Belatedly, a wave of embarrassment, jealousy, and unease washed over me, along with something else harder to name. I glared at Bulgom for no real reason as he handed me the shopping bag.
“Hey, Bulgom. Still?”
A month had passed since I first received that shopping bag. However many bags this was now, they had kept coming to me steadily throughout that time.
“Well…… I couldn’t reach him……”
“His phone’s just decoration, is it?”
“Well…… he said he’s doing a digital detox……”
“What a ridiculous detox. So what, did a stork bring this shopping bag?”
“A courier brought it……”
“Shut up.”
No matter how generously I tried to interpret it, Bulgom had been stringing things along for nearly a month with excuses that made no sense. The person who supposedly couldn’t be reached somehow managed, every time I needed something, to send over a shopping bag as if reading my mind through telepathy. And always through Bulgom.
The clothes that arrived like a subscription service were, as time went on, increasingly filled with expensive luxury brands — to the point where not recognizing them would have been strange. He wasn’t someone who knew much about that world, but the brand logos were ones he’d seen often enough in his ex’s wardrobe that he could identify them without difficulty.
Once he’d figured it out, taking the clothes out of the bags started to feel burdensome and uncomfortable. So he’d pulled out just a few of the most plain and practical ones to wear and left the rest piled in a corner of the office. As a result, the expensive clothes began taking over his office without any sense of restraint. Whether they were self-replicating or something, the office — which had nothing more than a single standing rack, let alone a proper dressing room — was quickly overwhelmed with clothing.
The moment he laid eyes on the graveyard of shopping bags growing dusty and losing their fragrance, a headache struck. He’d told Bulgom to stop accepting the clothes, but Bulgom kept showing up with bags anyway, citing every excuse imaginable — the weather had gotten cold, he needed to maintain a certain appearance, and so on. Each time a new batch arrived, he’d unconsciously bury his nose in the rich scent of the new clothes before he could stop himself — and after that, telling Bulgom to take them away felt too awkward, so he’d just rub the tip of his nose and say nothing.
He’d briefly suspected Bulgom had fallen for someone at a luxury boutique and was buying the clothes himself — but when Bulgom heard that suggestion, his face went tomato-red and he’d kicked up a furious fuss, so he’d dropped that line of scrutiny.
“Stop with the schemes and find out by tomorrow. If you give me another pathetic excuse, it’ll be the end of you. Understood?”
“Yes……”
“Today’s the last day I’m going easy on you.”
He turned away from Bulgom, who answered with a sulk, and pulled a sweatshirt out of the shopping bag. Today’s delivery, as if passing along his scolding, was a simple design with no brand logo — but when he checked the back of the neck, it was, of course, a label that made his mouth drop open.
By now, he was less curious about the name of the perfume and more curious about the identity of the person handing these bags to Bulgom each time. Every time a new bag arrived, and every time he caught Bulgom off guard, he’d asked — but Bulgom’s defense was ironclad, and the only answer he ever got was a friend.
“Just who is this friend of yours that keeps sending me expensive clothes every single time? And always exactly what I happen to need?”
He narrowed his eyes and looked up at Bulgom standing before him from where he lay sprawled on the sofa like a man of leisure — and he could feel Bulgom gulp and tense up.
“He’s…… a close friend of mine…… he’s someone with a lot of connections, so I asked him as a favor on your behalf……”
“Yeah. Enough. Tomorrow. You got it?”
Letting that flimsy excuse slide was partly because of his own deteriorating health — but more than that, it was because he didn’t want to know. Find out about the perfume, dig up more information. And if the omega he uncovered turned out to be someone better and more impressive than him — he didn’t think he could bear it. Wasn’t it cleaner to just sidestep it, turn away, pretend the omega didn’t exist, and quietly close the chapter on Kang Jaeho? He already felt like this was a battle he couldn’t win from the very start — a matter of secondary characteristics — which made him feel that way even more.
Of course, all that agonizing turned out to be entirely pointless. There had been no progress not just on the perfume, but on information about the mysterious omega either. As though someone were blocking the way, every avenue that might have led to the truth had been cut off.
“Hyung. Instead of staying here like this, why don’t you move to a hotel?”
“No.”
“Then at least a short-term monthly rental. Sleeping and living cramped in the office — I think it’s making your health worse.”
It was true — after living in what had felt like an ultra-luxurious palace, trying to eat and sleep in this rundown office left every part of his body aching and stiff.
“I said no.”
But the man who had occupied half of him — maybe even more than half — had been torn away, and now the only thing left to hold onto was this office.
“Then at least eat properly!”
“I have no appetite.”
His body, which wouldn’t listen to him, made him wonder if it was only now, belatedly, going through the breakup. And it wasn’t just his body. His heart swung wildly — hating Kang Jaeho hundreds of times a day, then missing him, then loving him — generally making a restless, irritating mess of his emotions.
Maybe the root of all his problems was his own heart — unable to fully accept that it was over, still clutching at petty jealousy and a desire for revenge.
