“Haechan, come here for a second, will you?”
Their mother’s sudden call sent Shin Haechan out to the living room right away, but Haejun hyung had his eyes fixed on me.
“Huh? Yo, your l-lips? Uh, um… that’s…”
Caught completely off guard without a single excuse prepared, I let my panic show all over my face. I stumbled over my words, eyes darting around — and it wasn’t until I spotted Haeyong trotting in behind me that I finally found something halfway believable to say.
“Hyung, did you know Haeyong can open and close doors? I saw it for the first time just now and got so startled I bit my lip.”
I’d thrown the blame on Haeyong for absolutely no reason.
Sorry, Yongyong. Hyung was wrong.
If you think it’s unfair… you’re welcome to start talking like a human.
Of course, Haeyong only perked his ears up at the sound of his name and said nothing at all.
Big hyung watched me quietly for a moment, then smiled and said,
“That startled you that much? We’ve seen it so often we’re used to it by now. That must hurt.”
Shin Haechan came back to the table right after and asked the same thing, so this time I wove my way out of it much more smoothly. Second hyung clicked his tongue.
“You really bit it hard. All that strength for nothing. Eat and put some ointment on it after.”
“Y-yeah.”
It wasn’t me who bit it hard because of all that strength.
Thanks to my hyungs, Kwon Wookyung’s face surfaced in my mind completely uninvited. Damn it.
Everyone except Dad — who was working late — sat down to eat together, and the wound bothered me the entire meal. Still, I kept myself from showing how much it stung, not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention.
Despite all that effort, there was no escaping the sharpest eyes in the house — Haejun hyung’s.
After dinner, big hyung came to my room with ointment in hand.
“Haehyeon, sit down.”
I’d been half lying on my bed, so I pushed myself upright as big hyung settled into the chair and squeezed ointment onto a cotton swab.
“I can do it myself.”
“It’s not that complicated.”
That’s exactly why I want to do it myself. But there was something in big hyung’s voice that made it impossible to refuse. A kind of force that made words like no or I don’t want to difficult to say out loud. Charisma, maybe? It wasn’t something you could imitate just by copying someone’s expression or way of speaking — it was an innate quality, a thing you were either born with or not.
“Haehyeon.”
The tip of the cotton swab touched my lip with careful precision, so I kept still and let out something like a soft “Mm?” The sting every time it made contact was unavoidable, no matter how gentle hyung’s touch was.
“Nothing else going on, is there?”
The gaze that had been tracing over my wound lifted to meet my eyes.
It was a gaze severe enough to feel cold, and I had to blink to hide any reaction. That sharp, discerning look made me feel like every thought inside me was perfectly transparent.
“What do you mean, something going on?”
“……”
Haejun hyung said nothing. He took my left hand and pressed his nose to the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse beat. Then he furrowed his brow ever so slightly, lifted his head, and let out a deep sigh.
I’d showered earlier and sprayed deodorant multiple times, so there was no way any of Kwon Wookyung’s pheromones could still be on me — and yet some dark instinct told me that hyung had caught even the faintest trace of something.
Hyung gestured with his chin toward the booklet lying on my bed. It was flipped face-down with the title visible: Guide to Health Management for Omega Phenotype Carriers.
“Why are you reading that?”
I felt a sharp jolt inside.
“That… the hospital gave it to me. I just opened it because I was bored and wanted to read through it. You said it yourself, hyung — that things wouldn’t be the same as before. So I’m trying to study up. I thought I knew everything about phenotype carriers, but it turns out there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“…I see.”
Hyung studied my face from every angle with the expression of someone who had a great deal left to say, then stood up.
“If you feel like your body is off in any way from usual, make sure to tell me. And… if there’s anything weighing on you, come talk to me.”
“Yeah, of course.”
I answered firmly, and hyung gave a faint smile. For some reason, the way he smiled looked unhappy.
“If you were going to manifest late either way, it would’ve been better if you’d been an alpha.”
“…You think so?”
Our parents had never voiced anything like that about my late manifestation. I’d only been told that because I’d manifested in the middle of life-sustaining treatment, my mother had taken it as a sign I would wake up, and she’d been overjoyed.
I was already in a place where accepting the change in my own phenotype wasn’t easy — hearing this made me flinch.
“Do you not like that I’m an omega, hyung?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that I think the change is a lot for you to handle.”
“That’s true, but……”
All this time, I’d subconsciously thought — I’m a beta, so I should be with a woman. Or rather, I’d never considered men as romantic prospects in the first place. But particularly for dominant male omegas, the rate of pairing with alpha males was extremely high. Now that I’d manifested, I had to consider possibilities I’d never thought about before… and it would be a lie to say I had no resistance to that.
I let my words trail off, then shook my head slightly and spoke my mind.
“You know, they say denying yourself makes you unhappy. It’s a bit sudden, sure, but I think I kind of like the new me too.”
So please love me too, hyung.
I swallowed the last part. I’d spoken with a show of conviction, but the truth hidden underneath was far more fragile. Honestly, if my family didn’t accept it, my own footing would waver too — that was the real feeling I was carrying.
“…You really. Who could ever dislike you.”
Hyung stroked my hair and let out a sigh.
