The cigarette burned down to the filter and still the man could barely open his mouth. He’d thrown back two more drinks, yet aside from a faint bloodshot ring at the edges of his eyes, he didn’t seem able to borrow any courage from the alcohol.
Grinding out a cigarette that looked too spent to give off even a wisp of smoke, the man spoke in a tight, strangled voice.
“Changing symptoms have started showing up... He’s not feeling well right now.”
“Him...?”
Ha. Out of things to say, he could only keep shaking his head. It felt strange to watch a man openly acknowledge a relationship in front of someone else without any sign of discomfort. He’d never so much as gossiped about people who were only physical partners.
“Usually there’s loss of appetite, heartburn, discomfort in the abdomen... Depending on the person there can be nausea or vomiting... He hasn’t been eating much for weeks since those symptoms began.”
“His body’s changing inside—of course he’s sick to his stomach!”
“It’s not exact, but I’d say roughly ten to twenty percent of the change has happened. He thinks it’s just mild gastritis... but since there’s no sign of improvement, he said he’s going to the hospital....”
As the man’s voice sagged and went slack, he leaned back in his chair, torso tipping far away.
“You... you’re not— no, you wouldn’t.”
The man’s tired blue eyes sent him a pleading look. He shook his head hard, refusing the man’s entreaty.
“Don’t tell me you want me to get in on this insanity too?”
In eyes that had gone the color of dull ash after losing their light, a sudden flash of blue flared.
“You knew from the start I was interested in him. You knew and you kept egging me on.”
Maybe that human desperation you only see when someone hits a dead end was dragging something aggressive out of him now. Ever since they sat down at this table, the man hadn’t seemed right in the head.
“Weren’t you the one who wanted it to work out between us? Weren’t you amused at the idea of a pathetic bastard who’d never known love opening his eyes to honest feelings, like some fairy-tale ending?”
“Yeah, I was a little amused. So what’s the big deal? Because I pushed, things got serious like you said, and if I’d kept my mouth shut nothing would’ve happened at all?”
Realizing the back-and-forth was pointless, the man scrubbed his face with a broad palm and let the hostility go. Raking his pitch-black hair—so at odds with those blue eyes—he propped an elbow on the table and clenched a fist in his crown.
“Help me. There’s... no one else I can ask.”
“Tell Ihyeon everything. Then you won’t need anyone’s help. It’s something you’ll have to do sooner or later no matter how much you try to dodge it.”
At that most rational—and therefore maybe most irresponsible—answer, the man released his grip on his hair and bit his lower lip.
Then, like a serious addict, he reached for another cigarette. He’d never smoked one after another like this before. But once he lit it, he spent more time holding it than bringing the filter to his lips. It seemed he just needed something—anything—to cling to.
His lips were dry and chapped as he stared at the thin bluish smoke curling up from the cigarette in his hand.
“I knew I had to tell him. I knew this isn’t the kind of mess you can fix later—that I had to stop. But at the same time there’s a part of me that wants to turn him a little more into an omega. If we’re bound deeper by pheromones, then it’ll be harder for him to reject me. Even if I confess, I figured the odds he’d accept me would go up by that much. So there’s me... the coward... trying to keep him by my side through the very pheromone-dependent method I used to despise most. I couldn’t ignore how sweet that voice sounded... and that’s how we got here.”
As if remembering, he drew deep on the cigarette and tapped off the lengthening ash.
“Whatever he is in reality, the fact that he releases pheromones that trigger mine makes him, for me, effectively a higher-grade golden omega. I can’t resist those pheromones and I can’t control my own. You’ve never been exposed to that level of pheromone, so you can’t understand. I think it’s as impossible as convincing a beta about the real effects pheromones cause. Even I felt an enormous gap between what I learned in theory and what I experienced for real. Even though he’s not an omega I’ve known long... the sense that I’m already powerfully subjugated, the way my entire life rearranges around him, the impulse to spend every bit of my energy for him... I’ll put money on it—there isn’t an alpha alive who could refuse that.”
It was the voice of someone convinced that if he couldn’t do it, no alpha could. Maybe he was right. He was the most exceptional alpha.
But even though he himself had lived as an alpha, he couldn’t accept that straightaway. He tightened his grip on the glass and shook his head.
“Even if you had to put physical distance between you, you should have removed Ihyeon from the situation itself.”
