“There was no need to make him worry.”
“Who the hell made this mess in the first place? How can you stand there and say you’re worried about Mr. Yeehyeon?”
“……”
“Do you think this gets solved by keeping him in the dark? Toying with someone’s life as you please…”
Not ignorant of his own wrongdoing, the man didn’t counter the accusation. Instead, he hunched over, his face twisting as if in the throes of a stomach or heart ache.
“Don’t… Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Then how would you like me to put it?”
Even knowing that this kind of recrimination would lead to nothing but emotional exhaustion, he too knew of no other healthy outlet to handle and express the shock of this moment. So he couldn’t stop.
The man, lips sealed, exhaled a long, slow breath. He brought a new cigarette to his lips, then moved it back to his hand, his mouth twitching. He hesitated for a long while, as if choosing whether his words were permissible.
“We’re seeing each other seriously.”
The sentence, mixed with his exhale, sounded like a sigh.
The man didn’t need to make such a grim declaration; he already knew it was likely. He had sensed the man’s unusual interest in Yeehyeon from the very beginning and had even predicted that Yeehyeon might be the one to break down the arrogant walls of the self-isolating man and make him commit to something serious. He just hadn’t known that seriousness would flow in this direction.
“Is one person changing the other’s body without their knowledge, what you call serious? And then, after all this time, making some pathetic excuse like you did it because you wanted him to be your omega? That your high-and-mighty Alpha nature, your pheromones, wanted Seo Yeehyeon?”
“……”
Strictly speaking, he was neither Yeehyeon’s family nor a long-time friend, but the man didn’t fight back against the emotional tirade, merely narrowing his eyes and hardening his jaw. He endured it with his mouth shut, as if wanting to punish himself through the other’s condemnation.
Seeing him so uncharacteristically weak somehow made him even more irritated, more furious, and he provoked him more viciously.
“Why? Why didn’t you wait until he was a hundred percent omega and pregnant before you told him, huh?”
“……”
The man turned his chin toward his shoulder, averting his gaze further as he swept a hand through his hair. Sensing what the man’s reaction implied, he clicked his tongue and gripped the neck of the heavy brown liquor bottle.
“So you did think about it. You’re really insane.”
He then tilted the bottle, filled his empty glass, and swallowed it in three or four gulps. He couldn’t even feel the heat of the neat whiskey as it traveled down his esophagus.
“So. What do you want me to do? Shouldn’t you be having this conversation with someone else right now?”
“……”
This was a man who had kept the fact that he was Ghost a secret even from his closest friend. It was unlikely he had come to him now just to confess it, to ease his guilt over turning his ‘serious partner’ into an omega through conversation.
The man couldn’t bring himself to speak, even as his cigarette burned down to the filter. He had downed two more glasses of liquor, but aside from a slight redness at the edges of his eyes, he didn’t seem to be able to borrow any strength from the alcohol.
Crushing the cigarette that would no longer even produce smoke, the man spoke in a tight, urgent voice.
“The Changing symptoms have started to appear… He’s.. he’s not feeling well right now.”
“He…?”
Ha. With nothing more to say, he just kept shaking his head. The sight of the man revealing his relationship with someone in front of another person, and not feeling any aversion to it, was just so unfamiliar.
“Usually, there’s a loss of appetite, heartburn, or abdominal discomfort… Depending on the person, some experience nausea or vomiting… He started having those symptoms a few weeks ago and hasn’t been eating much.”
“His insides are changing, of course he’s not going to feel well!”
“It’s not exact, but he’s probably changed by about 10 to 20 percent. He thinks it’s just a mild case of gastritis… but since it’s not getting any better, he says he’s going to go to the hospital…”
At the man’s limp, trailing voice, he leaned his upper body far back in his seat.
“You… this… no, it can’t be.”
The man’s weary blue eyes sent him a pleading look. He shook his head vehemently, refusing the man’s entreaty.
“Don’t tell me… you want me to take part in this insanity?”
A blue glint momentarily flashed in the man’s eyes, which had been like a lifeless, faded ash.
“You knew from the beginning that I was interested in him. You knew and you kept encouraging it.”
Perhaps the desperation unique to a cornered man was now drawing out his aggression. The man hadn’t seemed in his right mind since sitting down at this table.
“Didn’t you want things to work out between us? Weren’t you amused, hoping for a fairytale ending where your miserable friend who knows nothing of love finally awakens to true feelings?”
“Fine, I was a little amused. What’s the big deal? Are you saying you two got serious, as you put it, because I encouraged you? That if I had stayed quiet, none of this would have happened?”
Realizing it was a pointless argument, the man wiped his face with a large palm, retracting his hostility. He ran his hands messily through his jet-black hair, a stark contrast to his blue eyes, then propped his elbows on the table and gripped his swept-back hair at the crown of his head.
“Help me. You’re the only one… I can ask.”
“You tell Mr. Yeehyeon everything. Then you won’t need anyone’s help. It’s something you’ll have to do eventually, no matter how much you try to avoid it.”
