“Ugh. Yu Gojun……”
I never thought I’d run into him again here.
Lee Yeongwoo frowned deeply and stepped back to stand beside me.
“Snatching someone else’s guest—where were you rushing off to in such a hurry?”
Yu Gojun glanced around briefly and closed his mouth for a moment.
In the silence, unfiltered moaning sounds could be heard, and he looked at Lee Yeongwoo and laughed.
“You were all pretending to be innocent.”
“Th-that’s not it!”
“It’s not?”
Then Yu Gojun and his friends burst out laughing—*Wahaha*.
“At least hide your friend’s—or boyfriend’s—pheromones before you make excuses.”
“Wow, look, his hair’s even wet. Seems like you did everything you needed to in that short time?”
“I told you we didn’t do anything weird! Gun… he’s just because of pheromones……!”
I grabbed Lee Yeongwoo’s shoulder to stop him.
Nothing good would come from revealing my constitution to complete strangers. Lee Yeongwoo must have realized what I was thinking and closed his mouth.
At this, Yu Gojun and his friends snickered.
“You’ve gotten bold, Lee Yeongwoo. So the reason you never gave Alphas the time of day was because your standards were fucking high?”
“But what’s that bastard’s real identity? He knows Chairman Baek, he knows Gojun’s grandfather, and on top of that he’s Lee Yeongwoo’s boyfriend.”
As they approached, the rough oppressive feeling characteristic of an Alpha pack hit me hard. With the pressure piling on top of the nauseating smell, cold sweat began seeping out, but I bit my tongue and endured it.
When I covered my mouth with my trembling hand, Lee Yeongwoo looked at me worriedly, then immediately pulled my arm.
“Let’s go. They’re not worth dealing with.”
“Where do you think you’re going? Ignoring people?”
It was almost the ten minutes Baek Jeongwoo had mentioned. There was no time to waste arguing here.
After we’d walked a few steps, the sound of footsteps persistently following from behind made Lee Yeongwoo shout angrily.
“Stop following us!”
“We’re not following. What do you want us to do when we’re going the same direction?”
Lee Yeongwoo’s face reddened as he tried to curse more, but after checking my complexion, he pressed his lips tightly shut.
After ten seconds that felt like ten minutes passed, Lee Yeongwoo rushed forward shouting:
“Found it! Room 19!”
Finally, a room number marked ’19’ appeared.
Just as Lee Yeongwoo placed his hand on the doorknob, Yu Gojun said:
“That’s the room we reserved.”
“What? Don’t talk shit. We’re the ones who were called here……”
“Called?”
Lee Yeongwoo hurriedly covered his mouth, but it had already reached other ears.
Yu Gojun took out his phone from his pocket, tapped it a few times, then turned the screen toward us to show.
[Jeongwoo: 19]
“By this person?”
The name and number clearly displayed on the latest expensive phone in Yu Gojun’s hand.
……No way.
The moment an ominous feeling struck me.
“You’re here now. ……Huh?”
The door to Room 19 opened, and the source of all this trouble appeared.
“What? Why are you all gathered here?”
* * *
“Now then, shall we do some introductions? These bastards are the friends I mentioned.”
The interior of the room was more spacious than I’d imagined. The number of rooms was also considerable, making it feel like there was a building inside a building.
It took quite a walk just to reach the sofa Baek Jeongwoo pointed to.
“You’ve probably already heard their names? Since you met before I even called you! Hahaha!”
“I know that person. But conversely, I didn’t catch a single letter of a name.”
“Keke, did you get rejected by him too, Yu Gojun? That bastard’s wall isn’t a joke, right?”
“He was all bristled up and wary. Like a scared baby kitten.”
Baby kitten…….
Was my hand trembling right now because I was intoxicated by pheromones, or because I was pissed off by that greasy metaphor? The latter seemed more likely.
I wasn’t particularly surprised that these were Baek Jeongwoo’s friends. Every person I’d met at this party place was of similar caliber, as if they’d cloned Baek Jeongwoo from A to Z.
However, the problem was that these weren’t just ordinary friends.
“I prepared it as a surprise and it’s ruined. How did you run into each other?”
“We met like fate in the elevator. Then Lee Yeongwoo suddenly barged in and took him away.”
“Lee Yeongwoo did?”
At Yu Gojun’s question, Baek Jeongwoo looked at Lee Yeongwoo and grinned.
“Lee Yeongwoo, that impatient bastard. Couldn’t hold back and found him already?”
“I-I didn’t try to find him on purpose…… I also just happened to……”
“Did you already do it?”
“I told you no, so why does everyone keep saying that!”
When Lee Yeongwoo shouted, Baek Jeongwoo giggled as if amused and sat on the sofa in a slovenly posture.
“It’s a joke, why so serious? Well, sleeping with an Alpha doesn’t fit your personality anyway…… Hm?”
Then, not even three seconds after sitting down, he sprang up.
*Step, step*, he walked right up in front of me.
“This bastard, why’s your condition like this?”
Baek Jeongwoo’s pheromones rapidly drew near.
While I’d been social distancing from the Alpha pack, the savage beast smell suddenly hit me hard. My head spun dizzyingly.
The back of my shirt was drenched in cold sweat, but thanks to my suit jacket, no one noticed.
“Hey, get away from Gunho!”
“Pheromones, why are they like this? They’re incredibly thick.”
Sniffing around me like that, he was exactly like a dog. Not as an insult, but literally.
Instead of me, who was maintaining a vow of silence, Yu Gojun answered for me.
“His pheromones were scattered from when I first met him, but now as you can see. He’s showing off to the whole neighborhood.”
Baek Jeongwoo asked me with a dumbfounded face.
“Did you really…… do it?”
