Yuhan had said the scent wasn’t there, but just to be sure, Jinwoo pressed his nose to his own arm and sniffed. Of course, doing that wasn’t going to let him smell his own pheromones.
“Yes.”
“Really? Ah, I’m sorry. It must have been bothering you this whole time.”
Most people with a secondary gender learned to suppress their scent somewhere around their late teens. Those who moved through society didn’t go around letting their pheromones out freely — that was an understood social contract.
The only exceptions were those who were congenitally less capable of controlling it, pregnant omegas, and those whose pheromone glands had become hypersensitive during a heat or rut.
Since the heat was over, if his pheromones were still leaking out, it was clearly his own fault. But not knowing where the problem lay, he was fumbling around in a panic — and then he heard Hajin laugh.
“Not yours. Hyung’s pheromones.”
“Ah…”
Is that… a relief?
Come to think of it, ever since the heat cycle began and through to today, the apartment had been saturated with Yuhan’s pheromones. It wasn’t as if anyone was questioning whether he was dominant — and yet the concentration of pheromones Yuhan had been putting out for Jinwoo’s sake had been quite thick. It seemed that had soaked into him.
There was nothing he could do about it by his own will, so he had no choice but to wait for it to evaporate into the air. Jinwoo wasn’t hiding his discomfort, and Hajin waved a hand, telling him it was fine.
“It’s not like you’re a stranger. It’s alright.”
Even so, another dominant alpha’s pheromones couldn’t possibly be pleasant to be around — so Jinwoo couldn’t quite shake the look of apology from his face. If the server hadn’t come by to deliver the food just then, the awkward air might have dragged on even longer.
Throughout the meal, the main topic was the special exhibition. Starting with how they had run into each other by chance before, the strangeness of the connection between them came up without fail.
“Do you usually enjoy this sort of thing?”
“Yes. As you might know, I’m currently in Europe, and there are so many more exhibitions there than here in Korea.”
“Ah, right. When I was in the States, I was going to exhibitions nearly every other day myself.”
They fell into a conversation about a subject he had never once touched on with Yuhan. Jinwoo even felt like he clicked better with Hajin in some ways — and for the first time in a long while, he found himself genuinely animated.
“Hyung manages an art gallery, doesn’t he. Have you been?”
“I’ve heard of it. Just haven’t had the chance yet…”
It wasn’t something Yuhan had told him directly. He had simply come across it while familiarizing himself with information about Yuhan — but there was no particular need to go into that, so he didn’t. Hajin nodded.
“He’s dull, isn’t he?”
It was a remark that came out of nowhere. Jinwoo didn’t meet people for their entertainment value, and even if someone was dull, why should it matter. They hadn’t come together out of love anyway.
‘I think we could use a little more warmth between us as a couple.’
Why was that surfacing in his mind right now. Hajin’s words were fair enough — Yuhan wasn’t an entertaining person. But he wasn’t rigid either. If the question was really ‘you find him dull, so you dislike him, right?’ then Jinwoo would answer ‘not exactly.’ But if it was the question at face value — ‘is he dull?’ — then the answer was ‘yes.’
“No need to sugarcoat it. It was an arranged marriage, after all.”
Hajin read his hesitation however he did, and spoke without holding back.
Yuhan, who suggested they try to be warm with each other despite it being an arranged marriage — and Hajin, who brought that up so readily. From where Jinwoo was standing, both of them were a little strange.
“He’s dull, but I don’t think he’s a bad person.”
That was the most Jinwoo could offer by way of framing it. And it was the truth, too.
Hajin went quiet. He looked as though he was thinking, or perhaps as though something had put him in a bad mood.
“Hajin?”
“Right. He’s not a bad person.”
The smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth looked like it had been drawn there by force.
There was nothing in his smile that resembled Yuhan’s. Yuhan’s smile had always seemed native to his face, natural and well-suited, as if he had been made that way — but Hajin looked like he was wearing a mask.
For the rest of the meal, Jinwoo found himself watching Hajin carefully. The ease he had felt before seemed like a mirage now, and Hajin had suddenly become a stranger to him. Was this what Yuhan had meant when he told him to keep his distance?
“If there’s another chance like this, I’ll reach out.”
“Yes, thank you. I had a good time today.”
He had genuinely enjoyed it, and he was genuinely grateful — but the unsettled feeling wouldn’t go away. He hadn’t done anything to harm Jinwoo, and yet Jinwoo found himself reproaching himself for holding an unfair bias against someone undeserving of it — even as he saw Hajin off with nothing but courtesy.
Jinwoo arrived home around sunset. Yuhan must have been worried about an omega who had only just come out of heat — he was waiting at the entrance.
“What are you doing all the way out here.”
The taxi had stopped at the entrance to the apartment building. He had been planning to walk from there anyway. The security was strict enough that only registered vehicles were permitted inside — so he hadn’t expected to find Yuhan standing there.
“Wasn’t that a message asking me to come meet you?”
“……”
It wasn’t, particularly — but his expression was too bright for Jinwoo to say so, and he just kept his mouth shut. Yuhan could read it however he liked.
“Did you have a good time with your friend?”
“Yes.”
The fact that he had gone out on a lie came back to him. Feigning composure, Jinwoo answered — and found himself glancing at Yuhan out of the corner of his eye without meaning to. Did he notice? They had only been together for a few hours, so Hajin’s pheromones probably hadn’t transferred onto him — but Yuhan was a dominant, and dominant alphas were sensitive to pheromones, so he couldn’t assume anything.
“The friend you met today — they’re an alpha, it seems.”
The moment his feet met the solid concrete floor, he nearly bit down on his own tongue. He noticed?
He hadn’t done anything seriously wrong, and yet he had no idea why he was this nervous. As Yuhan himself had said, they weren’t in a hierarchical relationship — they were equals, and it was Yuhan who had told him he was free to see people outside. Not that becoming romantically involved with Hajin was what he had in mind — but there was no need to shrink like this.
“How do you know?”
“Mm… there’s a pheromone scent on you. That’s why I asked.”
He couldn’t tell whether Yuhan was testing him or whether Yuhan genuinely wasn’t certain himself. So this is what they mean when they say you can’t live with a guilty conscience.
Even as he took his shoes off and stepped inside, the interrogation-like back and forth continued. Eventually, right after they reached the living room, Jinwoo let out a long sigh and came clean.
“Actually…”
Even after hearing the full account of everything that had happened, Yuhan had very little reaction.
If Jinwoo hadn’t picked up on the strange undercurrent from Hajin today, he would have kept his mouth shut until the end. He had thought of Hajin as a decent person, in a different way from Yuhan. That had certainly been true up until they sat down to eat — but the odd feeling he had caught while they were talking about Yuhan had left a nagging residue he couldn’t shake. So he’d spilled everything, simply for his own peace of mind.
“I’m sorry for lying to you.”
