What did I even do to deserve fainting?
Hyeon’s startled heart beat in erratic bursts.
If anyone should be fainting, it ought to be him.
Not even when he was seized by fierce inspiration and swinging a brush had he ever felt a shock this immense.
Hyeon looked down at Seowoo’s face, his own eyes trembling unsteadily.
The pale cheeks were flushed pink, frozen by the cold.
He was clearly a little thinner than he had been three years ago.
His eye sockets were deep-set to begin with, so with his eyes closed, a dark shadow fell thickly beneath his brow bones.
Because of that, he looked both slightly more mature and somehow melancholy.
Winter sunlight shattered and glittered across his disheveled light brown hair.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen your face this close up……
The words from that night three years ago surfaced without warning.
So did the memory of what he had looked like then — the way he had drawn Hyeon in so helplessly.
And the scent of his pheromones, which had radiated a purity so intense it was almost violent.
It had been a tacit agreement between them to put the night of Seowoo’s heat cycle behind them.
The time Hyeon had known him amounted to a little over a year — and after the one and only heat cycle night, his last memory was a composed conversation and a farewell handshake.
And now, leaping across a three-year gap, to be looking down at Seowoo passed out in his arms — what kind of reunion was this?
It was almost laughable.
“Seowoo, try to come around. If you do this all of a sudden, it throws me off.”
“Bwah…… weh, wehhh……”
To make matters worse, the baby began to cry too.
A cold sweat ran down Hyeon’s back.
The little white steamed bun of a thing looked exactly like Seowoo, and was wailing bappa, bappa at him……
Don’t tell me — is this Seowoo’s baby? In three years, what on earth……
Even in the midst of the chaos, every time Seowoo exhaled, a sweet fragrance drifted out and made Hyeon’s tongue tingle.
A vivid drop of color in the middle of an entirely black-and-white world — it made his breath catch hard in his chest.
There was no way he could think clearly.
Without realizing it, Hyeon lifted his hand and touched Seowoo’s pale cheek.
The skin was just as soft and pliant as the warm body cradled in his arms.
“Sir! Are you all right?”
“……Chief Han.”
Chief Han’s voice was urgent as he came running at the sight of Hyeon sitting on the floor.
The moment he confirmed that his charge was unharmed, he caught sight of Seowoo and the baby in Hyeon’s arms and was visibly shaken — though he didn’t let it show.
Instead, with sharp alertness, he scanned the surroundings and picked up the bag and medicine pouch Seowoo had dropped.
Among the familiar-colored pills was a pheromone neurological treatment — the same one Hyeon took.
“I’m fine, but Seowoo suddenly lost consciousness.”
“Let’s move inside first. I’ll take the baby.”
It was rare for Hyeon to show his flustered state so openly and unguarded.
Chief Han moved briskly in his place.
With a gesture he set the waiting attendants into motion, and first lifted the baby out from between the two of them.
The moment the baby was separated from Seowoo, it burst into louder wails and began twisting its body around.
Chief Han held the baby firmly to keep from dropping it and tucked its face against his chest.
It was something like the instinct of a man long seasoned in service — it simply felt like the right thing to do.
No sooner had he gotten the baby settled than Go Eunyeong swept in close.
“Why are you sitting on the floor like that? Hyeon? Oh my — goodness! Is that person all right? Oh dear, what do we do, what do we do!”
Leaving his faint-hearted mother’s half-shrieked cries behind, Hyeon gathered Seowoo in his arms and rose fluidly to his feet.
The weight was far lighter than he had estimated with his eyes, and a quiet click of his tongue escaped him before he could stop it.
“I’ll take him to a room. Mother, please keep the people around us in check. I’ll have this person seen by Professor Lee.”
“Oh — yes, yes. That would be best.”
The urgency in him lengthened his strides, and with every jostle, Seowoo in his arms furrowed his delicate brows.
Seeing him like this — so pale and slight, like someone in the grip of a serious illness — left Hyeon with a strange feeling he couldn’t quite name.
There was also a heaviness in his chest, like something caught and pressing.
Looking back, he had always given Seowoo a particular kind of attention — and been unusually lenient with him.
To chalk it up to affection formed over a year spent together felt insufficient, because even from their very first meeting, he had made exceptions for him.
That was probably why he had ended up swept into his heat cycle too.
Hyeon came to an abrupt stop.
A realization had struck him — startling, even to himself.
Even now, the fact of himself walking with someone carried in his arms felt entirely foreign.
Surely Chief Han had noticed too — he had been sneaking sideways glances this entire time.
“My wrist……”
“Pardon?”
When Hyeon murmured it, Chief Han — following half a step behind with the baby in his arms — quickly closed the gap and leaned in.
“I think my wrist is gone, so please see to sending Mother home to the main house first, at an appropriate moment. Make sure she doesn’t notice.”
It was a hand he had kept precious for nothing but holding a brush.
