“What?”
Cesare’s voice rose, his face twisting sharply. Seohan’s shoulders drew in — he was already frightened half to death as it was.
“It’s just……”
Seohan slowly averted his gaze and worked his lips silently. Those fidgeting fingers drew the man’s sharp stare like a knife.
The odds of the illustrious Cesare Herald choosing him were very low — this hadn’t been a position he’d come in with high hopes for to begin with.
But even if he wasn’t going to pick him, was there any need to be this rude to someone who’d come in for an interview?
Seohan swallowed without thinking. If Cesare wasn’t going to be his employer anyway, there was no reason he couldn’t correct a wrong statement.
The warning that getting on Cesare Herald’s bad side would be disastrous was blaring in his head — but either way, he was going to be dead in a few months with or without Cesare. The title of terminally ill had summoned a courage he’d never had before.
“I just…… I don’t think I was looking at you like a — like a creep, and I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea and feeling upset over nothing, I have that kind of good will in me, you know……”
His voice grew smaller and smaller, but he didn’t try to take back what he’d said or make excuses for it.
The more his voice faded, paradoxically, the clearer his enunciation became. Pausing here and there to swallow a breath, Seohan kept stumbling through his disjointed words until he finally, somehow, wrapped them up.
And by the time the sentence came to a close, Cesare’s handsome mouth had twisted into something unflattering.
“Good will? Aah, so you’re saying — you said that for my sake?”
“Pardon? Yes, if you want to put it that way……”
Seohan nodded his head eagerly, affirming that yes, that was right. True to form as someone with no sense for these things, he didn’t even register that the man in front of him had just been mocking him.
If anything, he let out a visibly relieved breath, as though grateful that his meaning had gotten through.
“Ha!”
Cesare let out a short, baffled laugh at the sight of him. What the hell kind of guy is this. He was so dumbfounded the words dried up in his throat. His harsh gaze swept Seohan up and down.
“W-well, you’re right that I was sneaking glances, but I really wasn’t looking at you like that.”
Having wilted a little under the stare, he tacked on a belated partial concession — but it amounted to the same thing in the end.
What made it worse was that the sideways glance he shot along with it seemed to carry a silent argument that his original point still stood, and Cesare couldn’t help pressing a hand to his forehead. Colin seemed to feel the same way, because Seohan heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere behind him.
“……”
Cesare narrowed his eyes and studied Seohan.
His face in person looked far younger than the photo on his résumé. The résumé had clearly stated twenty-two years old, but he hadn’t yet shed that boyish quality — there was something green and unformed about his whole presence.
It was probably the delicate, neatly assembled features and the clear, unspoiled face. The soft, fluffy hair and the gentle look in his eyes played their part too.
His overall impression was round and soft. Even though the corners of his eyes turned up slightly, the roundness of his face made him look simply docile. One glance and you could tell — this was the type of person who didn’t know the first thing about how the world worked.
The fact that this blank-faced thing, who looked like he wouldn’t even realize he was being kidnapped if it happened to him, was mumbling back at him — it was irritating. Like a chick sitting there, chirping away as if it were already a full-grown hen.
“Then what was it?”
“Uh……”
“You were darting looks like a dog that needs to pee. If that’s not creeping, what is?”
At the blunt challenge, those round eyes rolled around in every direction. The plump lips kept parting and closing, parting and closing.
Cesare had completed his full investigation on Seohan before the man had even crossed into District 2. Every omega who came in for an interview went through the same standardized background check.
Yi Seohan was one of those people who were a dime a dozen in District 4 — in short, unremarkable. No family, no friends, no education to speak of. A life lived in total obscurity. That was probably why he seemed so lacking in the art of conversation.
“I was just…… looking because you’re handsome.”
After spending a long while choosing his words, the thing he finally produced while scratching the corner of his eye was just that.
“……”
Silence settled over the table. He seemed embarrassed by his own words, because he peeked around nervously before adding one more thing.
“I just looked a little because you’re, well, good-looking.”
The way he held his neck stiff and straight when he said it was remarkably bold. But poor thing — his neck was trembling faintly.
So he was the type that had to say his piece no matter what, even scared as he was.
Cesare narrowed his eyes as though measuring something. Whether the man was a coward or just brave was unclear, but either way, it was obvious he’d lost all sense of self-preservation.
“A little?”
“More than a little…… more like, a lot?”
Seohan answered like that and held up his index finger and thumb, spread slightly apart. But the response that came back was ice cold, and he drooped his head again.
Still, no matter how he thought about it, Seohan felt wronged.
Cesare had been staring holes through him from the moment he’d walked through the door. He hadn’t looked away even once this whole time. And then to make a fuss over him just sneaking a few glances at his face — wasn’t that excessive?