“I don’t want anything else. I just want you to meet someone who’s exactly like you, Haehyeon. Someone bright, and positive, and quick to smile.”
“Someone like me? If that happens, we’d both be so loud nobody could handle us.”
More than anything, it’d be boring if we were too alike.
You need differences to make it interesting.
“Besides, is now really the time for you to be worrying about me, hyung? Bring someone home for yourself first. Whoever you like, I’ll like them too.”
The laughter tucked into my joking tone finally coaxed a real smile out of big hyung.
*
The second time Kwon Wookyung crossed my mind was that night, just before I fell asleep.
Why did I make such a scene asking where the medicine was, threatening to call an ambulance?
I really need to stop sticking my nose into things from now on.
I have no idea how many times I kicked my blanket — I suffered through until the early morning before I barely managed to fall asleep.
It would’ve been fine if it had ended there.
The problem was the fact that Kwon Wookyung was a celebrity, and the fact that that did absolutely nothing to help me. Something I felt bone-deep over the next few days.
Even when Choi Seonho and Kim Daehee dragged me out to a trendy café from SNS and we were sipping sweet drinks,
“Did you know Black City is almost at 2 million ticket sales?”
“I think it’ll hit tomorrow.”
Choi Seonho casually dropped that name into the middle of the conversation, and Kim Daehee picked it up just as carelessly.
“Two million already, for an adult-rated film — this guy is only going to get more famous. I’m dying of envy. What do you think, best friend of Kwon Wookyung?”
The sudden arrow pointed at me, and I slowly pulled my lips away from the straw of my milk tea and fumbled my answer.
“What’s there to think? I didn’t even see the movie.”
“You didn’t? I watched it last week. Daehee, you saw it too, right?”
“Yeah. It was good. Pretty brutal in parts, too.”
“That part where he runs like crazy — oh wait, that’s a spoiler, never mind. Anyway, everything else was fine, but the kiss scene was just… ugh, it made me so mad. Paying my own money for this? And Ryu Damin being so pretty made it even more annoying.”
That word appeared and the back of my neck prickled — I’d spent all of yesterday working to change the subject without the others noticing.
Today, Mom and I had gone out together for a change of pace to see the opera The Magic Flute, just the two of us, and I truly had not expected him to make his presence known out of nowhere on the way there either.
“Ugh……”
“What’s wrong?”
Mom asked, eyes still on the road.
“Oh, nothing.”
I couldn’t very well tell her that a bank advertisement featuring a certain Mr. Kwon, his eyes curving up in a smile, had just gone by on a bus in the opposite lane. I’d gotten into a pointless staring contest with those eyes. Honestly — eye smiles I’d barely ever seen in person, now immortalized on the side of a bus for the whole world to stare at.
Earlier, a massive movie poster for Black City had been plastered across the exterior wall of a building too. Genuinely, not helpful in the slightest.
The entire world was Kwon Wookyung.
In other words, the entire world was a minefield.
“My youngest, what are you thinking so hard about? Something on your mind?”
“Hm? Nothing’s on my mind?”
“You seemed like you couldn’t focus on the performance earlier. Even when the Queen of the Night made her entrance, you were off staring at the orchestra for no reason. Did you not enjoy it?”
Originally, Mom had gotten the tickets to go on a date with Dad, but Dad had happened to be swamped with work.
Of her three sons, I was the only one she could actually enjoy an opera with. Big hyung, being the cultured adult he was, knew enough about various arts to get by, but didn’t enjoy them at a deep level. Second hyung, thanks to me, barely knew who Tchaikovsky was. She’d gone through the trouble of taking me to an expensive visiting performance, and if I told her I hadn’t been able to focus the whole time, she’d be so hurt.
“No, no. The performance was great.”
I quickly launched into talking about what I’d enjoyed in today’s show. Luckily, Mom had been so deeply immersed that she launched into her own detailed impressions, and I was spared any difficult follow-up.
But even while I talked with Mom, Kwon Wookyung’s presence lingered in the back of my mind.
…Did he get his arm treated?
What kind of actor hurts himself that easily?
He won’t scar, will he?
I didn’t know how to bring it up, so I couldn’t send him even something as simple as [You okay?]. And since I didn’t know when his rut would end, I couldn’t go see him either.
Like how being told not to think about an elephant only makes you think of nothing but elephants — the moment I resolved not to think about Kwon Wookyung, things to think about kept generating themselves endlessly. It felt like the world was laughing at me, saying, You’re not going to think about Kwon Wookyung? Not a chance.
My misfortune didn’t end in the real world.
Perhaps because I’d gone out of my way to search for Kwon Wookyung before and stumbled upon that horrifying video — my video platform algorithm had been contaminated by him. Whether it was long videos or short clips, his face kept appearing as recommended content.
I’d opened the video app before bed just to browse a little, and the feed was an absolute mess.
I’d started hitting “Not Interested” on everything to drive him out of my algorithm, then stopped. It’s not exactly that I’m not interested… Instead I scrolled past his face — and then a newly uploaded video from three hours ago caught my eye.
Black City hits 2 million 🎉 Celebratory stage greeting #KwonWookyung #return #stayhealthy #RyuDamin
The thumbnail showed Kwon Wookyung making a heart with his arm around his co-star, laughing.
Wait — since when was he back?
