But the moment he met Saehyeon’s wavering eyes, it seemed as if vitality was being breathed into his pupils, like shedding skin.
“Are you… hurt?”
When he raised his head, a large-bodied alpha was already crouching right nearby. With a man in a pitch-black coat crouching at his feet in a secluded alley where light didn’t penetrate well, he looked like a large beast hiding in the city center.
Even though his coat, which looked expensive at a glance, was carelessly dragging on the dirty ground, the man didn’t seem to care at all.
Trembling hands, a pale face drained of color, gasping breaths. After confirming even the disgusting pheromones of another alpha covering his entire body, Gil Taeseo slowly reached out his hand. As if telling him he wouldn’t cause harm.
Slowly approaching like that, touching his fingertips to the collar, the large hand that slowly climbed up grasped his arms and legs and lifted him up in one go. The hand’s approach was slow, but the lifting was instantaneous.
“I’m picking you up.”
Action came first, and the words were a notification.
Saehyeon, who was instantly embraced and lifted into his arms, blinked his eyes blankly.
No matter how much he’d become a body like a dried-up twig, Saehyeon was a bit taller than most beta men.
Even if he was an omega now, he’d lived nearly two-thirds of his life as a beta, so his skeletal structure would be no different from a beta. Being lifted too lightly made it feel unreal.
‘Treating a person like a stuffed doll…’
Placed somewhat high on his shoulder, Saehyeon rolled his eyes in bewilderment. Then when Gil Taeseo started walking with heavy steps, he shrieked in shock.
“Hey, what are you, suddenly picking someone up like a piece of luggage? Put me down right now!”
Everything was a mess. Nearly being sexually assaulted despite being a man, and then showing Gil Taeseo the sight of him collapsed with his legs giving out—his manly pride wouldn’t allow it.
Being lifted so easily was equally embarrassing. It felt like showing how pathetic he’d become. Thinking that way, it seemed like some strength returned to his limbs that had only been trembling.
Gil Taeseo, who had been walking without wavering even with struggling baggage on him, stopped abruptly in the middle. Sighing as if there was no choice, he raised his large hand and swung it without hesitation.
“Ack!”
A sound between a thud and a smack echoed embarrassingly through the alley. After the sharp impact, a tingling dull pain rose up. Saehyeon blinked his wide-open eyes.
Being hit by Gil Taeseo itself wasn’t unfamiliar, but the location was the problem. If it wasn’t a mistake, the location was… somewhat unusual and embarrassing. For example, his buttocks.
“You, right now you… did you just hit… my butt?”
He had no memory of being hit on the butt even by his birth mother when he was young. His hand was so large that his entire butt cheek was tingling as if it had a cramp.
“Stop squirming already. I’m already barely holding back as it is.”
Gil Taeseo spoke in a low growl. The voice that scraped his throat and leaked through his teeth was calmer than expected, but also sounded like he was truly suppressing something.
Saehyeon instinctively shut his mouth tight. It felt like he shouldn’t say anything more. But that didn’t mean his head stopped working. Like a computer case full of dust, his thoughts made loud noises but weren’t fast, spinning round and round in one spot.
‘Holding back what? What the hell is he holding back?’
His head was all buzzing from the shock of being hit on the butt by that Gil Taeseo and the violence of the word choice.
Into his view as he hung there dazedly, brilliant lights slowly began to spread. Gil Taeseo had traversed in one breath the distance that Saehyeon would have to walk for a long time dragging his exhausted body. Whether it was because of his long legs or because he was excited, he didn’t know.
At least it shouldn’t be the latter. It had to not be.
While Saehyeon was frozen, having turned deathly pale, Gil Taeseo was easily dragging his prey to the den he’d claimed not long ago.
Saehyeon’s spirit, which had briefly run away from home, came rushing back in a fluster because of the lights that kept getting stronger. Fragmented clusters of light poured down over his helplessly blinking eyelids.
Seeing such lights meant they were also getting closer to people. As the murmuring sounds of people became clear, Saehyeon took a small breath.
The last Gil Taeseo that Saehyeon remembered was also incredibly tall, but the current Gil Taeseo was even more so. Whatever he’d stuffed himself with and grown on after age 20, when among people, he seemed like his head would stick out several heads above them.
