That same morning, Lee Hyeon stepped out of the studio looking like a man who hadn’t slept.
Standing in front of the building, he stretched his body out and pulled his running shoe laces tight. The rain that had been fickle all the way until early dawn had finally stopped completely. The wind blowing in from the river carried faint mingled traces of wet earth and grass.
Before heading out, Lee Hyeon cast a glance toward Blue Giraffe. The green door was still firmly shut, and the lights inside behind the front glass were dark. It wasn’t time to open yet.
Go Eunyeong and the rest of his family, along with Chief Han, had always worried about Lee Hyeon’s health — but the truth was, his daily life was fairly well-structured. He simply had an unusual aversion to the feeling of being full, but he took care of his body’s balance and kept up with exercise without fail. If he didn’t, the rhythm of his work tended to fall apart alongside it. Just as an instrument needed to be in tune, when his body went off-balance his hands lost their sensitivity too, and the effect carried over directly into his paintings. That cascading sense of things going out of alignment, one after another, was what he hated more than anything.
Before the sun had climbed fully high, the riverbank held only a handful of other runners like Lee Hyeon and a few dogs being walked. He zipped up the thin, well-fitted tracksuit and broke into a run along the path. The upright, unfaltering posture, the steady breathing, the clean economy of movement — it was flawless to look at.
But the reality was something else entirely.
Even as his feet pushed forward in the rhythm his body had memorized, his mind was anything but settled. The warmth of Yoon Seowoo’s skin the night before, soaked through with the smell of alcohol. The sweet scent that had reached him when he’d buried his nose against the line of his neck. The words — I didn’t answer because I was afraid of making a mistake — and the hesitation hiding beneath them. The moment he shook one thought loose, another latched on in its place. His insides were tangled up so thoroughly that he couldn’t even focus on the repetitive act of running.
After running for a long while, Lee Hyeon finally slowed his pace. Not because he was out of breath — but because there were too many thoughts.
He came to a stop in front of a vending machine and bought a bottle of water, twisting off the cap. He was partway through three or four swallows of cold water when something tugged at the top of his foot.
He looked down. A small, fluffy white dog was latched onto his running shoe lace, pulling at it. With a surprisingly earnest expression, it whined and stepped backward, and the lace went taut.
……
It’s clearly a dog — so why does it remind me of someone else? Lee Hyeon stood still and let it have the foot, watching the little white lump wriggling away at it. Its stubby tail was spinning like it had a motor attached. It was going at the running shoe with great enthusiasm, doing its best with teeth barely worth the name.
Just then, an urgent voice cut through the air from a distance.
“Mung! Mung! Ugh!”
A slight-framed man came running toward the dog, tripped over his own feet, and went down. There was a solid thud of a fall — but the white dog appeared completely unbothered by its owner’s predicament.
Lee Hyeon drained the last of the water in one go and crumpled the empty bottle into the bin. The owner had shown up, so he figured he could leave the leash-free dog where it was. He gave his foot a light shake to detach the dog and turned to go — when a half-dead voice snagged at his heels.
“Um, excuse me……”
Lee Hyeon turned halfway around. The man who had just fallen was struggling to his feet, brushing clumps of dirt off his trousers. The white dog was tucked firmly in his arms. The creature showed absolutely no awareness that its owner was having a hard time — it was still hanging its tongue out and wagging its tail happily.
“Mung, you little…… ha, I thought I’d lost you.”
The man held the dog close and let out several sighs of relief in a row. Then he suddenly looked straight up at Lee Hyeon.
“Thank you so much, really. That could have been a disaster. She doesn’t normally just bolt like that — I happened to drop the leash, and if I’d actually lost her, I can’t even imagine, just thinking about it gives me chills — and actually today is her birthday. I gave her a generous raw food meal this morning, so she had way more energy than usual, like, so much more than——”
His face was a mix of flustered, relieved, and embarrassed all at once. Since the man was mid-sentence, there was no polite way to leave, and Lee Hyeon had no choice but to stand there and hear him out.
“It’s fine.”
The moment the man paused to catch his breath, Lee Hyeon cut in swiftly.
“Keep a hold of the leash.”
He gave the white dog a parting glance and turned to go without a second thought — when:
“Wait, just a moment!”
The man rushed forward and reached out a hand.