“Ah, I told you it’s not like that! Gunho just got intoxicated by someone else’s pheromones……! Ah.”
Lee Yeongwoo hurriedly covered his mouth, but the water had already been spilled.
“What? Intoxicated?”
Everyone’s eyes simultaneously widened,
Then they burst into roaring laughter.
“Hahahaha! Hey, did you hear? He said he got intoxicated by pheromones!”
“Can’t you at least put some sincerity into your lies? The excuse is that he got intoxicated, fucking hell!”
“He’s not even a kid! Hahaha!”
“……”
……Sorry for being a kid.
While everyone was holding their stomachs laughing, somehow Baek Jeongwoo wasn’t laughing.
One of his friends stopped laughing and placed a hand on Baek Jeongwoo’s shoulder.
“Jeongwoo-ya, why are you alone like this? Are you pissed because someone picked up the toy you threw away?”
At this, Yu Gojun let out a snicker.
“It’s not just any toy, but a former fiancé. Must bring back some feelings.”
……Fiancé?
When I turned my head to look at Lee Yeongwoo, I met brown eyes that were already looking my way.
Lee Yeongwoo looked startled, then avoided my gaze with a flushed face.
The engagement between LK and Baekil. Since neither were ordinary conglomerate families, both households must have put quite a bit of effort into it, yet it was past tense…….
It seemed there was some behind-the-scenes story I didn’t know about.
“There’s no way that Baek Jeongwoo would feel jealous, he just purely can’t stand seeing others do well…… Jeongwoo, why are you spacing out? Are you listening?”
“……Huh? I-I’m listening. Y-yeah. Right?”
“What are you saying? Hurry up and tell us this person’s identity.”
“Ah, fuck. I was about to do that anyway.”
Baek Jeongwoo messed up his hair roughly, then pulled out a bottle from the ice bucket and poured it into a glass with a *glug glug*. The cap was already open.
Then, holding up the half-filled glass, he said:
“He’s my cousin. The eldest son from Baekil Pharmaceuticals. Baek Gunho. The end.”
It was an unexpectedly simple introduction.
Inwardly, I thought it wouldn’t be strange for this bastard to suddenly expose me as an adopted child.
Then Baek Jeongwoo looked at me with narrowed eyes. His shameless face seemed to ask, ‘I didn’t say it on purpose, right? Aren’t you grateful?’ It was astounding.
“That bastard is really from that Baekil Pharmaceuticals?”
“Aha. So that’s why there were eyewitness accounts near Chairman Baek……”
“What did I tell you? I said that bastard looked like a Baek.”
“But I don’t get it. Earlier, he could’ve just said Baek Jeongwoo called him and that would’ve been it. Was there a need to hide it?”
Their gazes felt uncomfortable, like watching an animal trapped in a zoo cage.
At this point, one of them raised his hand high.
“Wait! According to that bastard Bang Geunhyuk, the one coming from Baekil Pharmaceuticals isn’t the eldest son but the second……”
“Now then! And!”
Before he could finish speaking, Baek Jeongwoo slammed down his glass on the table with a *bang*, as if to break it. Everyone’s attention immediately focused there.
“He’s someone who’ll be with us for a long time.”
“……You’re putting that person on our team? Isn’t this too sudden?”
“That’s why it’s a surprise.”
“At least consult us first, you bastard.”
I didn’t know what kind of group this “our team” was, but I could roughly estimate.
Yu Gojun, a member of Yurim Culture that dominated domestic publishing and media. Baek Jeongwoo, son of the third son of Baekil Group’s head family.
Though the official succession ranking was ambiguous, they had the potential to swallow everything whole if they laid the groundwork well.
The other bastards, from what I’d heard in passing, had backgrounds in the art world, distribution, were grandsons of financial holding companies, even descendants of a former Prosecutor General…… they seemed to have quite diverse backgrounds.
In other words, friends or allies, to put it nicely.
To put it badly, they were in a collusive relationship.
“Why so much talk? I’m the leader. Trust me. He’s useful.”
“He’s an interesting person, but his first impression wasn’t very friendly.”
“Ah, that? He’s playing hard to get. Playing hard to get.”
At Yu Gojun’s question, Baek Jeongwoo pointed at Lee Yeongwoo with his thumb and laughed.
“Look at that, he charmed not only our chairman but even LK’s youngest. Don’t you see? Behind the scenes, he’s cracking pumpkin seeds like crazy, that bastard.”
“That’s……! I’m not charmed!”
Baek Jeongwoo lightly ignored Lee Yeongwoo, who tried to object again, stood up from his seat, and suddenly approached me. In both hands, he held an unfamiliar liquor bottle and an empty glass.
“On the outside, pretending to be good, pretending to be upright, while hiding your claws behind. Quite cunning, aren’t you?”
Baek Jeongwoo poured liquid into the glass and handed it to me.
“I knew you and I were cut from the same fruit. A person who isn’t satisfied with just what’s in hand.”
“……”
“Hit the nail on the head?”
Baek Jeongwoo laughed,
And I maintained silence instead of explaining.
Because…….
‘I’m gonna puke, fuck.’
It was physically impossible.
Baek Jeongwoo’s characteristic pheromones, the stench from wild beast fur mixed with the smell of strong liquor, made my stomach churn like crazy.
“Then shall we start a welcoming party for our new member?”
When I didn’t take the glass (more precisely, I didn’t have the strength to lift my hand), Baek Jeongwoo shrugged and raised the glass high into the air.
“Welcoming the new face of our YPC!”
……YPC?
Even while my stomach was turning over, I looked up wondering what that meant, and a confident voice returned.
“We’re people who will hold the future throne, so Young Prince Circle. YPC for short.”
‘That’s terrible……!’
A curse reflexively came out but went back in due to motion sickness.
Who the hell came up with that?
