Following Cesare into the bedroom, Seohan swallowed involuntarily. He wasn’t exactly experienced in this kind of thing, but he wasn’t so ignorant as to not understand what “matching bellies” meant.
He stepped into the bedroom with hesitant feet. Unlike the living room, which had clearly been decorated with care, this room was different. With only the bare necessary furniture and lighting, it felt less like clean and more like stark.
“……”
Seohan didn’t dare approach the bed, frozen stiff and practically plastered against the wall. Cold sweat prickled at his skin, and his heart thudded so hard it was maddening. Cesare openly mocked him for it.
“Playing hard to get.”
“……”
Cesare’s mouth clearly existed for the sole purpose of cutting people down. Every word out of it was insufferably grating. He wanted to give him exactly one flick to the forehead — no more, no less.
But when he imagined Cesare saying something kind to him, that felt even stranger. Gentleness, from him. It was like picturing angel wings on a devil.
No matter how generously you tried to see him, Cesare had absolutely nothing to do with goodness. The atmosphere around him was so intense and dangerous that shadow suited him far better than sunlight.
“Go wash up first.”
“Oh—”
Cesare pushed Seohan into the bathroom attached to the room. Stumbling inside, Seohan clutched at his own clothes.
“There’s gel in there, so prep yourself. Find a robe to put on when you come out.”
“Pr— prep?”
“Say the word if you change your mind. I don’t have a hobby of forcing myself on someone who doesn’t want it.”
Cesare left those words and shut the bathroom door with a firm click. It was abundantly clear he found even explaining that much a bother.
Left alone in the bathroom, Seohan cautiously looked around. A bathtub large enough to fit three people with room to spare, and a sliding wardrobe with marble doors came into view. For an en suite bathroom it was strikingly luxurious. It looked even bigger than the single room he and Eddie shared.
Swallowing dryly, Seohan first began undressing. This was something he’d mentally prepared himself for since the moment he submitted his application, so there was no point being precious about it now.
The luxurious bathroom, however, made it difficult to feel at ease. Just leaving a single handprint felt like committing a grave offense.
“Pardon me while I use this.”
He muttered the awkward words to himself, and from outside the door came a sound — a barely stifled laugh.
It must be my imagination.
Looking at the solid bathroom door that seemed purpose-built for soundproofing, Seohan brushed it off and began washing up.
“Oh— mmm.”
But washing up in someone else’s home was no ordinary thing.
The showerhead had an unusual design, and just getting the water to run took real effort. When he used what appeared to be expensive shampoo and body wash, he felt like a thief and kept glancing around the empty bathroom.
“I’ve washed up, at least.”
Having finished, Seohan found a robe and put it on as Cesare had said.
The next problem was the gel. Cesare had told him to prep himself, but never having used it before, Seohan was at a loss.
He wasn’t ignorant, of course — just inexperienced. He knew well enough how omegas and alphas had sex. He’d gone through heat before, so he knew where he got wet. He just wasn’t sure when and how the gel was meant to be used.
Should he have prepped during the shower? Or after? Was he supposed to squeeze it inside himself? Or use his fingers? And wouldn’t an omega get wet on their own anyway — did he even need the gel?
Unable to bear the flood of questions, Seohan cracked the bathroom door open and poked his head out. He decided it was better to just ask Cesare, who surely knew far more about this than he did, rather than tie himself in knots alone.
“Eek——!”
The moment he opened the door, Seohan nearly stumbled backward in shock. Cesare, whom he’d assumed would be sitting on the bed or a chair at the table, was standing squarely in front of the door like a sentinel.
“Wh— why are you standing right here?”
“Did you see a ghost? You were taking forever in there so I was standing here. Besides, what does it matter where I am in my own house?”
He’d only asked a brief question, and the reproach that came back was remarkably long. Cesare reacted as though he’d been caught at something, and Seohan suddenly thought that maybe the laugh he’d heard earlier hadn’t been his imagination after all.
Had he been standing there the entire time Seohan was washing up? He didn’t dare ask — that would only make the lecture longer — so Seohan simply closed his mouth.
“Ahem. If you’re done washing, come out. I need to wash too.”
Cesare coughed a few times and tried to push past Seohan into the bathroom. Not wanting to miss his chance, Seohan quickly grabbed at his sleeve.
“What?”
“Um— excuse me. How do I use this?”
Seohan held out the gel he’d been carrying in one hand. Cesare tilted his chin in the way of someone regarding a spectacular display of stupidity, hands in his pockets.
“You’re not some kid doing it for the first time. You’re seriously asking me to walk you through something like this?”
“Ah……”
Seohan scratched the back of his head. He’d apparently asked something far too basic.
Maybe he should’ve just tried rubbing the gel between his cheeks and see what happened. Thinking that, he opened the cap and gave it a sniff. No scent at all — probably because of Cesare’s sensitivity to smells. He squeezed a little onto his hand. A mildly unpleasant stickiness met his fingers.
“Are you by any chance……”
Watching Seohan’s fumbling, clueless reaction, Cesare lifted one eyebrow at a diagonal angle, an expression of dawning disbelief crossing his face.
“Is this your first time?”
His expression pinched with something complicated as he asked the question flatly.
“Huh— what?”
Seohan blinked blankly, registering it a beat late. Cesare’s suddenly grave reaction left Seohan flustered in turn.
