“Um, Seohee-ssi… I have a request…”
Before he knew it, the day had drawn to a close, and deep darkness covered the sky.
As they left the apartment entrance, Hyowoo carefully spoke up.
“Please forget what happened here today…”
Hyowoo looked haggard like someone who had suffered a great ordeal. It was the first time he’d felt such extreme fatigue in just a few hours.
However, Lee Seohee tilted his head.
“Why are you asking that? Nothing happened.”
His innocent face, as if asking why when there was nothing untoward or embarrassing, felt frustratingly unfair.
‘Sure, nothing happened to you, but I’m so embarrassed I could die…’
After cleaning up the mug cup Saewoo had broken and the monitor he’d knocked over, Gyeonwoo and Lee Seohee seemed to have grown even closer.
When he asked what they’d talked about, the two just grinned without a word, as if they’d made a promise.
Watching them exchange phone numbers and whisper to each other, Hyowoo’s anxiety only grew.
‘That bastard Gyeonwoo definitely said something weird to Seohee-ssi…’
Just what did they talk about?
He was so concerned about what passed between the two that he couldn’t tell if food was going into his mouth or his nose.
Perhaps because of that, Hyowoo ate much more than usual, but even so, it was just a little over one serving. The rest was finished off by Gyeonwoo and Lee Seohee.
Hyowoo watched in wonder as the two ate food at an astonishing speed, as if watching a disappearing magic trick.
In the blink of an eye, empty plates. Thanks to not leaving even a grain of leftovers, cleanup was easy too.
While the twin brothers were distracted cleaning up the table, Hyowoo’s room door quietly opened.
Saewoo had finally managed to open the door.
“Hey, Saewoo! No, don’t come out!”
Before Hyowoo could stop him, the ball of fur that sprang out like a spring charged straight at Lee Seohee and plopped right into his arms.
He’d barely managed to remove the fur stuck to his clothes with a lint roller for 15 minutes, and that effort was on the verge of being completely wasted.
He tried to hurry and retrieve Saewoo before his clothes became covered in fur again, but the guy clung tight like a magnet stuck to a refrigerator door with no thought of letting go.
He tried coaxing with words and even brought out his favorite treats, but it was useless.
The one who separated Saewoo from Lee Seohee was none other than Gyeonwoo.
“Hey, youngest. That’s the eldest hyung-nim’s spot, not yours, you know? Stop it and come to this younger hyung-nim.”
Saewoo, who had been immovable no matter how many times Hyowoo coaxed him, immediately reacted to Gyeonwoo’s words. He let go of the clothes he’d been clutching with his claws extended and obediently went into Gyeonwoo’s arms.
Among the family, Saewoo liked and followed Hyowoo the most. The one he looked down on the most and utterly refused to listen to was Gyeonwoo.
No matter how fickle cats were, Hyowoo couldn’t understand why Saewoo was obediently following only his younger hyung’s words today.
Holding his cat brother like a baby, his human brother scurried over to his side. Then he whispered in a voice small enough for only the two of them to hear.
“Since Saewoo has vacated the spot, shouldn’t hyung-nim go and sit there now?”
“…Do you want to get hit once by hyung’s fist of love to come to your senses?”
He endured by drawing the character for patience (忍) three times, suppressing the urge to stick the lint removal tape he’d given to Lee Seohee onto his brother’s mouth.
Even up to the moment they left the entrance after removing as much fur as possible, Gyeonwoo didn’t forget to make Hyowoo uncomfortable with the unnecessary greeting of “Please come when our parents are here next time~”
As if that wasn’t enough, when he finally took out his shoes saying he’d see him off too, Hyowoo pushed him back inside the house. He also tossed Saewoo, who was trying to follow Lee Seohee out, into Gyeonwoo’s arms like throwing something, and closed the front door, leaving the commotion of his two brothers behind.
It was barely a 5-minute scuffle, but Hyowoo was exhausted as if he’d run a half marathon.
‘No matter how I think about it, those guys are definitely enemies disguised as allies…’
Having escaped from his chaotic brothers and finally left alone with just the two of them, he couldn’t even look at his face properly due to the embarrassment washing over him like waves.
‘They took turns being ridiculous… You guys can forget about chicken and snacks from now on…’
If he could, he wanted to turn back time.
‘…It’s not just them. I must have shown all kinds of unsightly behavior too…’
Suddenly, he remembered how he’d flung open the front door in the afternoon and yelled at Gyeonwoo.
Having pretended to be gentle and demure in front of him until now, it felt like his true self had been exposed, making his face burn.
Covering his face with both hands, Hyowoo asked again in a crawling voice.
“Anyway. Please forget it…”
“I met Hyowoo-ssi’s brother Gyeonwoo-ssi, ate delicious food, and had fun. I don’t really want to forget it.”
