In all likelihood, Seok Wonho had spent a very long time deliberating and preparing thoroughly before he could bring himself to confess to a sexual preference like that. He immediately added more, speaking to a stunned Yigyeol who couldn’t find a single word to say.
That he had absolutely no intention of ever acting on it. That it was simply a preference he had to carry and live with.
That everything he felt was because he loved Yigyeol, and a solemn vow that he would spend the rest of his life looking only at him.
It was a story that was nearly impossible to believe. Arriving at a world he had never known existed wasn’t something he could simply feel good about. He was dazed and frightened.
“Th-then why are you telling me something like this?”
In the midst of the whirlwind of confusion, Yigyeol managed to ask just that. Part of him even wanted to demand answers and resent Wonho for it — why not just hide it for the rest of your life?
Seok Wonho hesitated for a brief moment, then slowly stepped down from the bed. The plush hotel floor, laid with fine carpet. A man with a sculpted face, the kind who seemed like he would never bow to anyone — got down on both knees. And with that, he drew out the true point he had kept buried deep inside, speaking it to Yigyeol.
The true point itself was, in fact, even more of a shock.
“I just — I want you to help me a little.”
“What in the world……”
This was what he meant by help.
That when he occasionally let a few words slip during sex in a moment of arousal, Yigyeol shouldn’t just let it pass. That he wanted Yigyeol to respond in kind.
Not always, but every now and then, there were times when he couldn’t hold back a rising desire. Times when he felt like he would go mad if he didn’t get those words out right that very moment — and he asked that only at those times, Yigyeol let himself be drawn into the same space with him. If Yigyeol would help him just that much, he said, he would spend his life devoted to him and live as a good husband.
“It was because it was you, Yigyeol, that I could find the courage.”
He pleaded with Yigyeol in sweet words.
“If I hadn’t loved someone this much in the first place, I’d have gone through life not even knowing a twisted desire like this existed in me. It never would have surfaced.”
“……”
“So this is absolutely not something I’m saying lightly. My feelings…… can you understand them?”
It was an attitude as though awaiting judgment. When Yigyeol froze in bewilderment, the pleading only grew more relentless, stretching on without end. Please help me. Please understand me, just a little — he kept clinging to him.
Watching a man who had always been as unyielding as iron lay himself bare as though he might shed tears at any moment, Yigyeol fled the hotel as if in escape. He then spent a week alone, turning it all over in his mind.
Finding the story hard to believe, he searched the internet — and it was true, people with such preferences really did exist.
The world beneath the surface, which he hadn’t known at all, was far more solid and deep than he had imagined. Yigyeol looked into those depths, losing sleep and skipping meals. In the process, he also came to understand just how difficult it must be to confess such a perverse inclination to someone you love.
“It’s like the courage to throw yourself off a cliff with nothing on you……”
Reading along a line written by someone with such a preference on an anonymous board, Yigyeol recalled his husband’s confession over and over again. Gradually, Wonho’s anguish became something he could understand a little, and even the recklessness that had seemed so senseless began to feel quite romantic.
His resolve had already softened before the week was even out. Giving way so easily, Yigyeol turned his wedding ring — which he had never once taken off — over and over in his fingers out of habit.
His husband’s new side, so unfamiliar to the always mature and rational man he knew, was strange and frightening — yet at the same time, he felt a pang of pity. How long had he been stewing over this alone? The memories of their courtship and newlywed days, in which Wonho had been flawless, reached out and seized Yigyeol by the ankle, dragging him down into the mire.
Perhaps refusing had been impossible from the very beginning. Yigyeol wasn’t cruel enough to coldly call it quits while standing before the most unguarded part of someone he loved.
He returned to their newlywed home and quietly wrapped his arms around his husband’s broad back.
“I’m honestly scared.”
In that moment, the sound of Seok Wonho’s heartbeat beneath his palm eased every worry, little by little.
“But…… I think I can understand that you must have been even more scared.”
“Thank you, Yigyeol. Thank you, and I’m sorry……”
This person loves me. That’s why he found the courage.
“So I’ll try to find mine too.”
But even with that resolution, he had agonized over it more than a few times in the beginning.
