* * *
My eyes opened with difficulty.
I rolled around in the blankets and drifted toward the other side of the bed, where a faint warmth lingered. A soft scent clung to it too. As if someone had been there.
At the same moment, the tearful disaster of last night came rushing back to me.
“Ugh!”
Drowning in the misery of a breakup, I had cried my eyes and nose out in front of Cha Hyunwoo. On top of that — hadn’t I gone on about being an omega and begged him to release his pheromones?
“I’m losing it!”
I smashed my face into the pillow repeatedly. Just let me die, honestly.
After a few more face-plants, a better idea occurred to me. Why would I die over that?
“I, Jeong Yiyeon, hereby shed the memories of the past and am reborn anew from this day forward!”
I’ll just pretend I don’t remember any of it. Feeling considerably lighter, I stepped into the bathroom attached to my room and checked the mirror.
“Ah… evidence destruction: failed.”
My eyes were so swollen that anyone who saw me would know at a glance I’d cried my heart out. I washed my face with cold water but still looked like someone with a tragic backstory.
Drained of all energy in an instant, I dried off roughly with a towel and came out. I was pacing the room, racking my brain over a hopeless situation, when an excuse suddenly flashed into my head.
“I secretly got up in the early hours to make ramen and went back to sleep. That’s why my eyes are puffy.”
I actually clapped my hands together.
“Perfect.”
I spun around triumphantly and strode out with purpose — but my steps slowed before I’d gotten far.
‘Ah… there’s no ramen at Cha Hyunwoo’s place.’
He only stocked the house with expensive, healthy things, and whenever we went to the mart together, he wouldn’t let me toss even a single pack of ramen into the cart.
In the end, I opened the bedroom door with absolutely no plan in place. I crept anxiously out into the living room — and walked straight into Cha Hyunwoo.
‘No, I wasn’t mentally prepared for this yet!’
I had just squeezed my eyes shut and was spinning through options at full speed.
The faint scent I’d caught in the blankets earlier came rushing back in a sudden wave. It was only a moment, but a jolt hit my mind like lightning — an intense fragrance that seared itself into my memory — and my eyes flew wide open.
I walked straight up to Cha Hyunwoo without preamble. When I stopped in front of him as he stood there, his prominent Adam’s apple and the line of his neck came into view. Maybe he noticed the dangerously gleaming look in my eyes, because Cha Hyunwoo took a cautious step back.
“Wait. Stay still for a second.”
One of Cha Hyunwoo’s eyebrows twitched as if my words didn’t sit right with him. But I ignored that and pressed right up close to him, nose-first, and inhaled.
“Wow, what is this?”
At my sudden move, Cha Hyunwoo went rigid and only dropped his gaze to stare at me. Growing impatient, I demanded quickly:
“What perfume is this? Or wait, is it body wash?”
I need to know what brand this is right now. I have to buy this no matter what. Blinded by pure want, I was practically on the verge of burying my nose in Cha Hyunwoo’s collarbone.
Cha Hyunwoo pushed my forehead back lightly as if to ward me off, but I didn’t budge. If anything, my voice came out more stern.
“Shhh, you’re ice. You can’t move starting now.”
“…What?”
I breezily ignored Cha Hyunwoo’s bewildered word and instead grabbed his broad shoulders with both hands, shoved my face right up against the nape of his neck just below his ear, and sniffed deeply. And marveled again.
This was like the scent of a luxury body wash you’d find in the bathroom of a top-floor suite hotel.
Or perhaps a fragrance made by a renowned designer who’d poured their entire soul into it. The kind that sourced fantastical ingredients — a wisp of cloud, a drop of a fairy’s tear — from some imagined realm.
How else could you explain this contradiction: deep yet strangely stimulating, subtle yet fierce all at once.
Drawn in without even realizing it, wanting to keep inhaling…. At this point I even felt a sense of betrayal toward Cha Hyunwoo.
“You’ve been keeping something this good all to yourself?”
I whispered the accusation right into Cha Hyunwoo’s ear. Sure enough, as if he had something to hide, Cha Hyunwoo flinched and answered a beat too late.
“…What are you talking about?”
Oh, playing innocent now, are we? I lowered the hands that had been gripping his shoulders and crossed my arms.
I held my head straight up and looked Cha Hyunwoo directly in the eyes from below. Just let your pupils waver once. I’ll catch the lie instantly.
“The scent coming off your body. What body wash is it? I want to buy some too.”
“The body wash is the one you picked out yourself when we went to the department store together that time.”
“…This is that scent?”
I blinked in confusion and sniffed at my own arm. But that one fades fast after a shower. And besides, why doesn’t it smell this incredible on me the way it does on Cha Hyunwoo?
I was puzzling over this when one thought flickered through my mind. He seems like he’s stalling because he doesn’t want to tell me. My sharp instincts were speaking to me.
‘Caught you.’
I snapped my head up. My eyes met Cha Hyunwoo’s immediately.