If you were going to walk around that good-looking in the first place, shouldn’t you be used to people stealing looks at you? It wasn’t as if his face were plated in gold. Seohan couldn’t understand why this was being turned into his fault.
But if he opened his mouth any more, he had a feeling he’d be crossing a line he couldn’t come back from — so he pressed his lips together and bit them inward.
“Good grief.”
Cesare swept his hair back with an exasperated air.
“Must need a lot of money, huh? Already laying on the flattery like a little fox.”
“Fl-flattery?”
He’d just said the man was handsome because he was handsome, and now the man was framing him as some kind of schemer. It was deeply unfair. He’d been called slow before, but being compared to a sly little fox was a new one.
“Too bad, though. I hate cheap things most of all.”
“……”
Now he was even being called cheap. The rumor that Cesare Herald had something against omegas seemed to be true.
Oh, for — if that’s how it’s going to be, why call me in at all.
Being from District 4, he’d expected a certain degree of prejudice. But under the barrage of cutting remarks raining down on him like an airstrike, Seohan’s eyes went sharp in an instant. There was no way that didn’t catch Cesare’s eye.
“Oh?”
The eyes that had flared up with spirit collapsed meekly at that single word from him.
Thoroughly deflated, Seohan fidgeted with his fingers, then began slowly gathering his bag and rose from his seat. The conclusion had already been reached — there was no point sitting here any longer.
“Goodbye. Th-thank you for the opportunity to interview.”
“Sit down.”
The commanding voice was ominous. He’d stood up with the conviction of someone who’d made a firm decision, but without a spine to call his own, Seohan plopped right back down at those two words.
“Yes, sir.”
“What the……”
Cesare clicked his tongue watching Seohan wriggle his backside back into the seat, as if asking whether this would do.
He seemed docile and easy to manage one moment, and then somehow there was a flash of temper the next — the man was impossible to pin down.
Even now, he’d sat back down because he was told to, yet here he was blinking those round eyes with an expression that said why are you looking at me like that, tilting his head to one side.
“……”
Cesare felt a strange, nagging feeling — like impatience mixed with déjà vu — and slowly ran a hand along his jaw. The man kept sneaking glances in the direction of the elevator, clearly desperate to get home.
When was it that you were busy stealing glances at my face — the fact that he was so transparently dying to run away was galling, and Cesare’s eyebrow curved up on its own. He deliberately leaned back into the sofa at a leisurely pace and gave the résumé a little wave.
“When did you present?”
“Hmm…… the summer I was twenty.”
“That’s on the late side.”
Considering that most secondary-gendered individuals presented around age ten, that was considerably late.
Cesare recalled the faint trace of pheromone scent he’d picked up from the man’s nape. It had been as clumsy as everything else about him.
One look and it was clear he couldn’t regulate them properly either — but in truth, the amount was so faint that regulation wouldn’t even be necessary. As a dominant alpha, Cesare was sensitive to others’ pheromones — but even so, Yi Seohan’s required burying his face in the man’s nape and drawing in a deep breath before it could barely be detected.
He might, in fact, be the most suitable match out of all the omegas he’d interviewed over the years.
What he hated most was the pheromones omegas would pour off to lure — that desperate, look-at-me quality that turned his stomach even with a passing brush.
In the Graven Federation, omegas were no different from commodities, so everyone and anyone let their pheromones flow, trying to fetch a higher price.
He’d even gone so far as to search for a mutation. An omega who could stabilize his levels without leaking pheromones all over the place. Something he’d consistently failed to find, of course.
“……”
Cesare studied Seohan’s nape as though calculating something. He felt like he could make a definitive judgment if he could sense the man’s pheromones just a little more — but he already knew the man would squirm and fuss again, so he let it go.
To be honest, the fact that he didn’t find it revolting was already a significant result. This was the first omega who hadn’t triggered that sense of unpleasantness in him.
He’d never sat at ease in the same room as an omega like this either. Checking pheromones usually took less than ten seconds, and in most cases he’d be throwing the omega out within a minute.
He’d have to confirm it properly once the man could open his pheromones, but at this point — it was worth trying.
“You’ve lived in District 4 your whole life?”
“Oh — yes.”
“Since birth?”
“As far back as I can remember.”
“I see.”
Everything about him was clumsy from start to finish, yet he gave off a strange sense of déjà vu. But Cesare had no connection whatsoever to District 4. He’d grown up an orphan who’d even handled a gun as a child — but even then, he’d had no reason to go anywhere near the infected zone.
“Have you ever sold your body?”
“I — no, I haven’t.”
Seohan’s face flushed red as he waved both hands and shook his head vigorously. His soft, fluffy hair puffed up like cotton candy and then settled back down.
“Really? With a face like yours, you could’ve tempted plenty.”
