Yuhan’s hand spread wide across Jinwoo’s forehead. Jinwoo reflexively squeezed his eyes shut, but when Yuhan did nothing beyond resting his palm there, he let himself relax.
“You have a slight fever. Do you want to take something for it?”
He was probably talking about a fever reducer. Even if he had a fever, Jinwoo didn’t feel it himself, so he judged it wasn’t anything serious. He shook his head in answer, and Yuhan withdrew his hand.
“Then sleep a little more. You must be exhausted.”
“…Are you not going anywhere today?”
The words slipped out before they passed through his brain. The memories of last night overlapped with the present and Jinwoo squeezed his eyes shut again.
What did I just say.
His voice came out cracked and broken, just as pathetically as he’d expected — and even he didn’t want to hear it. He shut his mouth quickly and resolved not to make a single sound for the rest of the day.
“If you ask me not to go, I won’t.”
Yuhan pulled the slipped-down blanket back over him and patted it gently, and the drowsiness crept back in. It seemed like it would take quite a long time before all the exhaustion stored in his body could fully work itself out.
His eyes were drifting closed, and he was about to sink under, when —
‘Jinwoo… can you keep going?’
‘Mm… yes… more, give me more…’
He felt like screaming. Or finding a way to erase his memory. No matter how he thought about it, erasing his memory seemed like the more rational option. Screaming wouldn’t change a single thing.
“What’s wrong? Can’t sleep?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. He had definitely been on the verge of falling asleep just a moment before, and now sleep had vanished entirely. He turned it over in his mind for a moment, then nodded.
“Is the smell gone now?”
He had broken his resolution in under a minute, but he genuinely wanted to know whether the first act he had ever experienced had helped put the heat to rest. His body felt markedly lighter than those days when it had felt like he was inhabiting a stranger’s skin. The crawling, creeping discomfort that had seemed to swarm over his entire body, and the aching, clenching pull in his lower stomach — both were gone.
If he had conceived during this heat, he would never have to go through the same experience again — but if not, he would be facing the same misery again in a few months’ time. He was already worried about whether he’d be able to get through it with his sanity intact.
“There’s still a faint trace, but that much seems about normal.”
Ah, thank goodness.
The confirmation that the heat had fully run its course brought a wave of relief.
“It’s been three days now.”
“Pardon?”
The heat cycle had started on Tuesday afternoon, and he had been with Yuhan that same night. Yuhan had come home Wednesday evening and they had been together again — so if he had come back to his senses the following morning, it should be Thursday.
“Isn’t today Thursday?”
“Today is Friday.”
“Why?”
A foolish question met with an even-tempered answer.
“Ah, counting from the day Jinwoo’s heat started, it’s actually been four days.”
How could such a calm voice make his head spin like this. If Yuhan wasn’t toying with him, it meant an entire day had simply disappeared — and he had no idea from which point his memory had been wiped.
While he was sitting in his confusion, something warm settled over his eyelids and he let his eyes close. What is he doing?
“The day you made a mess of my dressing room was Wednesday. We went until dawn Thursday, then slept for a bit and went again that evening. And now it’s Friday.”
Again. We did it again.
Perhaps it was karma for staying up all night writing his master’s thesis and teasing his peers with ‘I’ve got great stamina~’. This was exactly why a person should always watch what they say.
Come to think of it, the string of memories from those nights that had flashed through his mind the moment he woke up couldn’t possibly have all taken place within just a few hours. So Yuhan’s account had to be right.
Wow. I’m alive. I didn’t die.
The coexistence of shock and wonder was a peculiar feeling. Jinwoo found himself stroking his lower stomach without even realizing it, marveling at it. The memory of something swelling without mercy inside him was vivid — and a needless worry crossed his mind about whether his womb had come through unscathed.
Now that his body was feeling somewhat more livable, all sorts of thoughts were coming to him.
“Jinwoo. It was your first time — was it alright?”
“…It wasn’t bad.”
A short, involuntary laugh escaped Yuhan. He’d declared with his own mouth that it was his first time, and then answered as if he were someone with a great deal of experience — that must have been what was funny.
If Yuhan could have read what was actually in Jinwoo’s head, he would have pushed back — first time or not, what does it matter.
No one had ever needed Yuhan. In fact, the mother who had given birth to him considered him a nuisance. A woman who had faced the double misfortune of being a recessive omega, and yet had somehow produced a dominant alpha — only to never be entered into the family register in the end. That woman’s one and only pride, and her greatest headache, was Yuhan.
Others envied and resented him for having grown up in a household that seemed to want for nothing — but behind Yuhan’s smiling face lay a void he had never been able to speak of to anyone. He had craved the love his father never gave him, and had despised himself for the way he was endlessly robbed by his younger brother.
And then, at last, he had found someone who could not be replaced by anyone else. His very own omega — the one who would carry his child.
“You must be tired. Sleep a little more. I’ll wake you later.”
He intended to make Jinwoo his, slowly — so slowly that Jinwoo wouldn’t notice. Like clothes soaked through by a drizzle, until Jinwoo had melted into him before he even realized it.
As if to herald the alpha’s dangerous plan, his pheromones surged and rippled with something perilous. But Jinwoo, already sunk into deep sleep, never felt it.
The heat cycle was over, but a low fever and the dull aches of a mild case of fatigue lingered for several days after. Yuhan said he had already planned to take time off, and looked after Jinwoo. Jinwoo had honestly been skeptical about how well a man who had been pampered and raised with kid gloves would manage — but Yuhan turned out to be more capable with his hands than expected.
Yuhan’s pheromones, which had sometimes felt strangely foreign even after months of living together, had grown easier to be around — and that too helped Jinwoo let his guard down. It seemed to be because Yuhan was the alpha who had shared his heat with him.
“Here. Your medicine.”
“…I think I don’t need it anymore.”
“Your fever still hasn’t broken. No.”
He had just forced down rice that scratched at his raw throat going down, and now there was medicine on top of it. Even the housekeeper who had looked after him as a child hadn’t been this attentive — and being waited on like this as a grown adult felt deeply awkward.
It had been like this ever since the personal physician made a house call the night before. When the doctor recommended which medications were safe to take given the high likelihood of pregnancy, Jinwoo had barely listened — but Yuhan had taken notes, hanging on every word. Since when was he like this.
“And your phone, Jinwoo. The battery was dead, so I put it on charge.”
“Ah… thank you.”
He hadn’t been in any state to receive calls for the past few days. His friends weren’t the type to contact him every single day, and there was no one waiting on a message from him — so the phone dying hadn’t been a problem. He was simply a little grateful for the consideration.
Yuhan had even gone to the trouble of unwrapping the pill packaging for him, which left Jinwoo with no room to make a fuss, and he swallowed them down. They were capsules, so there was no bitter taste — and right on cue, something slipped into his mouth. A lemon candy. His favorite.
“Good job.”
Yuhan’s smile looked softer than it used to. They said that while omegas naturally benefited from it, alphas too found a measure of fulfillment — mentally and physically — from sharing a heat, and it seemed Yuhan was no exception to that.
Finding myself thinking that’s a relief — Jinwoo found that faintly ridiculous.
“Um, well… so, I’ll just…”
Even spending the whole day together, there was nothing in particular to do. The conversations they’d had in the evenings up until now had only kept going because there was actually something to talk about — when there was nothing new to report, like these past few days, the awkwardness that set in was only natural. Best to slip away before it suffocated him.
“Do you not like being alone with me?”
“Pardon?”
“You seem uncomfortable.”
