Typing out messages continuously made my fingers ache and my speed was slow. Feeling like this wouldn’t do, I switched to the voice message feature and sent a clip instead.
“Testing, testing — ask Shin Haehyeon anything about what’s going on in his life right now~ We’re having a Q&A session. Questions are limited to two per person, so choose wisely!”
Kim Daehee: two questions lol so stingy
Im Yujin: omg this voice i haven’t heard it in so long ㅠㅠ
Park Seryeong: bj mode on wtf ㅋㅋㅋ
Park Seryeong: ill send you a donation as friendship tax!
Lee Dokyeong: who do you miss the most?????
Lee Dokyeong: who do you miss the most?????
Lee Dokyeong: who do you miss the most?????
Choi Seonho: three questions is an instant out;
Choi Seonho: Lee Dokyeong is OUT!
Lee Dokyeong: seonho shut up
Lee Dokyeong: someone kick this guy
Choi Seonho: I’m the admin, actually?
Kim Daehee: BJ Haehyeon
Kim Daehee: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Kim Minji: can everyone quiet down i have a question!!
Kim Daehee: Shin Haehyeon you free this weekend???
Pointless questions kept flooding in and it was absolute chaos.
I was giggling away, answering them one by one, when there was a knock at the door.
“Haehyeon, hyung’s home.”
It was my older hyung who opened the door and came in.
“Were you okay on your own? I tried to get back by lunchtime, but I ended up a little late.”
Only about thirty minutes had passed since Mom left. That was enough time for even a kindergartener to handle alone.
“You really didn’t need to come back. I was reading and then my friends started messaging me so I’ve been texting.”
I’d opened my books intending to study, but spent the whole time texting and hadn’t managed to read even a single passage properly. I quietly closed the textbook that only had stray pen marks on it. My older hyung smiled like he already knew.
“You don’t need to study yet. Take it slow.”
“I want to get my high school diploma this year. And I need to think about college too…”
“That’s admirable. But let’s eat lunch first. The housekeeper prepared something.”
“Okay.”
I sent a voice message saying “I have to go eat so that’s all the questions for today. The rest will have to wait for next time,” followed by a waving emoji. The teasing comment about Shin Haehyeon acting high-and-mighty again I brushed off without a second thought. Playing hard to get is the key to maintaining popularity.
I had lunch alone with my older hyung.
I’d mostly been eating lunch with my younger hyung up until now — and throughout every meal he’d given me grief about things like holding my chopsticks wrong, not eating enough variety, spilling food — so eating in peace for the first time in a while was an enormous relief. If his rut has started, he’s probably holed up alone in his officetel by now. I briefly considered sending him a teasing text.
I snuck a glance at my older hyung picking up kimchi with neat, proper chopstick technique. With his hair slicked back cleanly and his shirt sleeves rolled up, he looked every bit the successful businessman.
Truthfully, the family member I’d felt the most changed since waking up was Haejun hyung. Mom and Dad had maybe gained a few wrinkles I hadn’t seen before, and my younger hyung had simply followed the set path from pre-med to residency at a university hospital — but my older hyung had gone from grad student to a working professional, which made him feel especially different.
The Haejun hyung I remembered was from the days when he was going back and forth between Korea and a business school in the United States — back then, he wore hoodies and carried a backpack, fresh-faced and young. That memory felt completely at odds with the corporate air he radiated now, as if he’d been born wearing a dress shirt and tie. He always wore a smile, so it was easy to miss — but without any expression, he actually looked quite cold, which added to the effect.
“Haehyeon, something on your mind?”
My older hyung, who was always so attentive, couldn’t possibly have missed my gaze.
“No, nothing… just thinking you’re handsome.”
Hyung burst out laughing.
His open, warm laugh settled on his face and overlapped with the younger version of him I held in my memory.
“Getting a compliment from my youngest — that makes me happy.”
I studied my genuinely pleased-looking hyung’s expression and casually tossed out a question.
“Hyung, do you have a partner?”
Hyung raised one eyebrow as if he hadn’t expected that question.
“That came out of nowhere.”
“Well… I heard you’ve never brought anyone home, so I got curious. There must be tons of people who like you.”
The one who had brought partners home the most was me. It hadn’t been intentional — it just sort of… happened that way. There were even people who’d eaten dinner with my parents at our house.
“Tons, hardly. I’m not popular.”
A laughing sort of answer came back. That was clearly a lie.
“Haechan was the popular one.”
“My younger hyung……? No way!”
The shock made my hand go limp and the fork I was holding clattered to the floor. I sat frozen stiff until my older hyung cleared the fallen fork and brought me a new one. He sat back down and continued.
“It was last year, I think? Haechan even had a stalker. They were lurking around the hospital and showed up near the house too, so we reported it to the police.”
“…Were they a pervert?”
Did that person get some kind of thrill out of being verbally abused? I felt a fresh awareness that the world was wide and full of strange people. A world where my older hyung has no popularity and my younger hyung has a stalker — something had gone seriously wrong. I couldn’t accept it.
