Turning the word over in his mouth — needlessly bittersweet and wistful — Yong Cheonha walked into the bathroom and put a cigarette between his lips. He wasn’t planning to smoke in here; he just needed something to bite down on from the anxiety.
Where would pretty alphas frequently come and go? The entertainment industry, maybe? Where could you even meet aspiring celebrities or idols? Somewhere other than their agency buildings.
Honestly, whenever he made looks this much of a condition, there was always one thing he heard from people. That he could just find a decent kept man, sponsor him, and take what he wanted physically.
“Ha. How old do they think I am.”
But he was still at an age where he preferred things to happen naturally. And the ones who approached him because of his background left a really bitter aftertaste. It made him feel needlessly small and worthless somehow — it was unpleasant. Most of all, the act of buying a person with money just felt off to him.
What would he have to do to naturally meet a pretty alpha and actually get to dating? With about six months left in the year……. To get into a relationship, he’d need the flirty getting-to-know-you phase first, and there was so much to do with so little time.
At this point maybe the only option was for a pretty alpha to just drop out of the sky somewhere. He had been living righteously — couldn’t something work out somehow?
Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure he had been all that righteous, which only left him feeling like he needed to change his strategy.
Maybe I should try a part-time job at an amusement park?
People said it was so easy to start something romantic there. That only an idiot would fail to.
But even if he hit it off with a fellow part-timer, it probably wouldn’t end well. He’d already gotten burned a few times.
“Ha……”
Had he drunk too fast? He felt a little fuzzy. His head felt slightly heavy too.
He rinsed his mouth and pressed his fingertips into his temples. This didn’t feel like alcohol pain — it felt like he had studied far too much today.
Right, damn it — me, studying things that have nothing to do with my fate. What glory am I chasing.
No matter how much he studied, the school was full of studying-obsessed monsters, so just graduating would be a miracle.
His grades were about to get wrecked, his romantic endeavors were going nowhere, he was already miserable enough — and as if to mock him, a sound of pained groaning drifted through the partition from the occupied stall next to him.
Wait. From an occupied bathroom stall — a moan, along with sweet, fresh pheromones leaking out……?
Already not a particularly patient person by nature, Yong Cheonha felt a surge of irritation and kicked the bathroom door that was leaking both moans and pheromones.
“Hng……. Augh…….”
Hogging the whole bathroom to yourself, are we.
And what an utterly lovely pheromone, too. Meanwhile some people hadn’t so much as held an alpha’s hand.
“Hello? Is everything okay in there?”
He squeezed out a gentle voice on the outside, but inwardly he was fully prepared to pass divine judgment on whoever was in there getting inappropriate in a public bathroom. He knocked at the door with enough force to cool even a thousand-year heat.
A short, quiet apology drifted out in a barely audible voice.
Extremely curious about the face of whatever person was in there making a scene in a bathroom stall, Yong Cheonha perched on the edge of the sink and fixed his gaze stubbornly on the stall door.
Soon, with a rattling sound, the door opened with difficulty, and a man who could barely hold himself upright half-crawled out.
Since he came out alone, it didn’t seem like he had been in there trying to do anything with someone.
The man trembled like a newborn giraffe and made his unsteady way over to the sink. His pheromones were so thick they made Yong Cheonha’s nose sting.
Pheromones this strong in a club — hadn’t a heat cycle gone off?
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Ah, yes. Yes. My body suddenly just — my body feels a little, not, not great……”
Unable to even lift his head, curled over and trembling, the sight of him was genuinely pitiful. Omegas were outside his range of interest — but basic human decency was basic human decency.
“Should I call security? Are you feeling sick? Did your heat hit? Or did someone slip you something? Can you remember the face of whoever gave it to you?”
He shook his head while keeping it ducked low — it was unclear whether that meant no or he didn’t know.
Panting heavily, clinging to the sink and groaning — it was a fairly pathetic sight. The tips of his ears all the way down to his bare, exposed nape had gone flushed red.
