What do I do. He seems even more irritated than before.
Lost in his own thoughts, Seohan quickly arrived at an answer. It seemed like the difference in their builds was making things uncomfortable. Seohan rose up on his tiptoes and pushed his nape forward.
Not that it would do much good — he was of average height for an adult man, and there was no way he could reach eye level with Cesare, who easily cleared 190cm. But he wanted to earn some points by making it at least a little easier for him to check the pheromones.
“Aren’t you going to — ah, check?”
Unlike the bold question he’d managed to throw out, Seohan’s voice grew smaller and smaller. It was because Cesare’s expression, frighteningly rigid, had caught his eye.
But from Seohan’s perspective, he couldn’t understand it at all. He seemed put off by not being able to properly check the pheromones — so why was he even more displeased now that Seohan was offering his neck?
Cesare’s cheeks and forehead were flushed red. His face, stiff and heated, looked like it could erupt into a shout at any moment.
“Uh, um.”
Seohan slowly lowered himself off his tiptoes and pulled his hand free from where it had been hooked in the collar. The cheap fabric had stretched loose and gone slack from just that brief tug.
“……”
Cesare’s throat bobbed up and down in one large motion. The expression on his face as he looked down at the hair brushing against his chest and the round crown of Seohan’s head was anything but ordinary.
“F***… forget it. Move.”
After a long pause, Cesare finally spoke — a sharp curse falling from his lips — and turned his back with a dismissive wave of his hand. Despite the profanity, his tone itself was flat. Colin nudged Seohan’s back from beside him, urging him to follow.
“Oh, can I go?”
“Yes.”
No matter how you looked at it, he seemed angry — but Colin smiled gently and said he wasn’t.
Left with no choice, Seohan followed after Cesare at a slight distance. Whether it was the difference in their stride, the gap between them kept widening without him even meaning for it to.
“……!”
Cesare, who had been walking well ahead, snapped his head around. His sharp gaze drilled straight into the top of Seohan’s head.
“Wh — why?”
When Seohan asked what the matter was, Cesare said nothing — just raised an eyebrow and fixed his eyes on Seohan’s feet. It seemed to mean: stop dawdling and get over here.
He’d sensed it before, but the man’s temper was as short as his sharp looks suggested. Worried that another scolding might come raining down, Seohan broke into a quick trot and stuck close to his back. Only then did Cesare resume walking.
Following him up the stairs, another space opened up to greet them.
The first things to catch his eye were a sofa enormous enough to comfortably fit six adults lying down, and three ring-shaped lights hanging at staggered heights from the ceiling. Deeper inside, there appeared to be a bedroom and other rooms beyond.
It was a space that was both immaculately orderly and extravagantly lavish — all at once. It was such a different world that there wasn’t even room to feel overwhelmed.
He’d only been glancing around the upper floor for a moment when Seohan’s gaze settled on the back in front of him. Perhaps the most magnificent thing in this space was Cesare himself.
Cesare had only a shirt on, and because of that, every shift of his back muscles translated clearly through the fabric as he moved. With each step he took, the muscles fanning wide from the center of his back contracted and pulled the shirt taut, then released.
His shoulders were unrealistically broad, yet his trapezius muscles swept smoothly from the base of his neck to the tips of his shoulders — it was remarkable. He was seeing for the first time that a body this surreal could move with such fluidity.
Really wide.
Cesare’s frame was door-sized, and just sitting across from him on the sofa made the sheer enormity of him immediately apparent. But standing close beside him like this — the feeling was something else entirely.
Is that really a human body? Seohan was gaping faintly in admiration, then glanced down at his own limp wrists and let his shoulders drop. He’s a man too, just like me — but what even is this. They seemed like entirely different species.
“……”
The moment they reached the upper floor, Cesare grabbed a glass water bottle from the minibar behind the sofa. Whether he’d been very thirsty or not, the way he tipped back and drained an entire bottle in one go was a little tense.
The whole time he drank, he didn’t take his eyes off Seohan — as if blaming him for something. Seohan quietly averted his gaze under that wordless pressure. He had no way of knowing why the man was looking at him like that.
“Hff.”
Having quenched his thirst, Cesare slouched onto the sofa with the loose, careless posture of a back-alley thug. And before him, Seohan stood quietly.
He wasn’t sure whether he should sit on the sofa or not, but glancing back, Colin — who had followed them up at a distance — was also standing, so this seemed to be the right call. Cesare, however, wrinkled his face and kicked the table leg.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“Do I look like I have some kind of contagious disease to you?”
Seohan hunched his shoulders and shook his head, flustered. Contagious disease? What an absurd thing to say. There was probably no one in the entire Graven Federation who looked as healthy as Cesare Herald.
“N — no.”
“Then what’s this about.”
Cesare was gesturing back and forth with his hand between where Seohan was standing and where he himself was sitting.
Could it be that standing at a distance had offended him?