“Do you know what my younger hyung said to me the other time? He said he’s too good for himself to date anyone half-baked. Anyone who confesses to my younger hyung would probably get an answer like ‘I’m far too precious to date someone as lowly as you’… but why, why, why?”
I mimicked Shin Haechan’s condescending tone and my older hyung smiled, saying it was pretty spot-on.
“People like Haechan tend to be devoted once they actually get a partner.”
“Ugh.”
My appetite vanished on its own. My stomach turned and I set down my spoon — but my older hyung picked up a piece of spinach and put it on my plate, telling me to at least eat that, so I had no choice but to accept it.
“What happened after that?”
“Ah… the stalker?”
Hyung had been about to feed me another bite, but when I firmly refused, he put his chopsticks down and thought back.
“They were a minor, so it probably ended with just a warning.”
“A, a minor? Where did my younger hyung even encounter a minor?”
“Apparently they were a patient at the hospital.”
“Could it be that person had a mental illness……?”
I was briefly stupefied by the minor with terrible taste before finally pulling myself together. The conversation had drifted way off topic.
“But hyung, you still didn’t answer my question.”
Haejun hyung gave a light shake of his head.
“There’s no one. I’m too busy with work. Do you have any idea how strict Dad is at the company? Living up to his standards is really hard.”
“Huh, I always thought our dad only knew how to give compliments?”
Dad was the kind of person who, even if I fell on stage, would say “our little rice pup even falls gracefully.” It was hard to imagine a strict version of Dad — almost as hard as imagining a popular Shin Haechan.
“How could a businessman only say nice things while running a business.”
“Fair enough……. Maybe it’s because he has high expectations of you? Honestly, I feel like Dad wouldn’t say a word even if I did nothing for the rest of my life. Maybe because I’m a healthy fool.”
“Why are you a fool? And being healthy is such a wonderful thing.”
“That’s true.”
Dad being lenient with me was partly because I was the youngest, but probably also because I’d been through near-death experiences from birth. Counting the recent one, I’d alone given our parents two heart-stopping moments.
I thought of Dad, probably working hard right now, and felt a warm softness settle in my chest — before realizing the conversation had drifted off again.
“Still, you should try dating, hyung. At this rate it feels like you’ll end up getting set up through an arranged meeting and just getting married.”
“…I’d be fine with marrying whoever my parents arrange for me.”
“Wow. What a joyless thing to say……”
“What’s wrong with that. Mom and Dad met through an arrangement and they’re happy.”
“That was their generation though. And Dad said he fell in love with Mom the moment their eyes met at a coffee shop.”
“Yes, yes.”
My older hyung didn’t seem to be taking my words seriously at all. I felt sorry for him, a person who didn’t know the joys of romance. Getting scolded by Dad and doing nothing but work every day… Wait, actually, my older hyung is an alpha too — what about his rut?
“Hyung, how do you manage your rut?”
I asked it without thinking, just as it popped into my head — and hyung, who had been in the middle of drinking water, started coughing.
He brought a fist to his lips and gave a dry, cleared-throat kind of cough before looking away.
“Why, why are you doing that?”
“Getting this question from you, Haehyeon, just feels strange.”
“…Did I say something wrong?”
“It’s not that, it’s just… hmm, I find it embarrassing to explain.”
Hyung picked up his now-empty glass and went through the motion of drinking from it, then caught himself, refilled it, and drank from it again.
“No, I was just wondering if it’s really hard for you during that time… since my younger hyung said his rut was starting……”
My older hyung was so openly flustered that I got embarrassed too and my voice started to trail off quietly.
“It’ll be okay. If you’re healthy, just taking the right medication is enough to keep yourself together reasonably well.”
“Hmm. What if you’re not healthy?”
“Then it’d be rough, I think…? Someone I know has an autoimmune condition and they seem to really struggle badly every cycle.”
The thought of Kwon Wookyung unable to control his pheromones came to mind and I was about to ask what kind of difficulties they went through — when my older hyung’s phone rang.
“It’s the company. Let me take this for a second.”
“Okay.”
Hyung answered the call and stepped away.
I picked up my phone that had been pushed to the side and searched online. What was the name of the condition again? Secondary something syndrome.
Piecing together the words I could remember, I was able to track down the name. Secondary Trait-Based Hormonal Dysregulation Syndrome. That was it. I tapped the medical information site that came up at the top and dense small text filled the screen.
‘Secondary Trait-Based Hormonal Dysregulation Syndrome (S-THCS) is a functional disorder caused by damage to the hypothalamic–pituitary–trait axis (HPT axis) resulting from prolonged severe psychological stress, nutritional deficiency, or excessive use of suppressants during rut cycles. It typically manifests as a loss of hormonal regulation capacity and failure to control pheromones.’
What does any of this mean? It was complicated enough that I had to read it several times over.
‘Primary symptoms include persistent fatigue, pheromone concentration instability, heightened emotional volatility, massive pheromone discharge and loss of reason during acute episodes, increased instinctive responses…… Long-term treatment recommendations include discontinuation or minimization of suppressants, concurrent psychological therapy, and repeated exposure to stable complementary-trait pheromones.’
Kwon Wookyung, it seems like you’ve gotten yourself some kind of strange illness……