At Chief Han’s horrified expression, Hyeon let out a hollow laugh.
He himself was just as rattled.
Now that he was aware of it, the pain was impossible to dismiss.
And yet — the way the world, which had gone dark and dead, had cracked wide open the moment Seowoo came into his arms, felt like staggering luck.
Even the headache that had been threatening to split his skull had been forgotten.
Yes, perhaps…… rather than making another exception, it was clear he had found a way through.
***
Seowoo woke to a strange sense of ease.
He lay there wondering why he felt so unusually calm, and then noticed that the neurological symptoms that had been tormenting him had, for once, settled down.
The heat-like warmth and the uncomfortable, restless itching had gone eerily quiet.
And not because he’d taken a heavy dose of medication, either.
It felt like the first proper, deep sleep he’d had in months.
Like waking from an unusually profound slumber, the boundary between reality and dream was blurry.
His physical senses were returning even more slowly than his mind.
“……”
Seowoo slowly rolled his eyes upward and looked at the ceiling.
The interior was luxurious, yet too austere to be a hotel.
And yet the bedding — stamped with a hospital logo — was lavishly fine enough to make that feel out of place.
As Seowoo pieced together the situation, the memory of meeting Hyeon returned to him.
“So it wasn’t a dream.”
A groan escaped him involuntarily.
He had been stepping backwards when his heel slipped off the edge of a stair.
As he tipped backwards, Hyeon had somehow managed to catch him.
Thanks to that, he had clearly been spared a serious injury.
And then, in the very next moment, the instant he sank fully into Hyeon’s arms — for reasons he couldn’t explain, his vision had simply gone dark……
His life had generally been one of poor luck.
Wrong at the roots, he was a frail tree that swayed and buckled at even the smallest gust.
And his had been a life without so much as a wall to shield him from the wind.
So he should have anticipated misfortune like this.
It had been three years since he began suffering from pheromone neurosis, which manifested symptoms resembling a false heat.
People were said to be creatures of adaptation — and yet somehow, his condition had only worsened with each passing day.
The chronic, relentless stimulation made proper sleep impossible, and he had grown prone to fainting at the slightest overexertion — he had even become unable to drive.
The point at which he started thinking this could actually kill me someday — when the symptoms had taken a truly alarming turn — had been a few months ago, after he came across a photo of Hyeon and rumors of his engagement.
For a long time, Seowoo had tried his best to forget Hyeon.
Because his neurosis had its origin in their one night together.
So he had compulsively avoided any news or photos of Hyeon, and to purge even the memory of his pheromone scent, he had refused to buy anything with an iris fragrance.
But he hadn’t anticipated that a spam link he accidentally clicked would pull up Hyeon’s photo.
He had cursed the sky and resented his own wretched luck because of it.
And then, as though the universe had punished him for exactly that, he had come face-to-face with him like this — right here at the hospital.
Who could have imagined it?
Even when the man donated a painting worth more than ten billion won, he had never once come to see it in person……
“……”
After blinking quietly for a moment, Seowoo shot up from the bed.
“Yoon Dano!”
How could he have forgotten Dano?
How could he have lost consciousness and left Dano behind?
In an instant, it felt as though every drop of blood had drained from his body.
Seowoo bolted upright, pressed a hand to his forehead, and staggered.
A wave of dizziness spun through him.
“What is wrong with you, Yoon Seowoo……”
He muttered to himself with a self-deprecating edge, pulling himself together.
The suspiciously spacious hospital room was structured like a hotel suite — bedroom, living area, and bathroom all separated.
He rushed out of the bedroom and past an arched partition wall, and from the living area, he heard Dano’s laughter.
“App-ppa!”
From the open space in the center of the U-shaped sofa arrangement, Dano sprang to his feet and thrust a small pointing finger toward Seowoo.
Unlike Seowoo — who was flustered and stumbling in a panic — Dano looked positively delighted.
The relief that flooded through him was enough to make his legs go weak, but it was too early to feel at ease.
Seowoo looked warily at the two men flanking Dano on either side.
It was Hyeon — and his secretary, Chief Han.
Following Dano’s gesture, Hyeon had also turned to look at Seowoo.
The way he lifted one sharp, handsome brow looked so identically like Dano that Seowoo’s breath stopped short.
His heart beat out a loud, flustered rhythm.
One look at Chief Han’s complicated expression told Seowoo that he, too, had picked up on something off.
Could they have already figured it out?
The toy Hyeon was turning over idly in his hands felt to Seowoo like a hostage.
The outwardly indifferent expression, the pitch-black eyes that gave nothing away — his solar plexus shook.
The toy looked terribly out of place in those hands.
“H-hello. Hyeon.”
“Hello?”
Hyeon rose in one swift motion and closed the distance between himself and the hesitating Seowoo in an instant.
“Hello?”
The shadow of the man who asked again fell over Seowoo, swallowing him completely in darkness.