“I don’t have a brother, and I don’t know anyone named Gyeonwoo. So please forget it…”
At his desperate appearance, as if making a wish, Lee Seohee nodded while looking puzzled.
“Alright. If that’s what Hyowoo-ssi wants, I have no choice.”
Only then did Hyowoo lower the hands that had been covering his face and look at him.
But his relief was brief, as he soon made a dissatisfied expression and crossed his arms.
“However, I can’t do it for nothing.”
“What?”
“I need to get something out of it too. I have to forget the fact that I’m Hyowoo-ssi’s ‘boyfriend’ after all.”
At the word ‘boyfriend’ he’d momentarily forgotten, his cheeks burned hot again.
“Fine. What… do you want?”
A subtle nuance, as if reluctantly accepting unwanted conditions because he couldn’t overcome the blackmail. However, he didn’t have the luxury to care about his own tone or word choice.
‘He won’t make unreasonable requests, but since he’s someone who really likes to tease me, who knows what absurd thing he’ll say…’
At the baseball stadium before, he’d asked to hold his hand instead of an apology.
So what would he demand this time?
He waited anxiously for an answer, imagining the absurd request he might make.
About 10 seconds passed like that. Lee Seohee, who had been standing silently for a while, uncrossed his arms and spread both arms wide open to the sides.
This time, Hyowoo stared blankly at that sight for a while.
“What… are you doing?”
“A hug. Ah, in Korean it’s usually called ’embrace’ (po-ong), right?”
Of course, Hyowoo knew well what that gesture meant.
Moreover, today the streetlight in front of the house was broken so the surroundings were dark, and strangely, no people were passing by.
‘Did he think… it would be okay because it’s dark?’
Even so, this was a large apartment complex. It was a dangerous situation where you never knew who might witness what from where.
“So why suddenly an embrace…”
“In exchange for forgetting what happened today, let me hug you once. It’s equivalent exchange.”
Where on earth did someone who attended an international school even when in Korea and had lived in England since age 11 learn such a difficult word?
“What kind of equivalent exchange is that? That’s ridiculous…”
“Then think of it as a British-style farewell greeting.”
His face was full of mischief, as if saying ‘I won’t eat you up.’
‘Right. For this person, a hug is just a natural greeting, a simple expression of friendliness.’
He’d seen foreigners on TV substitute greetings with hugs between close people. Likewise, this probably doesn’t have much meaning either.
Nevertheless, Hyowoo couldn’t easily agree.
‘I know it’ll be fine if it’s Seohee-ssi, but…’
With him, there wouldn’t be a panic attack from physical contact, so there was no need to worry.
Honestly, he couldn’t say he didn’t have some desire to be held in his arms.
Just holding hands felt good, so what would it feel like to be embraced? He had a slightly embarrassing curiosity.
But the moment he was held in his arms, he was assailed by the fear that his body might show ‘another reaction.’
If an Alpha’s instinct was to leave many descendants, an Omega’s instinct was to have sexual relations with a stronger Alpha to bear strong children.
Omegas were instinctively attracted to Alphas with strong traits. Because of this, regardless of their cycle, there were numerous cases where a heat cycle would suddenly begin from simple contact with a strong Alpha.
‘Regardless of my will, my ‘body’ might desire Seohee-ssi…’
Thanks to modern medicine, female Omegas could get pregnant with male Betas, albeit at a low probability, but male Omegas could only bear the children of Alphas.
Until just 30 years ago, Omegas, especially male Omegas, were classified as useless beings except for bearing children and could hardly even have proper jobs. They could only survive by being ‘chosen’ by Alphas.
It had only been about 10 years since marriage between same-sex Alphas and Omegas was legalized. Before that, even if chosen by an Alpha, male Omegas were merely treated as parasites clinging on, hidden lovers, or concubines in the back room.
In such a society, the only thing male Omegas could rely on to survive was the ‘pheromones’ secreted during heat.
Research revealed that male Omegas react more sensitively to Alphas than females, and the pheromones they secrete are also much stronger.
Experts called this a ‘survival strategy.’ They theorized that bodies evolved that way to survive in a cruel reality.
‘I took two suppressants so it should be fine, but Seohee-ssi is a Dominant Alpha…’
Even with PTSD making him fear Alphas and having extreme aversion to sexual relations, he was still an Omega in the end.
He was afraid that the instinct to seduce a strong Alpha might burst out without him knowing.
‘Even if he’s a Dominant Alpha with resistance to pheromones… my pheromones are abnormal.’
He couldn’t grasp which way to go between the two contradictory emotions of wanting to be held while not wanting to be held.
It was then, as he’d unknowingly lowered his head and was just fidgeting with his hands.
Lee Seohee stepped forward and gently grasped Hyowoo’s slender hand. Then he carefully pulled Hyowoo into his arms.
