First came the acrid scent, as if a tree with flower buds had been thrown whole onto a fire. It was covered by a torrent of water falling densely over it.
Exactly that kind of scent. Like the smoky fragrance of acrid wood, and the strange water smell of a downpour washing it away.
Saehyeon breathed deeply and swallowed the pheromones pouring over him. He had the illusion that his empty body was being filled, even if faintly.
“Haah……”
Gil Taeseo looked down at Saehyeon’s eyes slowly clouding over hazily without blinking once.
The traces of other Alphas that had been stuck all over his body were pushed away, and that place was being occupied by his own.
Small tendons rose in the hand lightly wrapped around his neck. As if it would tighten at any moment. But as if struggling desperately not to do so. The even rows of teeth gnawed at each other while making cracking sounds.
What gained the upper hand at the fierce point of contact was reason. Gil Taeseo slowly withdrew his hand. From his palm to his fingertips, skin full of calluses and scars scraped against the soft nape as it fell away.
Before completely separating, he didn’t forget to linger reluctantly as if regretful.
“As expected. You…… I wasn’t mistaken.”
Gil Taeseo muttered something, but the meaning didn’t properly transmit to his dazed head. Saehyeon was also being swayed by intense regret. His loosely unfocused eyes clung like a magnet to the white hand moving away.
Soon that fingertip made contact and made a small, clear sound.
Snap.
“……”
Shuddering violently, focus returned to Saehyeon’s eyes. His panting breath was hot and rapid.
“You’re not in a position to talk about others being perverts.”
Leaving behind the other party who didn’t know what to do with the afterglow, Gil Taeseo slowly removed his large body from above.
“Huk…… heok……”
‘What just…… happened?’
Saehyeon only blinked both eyes while remaining in his slumped position. It was a strange sensation, as if he’d been tormented for a long time and become exhausted, yet also as if he’d languidly loosened his body in hot water.
And most of all, the sensations in his nape and lower abdomen were strangely full and ticklish……
“Uh-puhup.”
The moment Saehyeon unconsciously tried to move his hand to a specific area, heavy clothes flew over his face. When he reflexively pulled them down with his hands, it was a pitch-black coat.
When he raised his head, Gil Taeseo had already moved far away. Gil Taeseo, standing near where he’d hung the coat, had his arms crossed and was looking this way. It seemed he could see a face smirking hazily.
“I’ll give you 10 minutes. I’ll be downstairs, so organize yourself roughly and come out.”
‘Organize…… what organize.’
Saehyeon sat blankly and only blinked both eyes. Whether someone was doing that without knowing why or not, the man strode all the way to the door.
“If you don’t come out, I’ll take it as you saying you want to live trapped here forever.”
His face looked leisurely, but Gil Taeseo, who somehow hastily grabbed the doorknob, paused for a moment. Then he spat out his last words and disappeared beyond the door.
“I’m fine with that too.”
If you’re prepared for it, that is.
Click. As the sound of the door closing rang out, Saehyeon was finally left alone. It felt like a storm had swept through.
“Ah, what has he been saying since earli…… ahem.”
He’d opened his mouth to grumble that he didn’t know what he’d been babbling about since earlier. But somehow his throat was mercilessly hoarse and he couldn’t properly continue speaking.
Saehyeon, who cleared his throat and tilted his head, this time lowered his head toward the next sense of dissonance.
“……”
The destination was toward his lower body, hidden under the coat Gil Taeseo had thrown. Under the pitch-black and soft coat, something was stretching vigorously. Bulging.
“Why is this…… standing up?”
Even as he muttered vacantly and blinked several times, it didn’t disappear like smoke.
The diary entry scrawled in the journal that he’d recalled just before flashed through his mind once more. This time with a different sentence.
[There was nothing to say. I’m the sinner and the host of the dick,]
“……Agh!”
He was screwed. Really screwed. What good did it do to grab his waistband in defense? When I’m the host of the dick!
Saehyeon hurriedly grabbed and covered it tightly with the coat as if someone might see. But doing so didn’t kill what had already raised its head and risen.
Before considering other complicated circumstances about why this happened, worry struck intensely.
“How can I face that guy’s face again like this……”
To get a hard-on in front of Gil Taeseo. No, of course. Since they made a child, he must have gotten hard before too. But that wasn’t for the current Saehyeon to know.
Saehyeon had been deliberately separating his irresponsible 28-year-old self from his rational 20-year-old self. For him, it was no different from a bolt from the blue.
‘He might…… might not know. Yeah, he might not know.’
Couldn’t he have just thrown the coat at him to cover his face because it was disgusting to look at?
