It didn’t seem strictly necessary, but he chose an area he would never normally visit—neither near his workplace nor his home, ambiguously out of the way—and went into the largest of several pharmacies in front of a mid-size general hospital.
A plastic sign on the door outside listed business hours until 10 p.m., yet even though it had only just turned eight, the pharmacy inside was quiet.
“Welcome.”
Instead of the middle-aged man in everyday clothes sitting with his back to the entrance and absorbed in the computer screen, a pharmacist in a white coat emerged from the inner dispensary to greet him. She looked to be in her early thirties and asked what he needed with a smile.
He was a strikingly handsome man with an uncommon, foreign aura and a tall, well-built body that drew the eye even from a distance where his face couldn’t be seen clearly; but he looked on edge, as if someone were after him.
Still, she waited patiently.
Judging from the refined taste that naturally showed in his clothes and the polished manners evident even in small, unconscious gestures, he did not look like the sort to be in financial distress and about to attempt a robbery.
Patients who came to a pharmacy because they found their symptoms hard to speak about were far more common than people thought. Athlete’s foot or hemorrhoids, which to her were simple ailments, could be difficult for a patient to bring up.
But even after he came up to the counter, the man hesitated with a nervous expression—not out of shame at revealing something to another person, but out of humiliation he felt toward himself.
There was no choice, however. He forced open lips that wouldn’t part.
“I’m here to buy... a suppressant.”
“Yes, may I see some ID?”
Despite the man’s unusual manner, the pharmacist kept to a routine tone. That response put him a little at ease. He was grateful she didn’t glance at him like a beast, wondering if he was an Alpha in rut. That kind of look would have made this even more unbearable. All the more because he wasn’t in rut.
After confirming his Alpha designation, she handed his ID back and asked,
“If you have a product you normally take, shall I give you that one?”
He shook his head.
“No, nothing in particular.”
Turning briefly to scan the shelves behind her, the pharmacist set a paper box on the counter, its design emphasizing luxury in deep green and gold.
“This is the one people ask for most.”
Pushing the box back toward her, the man spoke firmly in a low voice.
“I’ve already tried this. I’m looking for something stronger.”
He had already bought and taken a suppressant at another pharmacy.
Suppressants, he thought. The entirety of his experience with suppressants was a brief stint as an auxiliary during early manifestation in his far-off boyhood, when his second puberty arrived. As a Golden Alpha, he hadn’t needed them, and because he’d had no wish to become a beast who had to control his heat with some suppressant, he had worked all the harder to perfect himself as a Golden Alpha.
Yet a suppressant sought again after about twenty years had almost no effect. At first it seemed to do something, faintly—but as soon as “he” began to show desire toward him, it was useless.
“As you know, an Omega’s heat has a somewhat regular cycle due to hormones, so there’s more stable, fundamental suppression available... but an Alpha’s rut has a strong sudden character, triggered by his own libido or by exposure to an Omega’s pheromones... so even though we call these suppressants, they can’t do much more than dull the sense of smell.”
The pharmacist explained with a slightly troubled look.
The man knew it well, too.
An Omega’s heat, marked by increased sexual drive and a heavy release of pheromones, occurred according to a regular pattern of hormone secretion; an Alpha’s arousal did not. No regularity, no cycle. If he felt desire, he emitted pheromones at once; if exposed to an Omega’s pheromones, he reacted at once and desire arose.
It was one reason he couldn’t feel Alphas were superior to Betas or Omegas, and also why he had poured himself into becoming a Golden Alpha.
That animal nature—opening pheromones in response to stimulation he couldn’t control, indulging in another’s pheromones—he had believed ended completely with his inexperienced boyhood.
“There is a stronger product, but you might temporarily lose almost all sense of smell. If you take it continuously, it can fundamentally affect olfactory function. You... know that, right?”
Watching his tense expression, the pharmacist asked carefully, as if to confirm.
“I don’t intend to take it long-term. Two boxes of that, please.”
At his words, she packaged and handed over two boxes smaller than the one from before, along with instructions to take two pills at once, up to twice a day.
“Are you... a Golden Alpha, by any chance?”
After finishing the payment, she stopped him as he turned away from the counter, then added in a cautious tone to the man who looked back.
“If you’re a Golden Alpha and you suddenly need suppressants, it would be better to see a specialist rather than take an over-the-counter drug.”
The man nodded as if agreeing with her suggestion.
“I’ll do that.”
But even a world authority in the field—someone beyond a mere specialist—couldn’t explain his situation now. A Golden Alpha showing a temporary abnormality in pheromone control. It was more complicated than that.
He tossed the bag with the medicine onto the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. The fact that the only thing he could rely on right now was a few lousy capsules made him want to laugh.
Only after he’d smoked three cigarettes in a row could he grip the wheel again.
■ ■ ■
“And then he shot them down again, can you believe it?”
Yuni threw her arms wide and raised her voice with an aggrieved look.
It was about interviews for new hires Phantom was recruiting. Among the people who had come over the past week, all the candidates she and my brother had shortlisted in their own way were, according to her, rejected by him at the final interview, and she was full of complaints.
“Sure, it’s the season when fourth-years looking for jobs flood in, so there are a lot of applicants, but at this rate we’re going to end up going to Chicago in August without a single day off, no vacation, just overtime. I mean, how easy is it to find someone who’s perfect from the start? Why is our director that picky.”
Sitting next to me in the back seat, she hugged the passenger seat where ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) Gwon Juhan sat and made a crying face.
“Because I quit so suddenly....”
“It’s not your fault, so don’t go there.”
Before my apology could get long, she held up a forefinger and firmly shut my mouth.
Yuni, Juhan, and I had met at a big-box store, done the grocery run, and were on our way back.
