As the restaurant began to get increasingly crowded by the minute, the two people hurriedly finished their meal and left. Even after leaving the restaurant, several fans asked for autographs or photos, but Lee Seohee politely declined.
To prevent the airport from becoming congested because of Lee Seohee, the two moved to the departure area early.
“I made Hyowoo-ssi sleep rough at the airport for nothing.”
At the words thanking him for being together, Hyowoo didn’t give any reply. He deliberately turned away from his inner feelings of wanting to stay with him even a little longer.
Unable to meet his eyes, he was fiddling with his fingers for no reason when the long sleeves suddenly caught his eye.
Hyowoo was still wearing Lee Seohee’s jacket.
“I’ll return this to you.”
As Hyowoo fumbled to take off the jacket, he said it was okay and closed the lapels for him again.
“Just keep wearing it. It’ll be very cold outside.”
“No. I’m okay now. Player Lee Seohee must be cold too…”
“I told you. I don’t get cold. Return the jacket later.”
Hyowoo obediently nodded to him adding ‘We’ll meet again anyway.’
If he wanted to meet, he could just meet. But because Hyowoo extremely loathed Alphas, he needed a clear ‘reason’ to meet him. With those words, Hyowoo had gained justification to meet Lee Seohee again.
“I’m going in now, so Hyowoo-ssi be careful going home too.”
“Yes.”
“When you arrive home, send me a message that you arrived safely.”
It was the final farewell of the day. The next meeting would probably be in summer when the season ended.
Loneliness washed over him. As he only moved his lips without even having the courage to say a word of goodbye to him, Lee Seohee extended his hand.
“I had fun today too.”
Like the day they first met, he offered a handshake as a greeting. After hesitating for a long time, Hyowoo barely extended his hand. Lee Seohee grasped that hesitating hand firmly.
Though his skin touched an Alpha’s, nothing happened.
He didn’t become breathless, nor did his vision go dark. Rather, his warm body temperature seeped in and his mind became comfortable.
“Take care of yourself, and don’t catch a cold.”
He who reluctantly released the hand he’d been holding tightly walked toward the departure gate. Then he looked back without even taking a few steps.
“Hyowoo-ssi, do you wear perfume by any chance?”
“Yes? Ah… No. I don’t wear any.”
When he tilted his head asking why, he laughed saying it was nothing. Until Lee Seohee’s back passing through the gate completely disappeared into the crowd, Hyowoo didn’t move a single step from that spot.
“Player Lee Seohee… please get back safely too…”
Belatedly muttering the farewell greeting he couldn’t properly convey, Hyowoo slowly left the airport.
And that afternoon, ‘Lee Seohee secret entry’ and ‘Lee Seohee airport secret meeting’ were side by side at number one in real-time searches.
***
—This station is OO. This is OO Station. The doors will open on the right.
When the announcement for the station where he needed to get off flowed out, Hyowoo slowly got up from his seat.
It was the school he was visiting for the first time in about two weeks.
After spending the night with Lee Seohee at the airport and returning, Hyowoo showed symptoms of rapid temperature rise and headaches. Since the fever didn’t go down even with suppressants, it was a preliminary symptom of heat starting.
That night, he received an injection of strong suppressant from his father who had come home from work. Though that could prevent the heat from coming, he suffered severe aftereffects. Headaches that felt like his head would split, vomiting, chills and even fever. The injection aftereffects were far more painful compared to oral medication. Especially this time the symptoms were so severe that he couldn’t even get out of bed for ten days.
Having no choice, Hyowoo had to submit a medical absence report with apologetic messages to professors after attending only one day during the first week of the semester.
He walked along the long path stretching from the entrance.
The Business Administration building was located at the very back of campus, so he had to go in for quite a while.
When the sculpture representing the school, located about halfway through campus, came into view, his steps stopped without realizing it. It was a sculpture he didn’t care about even seeing every day, but today for some reason his gaze was drawn to it.
‘It’s already spring of senior year…’
In just about a year, he wouldn’t walk this path anymore, nor would he look at the sculpture. As he thought of the approaching future, regret and anxiety seeped into one side of his heart.
‘This time next year, I’ll be living a life crushed not by school and assignments, but by company and work, right?’
He laughed at himself for being immersed in wistful sentiments despite not even liking school. He shook off the useless thoughts and hastened his steps.
After walking for quite a while, he arrived at the department building.
As Hyowoo was checking the classroom on his mobile phone, a female student approached him.
