“Fine. You’re a Ghost. Let’s say you can, through some trained control sense, trip a chemical process during noting the way you switch off a pistol’s safety and pull the trigger, and turn a beta into an omega. It’d be silly to insist a mutation like that is impossible when the alpha–omega pheromone mechanism itself isn’t scientifically explained anyway.”
The more he talked, the cooler his head ran; separately from that, anger surged up. He didn’t even have the leeway to audit whether he had the right to be angry in the face of this.
“But you said you trained. You said those two years in the States when you were a kid were for that. So why did you switch off the safety with Ihyeon?”
He pressed with a sneer, and the reply came at once.
“I’ve never failed. Not once, till now. With anyone. I’ve never failed to control even the noting—never mind having to go as far as changing. You can only trigger changing during noting, so when I wasn’t noting there wasn’t even a risk I’d attempt changing.”
“You didn’t control either noting or changing—with Seo Ihyeon!”
He shouted and raked his hair with a nervous hand.
Times like this made him wish he knew how to smoke. As a kid he’d tried every don’t-do-that under the sun and yet, out of some stubbornness, left cigarettes alone; but in life there are times you want to numb and dirty and harm yourself with something as harsh as strong liquor—and cigarettes are that harsh.
“I told myself it was a mistake. That something had gone wrong for a moment.”
Avoiding his eyes, the man sounded like he was making excuses. He slammed his fist on the table and raised his voice.
“To check that, you slept with him a second, a third time? Knowing it could turn into changing?”
The man’s stare, which had been fixed on a point on the tabletop, snapped up at him, sharp.
“You think I’d sleep with someone just to verify that? I don’t have that much curiosity about other °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° people or about pheromones.”
“I figured I knew your pattern if not your essence, at least to some extent—but after what I heard today, I have no idea who you are.”
“......”
On that point the man shut his mouth and threw back a drink. He wore the face of someone conceding there was no room for excuses. Still, he wanted the man to make them—at least enough he could accept it, enough to bring his anger down.
As if he couldn’t go on without it, the man lit a new cigarette and only then began in a tone a shade calmer than before.
“When we’d barely met. Back then it was just... a kinky feeling. Nothing I could sense clearly enough to be sure it was pheromones. I wondered if he was a golden omega suppressing his pheromones—didn’t think too hard at the time... but watching over time, that wasn’t it either. At some point it wasn’t just a kinky feeling—he started to give off real pheromones. And... he had no awareness of pheromones at all, even while he clearly sensed the ones I opened and the ones he emitted himself.”
“You opened pheromones? You?”
“......”
The more he listened, the more he felt driven into confusion. The man held back an answer. As if suddenly aware that he’d stopped smoking while he talked, he lifted the cigarette and dragged on it deep. Then his voice collapsed.
“Yeah. Over and over.”
The cigarette in his hand, as he scrubbed his brow and face with his fingers, looked like it might set his hair on fire.
He searched his memory for a second, gathered himself, and shook his head hard.
“No. No, this makes no sense. Ihyeon never sensed my pheromones at all.”
“......”
The man’s fierce eyes asked what he meant, but he had no intention of backing down.
“Why? Did you think you were the only one who could open pheromones to Seo Ihyeon? You’re not the only alpha in the world.”
He lifted his glass and drank, remembering that evening on the rooftop bar when he’d met Ihyeon alone and answered his questions about alphas, omegas, and pheromones.
Maybe, in that moment, Ihyeon had felt an unusual current in his relationship with the man and asked because of that—that late thought followed. At the time he’d just assumed it was natural curiosity about alphas that came with being drawn to Lau Weikun....
“Even if I’m not the only one who can open them, the only pheromones that can act on him... are mine—does that follow?”
Reading the conclusion on his face, the man drawled it out with a jeer—and he looked... pleased. He was trying to suppress it, but discovering the possibility that only his pheromones might have actual effect on Ihyeon, he couldn’t fully hide the joy of monopolizing him.
He found it harder and harder to know who the man in front of him was; he gave a little shoulder-shake of a laugh, a click of the tongue embedded in it.
“Right. Unfortunately. If he’d shown a reaction to my pheromones then, if something had happened between me and Ihyeon, he wouldn’t have gotten tangled with a bastard like you and had his life wrecked.”
A cold blue gaze stabbed him, needle-sharp.
“I’d like you to hold off on the provocations right now.”
He looked away from the man’s eyes—filled with an unstable sense of emergency and aggression, unlike even in boyhood—and felt for his glass. The man went on.
“Whether Seo Ihyeon thinks he’s a beta, or he’s a rare mutational form—either way, it’s nothing to do with me. I’m not the type to have enough interest in others to be curious about that kind of thing.”
“......”
“But I couldn’t ignore it. I was following every move with my eyes, I wondered, I wanted to know, to peel him open... I couldn’t not go up and touch him. If I hadn’t been a Ghost to begin with...”
He broke off there, shook his head, and dragged on the cigarette again. Even though he’d only taken a couple of pulls, the thing had burned itself down short.
“There’s more than one thing I don’t get. Then when... did you first sense Ihyeon’s pheromones?”
The man gave a short huff and crushed out the cigarette.
“You must’ve forgotten, but from the start I said Seo Ihyeon was an omega.”
“But you’re saying he isn’t. You’re saying because of you he’s turning into one now. So how did you feel his pheromones before that? Then what is Seo Ihyeon? What is he?”
The man’s hand closed lightly on the table.
“I asked him that... over and over. What are you. No—asked isn’t right; it was closer to talking to myself.... He doesn’t know, either. Even now he only knows he’s a beta. The professor in Boston who’s looked after me since I was a kid has no knowledge of a being like that—that’s where things stand.”
