’t have anything.”
“Not even photos of them?”
I shook my head.
I shook it again and again while gripping the water glass in front of me hard.
Between his breaths as he smoked, the faint buzz of a phone crept in: brrm, brrm. The one he had set on the table stayed quiet. He tapped off his ash and jerked his chin.
“Take it. It’s fine.”
The caller was Inwoo.
He said he’d just gotten home after dropping off Yuni and Juhan and asked if I’d gotten back safely. I thanked him again for the meal and hung up. It wasn’t even a minute.
“So you two managed to become the kind who call each other already?”
He ground the burned-down cigarette out in the ashtray as he said it. There was no snide edge.
“No... not really... We just exchanged numbers earlier today...”
“You said you were gay, so I guess you’re not completely uninterested in Choi Inwoo either, Seo Ihyeon?”
Because that “I’m gay” declaration had been false—at least an unverified impulse—I didn’t know what to say to that.
He fidgeted with the bottle of sports drink, opened it, and took another pull.
“Not much dating experience, right?”
“......”
I was relieved he didn’t push the topic of drawings any further, but dating wasn’t exactly comfortable either.
Lounging with one leg crossed, his back loose against the chair, he tapped the bottle on the tabletop and looked across at me. From what I’d seen so far, he wasn’t someone with particularly proper posture.
“As a friend, Choi Inwoo’s not bad, but I can’t say he’s a good guy as a man.”
Had he liked me enough to worry I’d get hurt by a bad guy? Thinking that, I stared blankly at his eyes—black irises I was used to versus the eyes of his that still felt uncanny to me.
Maybe he took my lack of reaction to mean I didn’t grasp the seriousness, because he leaned forward over the table and set a more earnest expression.
“Someone as green as you can’t handle his level. From the looks of it, you value taking it slow, °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° getting to know each other, connecting... He’s far from that kind of dating.”
“What about you, Director?”
“......”
Even though he had a person in front of him and was talking, he frowned like he hadn’t expected me to respond.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was my own little “wriggle” that let me be a bit mean only to him, but either way I was asking what even I thought was a bold question.
“Then are you a good guy, as a man?”
He dropped his gaze to the table and laughed. He lit a new cigarette, let the first drag out long, and said,
“Do ‘good men’... even exist? I’ve never seen one.”
It carried the nuance of someone who’d been burned by a bad man, or someone who had already filed himself under irredeemably bad.
But I couldn’t ask why. The self-mocking smile vanished from his face the very next moment.
“Since you met Choi Inwoo through Gallery Phantom, I’m saying this out of something like responsibility. Don’t take every single thing he says at face value. Well... if you’re drawn to him, I can’t say anything about that.”
If that was the point, then like he said, it was only “something like” responsibility. He wasn’t going to physically stop me, but he wanted a thin shield set up in advance so, if things turned messy, he wouldn’t have to carry the nagging sense that a tragedy had happened because of me.
As if he’d said enough on that, he pushed back the hair that had fallen over his brow with the back of his left hand holding the cigarette and changed the subject.
“I’d like you to start officially coming in to Phantom. We’ve added more artists lately, and the number and scale of exhibitions have gone up, so the staff are already struggling. I knew we needed to hire, but I’m... picky about people, so I made it hard on them. I’d like it if you came to work. I came up today to talk about that. I’ll have Manager Han pass along the details.”
He said it fast, like he’d get up the moment he finished, but even after the talk ended he kept smoking.
Maybe because I was buzzed, my brain turned slowly.
I hadn’t thought he’d want to hire me. Or maybe, somewhere deep in my unconscious, I’d guessed it would end up like this.
I didn’t know what to think. Rubbing away the droplets beaded on the cup from the difference between inside and outside temperature, I asked,
“Could I ask why you suddenly changed your mind?”
“I decided based on how you work and the results. It’s not much of a change of mind. Manager Han and the staff want you, too.”