……Please. That must be it.
But for that to be the case, the words Gil Taeseo left behind and that crooked expression bothered him. It was a face that anyone could see knew everything.
The last bastion that crossed Saehyeon’s mind after clutching his head and screaming for a while was this.
“……What if I break the window and escape?”
Then he might be able to run away without having to face that irritating face. Saehyeon was that desperate. He ended up giving up because trying to be less embarrassed might end up selling his grave site.
After re-singing the national anthem several times and contemplating whether to open the window and jump out for a while. Saehyeon could finally calm down the new brain in his lower body.
He staggered over and was about to turn the doorknob when a sudden suspicion arose.
“You’re not in front of the door, are you?”
Saehyeon narrowed his eyes and brought his ear close to the door, but he couldn’t hear anything. After pacing in front of the door for a while, Saehyeon finally clenched his fist tightly and threw open the door. But contrary to his tension, the corridor was empty with only the lights on.
Eventually, Saehyeon, who didn’t encounter anyone until he came down the stairs and left the building and set foot on the ground, scratched his head and turned his gaze.
In the distance, Gil Taeseo was standing leaning against a pitch-black car. After throwing his coat at him and leaving, he was still wearing only his shirt, as if he wasn’t even cold.
Smoke rose from the end of the cigarette between his thinly closed lips. The way it rose white and scattered into the air was like fog.
His facial lines, repeatedly revealed and hidden behind the pale fog, glittered as they caught the still-unextinguished streetlights.
At the suddenly felt presence, Gil Taeseo slowly raised his head.
Despite the dim surroundings, his sharp eyes caught the target at once. Saehyeon, who had rolled up the long coat and hugged it tightly to his chest, was coming out of the entrance that was gradually becoming familiar.
As confirmed earlier, his ankle wasn’t injured, and his legs, which had been trembling like a newborn foal in the alley, had already stabilized. So the staggering as soon as he spotted Gil Taeseo was probably due to mental shock.
In fact, Saehyeon’s head was full of complicated thoughts. Damn Mr. Gwak, who he didn’t know was dead or alive, the unexpected reunion. The mystery remaining between the two. And Gil Taeseo’s strange behavior and that… situation from earlier. There was so much to think about that his head felt like it would burst.
Gil Taeseo, who saw Saehyeon approaching hesitantly, raised his arm and pretended to look at his watch.
“That was faster than I thought. Are you still a quick shot?”
“What bullshit!”
But those thoughts were also quickly swept away. Saehyeon forgot about being complicated and had no choice but to shout angrily.
Gil Taeseo, who lightly caught the coat Saehyeon threw violently, spat out the cigarette he’d been holding in his mouth.
With his gaze fixed on the fuming face, his pitch-black shoe persistently trampled the white thing.
It was just the act of putting out the flame attached to the end of the cigarette. Even so, was it his own illusion that it seemed to contain some other implication?
Feeling the gaze persistently fixed on his face, Saehyeon gulped.
Saehyeon had been tense the entire time from the moment he opened the door of the office until now. Though he’d barely shaken it off, it felt as if sensations that wouldn’t be erased were still clinging to every corner of his body.
It wasn’t an unpleasant tingling. Rather, it remained stickily like sugar water giving off a sweet fragrance and wouldn’t come off at all.
At first glance, the latter seemed better, but Saehyeon didn’t think so. He’d rather feel bad; the type that made people fall in was dangerous. Because it clouded judgment and made foolish choices.
Saehyeon was someone who had kept such things at a distance and only ran for his own body’s prosperity.
But what made even such a person an unavoidable host of the dick was probably what traits and pheromones were. Each time he recalled what he’d experienced earlier, saliva went down his throat with gulps.
Leaving behind Saehyeon, who was bristling and in a tense stance, Gil Taeseo tilted his head slightly. The gaze that had been sticking tenaciously to his Adam’s apple bobbing dizzily fell away, and the man straightened his body that had been leaning roughly against the car.
“Get in.”
And he opened the car door and jerked his chin. Saehyeon, who had been holding his breath for a moment, twisted his face roughly.
“……Why should I? Move. I’ll go on my own.”
The street where all the people had disappeared was silent, and the dawn air was excessively chilly. His limbs, which had experienced all sorts of things after getting off work, couldn’t handle the cold air and trembled finely.
But he couldn’t lose to just such cold.
‘If I lose here, I’ll end up giving up everything.’
That sense of crisis close to conviction made Saehyeon stubborn.
Though it was a fleeting thing that would soon disappear like bubbles anyway.