“Oppa, hello!”
“Oh, hello?”
She was a junior from the same Accounting department with a bob cut that suited her cutely. Her expression as she energetically offered a greeting was full of anticipation.
“I heard you took the first exam? How was it? Did you do well?”
He’d actually done well and had a premonition he’d pass, but he held back his words. When he said he seemed to have gotten about half right, she laughed asking why he was being modest.
“You’ll pass, so you’re just saying that~”
“You have to see the results to know. I don’t want to make a fuss in advance.”
“Still, oppa is too cautious.”
During the conversation with the friendly junior, Hyowoo felt his mood become much more comfortable.
‘To be able to converse freely with other people like this. When I entered, I really couldn’t even imagine…’
The day he took his first step at school, Hyowoo couldn’t even walk straight, let alone face people.
What if someone recognizes me? What if I run into a high school classmate? Every day was frightening.
He was desperate to hide his face so no one could see him. Throughout his first year, he only wore hooded clothes, and walked around with his head deeply bowed wearing a mask. It was a miracle he continued attending without dropping out.
It was a scary and difficult time, but thanks to not giving up, currently he could walk around campus comfortably, and didn’t startle even when someone spoke to him.
‘If my condition improves like this, I might be able to stop receiving psychiatric treatment soon…’
A faint smile appeared on Hyowoo’s lips at the small hope that he could continue to improve little by little, steadily.
As if Hyowoo’s appearance like that was unexpected since he didn’t smile often, his junior’s eyes sparkled asking if something good had happened.
“I’m seeing oppa smile for the first time today! It looks good. Smile often.”
“If you fool around like that, I might not give you the exam guide.”
“Ah, that can’t happen! I was wrong. Please forgive just that!”
Hyowoo also chuckled seeing his junior apologize playfully. While exchanging a few more words like that, her boyfriend came and the conversation naturally ended.
After parting with the juniors, Hyowoo headed to the classroom. Since it was still 20 minutes before class time, the classroom was almost empty.
After briefly raising his hand in greeting to a few classmates who came early, he sat in his designated corner seat. Instead of taking out the latest tax law book he’d recently purchased, he took out his mobile phone and accessed the SNS account he’d created recently.
‘Surely… nothing else has been posted, right…?’
Though he knew he’d regret it if he deliberately looked, Hyowoo ended up searching for Lee Seohee.
As soon as he pressed the ‘#Lee_Seohee_airport’ tag, a bunch of postings related to the airport photos from that day came up. Even though more than two weeks had passed, it was still trending. He realized anew his popularity.
‘Well done, my younger sibling. How can you be number one in real-time search twice? It’s the glory of the Ji family.’
‘It’s not something I, who’s an accomplice, should say, but where does an Omega spend the night with an outside Alpha? Without any fear?’
Last night, having barely escaped from the heat aftereffects, Hyowoo had to listen to teasing and nagging from his noona and Gyeonwoo for over an hour.
‘Lee Seohee doesn’t seem to care at all about being caught. Seeing how he walks around with his face completely exposed at crowded Incheon Airport like that.’
Whether it was because he’d grown up abroad since childhood, or he was insensitive, or he really had no interest in his surroundings. Celebrities or entertainers usually try to cover their faces wearing sunglasses or masks, but he acted as if he didn’t care at all about people’s gazes.
‘And how is your face not captured at all again this time? This is almost at the level of a superpower?’
That was a part he found mysterious himself. In those many photos, Lee Seohee’s face was clearly captured, but not a single one of Hyowoo’s face was captured.
Even the most shared photo only captured the back of his head. To this extent, it was reasonable to suspect they deliberately didn’t capture his face.
However, though only his face wasn’t exposed, people deduced based on hair style, body type, and height that the person who was with him in December and March was the same person.
If his face had been captured, his personal information would have already spread all over the internet and then some. Hyowoo let out a sigh of relief that it was extremely fortunate his face wasn’t captured.
Besides the airport photos, eyewitness accounts and speculative rumors from that day ran rampant.
As expected, a few malicious comments caught his eye like ‘Behind good deeds pretending to be nice, an asshole who won’t give even one fan autograph.’
However, the post that gathered the most attention among them was a completely mistaken eyewitness account that he was affectionately holding hands tightly while sitting with some pretty person.
‘We didn’t hold hands. And I’m not pretty either…’
While scrolling down the screen, he pressed on the photo with the most comments and looked at comments he normally wouldn’t even read.