“Not because you realized I’m not an Omega...?”
My brain, slower than usual, seemed to have lost its sense of direction altogether. I could blurt the questions as they popped up, without much hesitation. For someone who usually chooses his words more than necessary, it was a pretty bold question.
Did he make the offer because I wasn’t an Omega and therefore less likely to cause trouble? If so, why had his vaunted ability to tell Omegas so precisely malfunctioned only in my case?
He said nothing for a moment to my question that might sound cheeky depending on one’s stance, then drew two or three quick drags in succession.
“About that... you’re really not an Omega?”
Maybe it was the light pouring straight down from above and the cigarette in his fingers, but I felt like I was being interrogated by a detective.
“Yes. In middle school, and again at the physical before enlistment, I was certified one hundred percent Beta.”
“Then what is it?”
“What is it,” he muttered to himself, but his gaze stayed fixed on me, like he still couldn’t accept that I was a Beta—or more precisely, that I wasn’t an Omega.
“I told you I’m a Beta.”
“Are you really a Beta? Unless you’re a golden Omega or have a family with money, it’s honestly not an easy world to live in as a male Omega. If you’re pretending to be a Beta for no reason... you don’t have to.”
A breeze came from the kitchen window we’d left open. In the smoke spreading on the wind there was a foreign scent that must have been his cologne.
Maybe he didn’t realize the ember had burned so far down it was nearly at the filter; he made no move to put the cigarette out and just stared at me. Like someone hoping I’d confess it was a lie and say I really was an Omega.
Under his slightly narrowed lids, gray-blue irises slowly shifted, looking from my left eye to my right and back again.
My body kept loosening with the alcohol. No—“loosening” wasn’t quite it. It was true my joints felt slack and floppy, but it also felt like I was lifting off and drifting in the air.
I felt lazy enough to want to lie down right then, and high enough to want to pour another drink. I really wasn’t in a normal state.
I drank some water to steady myself, bit my lower lip once and let it go, and opened my mouth. I wanted him to give up on this issue now.
“No, I’m a Beta. Even if I were an Omega... I wouldn’t have hidden it for the reasons you mentioned.”
Even after that he didn’t take his eyes off me for a while. With that floating sensation like bobbing on waves, it got harder and harder to stay seated.
When he finally crushed out his cigarette and the acrid smoke faded, the cologne grew stronger. It was so intense I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it at the bar or in the back seat of the car when we’d been that close.
Fragrant, or unpleasant—
It wasn’t so simple. It was like a complicated equation.
If I caught a whiff of that on someone passing by, I’d probably look back just for the strangeness of it. A scent that tugged at my nerves in a peculiar way.
“Ha... what am I even...”
He shook his head like he was blaming himself. I didn’t know for what. Maybe the breeze through the window scattered it, but the scent lingering under my nose drifted away.
He stubbed out the cigarette, took his half-finished sports drink, and stood. If I had any questions about working officially, I should consult Manager Han, and as I knew, they’d help conscientiously. With that businesslike closing line, he disappeared beyond the front door.
Maybe it was the buzz, but arousal hit hard. It’s normal at my age to feel it several times a day, but for me it was extremely rare.
I stopped mid-shower and stroked myself under the stream. It wasn’t the usual mechanical masturbation where I just forced an erection through friction and pressure and hurried to release.
In the sexual pleasure that surged until my whole skin tingled, my legs went weak and I had to lean against the tile wall as if collapsing. The intensity of the desire—new to me—was so high it leapt past both my temperament and experience and swallowed me, and it even scared me.
Letting out ragged moans, even after one release I was at a loss, clutching an arousal that refused to subside.
Excessive drinking isn’t good for health, but the risk of exposure to sudden sexual urges was worse.
Even though it was the most violent act I’d had, when I crashed onto the bed spent, I felt thirst more than relief. I twisted the sheet in my fist and slapped it lightly, and for the first time in years, I swore out loud.