The man holding his glass turned it slowly in his hand and bit his lower lip hard, then let it go.
“But now, whatever Seo Ihyeon is... it doesn’t matter. I didn’t come all this way to find that out.”
He rattled it off under his breath and tossed back the rest of the drink in one go. Watching him, he clicked his tongue.
“You dragged it this far... Whether it matters or not... that’s not for you to decide.”
“......”
“When manifestation hits after adulthood, most people can’t accept the change in their bodies and get shaken. When a man manifests as an omega or a woman as an alpha, the psychological shock is worse... Some never adapt and end up killing themselves. You know this; it’s not rare. And... in this case it’s not even his body manifesting on its own... It’s someone else...”
He couldn’t finish; he scrubbed his face hard with his hand.
Once he’d taken in the friend’s secret and the outrageousness of what his friend had done on a realistic level, he hit a new wall: telling Ihyeon. In the end that had to be why the man had come to him. Otherwise there was no reason to suddenly share a secret he’d kept up till now.
“I won’t let it come to that. He’s not... that weak a person.”
The man said it as he pulled a new cigarette from the pack.
“If he isn’t that weak—if he’s someone with the mind to endure and overcome—then... that makes it okay to do... that to him? No matter how I think about it, this... is nothing like you. Where’s the Lau Weikun who hated pheromone whatever more than anyone in the world?”
“You can’t understand, because you’ve never loved someone as an alpha.”
He doubted his ears. It felt like a sudden brake had thrown his weight forward—he was about to pitch over. The word choice hit as hard as anything else he’d heard from the man today.
“......”
“......”
He hung there, mouth open and lost for words; the man, too, aware of the word he’d chosen without thinking—the word love—looked away for whatever reason. He didn’t try to amend or retract it.
Like a tactless, uninvited guest, one of the two phones the man had set on the table started to buzz. Both of them glanced down; the man stood, grabbed the phone, and rose from his chair.
“Give me a second.”
He didn’t go far enough that the call couldn’t be overheard; he only walked as far as behind the sofa directly in his line of sight, then connected.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The voice was so everyday, so calm, you couldn’t believe this was the person who, moments ago, had sounded like he might tear his hair out as he talked about despair and confusion. He frowned, incredulous, glowering at the man’s back.
“No, it’s fine. Talk to me. I slipped out for a minute; it’s a relaxed scene. ...I’m eating here. Did you have dinner? Mm... and you didn’t leave any? ...Wow, good job. I’m glad the changed diet seems to be working. ...Uh... I might be a little longer. ...I might be in the middle of work, so I’ll leave a message when I head out.”
To Ihyeon on the other end of the call, he’d apparently spun it as a client dinner. With even a thread of a smile in his voice, he chattered away without a hitch.
He was floored. By any angle, that call was the way you talk to a lover you’re head over heels for. He had never imagined Lau Weikun’s romance would take this shape. After the shocks of the last few hours, he felt ten years older all at once. He didn’t think he could hold out without drinking; he drained what was left in his glass in one go.
When the man came back to the table, he wore the same murky, dark face as before he’d stepped away. He wet his lips with whiskey as soon as he sat, and then looked blankly like he had no idea why he was being stared at in silence.
“Ha. Do you have split personalities?”
“There’s no need to make him worry.”
“Who made this mess, and you’re saying you’re worried about Ihyeon now?”
“......”
“You think keeping it from him solves it? Playing with someone’s life like it’s yours to move around...”
At the rebuke, the man hunched like someone feeling real pain in his stomach or chest, face screwed up tight.
“Don’t... don’t talk like that.”
“How would you like me to talk?”
He knew a blame game like this only burns up emotion, but he didn’t have a healthier outlet to handle and vent the shock of this moment. So he couldn’t stop.
The man pressed his lips together, exhaled long and slow, touched a new cigarette to his lips, then took it back into his hand as his mouth worked. He weighed the words for a long time, as if picking what he was allowed to say.
“We’re serious. About each other.”
The sentence rode out on a breath like a sigh.
He hadn’t needed the man to declare it like an oath; he knew it. He’d sensed the man’s unusual attention to Ihyeon from the very beginning, and he’d expected that if it were Ihyeon, he might be able to break down the walls of a man who’d isolated himself and draw out his zeal. He just hadn’t expected that seriousness to run in this direction.
“Is it seriousness to change someone’s body behind his back? Then, much later, to serve up some shabby excuse about how your pheromones, as an alpha, wanted to pair with him as an omega? That your glorious alpha nature and pheromones wanted Seo Ihyeon?”
“......”
Strictly speaking he wasn’t Ihyeon’s family or an old friend, but the man, brow pinched and mouth set, didn’t fight back against the emotional censure. He kept his mouth shut and endured, as if he wanted to punish himself even through someone else’s blame.
Seeing him weaker than usual only stoked him more; his anger spiked and he went in to provoke harder.
“Why not just make him a hundred percent omega and wait till he’s pregnant, then tell him? Huh?”
“......”
The man turned his jaw toward his shoulder, let his gaze slide off to the side, and raked a hand through his hair. Reading what that reaction meant, he clicked his tongue and clamped a hand around the neck of the heavy brown bottle.
“So you have thought about it. This is truly insane.”
He tipped the bottle, filled his empty glass, and swallowed three or four gulps. He couldn’t even feel the heat of the undiluted whiskey tracking down his esophagus.
“So. What do you expect me to do? Isn’t this the last place you should be, telling me this right now?”
“......”
He was a man who’d kept the fact he was a Ghost silent even from his closest friend. He hadn’t come now to confess that, nor to lighten his guilt by talking about turning a “serious partner” into an omega.