“......”
“In the end, because you were afraid he’d reject becoming an omega and push you away, you stalled and made everything worse.”
The man didn’t try to make excuses. With a roughened face and deepened eyes, he only looked at him.
“I’m not here to make a confession in front of you, or to beg for understanding. I came to ask you to help me minimize the shock for him... at least... so he can hear the explanation of this situation from me, so we can avoid him finding out in the worst possible way... that’s what I’m asking.”
All the important things—the things he absolutely needed to know—had already been spilled. Even so, he couldn’t answer the man’s last statement. A swarm of questions still scrambled his head.
If this is this shocking to me, a third party wholly outside the situation... what will it be like for Ihyeon?
His upper body flinched as if a leather whip had cracked across his back. He glanced, unthinking, at the man across from him. Anxiety rippled in those blue eyes too. But whatever terror the man himself was tasting had to be far darker. The deeper the bond he’d felt with Ihyeon, the more intense the want for Ihyeon—the fear would be squeezing him with no gaps to breathe.
At some point the bottle was nearly empty. Even with how much they’d drunk in a short time, there was no loosening haze to lean on. He closed his eyes, feeling the heavy fatigue that hypervigilance brings.
“Go home. I have nothing to say tonight.”
He had no desire to see him out, and the other man didn’t seem to want a send-off either.
Rising, the man grabbed his cigarettes and phone but didn’t leave the table straight away; he half turned back. His large silhouette spread over the white tabletop.
“Beta and alpha. I even thought that might be the most ideal relationship for someone like me. Even without dragging pheromones into it, he... shook me, provoked me, fascinated me. But... I can’t. When I answer his wanting pheromones with mine, when I bind and commune with him with everything I have—mind, body, and pheromones—I gladly let myself be overturned by the joy of it. Sometimes I pity alphas who were born that way and never met someone like that....”
The man rubbed his jaw, face sunk in thought, and let his /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ words trail off. His voice was shredded like someone who’d been shouting for hours. It was husky to begin with; now it was even rougher. Whether from drink or feeling, the bloodshot in his eyes was just as raw. The face of a man laying his love bare looked like someone who’d had all the fruits of that love stolen before he could ever taste them.
“Consider what I just said... a status update to a friend, separate from the favor I’m asking.”
A status update, sure. It was a plea disguised as a threat: he mattered that much, so please, grant the favor.
He turned his face away from the man and tipped back his glass. The man spoke in a rasp that kept stopping to catch breath.
“After I get back from Chicago... I’ll tell him everything. Just until then... help me buy a little time, please.”
“......”
“I’m going.”
He only twisted his mouth and drank; he didn’t answer the farewell.
Watching the man’s back as he headed down the hall toward the entry, a blazing feeling surged up. It touched on anger and brushed contempt, but... if he had to name it, the closest thing was jealousy.
Jealousy so hot he wanted to grab and tear something away—aimed at what or at whom, he couldn’t say.
■ ■ ■
It was sudden, but I was glad Inwoo dropped by.
Every Thursday I only see patients in the morning, so when he called to say he was at his usual liquor shop nearby and thought he’d ring me, I hesitated for a second but happily said yes.
I had no complaints with my current life, but like an unusual harmony joining a steady, repeating melody, a visitor’s arrival brightened my mood. With the Chicago trip and the joint fall exhibition getting closer, maybe it was also because neither Yuni nor Juhan had contacted me at all this week.
“But I’m honestly a little hurt.”
Twisting the stem of the bold wineglass off my lips and rolling the glass on his crossed knee, he spoke.
The red wine—full and deep with a sensual impression—and the cream-cheese crackers I clumsily plated were gifts he’d brought. He’d looked apologetic that the snack didn’t pair with the wine he’d brought, but I was hardly in any position to fuss about pairings when I barely knew wine at all.
Sitting on my work chair I’d dragged to face the sofa I’d given my guest, I set my glass on the table and looked across at him.
“Ever since you moved in here, Ihyeon, you haven’t seen me even once.”
“Ah....”
“Is someone keeping you from meeting me?”
He tipped back his glass again, swallowing the dark red, and spoke in a teasing tone.
He’d once said he felt jealous even of the friend he’d grown up with for so long—and that friend was probably Inwoo—but strictly speaking, he’d never actually told me not to see Inwoo.
