<Part 2>
1.
Five years later.
Several seasons had passed, and the president’s face on television had changed.
The university, where he had wondered if he could graduate safely, had already become a line on Wooyeon’s resume, and now he was a proper member of society. The suffocating times of being chased by debt had been shoved into a frame as things of the past, as if they had never happened. It wasn’t that all that debt had disappeared somewhere, but in any case, it had.
Beneath the darkness-covered sky as seen from the sky lounge, the city sparkled as if stars had poured down.
Thinking that time really flows quickly, Wooyeon looked at Jeonghan sitting across from him, then lowered his head and cut the steak on his plate.
“Shall we get married?”
The sound of Wooyeon’s utensils that had been clinking softly stopped.
‘Didn’t you know? It’s you I like, sunbae.’
The face of Jeonghan from five years ago, who had said that with a calm face, flashed by.
The sound of string instruments spreading softly throughout the luxurious sky lounge continued playing without interruption. Wooyeon, whose face hadn’t changed much from five years ago, raised his head to look at Jeonghan. Jeonghan, dressed in a suit, smiled slightly when their eyes met, then naturally gestured and poured wine into the glass placed in front of Wooyeon.
“……Huh?”
“The elders of the family are gradually pressuring me to get married. I’m of age now, and there’s also the matter of succession.”
As if it were nothing, Jeonghan’s voice was calm. Wooyeon let out a long breath and chewed the inside of his lips. It seemed only Wooyeon himself was trembling.
Wooyeon carefully put down the utensils he was holding and raised his eyes again. His long eyelashes curled up as he looked at Jeonghan.
“You came here to talk about that?”
“I carefully selected this place, does it not suit your taste?”
“……”
The problem with this proposal that didn’t even seem like a proposal wasn’t that. Jeonghan’s attitude seemed like he was removing an obstacle placed before his eyes, or like he was simply going through a step that should naturally be taken.
Simply, Jeonghan had just reached the point where he should get married, and Wooyeon was merely the person closest to him who was sleeping with him at that moment—Wooyeon had such thoughts. During his time by Jeonghan’s side, the numerous scandals he had spread around flashed through Wooyeon’s mind.
“Don’t joke around. I don’t like jokes like this.”
“……Does this seem like a joke to you right now?”
Jeonghan, holding his glass, stared piercingly at Wooyeon and swallowed the wine down his throat. Wooyeon knew too. Jeonghan wasn’t joking. Not because it was a joke, but because both marriage and Wooyeon’s feelings were nothing to him.
Wooyeon knew that something was lacking in Jeonghan, but he didn’t know he would try to dispose of even the marriage issue like this.
“I refuse.”
After Wooyeon’s firm answer, a brief silence flowed.
“The reason?”
“You’re not sincere.”
“What sincerity?”
You’re not proposing to me because you want to love me for life. Wooyeon just swallowed those words that had risen to his throat along with the wine. It was obvious he would be ridiculed the moment he uttered them. And he would be hurt by him.
“That’s a bit hurtful. I didn’t expect to be rejected from a proposal.”
Who’s the one to talk…… Jeonghan calmly snatched the word “hurtful” that Wooyeon had forcibly swallowed.
With an attitude that didn’t seem hurt at all, Jeonghan cut the steak placed before him into small pieces again. Wooyeon stared blankly at Jeonghan like that, then moved his gaze back to his own plate.
Wooyeon was calmer than expected too. The five years they had spent skin to skin together hadn’t just carelessly flowed by. But he couldn’t stop the sigh from bursting out, and a small sigh flowed from Wooyeon’s mouth.
“Be a bit more serious. A marriage partner, just because they’re by your side, so carelessly……”
At Wooyeon’s words, Jeonghan, who had finished chewing and swallowing the meat in his mouth, stared at Wooyeon again. On Jeonghan’s steak plate, blood was seeping out from the insides of the steak whose surface was well-cooked.
“Do you think I carelessly……”
“……”
“Chose you?”
Jeonghan’s eyebrows twisted slightly. Rather than looking hurt, it was an expression that looked somewhat displeased. Although Wooyeon didn’t know which part of his words had touched him, it was true that Jeonghan’s attitude didn’t look like that of a sincere proposal.
Wooyeon silently brought the wine to wet the inside of his mouth again. It was a silent affirmation.
“I think I’ve been saying I like you since way back, sunbae.”
At Jeonghan’s words, Wooyeon’s hand, which had been tilting the glass to let wine flow into his lips, stopped. Wooyeon slowly put the glass back down on the table and looked at Jeonghan, and Jeonghan was also staring piercingly at Wooyeon. With cold eyes that seemed like they would see right through all of Wooyeon’s thoughts any moment.