He couldn’t bear the terrible embarrassment of showing an unspecified number of people the sight of him being transported dangling like laundry that had fallen wrong onto a utility pole. In the end, unable to endure any longer, Saehyeon muttered quietly.
“P-put me down…”
But what came back at those words was only a cold refusal.
“Looking like a newborn fawn, what are you going to do.”
No, there was another problem besides the embarrassment. The piercing gazes themselves were unpleasant and frightening. In fact, since waking up a few months ago and living until now, there hadn’t been a single time when people’s gazes had been welcome.
It felt like the sharp gazes would thoroughly dissect and unfold him, trying to trample him down.
With all resistance suppressed, Saehyeon instinctively pressed his frozen stiff body against the alpha holding him. Gil Taeseo, who glanced at his hunched back and still trembling body, released his pheromones. The sharply honed pheromones became weapons, instantly pressuring the surroundings.
“Tsk.”
His control was so delicate that the omega clinging to him only blinked his eyes, unaware of what was happening around him.
The gazes quickly moved away from the fierce utility pole and the laundry with a complicated head.
Gil Taeseo headed to the place that had fallen into his grasp not long ago. The bars that his half-brother—some number he couldn’t even remember which—had been running.
The place that filled the alley, selling people in the front and selling people over ‘in various senses’ in the back to rake in money. It was a side income that had rolled in accidentally when he’d merely disposed of a person.
But Gil Taeseo was utterly disgusted by promiscuous acts done under the influence of pheromones. He’d planned to roughly clean up on the first day, hand it over, and cut ties, but his thoughts changed after catching a faint scent on the street.
When he came to his senses, he’d be loitering on the streets chasing that scent like a dog in heat.
Today as well, he’d been wandering around as if drawn there without fail. Then when he became aware that his state was quite laughable, a hollow laugh came out.
“…Ha. Really pathetic, fuck.”
Gil Taeseo gave up walking any further and leaned against a wall. Habitually taking out a cigarette and lighting it, he heard groaning and unsettled signs from somewhere. Along with disgusting pheromones.
His mood was already shitty, so he couldn’t be pleased about people performing public indecency in front of someone else’s establishment. So he’d moved thinking to step on them appropriately, but…
He really never imagined he’d see Lee Saehyeon there.
“Even running around like a cock-crazed idiot…”
It was when Gil Taeseo was muttering to himself. Saehyeon, who had been hanging limply, suddenly raised his head and shouted.
“What? What did you just say? Cock? Did you say cock?”
It was the moment ‘cock’ was added to the washing machine in his brain where the action of hitting his butt and the words ‘holding back’ were tangled up. Unexpectedly, because the puzzle fit together perfectly, Saehyeon’s eyes widened in shock.
But Gil Taeseo didn’t care. Unlike his complicated feelings, his steps were swift. It was better than before, but the body draped over his shoulder was still trembling violently. He wanted to quickly take this fucking human to an enclosed place and sit him down.
“That cock-like bastard flipped over in that alley back there, clean him up appropriately and just keep him breathing.”
Gil Taeseo said to someone nearby as he lightly stepped over the threshold. Shin Seokwon, who noticed his lips twisting slightly, straightened his posture once more and answered crisply.
It was because his superior, usually expressionless like a plaster statue, smiling meant his mood was shitty as fuck.
“Yes. I’ll do that.”
Saehyeon’s consciousness, which had been hanging and gone to another world, also crawled back home, startled by a third party’s voice.
Through his slightly tilted, swaying view, he saw a man as black as a door panel. A short head shaved close, slightly tanned skin, and ears that had been crushed and deformed as if they’d been broken once caught his eye.
“Send up a first aid kit too.”
“Yes.”
Gil Taeseo, who commanded with his chin the man with a vicious impression so fierce that problem customers wouldn’t dare open their mouths even from afar just by keeping quiet, entered inside.
After being shaken a few times and coming to his senses, Saehyeon found himself sitting with his butt pressed to a leather sofa in some room.
The room, which was more spacious than expected, actually had few items in it. Only a desk placed by the window and a sofa in front of it were sitting there lonely.
The place where Saehyeon sat was precisely that isolated island-like sofa. The cold temperature of the dark-colored leather sofa penetrated his clothes and was transmitted to his tingling butt.
“Lee Saehyeon.”
A low voice calling his name dug into Saehyeon’s ears as he sat there dazedly. Saehyeon’s head snapped up in surprise.
