“I… I jumped you? …I jumped you?“
It was roughly five minutes later that Hae-yul collected himself and asked back.
“Yes.”
Kwon Gyo-eon answered without a moment’s hesitation, setting his interlaced hands on the table as he looked at Hae-yul. He seemed to be waiting for Hae-yul, who was still in a state of confusion. Hae-yul quietly averted his gaze from Kwon Gyo-eon’s and lowered his eyes, fidgeting with his own hands for no real reason.
It was because Kwon Gyo-eon’s firm reply had left him at a loss for words. Honestly speaking, Hae-yul didn’t think a man with a build like Kwon Gyo-eon’s would have meekly submitted to his own physical strength, which was surely far inferior. Just look at those broad shoulders and that solid chest.
If anything, he would have been jumped by that man — there was no way he had jumped the man. How could that even be possible?
He couldn’t shake off the suspicion that the man might be taking advantage of the gaps in his memory to pull something over on him. Even as he thought that someone who lived in a place like this had no reason to stoop to such a thing. Still — there was always that one-in-ten-thousand chance.
Hae-yul’s gentle eyes narrowed slightly.
“Excuse me——”
The moment Hae-yul opened his mouth, Kwon Gyo-eon swiftly corrected him.
“Not ‘excuse me’ — it’s Kwon Gyo-eon.”
“…Yes. I know.”
“If you know, then you should use it. It’s a name I gave you specifically for that purpose.”
“Honestly, we’re not close enough to be on a first-name basis, are we……? And we’re not going to keep seeing each other, so I don’t think there’s any need to bother calling you by name.”
At those words, Kwon Gyo-eon’s expression hardened involuntarily. But before Hae-yul could notice, he smoothed it away and replied mildly.
“You find me difficult? That can’t be right. Just earlier this morning you were quite fond of me.”
Even after hearing Hae-yul declare plainly that they wouldn’t be seeing each other again, Kwon Gyo-eon’s words came without the slightest restraint. The face with which he brought up the events of the early morning was equally undisguised — the amusement he hadn’t quite managed to conceal was clear as day.
Hae-yul, having witnessed that plainly, felt his eyelids flutter. He stared at Kwon Gyo-eon with slightly wavering pupils. How could someone who had supposedly been jumped by him talk about it like that, smiling?
The suspicion that had already taken root began to swell.
“Did I really jump you?”
At Hae-yul’s pressing, Kwon Gyo-eon exercised his right to silence. He kept his mouth shut and stared straight at Hae-yul with pitch-black eyes. His gaze seemed to be prompting something, and Hae-yul, catching on, twitched his cheek and asked again with a sigh.
“Did I really… jump Kwon Gyo-eon?”
“Yes.”
“That’s absurd. No, honestly, it doesn’t make sense.”
When Kwon Gyo-eon tilted his head to one side as if asking for a reason, Hae-yul quickly added an explanation.
“Think about it. Kwon Gyo-eon doesn’t look like the type to just let himself get jumped by someone. You’re much bigger than me, too. So in short — Kwon Gyo-eon wasn’t someone I could have jumped in the first place.”
“Ah.”
Kwon Gyo-eon nodded his head a couple of times as if he found that somewhat convincing. Then he propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin on the back of his interlaced hands. As Kwon Gyo-eon’s upper body leaned in toward the table, Hae-yul leaned back by the same measure.
Watching Hae-yul dart his eyes around without being able to settle them anywhere — like a puppy that urgently needed to relieve itself — Kwon Gyo-eon opened his mouth.
“Ju Hae-yul, do you remember that you were in heat?”
“…Ah.”
It was the fundamental premise he’d forgotten. Hae-yul’s face went like someone who had just been hit hard at the back of the head.
“A dominant Omega like Ju Hae-yul, in full heat and actively releasing pheromones — what chance does a fragile Alpha like me stand?”
But the words that followed immediately left him flustered, mouth falling open. …Who’s fragile? Kwon Gyo-eon let out a soft laugh at Hae-yul’s demanding stare and tugged the corners of his mouth up.
When that smile settled in, a faint warmth seeped into his cold features.
“I tried to resist, but it was beyond my control. Ju Hae-yul’s pheromones were… well. Extremely stimulating.”
“……”
“Truly.”
Whether he had apparently convinced himself with his own words, Kwon Gyo-eon nodded and added naturally — and Hae-yul promptly choked.
Hae-yul coughed and covered the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. His throat tickled and his ears felt muffled. His face flushed red in an instant.
He turned his head away and coughed for a long while. Only after the hacking that had sounded like he might cough up blood finally died down did he swallow a sigh and look straight ahead. But at the sight that followed, it seemed like the coughing he’d barely managed to suppress might start up again.
“Have some water.”
Before he’d even noticed when, Kwon Gyo-eon was pushing a cup of lukewarm water toward him with an uncharacteristically worried look in his eyes.
“…Thank you.”
Hae-yul took the cup with a dazed expression and slowly drank it down. Having some water made him feel slightly better. He wiped his damp lips with the back of his hand and set the cup down.