His pheromones were completely uncontrolled, and the fever that came with a heat looked like it had peaked hard — sending him out like this seemed genuinely dangerous, so Yong Cheonha contacted his uncles.
“Just wait a bit. If you can’t even manage your cycle, why are you coming to places like this?”
“Coming here — haa……. Wasn’t, ah, ugh…….”
“Are you alright? Does it hurt a lot? Lean on me.”
Yong Cheonha wrapped an arm around the man’s waist and let him lean in. He was more solidly built than expected. Yong Cheonha had assumed he was the same size as himself, but the man exceeded his armful.
“I’m sorry, I’m, I’m so sorry……. Hic……. Phero, phero, pheromones…….”
“Ah…….”
The desperate plea from the man clutching at his clothes left Yong Cheonha at a loss.
The other person was likely mistaking him for an alpha.
It sounded like he was asking for a pheromone shower — but between two omegas, releasing pheromones at each other would have absolutely no effect. They’d just both end up smelling twice as fragrant.
Even now, the pheromones were already excessive enough that Yong Cheonha himself — also an omega — was feeling a subtle heaviness in his head. Combined with the lingering alcohol, it was starting to border on a headache.
It was getting bad enough that he felt like he needed to help this person and then go straight home.
Ah. Is the alcohol not sitting right?
His body was being particularly uncooperative today. Between the encroaching headache and a hint of something cold-like, he felt faintly chilled all over, heat creeping up from the tips of his ears.
He had planned to start a wild weekend right from this Friday night — but it was looking like he might need to spend the whole weekend resting instead.
He pressed his fingers into his temples, trying to hold himself together somehow, when his body suddenly tilted forward.
Two centimeters from the face of a man he had never met before.
Close enough that their eyelashes might brush — for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
Could a person’s eyes really be this bright a shade of brown? Partially the lighting, perhaps, but the irises were less brown and more amber — beautiful to the point of being almost otherworldly.
The slightly downward-slanting outer corners of his eyes were framed by densely-set lashes so long they drew a sigh.
His gaze traveled down from hair that was sweat-drenched, plastered against his forehead, curling slightly at the ends — and found a straight, proud nose and luminous skin beneath. And beyond that, lips so lush it was as though they had been shaped from camellia petals.
Slightly curly hair, doe-like eyes, a nape left fully exposed — it drew the gaze in a way that felt almost strange.
Just like Yong Cheonha’s first love.
Yes. Just like that futile first love.
It was, truly, a beautiful face.
A face flushed red all over. He had his brow furrowed slightly as if in pain, but his eyes glistened with pooling moisture, as if he might cry at any moment.
The warm breath falling from his parted lips felt almost sweet.
Yong Cheonha’s heart lurched in his chest in an instant.
Oh. Damn. Possible. Possible. Possible. Possible.
With a face like this, he thought he might be okay with an omega. Couldn’t something be worked out — pheromone perfume or something?
What an absolutely breathtaking face. He didn’t want to let this go. Secondary type didn’t matter. At this level, even an omega seemed viable. Terribly sorry for a first meeting, but — he was in love.
“Um……”
Oh. Damn — the voice too — it’s passing, no — it passed. Yong Cheonha mentally ran through the properties he had recently looked at, wondering if any of them had been newlywed-appropriate.
We’re both omegas, so kids probably won’t happen. For two men living together, 160 square meters isn’t bad.
He was calculating — three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an expanded balcony would be about right, wouldn’t it — when a soft voice drifted to his ear.
“Are, are you alright……?”
“Pardon?”
Is 160 square meters too small though? Right, darling would need a walk-in wardrobe and one or two hobby rooms too.
“I asked if you were alright…….”
Like drops of paint falling onto a masterpiece, crimson droplets began blooming across the beautiful man’s face.
Only belatedly realizing that the drops obscuring that beautiful face were nosebleed blood dripping from his own nose, Yong Cheonha hastily clamped his hand over it.