“N... no. A lot of things got decided all at once and the environment changed, so I’ve been out of my depth... and I’ve been focusing on painting... He told me to go out or invite people whenever I liked....”
My long-winded babbling cut off at his pointed little cough.
“Mm... I didn’t say it was because of Lau Weikun, so why are you taking his side?”
“......”
Heat rushed to my ears and I dropped my gaze. He laughed. It wasn’t a sneer making fun of my clumsy excuse.
He picked up an especially rich cracker loaded with thick cream cheese, took a bite, and brushed the crumbs from his thigh.
“Well... if you’re the one who misses someone you make the move. What else can you do? Thanks to that, I’ve got the chance to lock down a great piece early, so I’ll take that and be satisfied for now.”
Every time we talked on the phone, he’d said he was curious about the painting with Juhan as the model. Everyone around me seemed intrigued, probably because choosing Juhan as my model struck them as unexpected.
I showed him the piece at about eighty percent done. Unlike on the phone, he fell quiet, studied it slowly for a long time with a serious air, and then surprised me by saying he wanted to buy it when it was finished.
I’d been doing color practice alongside sketching, but this would still be my first completed work since I started drawing again, so it was obviously going to be rough in a lot of ways. I was naturally thinking of it as a study, so his offer made me happy and a little dazed.
After a sip of wine, I rubbed the slender part of the glass between my fingertips and forced myself to start.
“About that, Inwoo... I think it’s still too rough to sell....”
“As a collector, if I’m willing to pay to have your work in my collection, then the value’s more than enough.”
“I’m really grateful and happy you’d say that, but...”
This time, it wasn’t his gesture that cut me off. It was the sound of a door lock code being tapped on the heavy steel door that opened to the hallway from the garage. Inwoo had just lifted his glass when he paused with a face that asked what the sound was.
“Ah... I think the director’s here.”
Inwoo’s eyes tightened a fraction, but before I could have any thoughts about that, the door pulled open from the outside.
“......”
He visibly checked his step the instant he started in. Facing the door, Inwoo lifted his glass toward him and smiled. His eyes—already a little wide—went stiff as he skimmed over Inwoo and me and then the wine and crackers on the table. For some reason I tensed and half rose without thinking.
“What, no heads-up?”
He flicked a glance my way but greeted Inwoo first. His voice was curt.
“I did. I told Ihyeon.”
He dropped a bulging briefcase stuffed with tightly packed materials onto the seat next to Inwoo, then looked at me again. His eyes and mouth were set, but I couldn’t expect him to act the same as usual in front of Inwoo. I knew that, and still, some nameless anxiety made it hard to sit back down. With Inwoo lounging on the sofa, sipping wine, the three of us formed the points of a triangle—him and me at the two tips with Inwoo in the middle.
“This is Ihyeon’s studio, and you’re just punching in the code and walking in. Isn’t that a little much? You’re the landlord, but aren’t you invading his privacy?”
“It’s not like that—I told him he could come and go as he liked. I felt bad the director kept having to go around through the garden because of me....”
This time, he didn’t call it out loud, but peering over his glass, Inwoo’s upturned eyes clearly found it odd how quickly I volunteered defenses for him.
“So why are you both standing? Ihyeon, sit down. Hey, landlord, if you sit the tenant can sit comfortably too.”
He shrugged off his jacket and laid it over the back of the sofa, then sat beside Inwoo as if he had no choice and rubbed around his brows like a man with a headache.
“What are you here for?”
“To see Ihyeon. There’s a fun rumor going around about a nude of Kwon Juhan, and no matter how long I wait, no one invites me to come see.”
I was about to pass the table and head for the stairs to fetch him a glass too when he caught my wrist. The look he raised to me was dry, all the tenacity gone. Not the eyes that always caressed me.
“Where are you going?”
“Wine... I was going to bring you a glass.”
Over the rim of his glass, Inwoo’s gaze slid to where he held my wrist, but if anyone would have already sensed the changed current between us, it was Inwoo.
“Don’t. I’m not drinking.”
Head bowed, rubbing at his brow again and again, he sounded tired and annoyed. Then he tugged my wrist back, telling me to sit. I was sure now—it wasn’t that he was stiff because Inwoo was here. He was in a bad mood, plain and simple.
Trying not to react to Inwoo’s curious, sticky stare, I went back to my seat.
