No matter how difficult and exhausting the night had been, as soon as the sun rose, I woke up without fail.
I was rather plain when it came to sexual matters compared to my peers. Having a large family and no personal space could be a reason, but more than that, it was probably rebellion or a reaction against the memories of being overwhelmed and crushed by alpha pheromones.
The first sexually charged pheromones I encountered were in the middle school bathroom. It was literally harassment. Humiliation, shame, self-loathing. Was it an extension of that? I felt repulsion toward touching my genitals to feel pleasure myself. I’d never even looked up porn once. I had no opportunity to encounter it, and pursuing sexual pleasure felt like a very bad thing to do.
However, I learned that there were feelings so tender they brought tears to my eyes…… and that there were times when I could obtain pleasure intoxicated by those feelings. It wasn’t the bad thing I thought it was, but in a different sense, it was a bad thing.
Just lying still with my eyes open, I smelled my pheromones floating in the air. The pheromones I’d poured out last night still remained. A lewd, thick smell. My lewd pheromones that I’d released. I felt nauseous.
How should I face Eorin…… Slowly regulating my breathing, I turned my body to the side and felt tears coming from my eyes pressed against the pillow, so I rubbed my face against the pillow. It wasn’t that I was sad or anything. My heart just felt empty.
Suddenly taking a breath, I noticed the traces of last night rising as a smell from all over the blanket. I sat up. I thought I couldn’t leave it like this. Looking properly, everything was a mess—the blanket, clothes, and my body. Not knowing what to do and feeling helpless, I opened a small drawer in one corner of the room just in case. And there were underwear and clothes to change into, wet wipes, and pheromone-specific deodorizer.
I see. The embarrassment that children would face upon waking up in the morning and regaining their reason was already familiar to the teachers. I roughly wiped my body and the edges of the blanket with wet wipes, changed my clothes, then folded the clothes and blanket and pushed them to one side of the room. And when I sprayed the deodorizer all over the room, I felt my pheromones fading. My churning stomach gradually settled down too. Thinking it had faded enough to this degree, I opened the window and ventilated the room.
The orphanage was still quiet even when I came out into the hallway carrying the blanket and clothes. I was the only one awake. I crossed the hallway toward the laundry room. I put the blanket in the washing machine and ran it, roughly rinsed the clothes with water, wrung out the moisture, and put them in the laundry basket.
Having finished dealing with everything, I returned to my room, sat leaning against the wall, and hugged my knees tightly. I needed time to collect myself.
At some point, Eorin had become like a sacred area inside me that shouldn’t be touched. And I was the one who defiled it. I had crossed the fence I’d carefully set up. I shouldn’t have done that. I tried to make excuses to myself. But the cold-hearted me in some corner of my heart shook its head. Liking Eorin didn’t serve as an excuse to break down the fence.
How should I handle precious feelings?
It was a difficult question for me, experiencing liking someone for the first time. Both the me who couldn’t overcome the impulse and crossed the fence and the cold-hearted me standing outside the fence criticizing that me—neither knew the answer.
Suddenly emptiness surged up. It was an emotion I’d felt countless times last night. Just liking someone isn’t enough. Even though I’d decided to hide it, there was a me collapsing from the loneliness I inevitably felt. Greed wasn’t covered just by concealing it.
I didn’t want to covet Eorin. I thought I was good at distinguishing between things I couldn’t even dream of and reality, but I was still in the process of learning to give up.
I slowly regulated my breathing. I had to collect myself. Since it was a heat cycle, I could rest from school until today, but if the teacher thought it was okay, I could meet Eorin right away today. I couldn’t stand next to Eorin with such a messed-up heart.
Then I heard some murmuring voices outside the room and heard a knock on the door. And through the door that soon opened, I saw Chanhyeong’s face.
“Hyung.”
“……Yeah, Chanhyeong-ah. You’re up early.”
Chanhyeong, who had been looking at me for a moment, turned his head and said, “He’s here.”
“Really? Oh my, what kind of child has so little sleep, Chiwon. You startled me.”
It seemed a teacher was with him. Chanhyeong exchanged a few more words, then closed the door and came into the room.
“Hyung, you disappeared and I was so surprised. The teacher opened the door and said even the blanket completely disappeared.”
“Where would I go to disappear?”
When I tried to smile, Chanhyeong plopped down in front of me.
“Hyung, were you okay last night?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Your eyes are swollen though?”
“Mm…… I guess I was tired.”
Rubbing my eyes that must have gotten red, I calmly lied. Chanhyeong sighed.
“Hyung, rest from school one more day.”
“Is it still that bad?”
“Yeah. I don’t think you should go to school.”
It seemed my pheromones hadn’t calmed down. Since you inevitably become insensitive to your own pheromones, it was hard for me to feel it, but I silently nodded. If Chanhyeong, a dominant omega, said so, then it was so.
“Hyung, anyway, as a person……”
“Hm?”
