Since he couldn’t get the words out to the end, he just kept heaving sigh after sigh.
“They wouldn’t have been able to make off with any important ledgers or internal information.”
Right. Unless they physically came here and stole the documents and cash bundles out of the safe, what could they possibly threaten us with using just a camera? Even if that camera happened to have audio recording capabilities. What could they blackmail us with after listening to us flirt around all day and go on and on about perfume?
But shit! There’s plenty they could do with the video of me jerking off! What if they use that shameful footage as a weapon to demand money, and threaten to spread my voice — the one moaning and groaning while calling out Kang Jaeho’s name — all over the world if I don’t comply?
Consumed by a surge of sudden rage, he tried to stand up again, but everyone pressed down on his shoulders to stop him. They told him to calm down and shoved some tea at him that looked utterly unappetizing just from the looks of it. Out of appreciation for the gesture, he forced himself to take a sip — then spat it right back out because it tasted awful. He worked his mouth against the bitter taste and chose his words carefully.
“You idiots! So what — huh? If they take my video — no, footage of us just going about our daily lives — and use it to blackmail us, what are we supposed to do?!”
“Hyung. What could anyone blackmail us with using footage of our everyday lives?”
Why are these bastards suddenly being so logical?
“I — I changed clothes and washed up here!”
He couldn’t understand why everyone was reacting so lukewarmly when it wasn’t just him on camera. Did these guys have no shame?
“Hyung, the chances of it being leaked are— well. If that ever happens, we’ll chase them to the ends of the earth and beat them to a pulp, so don’t worry.”
Mangchi, seeing that he still couldn’t let go of his anger, thumped his own chest twice with his fist as if to say, just trust me.
“Our Lee Gang hyung, honestly. You never got mad even once after having pheromone showers done to you every single day. And you’re getting this worked up over something like this? Haha.”
He stared blankly up at Gamja, who was grinning again not long after getting smacked in the back of the head, and Gamja awkwardly schooled his expression.
“What shower?”
“Uh…… a pheromone shower……?”
Gamja scratched the back of his head sheepishly at his flat reaction.
“What’s that?”
“Pardon?”
Not just Gamja — the entire office erupted in a chorus of screaming shouts, making him furrow his brow. The guys surrounding him were all yelling at once with him right in the middle, and it felt like his eardrums were about to give out.
“You genuinely don’t know, Hyung?!”
“I’m asking because I don’t. How many times do I have to say it?”
Are these idiots all ganging up to make fun of me for being uneducated?
As he continued to stare back with an uncomprehending expression, an impromptu lecture on secondary genders began right then and there.
“Where did that green chalkboard come from?”
“Pay attention!”
“Alright, alright.”
Mangchi, the most educated among them, stepped up to the front. His grave expression put a thirty-year veteran principal to shame.
“You’re well aware that alphas and omegas have pheromones, I presume.”
“Of course I know that.”
“Those pheromones are all completely unique — no two are the same in this world. Now, here’s a quiz! How did all of us come to know that Director Lee and you were involved with each other?”
Why ask something so obvious.
“You dug around or tailed us, I’d imagine.”
“Buzz! Wrong!”
He felt a flash of irritation when the man hurled the chalk he’d been holding out of nowhere, but the sheer force of his momentum was too much — and honestly, he was curious about the answer, so he quietly shut his mouth.
“That’s because Director Kang never missed a single day of giving you a pheromone shower!”
“So what is that, I’m asking.”
“A pheromone shower is the act of an alpha slathering — no, absolutely drenching — their pheromones all over an omega. Think of it as a kind of protective measure to guard an omega from other alphas.”
Mangchi launched into his explanation with gleeful enthusiasm, as if he’d been waiting for this question — it was almost fanatical. Is this guy majoring in secondary gender studies or something? Feels like he chose the wrong career path…… instead of doing this here, he should be out there teaching at some academy.
Applause broke out from all around at how crisply and cleanly he spoke, as if reading from a prepared script. He found himself absently clapping along, though the confusion still hadn’t left him.
“‘Drenching’ is supposed to be protective? What do you mean?”
“Ah, Hyung. That’s just a figure of speech. It means layering on a lot of pheromones.”
“But I’m not an omega, I’m a beta……”
He was about to poke a hole in that self-confident man standing at the front — to press down on that arrogant nose of his — when he stopped short. It was because something the man had said to him in the hospital room not long ago suddenly came to mind.
‘That’s because I coated Gang with my pheromones.’
‘I’ve drenched you in my pheromones, so you’re safe.’
‘For three years straight?’
