1. Unplanned
Even after boarding the plane bound for Korea, Jinwoo couldn’t stop sighing.
What was so great about marriage, anyway.
Even while he was in the States, they’d been nagging him to go on blind dates whenever he’d almost managed to forget about it — and now they’d gone and arranged another meeting, timed perfectly to the day of his return to Korea.
This was all because of his hyung.
He tried not to blame others, but blaming his hyung was the one thing that gave him the most peace of mind.
His hyung had gone and married for love without a single material benefit, knowing full well their parents would be against it — and now all the fallout was landing squarely on him.
So surely he could be forgiven for placing at least a little of the blame there.
His hyung must have felt somewhat guilty, because he’d booked him a first-class seat instead of business — not even at the family’s expense — but Jinwoo declined every service that was offered.
It wasn’t out of defiance.
It was because jumping straight into a long-haul flight the moment his heat cycle had ended left him feeling completely wretched.
“They should at least tell me who’s going to be there…”
He pulled his coat over himself on top of the blanket and closed his eyes.
He’d only been on three blind dates so far, but every time, he’d at least been given basic information about the other party in advance.
This time, there had been none of that.
It felt like pressure — like a silent command to stop making noise and just marry this person.
Most omegas around him in similar circumstances had gotten married around this age, but this wasn’t the Joseon Dynasty — surely meeting someone for the first time with wedding paint already on their face was a bit much.
His mind was cluttered with too many things to think about, but his body was exhausted enough to pull him under on its own.
By the time he opened his eyes, the announcement signaling their descent was already playing.
“You must be tired after traveling so far.”
The person he met — with no prior information whatsoever — was, at the very least, the best of the blind date partners Jinwoo had encountered up to this point.
In looks, in voice. Everything.
It would have been easier to make comparisons if he’d known more about him beforehand.
“I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m Do Yuhan.”
“…Hyeon Jinwoo.”
This was his first time meeting someone at a blind date who offered a handshake so politely.
Was it that all the other alphas he’d dealt with up until now had been the strange ones — or was this man simply unusual?
“I heard you were studying in the United States.”
“Yes, I was.”
He didn’t just appear decent on the surface — he seemed genuinely fine on the inside, too.
Even so, Jinwoo’s guard didn’t ease away so readily, and that was because of his track record up until now.
The second alpha he’d met had tried to pin him down with pheromones from the very first meeting.
If Jinwoo hadn’t been a dominant, he surely would have been swept away without a chance to resist.
At least this man didn’t seem to have that kind of violent streak — and that was a relief.
“I took the liberty of choosing this place, thinking you might be craving Korean food — I hope that’s alright?”
It was precisely the exchange of a business transaction.
The kind of tone that belonged to someone with no particular desire to impress him, but equally no reason to come across poorly.
Jinwoo didn’t feel offended or put out.
If he’d been sensitive enough to feel that way toward a complete stranger, he’d have gone into acting rather than art.
“I’m not picky. You chose well.”
Instead of replying, Yuhan gave a faint smile.
A light trace of the pheromone distinctive to dominant alphas drifted over.
It was possible Jinwoo was more attuned to it than usual — his heat cycle had only just ended, which meant his sensitivity was still running high.
Most likely, this was also part of his strategy.
The texture was entirely different from the kind of pheromone that slipped out when someone was genuinely drawn to another person.
Unlike betas, alphas and omegas use pheromones to read each other.
It’s an instinct so deeply animal in nature that it’s difficult to explain in words — but the point was that the pheromone meant to draw someone in and the one designed to cultivate goodwill were entirely separate things.
And from Yuhan, it was the latter he was sensing.
“Why is it that you want to get married?”
Jinwoo set aside the table full of food laid out before them and got straight to the point.
If this had been his first blind date, he too would have been too tense to hold a proper conversation — but by now, he was something of a veteran.
And Yuhan was a person who looked ready to listen.
He seemed different from the ignorant alphas he’d dealt with before, and so Jinwoo made the effort to engage.
This would be the last one, anyway.
He’d managed to hold his ground up until now — but his time had come too.
His hyung’s love marriage was done. His noona’s arranged marriage was done.
Jinwoo knew perfectly well that he was now the only one left with whom any kind of transaction was still possible.
He couldn’t leave the choice of a spouse — someone who would be registered in the same family registry as him for the rest of his life — entirely up to fate.
So if there were grounds for fault, he needed to start paying careful attention to them right now.
“As you may be aware, I’ll be thirty-six this year — thirty-seven before long.”
He hadn’t known, but he nodded as though he had.