After my brother and Morae left last Sunday, starting that very next Monday I stopped going in to Phantom. And I moved my things into the basement of his house.
The Plan A he’d mentioned was the basement of his home.
Even though it was called a basement, the first floor was at a one-and-a-half-floor height up a staircase, so more than half of the space was exposed above ground. The windows were big and many, so there was plenty of light and no issue with ventilation. None of the damp, musty feel unique to basements—it was perfectly comfortable.
Just as he’d explained, the previous owner had renovated it cleanly in a studio style so his son, then studying abroad, could live there upon returning, so there wouldn’t be any inconvenience. The floors and walls were tidy, and it even had a kitchen and bath.
If I had to pick between the A and B he proposed, my choice was obviously A without a question.
Even that was plenty luxurious for me, but he, hands jammed in his pant pockets, paced the epoxy floor with a face that said he wasn’t thrilled and urged me several times to reconsider the old place.
It had been a modest move—just a backpack and a couple of shopping bags—but today was a kind of housewarming in the sense of the invitation he’d suggested.
“It’s not like we’re choosing a boyfriend—what’s with this ‘feeling’ talk. When you first came to help you acted a little aloof, but then you pretended to be won over and said we could do it our way, and now—ugh, matchmaking would be easier.”
Listening to my sister’s perfectly fair grumbling, it occurred to me that his initial indifference toward me might actually have been on the friendly side. If in the end he hadn’t liked me, he never would have hired me—someone with troublesome baggage—as staff. That I now knew.
“In the end the people who’ll work face-to-face are me and Gwon Juhan! Whoever’s scheduled Monday, we push it through no matter what.”
While my sister steeled her resolve, the car was pulling into his garage.
We waved off the driver, who offered to carry the bags, and each of us took two grocery sacks from the trunk.
For the time being, the opinion of him and the chief was that when I went out, I should ride in a car driven by the driver. I hardly went out because I wasn’t going to work, but still the driver always waited in a guard booth set aside in the garage until he came home. Being the recipient of kindness and consideration, I couldn’t insist on stubbornly refusing just because I felt awkward—but it was awkward and burdensome all the same.
“That driver is definitely doubling as security, right? Is that... that father of your sister, is he really that scary?”
Walking the corridor that connected to the studio, my sister lowered her voice to ask, even though the door had already closed behind us.
If she meant someone who could snatch me out of my current life to ferret out the location of Morae and my brother... then yes, Teacher Im was indeed “that” frightening.
All my talk about how life here made me feel unsteady and unable to find calm—none of it compared to being dragged back to the village by Teacher Im and interrogated about Morae and my brother’s whereabouts. I didn’t want to play the Hollywood-animated-movie side character who moralizes and causes trouble for everyone while lacking any ability to solve anything.
“Did they arrive safely, your sister and brother?”
At the door leading to the studio, Juhan, who’d reached it first, looked back and asked. I shook my head.
“They’re still en route. Calcutta—they emailed yesterday.”
He’d set us up email accounts for contact with Morae and my brother. Entering Eastern Europe via Minsk, capital of Belarus, the two had crossed several countries in the east of Europe, then traversed Russia, gone down through Mongolia and China into India, and from there planned to approach Bali by alternating land, air, and sea routes. It was a route he had planned and prepared in less than a day.
“They’ll make it. It’s the director’s plan.”
Loaded down with bags, my sister tilted her head and lightly bumped my temple as she spoke, and understanding her intent to comfort me, I nodded back.
“Open the door, quick. This is heavy.”
At my brother’s half-complaining prod, I tapped in the password and released the door lock.
Midway along the corridor that connected from the garage there was a door into the studio; past that, a right turn led to another door out to the garden.
Since I’d come, he’d been using the door from the garden side to access the garage, but there was also a staircase inside the studio that connected to the first floor. If he invited me to eat together, I went upstairs via the internal stairs.
To be honest... over the past week—after I moved on Monday, up to yesterday, Friday—there had been physical contact between us twice.
Once after we ate sushi he’d brought back from outside, and once after we ate oil pasta he’d made; we chatted a bit and... ended up kissing and touching.
But both times there was no penetration. We made each other come by hand, and once he rubbed between my thighs while we stood. That was all.
“Wow... how is this a basement? In college neighborhoods you get places on the second or third floor packed wall to wall with the building next door and they’re still gloomy! This is luxury!”
Excited, Juhan set his bags down on the floor and started looking around the studio. It was a wildly enthusiastic reaction, quite unlike mine when he first showed me the place.
“Maybe because it’s open like a studio, it looks even bigger. This side is for the workroom... that side the bedroom. Right?”
My sister set her bags down beside the ones Juhan had dropped in the middle and pointed toward the bed half-visible beyond the far corner. Juhan was already running to the bed, even checking the cushion of the mattress.
In the central space by the door where my sister and I stood, there was almost nothing besides tools for painting. Looking with interest at the canvases lined up upside down under the window, my sister asked,
“Nothing finished yet?”
“If you’re not feeling it, don’t show us. We’re gallery staff at least in name; we know how to respect a painter’s wishes.”
Already back this way, Juhan squatted by the bags he’d set down and peeled a banana, joining in.
“It’s not that... I took too long a break, so right now I’m only loosening up my hand....”
The tools and materials he’d prepared for me were almost too good, but I was still mostly sketching; two days ago I’d touched some oil paint a little, that was it. But my hours at work were quickly increasing. I was spending almost the whole time drawing from when he left for work until he came home, and it wasn’t painful the way I had feared drawing might be.
I was merely moving my hand to put down the subject; I still wasn’t putting myself into it.
But I couldn’t go on forever doing studies and drawings as practice. I had borrowed money on the promise I would paint; I had an obligation to produce paintings that had economic value.