From Seohan’s side, he’d only kept his distance so as not to make Cesare uncomfortable — but thinking about it now, it made sense that it could be read as treating him like he was infected with something.
Sure enough, when he took one step closer, the pinch in Cesare’s expression eased ever so slightly. Cesare finished off the glass of water sitting on the table and crooked his index finger.
“Go grab that for me.”
Since the look was directed at him and not Colin, it must have been meant for him — but he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to bring. It couldn’t be his bag. Tilting his head, Seohan alternated his gaze between the water glass Cesare had just emptied and Colin.
“Should I get you water……?”
“What are you babbling about. You said to check, didn’t you.”
As if exasperated that he couldn’t catch on right away, Cesare pointed at Seohan’s nape with his fine index finger. The very spot Seohan had exposed moments ago, pulling his knit down to his collarbone.
“Oh, yes!”
Understanding at last, Seohan scurried over to the sofa where he was seated.
Cesare Herald seemed to be not just foul-tempered, but wildly inconsistent. When Seohan had risen on his very own tiptoes and offered his neck up for a sniff, he’d told him to move — and now he was calling him back again.
But even Seohan, lacking as he was in social awareness, understood that he was in no position to be nursing grievances against him.
“Is it okay if I sit beside you? I think that would be easier……”
Seohan hovered around Cesare, fidgeting with his knit, and pointed to the spot next to him.
“Do whatever.”
Cesare gave a nod, perfectly willing — but the gesture itself couldn’t have been more indifferent. His eyes, however, were sharp. As if he was watching to see what Seohan would do.
He always looked at Seohan like that. Staring directly at him with those fiercely flickering eyes, never looking away.
He’s a really strange person.
Seohan found Cesare fascinating. He himself had always found it so difficult to even make eye contact, let alone hold a conversation with someone — yet this man seemed to have absolutely no qualms about anything.
“H — here.”
Seohan settled in beside him, avoiding those eyes that were boring straight into him, and offered his nape once more. From above his head came a quiet, deflating sound of a scoff.
Only Seohan didn’t know that he looked exactly like a herbivore presenting its throat to a predator, begging to be bitten.
“Hmm.”
Narrowing his eyes as if gauging something, Cesare grazed Seohan’s nape with a languorous touch. The pulse beating just beneath the skin transmitted itself clearly even through the glove.
His thick thumb pressed slow and deep beneath Seohan’s chin, then dragged gradually down the line of his throat. Every time it did, the frail body seated beside him flinched without warning.
“Ugh.”
“……”
On impulse, Cesare reached up and smoothed Seohan’s hair. He brushed aside the strands that had frizzed out particularly badly from all the rain, revealing the smooth, flat expanse of his forehead. Without realizing it, the corner of his mouth tugged faintly upward.
He’d sent a hovercar, so the man hadn’t been caught in the rain — yet today, he looked unusually grimy. Like someone had plucked a rain-soaked puppy up and plopped it down here.
Cesare despised animals, but whenever he looked at the guy, small creatures like puppies or baby squirrels kept coming to mind.
Look at those chestnut-brown eyes, darting around and sneaking glances. That pathetic little appearance. That self-conscious, uncertain way of carrying himself. A puppy through and through. One abandoned without an owner, whimpering all alone.
“Hmm.”
Cesare tapped a finger against Seohan’s pale cheek — once, twice. And with that, the wandering eyes that had been drifting nowhere in particular turned toward him. Despite being so clearly terrified, the gaze that looked up at him was rather bold.
“Why……?”
Seohan rubbed his own cheek and tilted his head. Cesare arched an eyebrow shamelessly.
“What?”
“Oh — nothing.”
The eyes that had been looking up at Cesare dropped downward again. It left him vaguely wanting. Even setting aside how uncommon East Asians were, those chestnut-brown irises were something one could come across anytime — strange, that they should have this effect.
“Come here.”
“Oh —”
Cesare grabbed Seohan’s forearm and pulled him in close. As the body followed along without resistance, the inexplicable thirst inside him eased just a little.
Yi Seohan ran at a fairly comfortable temperature. A warmth that, oddly, made you want to reach out. Even Cesare, who found other people’s body heat unpleasant, found himself drawn to that slightly cool, yielding softness — the opposite of his own body, which ran hot and rigid.
The pale, slender neck wasn’t bad, either. He had no tolerance for weakness, as a rule — but this particular sight, the kind that could fit entirely in one hand, was something he could manage to overlook.
A throat that felt like it might snap in his grip if he pressed even a little too hard. The hair swaying softly against it kept stoking the violence and dark desire that lived inside Cesare.
What if I actually applied some pressure? If he tightened his hold around that windpipe — what expression would this clear, unmarked face make? Would those eyes brim with tears and gaze up at him desperately? Or would he come at him, bold as anything?
“Mmn.”
Unaware of what thoughts were filling Cesare’s mind, Yi Seohan surrendered his neck entirely to that hand and leaned in.