His voice surfaced in his memory one after another, and he swallowed a low sound. At the time, he’d been so fixated on the fact that the man was Director Kang that he’d let those words go in one ear and out the other, dismissing them as meaningless…… so that had been a pheromone shower.
“Yes. It’s a marking behavior that alphas don’t commonly do even to their bonded omegas — and yet Director Kang did it to you, who is a beta, of all people.”
“How do you all even know that? You’re betas just like me.”
Never mind that even he himself — the one who’d been subjected to the pheromone shower — hadn’t known.
“As expected of our Hyung. Sharp question. You’re right! Since we’re all betas, we’d have no way of knowing unless we were hit with pheromones that carried a directly aggressive charge!”
And that’s when the uproar began. They were all talking over each other so badly that eventually, only the person who raised their hand and was given the floor could speak.
“I’ve honestly had such a hard time all this while. I can’t even count how many times I’ve nearly gotten into fights and almost got beaten up by all kinds of secondary gender types — dominant, recessive, you name it — just for being around Lee Gang hyung. Once I figured out it was because of Director Kang’s pheromones, I’ve made it a point to carry pheromone neutralizer on me at all times!”
“Getting that worked up over just a pheromone……”
He turned away from the man wailing that even the neutralizer barely worked because the pheromones were too thick to remove, and Gamja started venting next.
“An extreme dominant alpha’s pheromones aren’t something you just go around smelling every day — they’re the kind that bulldoze every alpha in the entire neighborhood and pick fights. If you’re completely drenched in them like Hyung, other alphas are too intimidated to even touch you — but if you’ve got a faint trace on you like me? You get smacked in the face immediately. You get me?”
Gamja, breathe. Breathe.
The next one to get the floor was Bulgom.
“Ahem. Mic check.”
What, where did that wireless mic come from? He looked around the office, but he seemed to be the only one questioning any of this.
“You know my wife is an omega. Even when I come home with pheromones on me that I can’t even smell myself, the second I walk in the door she kicks me straight from the entryway to the bathroom. And that’s not all — I’ve been beaten to a pulp by my wife thousands of times for supposedly luring in passing omegas!”
“Why does one person pick fights and the other get lured in? What kind of pheromone does that?”
He rested his chin in one hand and asked, irritated.
“It means it’s a pheromone that’s threatening to alphas of the same secondary gender, while being alluringly provocative enough to excite omegas.”
Mangchi pushed up a pair of glasses from out of nowhere and added the explanation, and when he nodded to show he understood, Mangchi smiled with satisfaction.
But where do these things keep coming from? The mic was one thing, but why does he have glasses? His vision is 20/20. Who’s handing him these things? He looked around again, and Mangchi rapped the chalkboard sharply with the chalk and told him to focus. The way he pushed up his glasses with his middle finger was pretty obnoxious.
“For reference, applying your pheromones to someone without their consent is a serious crime.”
After that, it was chaos — everyone was so desperate to get their grievances out that they were practically bleeding from the ears. Stories of getting smacked around for supposedly harassing omegas, getting beat up for having no public decorum. There were enough tales of suffering at the hands of those pheromones to fill volumes.
He absently lifted his shoulder, brought his nose to it, and sniffed. He hadn’t realized that being drenched in Director Kang’s pheromones had caused this much trouble. Partly because he hadn’t had much formal education, but also because he’d never had much interest in secondary genders to begin with……
“But I never gave my consent……”
When he quietly said that after listening to everything, the room fell somber.
Mangchi took off his fashion glasses and pretended to wipe away tears.
“What fault is there on your end, Hyung. If anything, you’re the victim here too.”
“What kind of insane alpha goes and does a pheromone shower on a beta?!”
Gamja raged, clenching his fists and trembling. No one needed to say out loud which insane alpha they were talking about.
Unlike the others who were fuming with their whole bodies, his thoughts had drifted in an entirely different direction.
If I had been an omega, I would’ve noticed those pheromones a long time ago, wouldn’t I? Just how stimulating is that pheromone, if it lures in passing omegas — and how powerful must it be, to provoke an alpha’s aggression? Maybe, if I’d been at least a recessive omega from the very start, he wouldn’t have cheated. Because I, as a beta, can never smell his pheromone, and I can’t have children either.
If I’d had that kind of devastating pheromone too……
He stopped himself from spiraling further down into the ground and shook his head. Either way, putting together everything everyone had said — because of Director Kang’s pheromones faintly rubbed off on them, they’d all been suffering, something like that……? But he was also technically a victim……?
“You bastards! Why are you only telling me this now?!”