Driiing!
“If you hate everything else, then please — at least answer the phone!”
He already knew who was calling without looking. Director Kang, obviously.
Kang Jaeho had been calling every day, shamelessly unbothered, ever since he’d turned his phone back on. At first he’d been tense, unsure what to say — but the man only ever talked about meaningless things, and eventually he’d gotten to the point of picking up half-asleep and hanging up without much thought. The trivial topics ranged widely.
[I got the DVD of that movie you wanted to see — come over and watch it together.]
[Today I made kimchi jjim too, your favorite. You’re coming to eat, right?]
[It’s gotten cold, so I’d like it if you came home.]
But every single one of them was just coaxing him to come back to the house. He didn’t know why. Did he want to keep his second around?
That’s exactly why he felt like ignoring these calls for no reason at all. Even if the intention was casual, it still meant the man had at least some interest in him. Right now, he wanted to rake and claw at that feeling until it bled. Whether it would work — he had no idea.
At Bulgom’s desperate plea, he picked up the phone — and Bulgom’s face visibly relaxed. He met that look with a smile, then immediately rejected the ringing call and flipped the phone face-down, just like the state of his heart.
“Ah! Hyung!”
“What. Why?”
It’s my phone — what’s wrong with me not answering it?
The outcry didn’t come from Bulgom but from the others who had been watching. For some reason, each of them was either clutching their own head or face-planting like a defeated man, shoulders shaking.
But if he answered this call right now, he felt like he’d end up spitting out all his resentment and anger toward the man — or worse, something pathetically clingy dressed up as a heartfelt confession of love — so there was nothing he could do.
He threatened that if they annoyed him one more time, he’d switch his phone off entirely — and only then did they fall silent, making disgruntled faces as they turned back to the ledger.
He covered his face with the sweatshirt he’d been holding, blocking out the light, and closed his eyes. If the guys didn’t come back with answers by tomorrow, he’d go out himself and track down the omega’s identity on foot. And then he’d make sure to let her know. Just how flippant of a man your alpha really is.
Thud — thud thud —
Just when it seemed like things were finally quieting down, noise from somewhere else made him pull the sweatshirt off his face and shoot a look at Bulgom. Bulgom gestured frantically that it wasn’t him. He lay back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling like he could bore a hole through it. Under the bright fluorescent light, his pupils dilated for a moment, then contracted.
Ah. Right. That’s it. That was the problem from the beginning. The source of everything.
The noise between floors — which had gone quiet for a while — started scraping at his nerves again. His already razor-thin patience, worn completely down, snapped in an instant as if torn apart.
He launched himself off the sofa and stripped off his t-shirt and sweatpants in one motion. Then he rummaged through the graveyard of shopping bags and pulled out a black suit that had been neatly folded to one side. He slipped on a white dress shirt with practiced ease, buttoned it up, and tucked it in. He buckled a belt over the slightly loose waist, then casually knotted a tie with a repeated logo pattern. Finally, he shrugged on the jacket — and even though it had been sitting there for several days, the scent of the perfume still lingered faintly across the whole garment.
He put on his polished dress shoes, stood in front of the mirror celebrating the Gangho faction’s twentieth anniversary, and the guys gathered around him trying to talk him out of it.
“Why waste your energy on this, hyung.”
“You’re not even well. You should change back into something comfortable and lie down……”
“How do I look?”
He ignored all of it, pushed his hair back a few times, and asked — and they gave him a thumbs-up, saying he looked incredible.
“Ah, honestly. It’d be rude to show up to a funeral this overdressed. But with a face this good, even toning down the color of the outfit can’t do much.”
He ran a hand along his jaw, which had grown sharper from not eating well these past weeks. He had almost no body hair to begin with, so his chin was smooth — not even a hint of stubble — and after a moment studying that in the mirror, he turned away.
“Hyung. Let me go by myself.”
He brought his hand down vertically on Mangchi’s arm like a blade, blocking his path, and said:
“No. Actually, perfect timing. I’ve been building up a lot anyway.”
Anger, stress, frustration, exhaustion — all of it had piled up inside him, stacked into a mountain.
He was taking the full force of a wretched breakup straight to the body. On top of that, for over a month now, he’d found out nothing and tracked down nothing. So what he needed most right now was something — someone — to direct his rage at. As if he’d ever learned how to process emotions in a mature way. In that sense, whoever was stomping around upstairs was a perfectly appropriate target.
He clicked his dress shoes against the floor, strode out of the office door with swagger, and climbed the stairs. I’m going to crush them so completely they’ll never do a tap dance again.
Bang —
Hands shoved carelessly into his trouser pockets — entirely at odds with the sharp outfit — he kicked the iron door in front of him without a second thought.
Bang bang —
“Ah — honestly. Judging by the way they’ve been thundering around making noise every single day, their legs seem to be working just fine…… Gamja.”
“Yes, hyung!”
“Open it.”