“How do you wake up as soon as the sun rises? Aren’t you sleepy? The blanket keeps pulling me in. It tells me to sleep more.”
“My eyes just opened.”
Amazing, really. Saying that while shaking his head, Chanhyeong’s face was plastered with drowsiness.
“Should I lay out a blanket for you? Want to sleep more?”
“If I sleep now, I’ll barely sleep for ten-something minutes and have to get up again. I’ll lay out the blanket, so hyung sleep more. You didn’t sleep, right?”
Chanhyeong really laid out a blanket on my room floor and tried to make me lie down. Even when I waved my hands in refusal, he was adamant.
“Originally after a heat cycle passes, you have to rest well. You get exhausted. It’s your first time going through it without medicine, right?”
I heard that if you spend a heat cycle with an alpha, your physical condition is good, but it was something I couldn’t know. It certainly seemed I was exhausted, feeling my body drooping. Let’s rest for a day and collect my feelings—I made up my mind like that.
When I went to school the next day, I was better than I thought. Was it because a day had passed? I came to think of that night’s events as somewhat separate. It felt that unreal. The sensations and memories remained vivid, but on the other hand, it was a dreamlike night.
“I heard you were sick, didn’t you get a little gaunt?”
“Really? I’m fine though.”
The kids were still kind to me. I resolved once more. I’ll carry these feelings entirely by myself.
“I’ll show you the notes for the parts you missed, Chiwon-ah. Copy them during evening self-study time today.”
“Okay. With finals not far off, what are you doing getting sick?”
Finals were in two weeks. Since I wasn’t in good physical condition last time, I wanted to properly take the test this time. Most of all, I was most worried about my Ethics score.
“Want to go study together this weekend?”
“Where?”
“Mm, should we go to the library reading room? I went last time and it was good.”
“Or a cafe is good too.”
“If we go to a cafe, I feel like we’ll one hundred percent play.”
“As expected, right?”
“But Woojin, is your academy okay?”
“Yeah. During exam period I don’t play piano. No matter what, mom said I have to study. The next competition has some time left too.”
As it turned out, Woojin seemed more serious about piano than I thought. Following his mother’s claim that no matter how soundproof the room was, it was still a nuisance at night, Woojin said he would go home after evening self-study ended and sleep right away, then wake up at dawn to play piano before coming to school. Only after hearing that story did I understand Woojin, who came to school early but collapsed sleeping every day. He said that even doing that, he couldn’t compare to kids attending arts schools, but for someone like that, Woojin showed no signs of being anxious. He didn’t have dreams of going to some great university or anything, and seemed to just think it would be nice if he could play piano even as an adult.
“If that doesn’t work out, I’ll at least be a teacher at mom’s academy. But mom said if I’m going to do that, I have to go to a good university and bring back a diploma, that she doesn’t hire just any instructor, threatening me.”
Since Woojin was the worst at studying among us, we decided to all study together during exam period. And that already became this weekend.
“Time flies……”
It was words that came out without going through my head. When I muttered like that, Eorin glanced back at me.
“Hm?”
“Ah, no. Thinking about it…… It’s already finals, and that means the first semester is over.”
“True. Half a year really flew by.”
“Days are so long but why is a year so short?”
It had already been four months since I met these kids. During that short time, I changed a lot. Still, I knew well that I’d grown in some areas. There were still plenty of things to carry, things to endure, things to let go of, but as far as I could feel, I was spending my days quite happily. Enough that the passing time felt precious.
I couldn’t hold onto time. So I held onto what was in front of my eyes.
“Ack.”
“Chiwon-ah.”
“Is our Chiwon suddenly feeling lonely?”
When I hugged the kids, Junsu giggled and hugged me back. The other kids also reached out their hands and patted my back.
That there are people who smile and hug you back. And that within that circle, Eorin is there. I decided to be satisfied with just that.
A week before the exam, instead of club activities, they gave us self-study time. So this week was practically the last time we could play basketball with peace of mind. Of course we’d do it again after the exam ended, but that was only for a few weeks before vacation, and the closer exam period approached, the harder it was to go out to the playground because playing basketball pricked our conscience for no reason. Even though we wouldn’t study during that time anyway.
Since it happened to be free basketball’s turn, we grabbed the basketball and ran around like crazy. I used the fake moves I’d started practicing recently. Of course they didn’t work. But it was fun enough to laugh loudly. As much as the weather got hotter, we sweated profusely, so Woojin was disgusted, but actually the one who ran around most enthusiastically was also Woojin.
Returning to the classroom, we made plans for what time to meet at the library tomorrow. But on the way we met Hyeonho, who was returning from going to the band club, so even Hyeonho’s friends decided to gather at the library. Counting up, there were eight people.
[When I said let’s go hang out, I really meant let’s hang out, not let’s meet and study……]
Hyeonho’s friend Sejin, who had first brought up the topic, said that on messenger. After evening self-study ended and I returned to the orphanage, showered, and was drying my wet hair, I looked at my phone and giggled.