I gave him a mocking grin. Cha Hyunwoo’s pupils wavered with what looked like unease.
At the same moment, I lunged at Cha Hyunwoo.
I wrapped both arms around his neck and coiled both legs around his waist. I clung to Cha Hyunwoo and hung off him like a sloth dangling from a tree.
“You’re not telling me because you want to keep it all to yourself, aren’t you? Tell me. Hand it over!”
I threw my arms around Cha Hyunwoo’s neck and threw a full tantrum. For some reason he went completely rigid. I buried my face in his neck and breathed in deeply.
It was sweet yet intense, the kind of scent that was hard to pin down with a single word. Still, if I had to describe it….
“This… just tell me what this is, the cinnamon-ish thing.”
I mumbled it against his skin but got no reply at all. Even so, I couldn’t give up like this. I was readjusting my grip to thrash around more insistently when the temperature of the large hand that had suddenly seized my shoulder was so hot that I froze.
And then Cha Hyunwoo’s voice followed, sunken beyond measure.
“That’s my pheromone scent.”
“…What?”
Only then did I lift my face from where I’d had it buried in his nape. Naturally, Cha Hyunwoo’s face was right in front of mine. Far too close.
I stayed dazed, and then one of my legs, having gone slack, slid slowly down the length of Cha Hyunwoo’s thigh.
“Ngh.”
A suppressed groan from Cha Hyunwoo reached my ear. I startled badly and reflexively pulled away, landing on both feet. The awkward silence that had spread through the living room broke at long last.
“How can you smell my pheromones?”
“…Right. I’m a beta.”
Even as I answered I was puzzling over it, momentarily lost in thought. Cha Hyunwoo, who had been leaning back, suddenly closed in on me all at once.
‘Why! All of a sudden! What’s happening!’
What I’d done to Cha Hyunwoo was already long forgotten. The abrupt shrinking of the distance between us nearly sent me stumbling backward in shock.
Cha Hyunwoo tilted his head and brought his face up close to my nape, then breathed in deeply as if taking in a scent. Then he pulled away in sudden urgency, like someone who’d been burned. As if something had overwhelmed him, or knocked him sideways.
“What’s wrong?”
“…Go change right now and come out. We’re going to the hospital.”
“What?”
“I can sense pheromones coming from you.”
* * *
When I was little, I took it for granted that I would present as a designation holder.
Because my father, my mom, my brother — everyone in my family had a designation. Even Cha Hyunwoo’s parents, who I thought of as another family, were designation holders, and Cha Hyunwoo himself had presented as an alpha.
Presenting as a designation holder was as natural and inevitable to me as breathing.
And yet in the end, I was the only one who didn’t present. I hated that. I was hurt by it, and I grieved it.
I just wanted to be someone my family could be proud of. Since there was nothing I was exceptionally good at, I at least wanted to present as a designation holder.
I felt like that would make me a cooler, prouder son. No — it had to. Because my mother had died because of me.
People around me said it was a heartbreaking accident. That it wasn’t my fault — that it was an unfortunate tragedy.
But even if it was an accident that couldn’t be helped, a corner of my heart held onto an indelible guilt and remorse that I couldn’t erase.
Maybe that’s why I wanted to present even more desperately. Even though presenting as a designation holder didn’t come with any guarantee of becoming a son someone could be proud of.
I know now. That presenting isn’t the only right answer. The me of my childhood was foolish enough not to know that.
There was a day when I was little and had my designation test at school. Right up until I looked at the results, I hadn’t doubted for a single second that I would present.
When I saw the two characters reading beta written on the results sheet, I genuinely wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.
The feeling of failing to accomplish something you’d always taken as a given — it was truly….
Pathetic and humiliating.
So I think I skipped lunch that day and hid away in a corner of the school courtyard….
I started to drift toward that hazy memory, then pushed it away.
I was that devastated back then, so I shouldn’t get my hopes up this time. Besides, I know by now that presenting isn’t the only answer. Right. Don’t get my hopes up.
Having quietly resolved this, I sat in the hospital waiting area and jittered my leg.
I had come with Cha Hyunwoo to see Dr. Kim — his personal physician and a specialist in designation medicine — for an examination and tests.
All that was left now was waiting for the results.
No matter how much I tried to settle myself, my leg kept bouncing uncontrollably. Murmurs kept slipping out of me too.
“No, don’t get your hopes up too much. It might be some kind of mistake. I might not have presented. The bigger the hope, the bigger the disappointment, right. It was just a brief mix-up. That can happen. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Yeah, I’m really, truly not expecting anything at all.”
“Sounds like you’re already expecting something.”
“What?”
I jumped at the voice from beside me and looked around wildly. There was no one beside Cha Hyunwoo except me. A disbelieving scoff escaped me.
“Ha, who? Me?”
I pointed directly at myself, then waved the idea away.
“When did I ever say I was expecting something…?”
But contradicting every word I’d just said, the moment my name was called, I was on my feet in an instant.