“And below me, I have a younger brother who is an alpha.”
It was only two sentences, but Jinwoo understood at once.
Even in a society that had become increasingly merit-driven, certain companies still clung to family succession.
The chairman would soon be designating an heir, and whoever followed needed to have a solid standing.
Jinwoo knew all too well that a stable family life occupied a significant place in what that ‘standing’ entailed.
“Then the ultimate goal is a child.”
“That’s correct.”
Marriage alone didn’t make a proper family — that, too, fell short.
The problem that came trailing behind like a string of sweet potatoes was, of course, children.
Jinwoo nodded.
Between a dominant alpha and a dominant omega, the likelihood of producing a dominant offspring was high — so from Yuhan’s perspective, there was probably no better match than him.
He had tried to hold out until thirty, but it looked like he was going to become a married man while still in the prime of his twenties.
Maybe he should have just blurted out that he had a partner.
Too bad that wasn’t an option — and he knew it better than anyone.
All the support he’d received without wanting for anything until now had been fertilizer for this very day.
Even if he’d been raised as the pampered youngest and late-born child of the family, when it came to transactions made for the family’s sake, his parents drew a firm and unmistakable line.
“Since it seems we’re both going to end up in this marriage either way, please make me two promises.”
“Go ahead.”
“The first — no interference in each other’s private lives.”
It wasn’t meant to catch him off guard, but seeing his expression remain entirely unchanged made Jinwoo find him just a little irritating.
“As you may know, I came back to Korea right before starting my doctoral program, so I’m a bit resentful about that. Some people make a point of interfering even in things like this.”
It had only been a few months since he’d finished his master’s thesis.
He wasn’t the type of student who burned with academic passion, but having his studies cut short against his will was quite a grievance.
Things would be busy right away with wedding preparations and everything else, so he couldn’t start immediately — but finishing his doctorate someday was still a goal of his.
The remaining condition was, honestly, not a bad one for Yuhan either.
“And — let’s use separate rooms. We only need to be together during my cycle, right?”
Since it was a marriage with a clear purpose, there was no reason to press his body against a stranger’s on days when it wasn’t necessary.
He would feel the same, so if anything, Jinwoo might have been the one opening the door for him.
“Let’s do that. I have no objections.”
“Good. I won’t interfere in your private life either. Well… even if you see someone else on the outside, as long as you don’t get caught, I’ll let it slide.”
“I’m not that kind of promiscuous person.”
“Right. You don’t seem like it. Still — you never know how things will go with people.”
It was a concession he was giving to Yuhan, but at the same time, a concession to himself.
Jinwoo gave his heart too easily.
Even when he ended up being the one hurt in the end, there was nothing he could do about his own nature.
With Yuhan, too, he was being rigid right now — but someday, fondness would creep in whether he wanted it to or not.
This was his defense mechanism, so that when that day came, he wouldn’t get hurt.
Yuhan gave no significant reply to that.
“Is there anything you’d like to say to me?”
For a transaction to take place through marriage was a natural sequence of events.
The greatest benefit would likely go to Yuhan, and the smaller gains would flow across his company as a whole.
The advantages Jinwoo stood to gain — there were essentially none.
So he had every right to refuse whatever was asked of him.
Even so, he was the one bringing it up — simply out of basic courtesy toward another person.
He was prepared to hear him out and accommodate anything within reason, so long as it wasn’t something impossible to follow through on — and then, at last, Yuhan, who had seemed to be turning something over in his mind, finally opened his mouth.
“Let’s set the wedding four months from now. All the preparations will be handled on our end. You don’t need to do anything, Jinwoo. Just…”
“Go ahead.”
Whether he was genuinely being considerate or merely performing it, Jinwoo couldn’t tell.
If it was a performance, the man could have made it big as an actor.
“The elders in my family like to be shown things — so I’d like you to live with me before the wedding.”
He’d thought he might at least be able to enjoy his last stretch of freedom before becoming a married man.
Even that remaining shred of expectation had now crumbled entirely.
“Ah… so even though it’s an arranged marriage, you want us to put on a loving front… is that the kind of thing you mean?”
People always imagined spoiled, ill-mannered behavior when they heard “youngest child born late in life” — but Jinwoo was different.
The lengths he’d gone to in order to keep the real side of a chaebol heir from circulating on social media — it had taken no small amount of effort.
Not once during any of the previous blind dates had he ever failed to conduct himself with proper manners.
And yet right now, a laugh was threatening to escape.
He tried his best to suppress it, but Yuhan would have caught it.
Beyond whether his request was reasonable or not — just how absurd the whole thing was.