“I’m just so grateful — I’d really like to do something in return. A coffee, or maybe a meal——”
Before the sentence was finished — a hand closed around his forearm, and Lee Hyeon recoiled as if burned, wrenching his arm away sharply. It was reflex. Something close to pure instinct.
……
A brief silence fell.
The man drew his hand back, startled too. Embarrassment spread across his face in an instant. Lee Hyeon looked down at his own arm without a word. Through the thin fabric, a stranger’s pheromones clung in mottled, murky patches.
Unpleasant.
The emotion was exact and clearly defined — and in the same instant, an involuntary shudder moved through him. Lee Hyeon took a step back. The man, belatedly realizing that grabbing someone’s arm without permission had been presumptuous, apologized over and over.
“I — I’m so sorry. I was just so flustered——”
“It’s fine.”
The words that came out were dry, but his expression was not. At that, the man’s face only grew redder. Lee Hyeon had no intention of explaining himself or smoothing things over. He left the embarrassed man standing there and walked away from the spot as though escaping it.
As he ran along the path again, he tried not to think about anything — but of course, it wasn’t that simple. If anything, only the brief contact from a moment ago kept replaying in his mind. The unfamiliar pheromones, the uninvited body heat, the unwanted scent — all of it was unpleasantly vivid.
Lee Hyeon exhaled in irritation.
This was how it had always been. Being finicky about other people’s pheromones was nothing new — it had been this way for years. He had lived like a territorial creature, wary of anyone encroaching on his space. It made no exception for alphas or omegas alike. Hadn’t he always been the type to become almost hysterical at even an accidental brush of contact?
Which meant Yoon Seowoo was, if anything, the anomaly.
Acknowledging that only made his breathing worse. Lee Hyeon finally dropped his pace. He pressed a hand to his side and worked to steady his breath — and when he lifted his head again, the shimmer of sunlight dancing on the surface of the river stabbed at his eyes.
Huu……
He wiped a hand down his face and turned in the direction of the studio.
***
When he stopped in front of the building, Lee Hyeon’s gaze snagged on the entrance. It was Yoon Seowoo.
He was perched on the low front steps with one foot up, sipping from a tumbler. Like someone who had just stepped out of a shower — the ends of his hair were still clumped with moisture that hadn’t quite dried, and his cheeks were flushed a warm pink.
Seowoo, who had been looking toward Blue Giraffe, sensed someone and turned his head. Lee Hyeon caught the full sight of the easy smile on his face going stiff and awkward.
“Good morning.”
“You’re here.”
“Looks like you’ve been out for a run.”
Lee Hyeon nodded, and Seowoo pulled his lips into an exaggerated smile. Lee Hyeon knocked the dirt from his running shoes and looked him over.
He’d come home at five in the morning — not even that long ago, when you thought about it — yet every trace of alcohol was completely gone. In its place, a faint drift of what smelled like baby wash and a familiar thread of pheromone hung in the air around him. Lee Hyeon drew in a quiet breath, and something somewhere inside his chest went loose.
“Didn’t I give you the door code?”
“Ah…… well. I did go in earlier.”
“Then why are you standing out here instead of waiting inside?”
He took the lead up the steps, and even without looking back, he could picture the expression Seowoo was making behind him. He could see clearly in his mind the eyes busily searching for an answer.
“I just — it felt a little strange being alone in an empty house with no one home.”
He’d expected something like that. Lee Hyeon didn’t push further and took the stairs quickly, opening the studio door.
“Come in.”
Once inside, Lee Hyeon unzipped his tracksuit and reached for water first. He pointed Seowoo toward the sofa as he stood there hovering uncertainly.
“Wait here for a bit. I’ll be out after I wash up.”
“……Okay.”
Lee Hyeon stepped behind the partition, tossed off his clothes without ceremony, and walked into the bathroom — and the moment he caught his reflection in the mirror, he paused. Even to his own eyes, his gaze looked dark and sharp-edged.
He stepped under the showerhead and turned it on. Lukewarm water ran from the crown of his head down over his shoulders.
Under normal circumstances, this was where his body’s rhythm would settle back into something comfortable. The pattern was: get the breathing under control through exercise, cool the heated body down with a shower, and then thoughts and senses would gradually come back online in their proper order. But today, the misaligned pieces showed no sign of clicking back into place.
The moment he closed his eyes, the previous night came rushing back.