“Have you never had sex before?”
Cesare’s gaze slid down to Seohan’s lower body, then returned to his face.
“Ah……”
Only then did Seohan understand what he was asking, and his mouth fell open in a small oh. He slid his gaze away, wondering if he’d made some kind of mistake — but it didn’t feel like something he’d done particularly wrong, so he spoke.
“It— it is my first time.”
There certainly hadn’t been any condition stated that inexperienced omegas weren’t allowed. If anything, given all that talk about cheap and not cheap, he didn’t think being inexperienced would count against him.
“For f——’s sake, seriously……”
But Cesare pressed one hand against the door frame and let out a long, heavy exhale. His expression, seemingly displeased, was grimmer than Seohan had ever seen it.
Thoroughly deflated by Cesare’s reaction, Seohan dropped his gaze. Drops of bathwater that hadn’t been fully dried trailed down from his lowered lashes.
“Does— does being a first-timer mean I can’t?”
Cesare leaned his back against the bathroom door and pressed his fingers to his forehead. Alongside that, Seohan’s worry deepened.
Could it be that Cesare Herald had wanted a more experienced omega? If so, he was out before he’d even signed a contract. But if a well-worn omega was a no, and an inexperienced omega was also a no — then exactly what standard was he supposed to meet?
Right up until stepping into the bedroom, he’d felt good about the prospect of Cesare hiring him — and in the span of a single moment, a wave of sharp disappointment crashed in.
“Does that mean I don’t get paid?”
A thoroughly dejected Seohan asked in a small, sullen voice. Silence fell between them.
* * *
An uncomfortable current settled over the bedroom.
Seohan, bundled tight inside the robe, sat slumped in the chair at the table like a sack of grain left in the wrong place, while Cesare sat across from him with his chin propped in one hand.
He seemed to be thinking something through deeply — his expression grave, his gaze drifting toward Seohan from time to time. Those glances were sharp enough that every time their eyes met, Seohan’s shoulders flinched.
Cesare rested his elbows on the table, laced his fingers together, and pressed them against his lips.
He remained silent for a while longer, then fixed Seohan with a look of utter incomprehension and opened his mouth.
“How have you handled your heats up until now?”
“I got through them with suppressants. My first heat, I just— I just endured it.”
When he’d gone through his first heat, he hadn’t even known that’s what it was. His body ran fever and then cooled and ran riot on its own, so he’d huddled in the corner of his room and suffered through it alone. After his body finally calmed down and he’d gathered the nerve to visit a clinic, that was when he learned it had been a heat.
“That’s something you can just endure? When a person’s in heat like an animal?”
Cesare gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Well— it was rough, but there was no other way…… And my pheromone levels are low, so my heats weren’t severe either……”
The doctor had told him that if Seohan had been a dominant omega, or even an average recessive omega, he wouldn’t have been able to endure it. The doctor had also tried to frighten him with stories of omegas who’d been consumed by desire and grabbed at anyone within reach, only to end up in serious trouble.
After that, whenever a heat seemed to be approaching, he got through it by taking suppressants. The medication brought it down fairly quickly, so there was no reason he couldn’t manage.
“Tch.”
Having heard the story, Cesare clicked his tongue with a troubled look on his face.
A sudden headache pressed in at his temples. If he thought about it honestly, Yi Seohan being a first-timer wasn’t actually that significant a problem — and yet he couldn’t understand why he himself was so rattled.
Whether the guy he was picking up to burn off some frustration had experience or not was entirely irrelevant to him. All he needed was someone without an STI and not so repulsive it was unbearable. The problem was that such an omega had been impossible to find no matter how hard he looked.
“Hah.”
In that sense, Seohan was an omega with quite decent conditions. He needed that pheromone.
But somehow, he didn’t want to take the guy’s first like this. He’d said he seemed timid — but who would have expected that an omega living in District 4 would have zero experience? And on top of that, for someone who looked like that to have no experience — that made no sense.
Then again, if the guy had been overly experienced, that would have soured his mood in a different way. Even just imagining it made something unpleasant stir in him, and a sudden surge of anger rose from somewhere inside.
So, in short — Cesare was a little thrown right now.
It wasn’t that he disliked the fact that the guy had no experience. If anything, it was closer to something welcome.
The problem was Cesare himself. He wasn’t exactly practiced either when it came to this kind of thing. And on top of everything, this would be a first that would stay with the guy for a long time. He didn’t want it to happen like this.
A want crept up on him suddenly. A truly strange, embarrassing want — to be remembered as the alpha who gave the guy a genuinely remarkable first experience.
The moment that cringe-worthy thought surfaced, Cesare’s leg bounced with an inexplicable restlessness. He had never once wished for someone pure and untouched — yet the fact that he would be this guy’s first had suddenly begun to weigh on him like something urgent.
“You.”
“Yes?”
Seohan looked up with wide, guileless eyes.
Right. That face was the problem. When he blinked up at him with that expression of someone who seemed to know absolutely nothing about the world, it made him hesitate.
Was stupidity contagious? Somehow, whenever this guy was in front of him, Cesare felt himself turning into an idiot as well.
“If you’re lying, you’re dead.”
“What— which part?”
“That you haven’t been with anyone. You’re dead if you’re lying.”
“What? Yes.”
At the word dead, Seohan nodded so hard it looked like his head might fall off.