“Um, Kwon Gyo-eon.”
“Yes.”
“So then… you and I——”
“Yes.”
Kwon Gyo-eon sat quietly as if waiting for Hae-yul to finish.
“In other words……”
Hae-yul hesitated, unable to bring himself to say the words easily. No — more precisely, he couldn’t bring himself to say that particular word while completely sober. Furrowing his brow in thought, Hae-yul clenched his fist and asked.
“Did we… sleep together?”
Even having transmigrated into a novel where Omegas, Alphas, and Betas existed, Hae-yul still couldn’t properly accept these designations. Heat, rut, knotting — he’d only grasped the basic concepts and hadn’t made them feel real to himself.
No — he hadn’t even believed he was an Omega at first. But after experiencing the heat cycle that visited him periodically as if to brainwash him into accepting it, he’d resigned himself halfway and begun tracking his cycle.
The thought of going feral and seeking out an Alpha every time he went into heat was horrifying enough to make tracking his heat cycles a necessity. He’d always paid attention to his cycle with the mindset of preventing something even worse from happening. That was all.
But rut and knotting were different. Spending a heat with an Alpha, or knotting occurring in the process — these were things that were as good as never going to happen in Hae-yul’s life.
From the start, Hae-yul had never once thought about relationships or love between men, and had no interest in it whatsoever. So there was no way what happened with Kwon Gyo-eon could feel natural to him.
“Yes.”
Kwon Gyo-eon answered quietly.
“……”
I really slept with a man. It was something he simply couldn’t believe — but the other party was saying it was true, and he couldn’t just cover his ears and deny it forever.
And… that meant the nightmare of a dream he’d had might have actually been real. At this point, he had to remember what had happened in the early morning and figure out exactly how things had unfolded.
Hae-yul tried hard to piece together the memories of last night, but came up with little. As much as he didn’t want to, he had no choice but to rely on Kwon Gyo-eon’s account. Hae-yul lightly bit his lower lip and carefully broached the subject.
“I’m sorry to ask, but could you tell me what happened?”
“Mm. I had some business near Korea University. When I was about to head back after finishing up, there was a man slumped down in front of my car. That was Ju Hae-yul. The pheromone concentration coming off Ju Hae-yul was too dense for me to just ignore and leave.”
Kwon Gyo-eon continued speaking in a composed tone, as if recounting an ordinary day.
“I couldn’t just leave and risk something happening, so I had no choice but to bring you with me.”
“……”
“At first, I intended to take you to a hospital rather than my home. But Ju Hae-yul refused outright. I couldn’t forcibly drag someone to a hospital when they were insisting they’d rather die than go, even in an unstable state of consciousness — so I brought you to my home for the time being.”
Listening to Kwon Gyo-eon’s account, something began to stir in his mind. Hae-yul reached for the hazy fragments of memory.
* * *
His body was burning up. The heat raging through him was so intense that all he could think of was dousing himself in ice water.
“Ju Hae-yul, are you coming around?”
The low voice was clearly speaking to him. Hae-yul struggled to lift his heavy eyelids and looked at the person before him. Through a hazy, blurred field of vision, the man’s face was dimly visible.
A faint winter-like scent drifted from the man. He was almost certainly an Alpha. The fact that this dry, cold scent felt excessively welcome and sweet was enough to confirm it.
“Since Ju Hae-yul said no to a hospital, I’ve brought you to my home for now. Can you hear me?”
Not a single word the man was saying registered. Only the scent the man was giving off filled his mind entirely.
In that moment, Hae-yul tasted for the first time the irresistibility of the heat cycle. The Alpha’s pheromones worked like a potent painkiller — so much so that all the effort of past days spent taking suppressants and pinching his thighs to endure felt utterly wasted.
Simply breathing in the pheromones deeply was gradually easing the unbearable burning sensation.
If I just let myself be thoroughly soaked in the Alpha’s pheromones, it feels like I might be freed from this pain — from this fever that rises without end. Even through his hazy consciousness, Hae-yul somehow managed to piece his thoughts together, and then came the desperation. With instinct overriding reason, he found himself reaching out to pull the man into an embrace without even realizing it.
“Come to your senses.”
The man said firmly and rose from where he was. As the man’s pheromones grew more distant, Hae-yul looked up at him with eyes brimming with tears. His vision was veiled by a hazy, damp curtain. Hae-yul reached out and grabbed a fistful of the man’s collar. The hand gripping the edge of his sleeve trembled.
“It h-, hurts……”
A voice heavy with exhaustion pleaded with the man. The pheromone scent flowing from Hae-yul’s body grew even denser. The colorless pheromones — carrying the scent of warm spring sunlight — rippled toward the man. It was an unmistakable signal.
But the Alpha who should have been responding to that signal was trying to pull away from Hae-yul. Hae-yul, as if the man’s back as he tried to step away were the only lifeline he had left, desperately pulled him into an embrace from behind. And that massive body came to an abrupt stop right where it stood.