“Ah. I’m not normally the type to have a weak nasal membrane, you know. What’s going on with me today.”
Even in this situation, he couldn’t help playing it cool in front of his ideal type.
“Genuinely. I’m not someone who just randomly gets nosebleeds when the seasons change. Have I been a little tired lately?”
He actually did have the hardware of someone who could enter a triathlon, so this was genuinely baffling to him.
Even with his nose covered the nosebleed kept going, and drops of blood began blooming across that angel-like face. A crimson drop trailed down the man’s cheek and caught on his lip. As if breathing through his nose had become difficult, the drop slid between his parted lips and visibly stained his tongue red.
For how brief a moment it was, it stretched out impossibly long — as if captured by a high-speed camera, playing back in extreme slow motion.
Even the furrow that formed between the man’s brows at the metallic taste of blood was part of it.
Still catching his breath in short, labored gasps, the man gently told him not to tilt his head back.
If you do this, you’ll have no choice but to marry me.
It was a face that made him dream of fidelity and settling down — laughably at odds with his life’s stated goal of total physical indulgence.
“Could you, haa, could you, as hard as it may be, haa……. Could you rein in your pheromones, please?”
“Ah.”
Pheromones.
Yong Cheonha’s pheromone was a heavy musk type, which most people couldn’t detect well. Even Yong Cheonha himself could barely sense it.
Perhaps because of that, the occasional person who was drawn to his pheromone was always, without exception, someone strange.
But hoping that even those types might come along, he had been releasing it freely out of habit — so he had never really thought much about his pheromones.
Apparently I’ve just been letting them loose without even thinking. But still — two omegas mixing pheromones a little, is that really a problem?
“It’s fine. I may not look it, but I’m an omega.”
“I’m, I’m an alpha, so it’s not fine.”
“Ah……?”
It took him quite a while to process what had been said. If the other person was an alpha, there was suddenly a lot more to think about.
So then — what does our family planning look like? 160 square meters won’t cut it.
He found himself involuntarily factoring in his grandfather’s real estate holdings as well.
“Wha—! What are you doing! What is this! Stop!”
He had been diligently working through future plans when a thunderclap of a voice shattered the whole thing.
The uncles.
He had contacted them earlier about an omega in the bathroom whose heat had gone off, and now they had come flooding in all at once.
“Uncle——”
“What the, what the——”
“Are you insane! What are you doing in here!”
The broad-shouldered men carried themselves with an air of utter disbelief — but their eyes were registering something closer to a seismic event.
This club had been acquired purely so that Yong Cheonha could go out and enjoy himself safely, and if anything even slightly harmful to Yong Cheonha was detected, it brought down an enormous storm of retaliation.
That same Yong Cheonha had personally called to say there was an omega who had gone into heat and to come take care of it — so they had rushed over, and what in the world was this scene in front of them.
An omega, covered in blood, in Yong Cheonha’s arms. And on top of that — even at a glance, clearly very good-looking.
He’s been more hysterical than usual lately — and now he’s gone and actually caused an incident.
The sight of the bloody scene before them made their heads spin. He was an adult now, but if he started having run-ins with the police for no good reason, that was going to be a headache.
The wiser approach was to handle things separately — to settle privately with the omega who had apparently been beaten just for having the misfortune of catching Yong Cheonha’s eye.
The calculation was done. No point dragging it out.
Three of them hoisted Yong Cheonha by his limbs and carried him off as though bearing a palanquin, while the other two went to assist the omega they assumed Yong Cheonha had beaten up.
Yong Cheonha, simultaneously speechless and unable to breathe through his blocked nose, was too dumbfounded to say a word. Even after being set down gently on the sofa in the VVIP-exclusive room, he remained at a loss for words for a long while.
Only after his nosebleed stopped and he had turned the whole situation over in his mind was he able to finally get a word out.
“What exactly is happening right now?”
