To think that not only had he come face to face with Kwon Gyo-eon in real life, but had even spent a night with him — and yet it would be a moment like this that made him truly feel he was living inside a novel. Hae-yul stared blankly down at the business card that felt strangely heavy, then shoved it deep into the back of his desk drawer.
Kwon Gyo-eon was no ordinary person, so he couldn’t just carelessly throw the card away either. It was unlikely, but if the card he’d discarded somehow ended up in someone else’s hands, that would be a serious problem. Hae-yul recalled the words Kwon Gyo-eon had said when he handed over the business card.
“If anything comes up, please contact me at this number.”
Come to think of it, that was a funny thing to say. As if Hae-yul would ever contact Kwon Gyo-eon just because something came up.
Shaking his head, Hae-yul carefully slid the drawer shut, as though locking away a heavy safe.
“It’s not like I’ll ever need to reach out anyway. Why even give me this.”
Was it meant as a warning — that there was still a meeting to come, so he should stay on edge? Well, the staggering sum of one billion won that Kwon Gyo-eon had thrown out as compensation was still making the back of his head sting, even now.
Hae-yul glared at the inoffensive drawer for a while longer, then took the cash out of his wallet and began sorting it by day of the week.
***
The following evening, just as Hae-yul was coming down after finishing his shift at the study café, a deep, rich scent that brushed past the tip of his nose made his body tremble involuntarily. Then he spotted a familiar silhouette standing at the entrance with their back to the building, and came to an abrupt stop.
“……”
It was Kwon Gyo-eon. Hae-yul rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was seeing things — but no matter how hard he rubbed, Kwon Gyo-eon’s figure refused to disappear. Why on earth had the man who’d said he needed to think things over come all the way to the study café?
No, more than that……
How did he even know Hae-yul worked at this study café on weekdays? He didn’t remember ever mentioning it. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. That wasn’t the only thing that felt off.
Thinking back on it carefully — he’d never told Kwon Gyo-eon about his convenience store job either. Not the location, not even the hours. He could chalk the convenience store up to coincidence, but coming all the way out to the study café……
…That’s seriously weird.
Hae-yul’s feet, still planted on the stairs, froze solid.
Just then, as though sensing a presence, Kwon Gyo-eon — who had been standing with his back to the study café — turned around and looked at Hae-yul. The moment their eyes met, Hae-yul’s shoulders jerked.
“Ju Hae-yul.”
“How did you……”
Kwon Gyo-eon slowly approached the stairs where Hae-yul was standing. The closer he got, the more the color drained from Hae-yul’s face. With only two steps of the staircase between them now, Hae-yul swallowed dryly.
Up close, Kwon Gyo-eon’s face showed faint traces of exhaustion.
“Have you been well?”
Kwon Gyo-eon asked in a low, slightly hoarse voice. Hae-yul’s pupils, looking down at Kwon Gyo-eon from two steps above, quivered finely. Hae-yul’s lips twitched, and he gave a vague nod before trying to ask something in return. But Kwon Gyo-eon was just a fraction quicker to speak.
“You don’t look particularly glad to see me. It’s been a few days, though — aren’t you even a little pleased?”
…Pleased, as if. He and Kwon Gyo-eon were not in any sort of relationship where being glad to see each other made sense. On top of that, Hae-yul had no interest in answering such a pointless question — what he actually wanted to ask was how Kwon Gyo-eon had found his workplace when he’d never told him.
Hae-yul stood silently, doing nothing but steadying his breath, and Kwon Gyo-eon tilted his head slightly.
“Ju Hae-yul, why aren’t you answering. Is it that you don’t even want to speak to me anymore? Because I used compensation as an excuse to threaten you in such a petty way?”
Kwon Gyo-eon asked in an almost whispered tone. So he does know he pulled a cheap trick. Hae-yul inwardly let himself snark all he wanted, then swallowed a sigh. The belated thought that he himself hadn’t exactly been blameless in all of this made him hesitate.
Hae-yul smoothed his expression and looked Kwon Gyo-eon squarely in the face. Unlike the last time they’d met, the exhaustion etched into his features was a little puzzling — but that was all. Hae-yul had no particular desire to dwell on it.
“How did you know to come here? I don’t think I ever told you.”
Kwon Gyo-eon paused briefly at the question, then answered.
“What do you think, Ju Hae-yul?”
There were plenty of possibilities that came to mind, but every single one of them was too embarrassing to say out loud. For instance — a background check. The most likely scenario was that Kwon Gyo-eon had used his money and connections to hire some kind of investigation agency to dig into Hae-yul’s background. But spending time and money to look into someone like him was, rationally speaking, a little……
The next possibility — stalking. He couldn’t rule out the chance that Kwon Gyo-eon had been secretly following him around like a paparazzo, keeping tabs on his every move. But this too, for the same reasons as the background check, left Hae-yul feeling awkward.
There were other possibilities that came to mind as well, but they all got eliminated under the conclusion that he simply wasn’t important enough a person for Kwon Gyo-eon to bother spending his money and time on something like that.
As Hae-yul hesitated and fumbled for an answer, Kwon Gyo-eon spoke.
“I’ll leave that to Ju Hae-yul’s imagination.”