Wooyeon lowered his long eyelashes and avoided Jeonghan’s gaze. Though they were sweet words, Jeonghan’s words of liking him wouldn’t mean that. In the first place, he probably wasn’t even sincere, but even if he were, there was no way he could do something like marriage with him.
“I can’t… do something like marriage with you.”
He couldn’t bear to look at Jeonghan’s face. For Wooyeon, who hated being an omega, it was rather fortunate that he was not dominant but recessive with weak pheromones and difficult pregnancy, but not as Jeonghan’s marriage partner.
“I’ve never thought about something like marriage in my life, and doing it with you is even more so. I can’t do it, and I don’t want to. That’s the reason.”
With a sense of inferiority as if he had suddenly become half a person, Wooyeon bit his lips. Knowing full well that Jeonghan’s marriage involved the matter of succession, he couldn’t marry Jeonghan by putting only his own feelings first.
Even though it was a proposal Jeonghan made without much thought, Wooyeon didn’t understand himself for hating being a recessive omega at this moment. Even if he had been dominant, he shouldn’t have accepted such a proposal.
“Is that so?”
“……”
“Since that’s what you think, sunbae, there’s nothing I can do for now.”
Jeonghan’s voice was casual and unwavering. Wooyeon bit his lips hard and picked up the fork and knife he had put down with trembling hands. The one who rejected the proposal and the one tasting wretchedness were both Wooyeon.
With the fork tip trembling finely, Wooyeon stabbed the steak. It seemed it wasn’t only the steak that was being stabbed and torn with a thud. Haa, at the inevitable sigh he let out, Wooyeon’s eyelashes trembled.
“Eat a lot. The food here is good.”
The eyes of Jeonghan, who was drinking wine again, were fixed on Wooyeon.
* * *
“Oh right. Honey, did you go to the executive director’s office well this morning?”
“Ah…… yes.”
At the question from the team senior in the front seat, Wooyeon slowly nodded his head. Unlike at first, the employee ID with TH’s name engraved on it, which had now lost its novelty, dangled from Wooyeon’s neck. Wooyeon’s earlobe revealed beneath his hair was reddened. Wooyeon’s hand stopped awkwardly, and his long eyelashes trembled while facing downward.
“Come to think of it, the executive director calls for Seo Wooyeon a lot.”
“……”
No matter how well he did his work, he was just an assistant manager. For such a Wooyeon to occasionally receive calls from the executive director’s office and go in and out of the executive director’s office, which was far beyond reach from an employee’s standpoint, it wasn’t strange that bad rumors circulated among the staff.
“I should have gone into economics too.”
Externally, everyone understood it was because Wooyeon was on the promotion track, but naturally, various dirty rumors attached themselves.
At the words of that senior who was from the same school, Wooyeon smiled awkwardly. He was almost grateful when they tied it to school or regional connections. It wasn’t exactly clean in reality either.
“Ah. Right, Assistant Manager Seo. You’re going to the meeting now, right? That material you mentioned, the section chief was looking for it, is it ready?”
“Ah, yes. I’ll bring it to you right now.”
Wooyeon’s hands were busy searching for the printed materials on his desk. As he lowered his head, the hair that had been disheveled below his forehead quickly found its place again and settled down when Wooyeon raised his head.
Phew, Wooyeon, who had gathered the materials in his hands, let out a short sigh. A meeting with Japan’s SNK Chemical was scheduled.
“Assistant Manager Yoon, then I’ll go ahead first.”
Wooyeon, who bowed to the assistant manager next to him, left the office with the materials. Beyond the glass wall, ‘TH Chemical’ was engraved on the revealed exterior of the company building. TH Chemical was also a major business division of TH, which had become a global conglomerate with a pharmaceutical company as its parent.
“……Ah!”
“Oops, I’m sorry.”
As he hurriedly passed through the glass door of the office, he bumped into someone who was similarly rushing in, and all the materials grazed Wooyeon’s knee and fell with a thud onto the marble floor. More coincidentally, they came face to face with executives who were waiting for the elevator, seemingly about to go on an inspection.
“Oh my.”
The voice of a middle-aged man, probably one of the executives, turned toward Wooyeon. Wooyeon couldn’t even make eye contact and just lowered his head. Sweat seemed to be seeping into his palms somehow. He felt blatant gazes directed at him.
When Wooyeon bit the inside of his lips slightly and raised his head, the executives and secretaries had already boarded the elevator. Before the elevator door closed, Wooyeon met eyes with a face smiling faintly inside the elevator. A familiar face and a smile he had grown accustomed to. It was Jeonghan.
“Phew……”
Wooyeon, who had been a scholarship student of the TH Scholarship Foundation, joined TH Chemical right after graduating from university. And a year later, Jeonghan also joined as a regular employee, following Wooyeon.