At the most rational, and therefore perhaps the most irresponsible, answer, the man released his grip on his hair and bit his lower lip.
Then, like a serious addict, he reached for another cigarette. It was the first time he’d ever seen him smoke so incessantly. But after lighting it, he spent more time holding it in his hand than bringing the filter to his lips. It was as if he just wanted to cling to something, anything.
The man’s lips were parched and dry as he stared down at the thin, bluish smoke curling up from the cigarette in his hand.
“I knew… I had to tell him. That I had to stop, because this isn’t the kind of thing you can clean up later. But at the same time, there’s a part of me that wants to make him just a little more of an omega. That if we become more deeply entangled by our pheromones, then it’ll be harder for him to reject me. That even if I confess the truth, the probability of him accepting me will be that much higher. There’s a part of me that’s trying to possess him through that cowardly… pheromone-dependent… method that my former self would have despised the most, and I couldn’t ignore the sweetness of that voice… and that’s how I ended up here.”
As if just remembering it, he took a deep drag of his cigarette, then continued as he flicked off the long ash.
“I asked you if you’d ever loved an omega as an Alpha, right? Explaining this intense pull to someone who hasn’t experienced it is… probably almost impossible, just like trying to make a Beta understand the actual effects of pheromones. The difference between what I learned in theory and what I actually experienced was enormous. Even though he’s not an omega I’ve known for a long time… there’s this sense of being strongly subjugated to him, and this desire for my entire life to be rearranged around him, for all my energy to be consumed for him…. I guarantee you, there’s no Alpha who could refuse that.”
His voice was filled with the conviction that if he couldn’t do it, no Alpha could. The man might be right. He was the most superior of Alphas, after all.
But even though he himself had lived as an Alpha, he couldn’t immediately accept it. He shook his head, tightening his grip on the glass.
“You should have separated Mr. Yeehyeon from the situation itself, even if it meant keeping him far away from you, even if it meant using some kind of force. But what did you do? Where is Seo Yeehyeon living right now?”
“……”
“In the end, you were just afraid he might refuse to become an omega, so you changed him on your own, without his consent.”
The man made no further attempt to excuse himself. He only stared at him with a haggard face and sunken eyes. As if any further explanation or persuasion was not for his benefit.
“I’m not here to make a confession to you, nor am I asking for your understanding. I’m just here to ask you to help… to at least reduce his shock… so that he can hear the explanation of this situation from me, so that we can avoid him finding out in the worst possible way.”
The important things, the things he absolutely had to know, had already been said. And yet, he couldn’t answer the man’s final statement. Countless questions still swirled in his head.
If it’s this shocking to me, a complete third party detached from the situation… what will it be like for Yeehyeon?
His torso flinched as if a leather whip had viciously struck his spine. He unconsciously looked at the man across from him. Anxiety flickered in the man’s blue eyes as well. But the horror the man must be tasting was likely incomparably deeper. It was surely pressing down on him with the same weight as the deep bond he had felt with Yeehyeon, with the same intensity as his desire for him.
The liquor bottle was now almost empty. Despite drinking so much in such a short time, he couldn’t expect the mental slackness that came with being drunk. He closed his eyes, feeling the profound fatigue brought on by extreme sensitivity.
“Go home. I have nothing to say to you today.”
He had no intention of seeing him out, and the other man didn’t seem to expect to be seen out.
Getting up from his seat, the man, with his cigarette and phone in hand, didn’t leave the table right away but turned his body halfway back. His large shadow covered the pristine white tabletop.
“A Beta and an Alpha. I even thought that might be the most ideal relationship for someone like me. He was… more than enough to shake me, to stimulate and fascinate me, without even needing to bring pheromones into it. But… I couldn’t do it. With my mind, my body, and my pheromones… to the instinct that wants to bind with him using everything I can possibly mobilize, I… was willingly overthrown. To the point where I feel sorry… for those born as Alphas who have never met such a partner…”
The man trailed off, rubbing his chin with a pensive look. His voice was cracked, as if he had been shouting for a long time. His already husky voice was even rougher. His eyes, too, were bloodshot and raw, whether from the alcohol or his emotions. The face of the man confessing his love looked like that of someone who had been robbed of everything before ever seeing the fruits of that love.
“Just take what I said before as… a personal update for you, as a friend, separate from this favor.”
An update for a friend, my ass. It was just a threat disguised as a plea, a way of saying this person is so precious to me, so please, grant my request.
He tilted his glass, ignoring the man, who spoke in a parched voice, pausing for breath between words.
“After I get back from Chicago… I’ll confess everything. Just until then… so I can buy some time… help me, please.”
“……”
“I’m leaving.”
He only twisted his lips and drank, not responding to the farewell.
Watching the man’s back as he walked toward the hallway leading to the entrance, a fiery emotion suddenly flared up inside him. It resembled anger, and it bordered on contempt… but if he had to find the closest emotion, it would probably be jealousy.
It was vague, what or whom it was directed at. It was just a burning jealousy, hot enough to make him want to charge in and snatch it away.
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