What had started as let’s at least try once was beyond anything he had imagined. Outside, he was a capable company employee and a more gentlemanly husband than anyone — yet whenever he got drunk or caught up in the mood and undressed Yigyeol, he would occasionally give in to that dreadful sexual fetish and say things like this:
“You know Deputy Jung from our team, the one who greeted you last time. What did you think of him? Should we invite him over sometime?”
Or, even in the middle of a pleasant dinner out together, he would gesture discreetly at a nearby customer or the waiter and ask in a low voice:
“If that man over there forced a kiss on you right now — how do you think you’d feel?”
As time went on further, even out on a busy street:
“That man who just asked you for directions. Looked to me like a freshly turned twenty-year-old alpha — didn’t you feel anything? Like he was making a pass at you…… mm? He had the build for it too. If he put his mind to it, he could easily drag someone like you off. Hah, imagining it is going to drive me crazy.”
With each passing year, his husband’s words pushed further and further past the line of safe territory. And all the while, Yigyeol found himself swept along in those waves too.
Was it resignation, or was it contagion? The situations that had once seemed strange and frightening grew dull with time, and even familiar.
Truth be told, there were the rare occasions he felt aroused. A transgression he had never once imagined in his life — yet even his husband’s persuasion that there was no sin in simply exchanging words began to sound plausible to him.
By the time they reached their fifth year of marriage, Yigyeol was at last capable of becoming fully immersed in such scenarios himself, depending on the moment. Enough to casually spin out the shameless lie that he had recklessly slept with an unsuspecting young designated driver and used him for sport. Enough to become wholly absorbed in the sweet fantasy of doing something improper with someone else, as though giving in against his will to his husband’s pressure.
* * *
“Yigyeol, come here.”
It was an evening no different from any other.
His husband, home from work, had dinner with Yigyeol as usual, then volunteered to handle the tidying up first. Even after being busy at work all day, taking every chance he got to help with household tasks was a habit and an unbreakable rule he had kept without fail for five years.
While her husband briskly cleared the dining table, Yigyeol drew water into the large, solid marble bathtub in the main bathroom.
An omega’s body was delicate and sensitive. Yigyeol was especially susceptible to external factors. Pleasant scents and atmosphere, soft and glimmering things — they lifted his mood.
Having grown up in comfortable circumstances from a very young age and lived a smooth life all the way through, he had no hobbies worth speaking of, and his almost singular one was the bubble bath he enjoyed lavishly, going through premium bath products without restraint.
Stepping out in a robe after a pleasant bath, Yigyeol was called by his husband, who had been in the study.
“Were you in here?”
Shaking his hair loose of the remaining dampness, Yigyeol walked toward the desk. His husband, done with the household tasks, was seated with the packed bookshelves as his backdrop.
It was the kind of sight that made him want to show him off.
The light of the screen fell across every corner of Seok Wonho’s features as he looked at the open laptop, making them appear all the more defined. His dark, beautifully shaped brows, his deep and composed eyes, his lips which always held an easy smile — all flawlessly smooth.
His swept-back hair was always neat, and his body, consistently maintained under a thorough routine, was firm and upright even with only his clothed upper half visible. With a meticulous and exacting disposition to match, he was a model alpha from head to toe, in every sense of the word.
Gazing with admiration at the sight of his husband — one he wanted to capture in a photograph and keep — Yigyeol came to stand beside him. His husband naturally reached around and pulled him in by the waist.
“Did you bring work home again? You should rest once you’re home.”
“No. I have something I wanted to show you.”
“Mm? What is it?”
His husband pressed a quick kiss to the top of his head, where the scent of shampoo lingered richly, and settled Yigyeol onto his lap. The hands that lightly fussed over him were affectionate. Setting aside his looks, his personality, his abilities — what always melted Yigyeol’s heart without fail was this touch. The unwavering love that treated him as though he were the only omega in the world was Wonho’s most singular quality.
Guided by the arms around his waist, Yigyeol glanced at the laptop screen.
“A leather workshop…… one-day class?”
The towel slipped from his grasp. His husband began drying his damp hair for him in his place. He went carefully over the wet curve of his ear and the nape of his neck as well. Yigyeol accepted all of it with easy familiarity, scrolling down the screen with the laptop’s touchpad.
“Wonho, what’s this?”