“So you won’t tell me? Or is it that you have something to hide?”
“What if Ju Hae-yul loses interest in me once I tell him everything he wants to know?”
Hae-yul stared at Kwon Gyo-eon with a dumbfounded expression. The fact that he’s worried about me losing interest in him, in a situation like this — was he actually planning to banter with me? But for all that, Kwon Gyo-eon’s face didn’t look like that of someone making a joke.
If anything, the pupils looking up at Hae-yul were closer to slightly unfocused. Hae-yul leaned in, studying those eyes carefully, wondering if he was seeing wrong — when Kwon Gyo-eon suddenly covered his own eyes with one large hand.
He pressed down on his eyelids firmly, as though reprimanding them, before finally lowering that large hand. Bloodshot eyes dropped downward, as if avoiding Hae-yul’s gaze.
“It’s not a particularly pleasant sight.”
“Pardon?”
“I don’t want Ju Hae-yul to see me like this.”
The words made no sense to Hae-yul. He tilted his head, then shook it. The realization that he’d almost let things slide again, caught up in Kwon Gyo-eon’s characteristic slipperiness, snapped him back to his senses.
But then — the scent drifting from Kwon Gyo-eon as he exhaled a slow breath with his head slightly bowed made Hae-yul flinch despite himself.
…Pheromones?
Kwon Gyo-eon was not the type of alpha who actively used his pheromones. Even the pheromones he occasionally let slip were less of a come-on and more of a simple assertion of his presence.
But right now, there was heat in the pheromones he was putting out. A cool, sharp scent invaded Hae-yul’s nasal passages uninvited. A surge of alarm made Hae-yul reflexively pinch his nose shut and stare — and Kwon Gyo-eon furrowed his brow. He too seemed to be struggling with something that wasn’t going the way he wanted.
“What are you doing right now?”
Hae-yul’s lips, which had been about to demand to know whether Kwon Gyo-eon was deliberately leaking pheromones at him, trembled briefly before clamping shut like a clam.
Don’t tell me……
Could something have gone wrong while he was helping with his heat cycle? That thought struck him for a split second, and his heart dropped. Those with secondary genders had evolved to be influenced by each other’s pheromones. Because of that, alphas and omegas were naturally and profoundly affected by each other’s cycles — that is, ruts and heats.
Omegas who spent a night with an alpha going through a rut would mostly go into heat, and conversely, alphas who were with an omega going through heat would go into rut. There were time differences depending on one’s ability to control their pheromones, but that was how it was for most.
It had always been a topic that had nothing to do with him, and so Hae-yul had been going through life having forgotten that perfectly obvious theory — until now, as his pupils shook hard.
Hae-yul realized belatedly that there was an alpha on the verge of a rut cycle standing right in front of him, and froze on the spot.
Despite the weather not being warm, cold sweat was trickling down his spine. Kwon Gyo-eon seemed to study Hae-yul’s nervous reaction for a brief moment before opening his mouth.
“Ju Hae-yul, has everything been alright lately?”
Hae-yul blinked — he had fully expected Kwon Gyo-eon to bring up the rut. It seemed like Kwon Gyo-eon had deliberately changed the subject, though he didn’t know why. It was so absurd that the tension locked into his body dissolved on its own.
In truth, he had been somewhat bracing himself for reckless behavior from Kwon Gyo-eon due to the rut — or even a remark along the lines of you helped bring this on me, so take responsibility. With Kwon Gyo-eon’s pheromones making his skin prickle, he had also been frightened by the thought that Kwon Gyo-eon might try to do something he didn’t want.
And understandably so — this was his first time witnessing an alpha’s rut up close. Hae-yul eyed Kwon Gyo-eon with uncertainty, then replied.
“Yeah, well……”
Having tentatively concluded that Kwon Gyo-eon didn’t seem like he was going to harm him, Hae-yul looked at him with noticeably less wariness than a moment ago. Kwon Gyo-eon, who seemed to be trying his best to appear harmless, had relaxed the set of his mouth — and his face did seem a little softer for it.
“Don’t be tense. I have no intention of doing what you’re worried about.”
“…I wasn’t tense. Why would I be tense?”
Bristling at words that seemed to see right through him, Hae-yul shot back bluntly. Either way, his read on the situation seemed to be correct. At the very least, Kwon Gyo-eon didn’t appear to have any plans to use his rut as leverage against Hae-yul.
Even if we’re not all that familiar, he’s not the type of person to pull something like that……
In the original story too, he had only turned a blind eye to “Ju Hae-yul” — he hadn’t been the kind of trash who’d use pheromones to assert dominance. And though things were quite different from the original in many ways, the Kwon Gyo-eon Hae-yul had met in person was gentlemanly as well.
Feeling a strange awkwardness at the way the atmosphere had eased so quickly with just a word from Kwon Gyo-eon, Hae-yul glanced at him sideways and asked.
“What about you? Has everything been alright on your end?”
At that, Kwon Gyo-eon’s eyes widened slightly. But it was only for a moment — Kwon Gyo-eon then fixed Hae-yul with a look of mild dissatisfaction. It was the kind of look that seemed very much to be prompting him to fix how he was addressing him, so Hae-yul played dumb and looked the other way.
