As if to mock how long he’d been staring, he tore his gaze away in an instant, without a trace of lingering. He slumped his back, leaning loosely against the backrest, and looked down at his own two hands as if they were foreign objects. Then, he let out a short, dry laugh.
“No. He’s a Beta.”
A look of bewilderment appeared on Jane’s face.
“Oh? I’ve made a big mistake, then… The reaction you showed just now… it was the spitting image of it. I’m sorry, Mr. Yeehyeon. I jumped to conclusions.”
“No, it’s fine. Really… please don’t worry about it.”
Unlike the blond man’s conjecture, which had been laced with unpleasant intentions, Jane had no need to be sorry. Just as I unconsciously thought of and treated everyone as a Beta, she had simply judged me to be an Omega based on the standards of her own experience. After I repeated that it was truly all right, she showed a slightly relieved smile.
“He is… someone precious to me, that’s true.”
“……”
Jane’s and my gazes turned to him.
He had always expressed his affection for me without holding back. But this was the first time he had so clearly defined my meaning to him in front of someone else.
He pretended not to notice our stares, raising his glass and draining the last of the whiskey.
“Is that so?”
Jane’s face was bright. She looked thrilled and pleased, like a mother being introduced to her son’s first love. But she didn’t reel off the questions that officially followed couples around… like how long they’d been dating, how the relationship started, who confessed first, and so on.
Unsure how to react to Jane, who was sending me a slightly mischievous smile with sparkling eyes, I awkwardly averted my gaze and let out a long, silent breath.
“A lot of people got a good impression of you today. Whatever decision you make, Connor and I will support you. Don’t mind what happened just now. If he’s been carrying on like that in the art world, there must be far more times it’s gone unnoticed.”
He’s not someone worth your concern; by now, he’s probably figured out who you are and is tearing his hair out on his end. She added this, squeezing his wrist once, firmly, in encouragement before letting go.
“He’s lived his life making many people miserable for the fun of brandishing what little power he has, so it wouldn’t be so bad for him to experience some misery himself when he meets a different kind of power.”
He said he only felt sorry for causing trouble for the others who had gathered, for Jane, for Connor… and for me, and that he wasn’t concerned about the blond man. Jane smiled, nodded, and rose from her seat.
“You two rest a little longer before coming out.”
Even after she left, we were silent for a long while. He looked down at his empty glass, and I held the cup of warm water Jane had given me, saying it would help me calm down, feeling its warmth as we each became lost in our own thoughts. No, what thoughts. All my consciousness was focused on the person sitting before me. The thrum of the party music, which continued despite the small commotion, traveled faintly through the walls.
It was he who broke the silence. Pat, pat, he tapped the seat beside him. But his eyes, as he looked at me, were uncertain whether I would grant his request.
I glanced once at the door she had left through, then hesitantly stood and moved to the seat beside him. He just stared at me as I did. With eyes that desperately wanted to touch. With eyes that wanted to touch so, so much, but couldn’t bring himself to do so rashly, not knowing how I would feel.
He spun the now-empty on-the-rocks glass meaninglessly in his hand, as if searching for the right words.
“Are you scared of me?”
It was a foolish question. I shook my head without a pause.
“I don’t know if you’ll believe me… but that’s the first time I’ve ever hit someone.”
“……”
“I’ve learned several martial arts for self-defense since I was very young, but that was strictly a last resort for defense… You can’t just resort to violence every time someone gets on your nerves. I was also taught in parallel about the dangers of physical force and the value of the mind and reason that control it. Well… I suppose that’s hard to believe after you’ve witnessed a scene like this…”
Smiling bitterly in self-deprecation, he dropped his gaze to the glass in his hand again. It was strange to see him so lacking in confidence in front of me, and it didn’t feel good.
A gap wide enough for a small child to sit remained between us. I closed the distance by half, dragging myself on the plush cushion to move closer to him. I lightly stroked up and down the skin of his arm revealed below his rolled-up shirt sleeve, as if tickling it, then moved down toward his wrist.
He was staring straight at me as if watching a truly fascinating movement. Then, responding to my motion, he set down his glass and offered me his hand. I slowly pressed my palm against his large, warm one.
“I believe you.”
A faint relief surfaced in his blue eyes. His gaze was desperate, like someone who had found a thin thread of hope in the midst of despair. Was this something that warranted him being so insecure with me? I felt a pang of pity, as if he were blaming himself with more weight than necessary.
“Please don’t be scared of me… I won’t do it again…”
Don’t despise me, he added in a pained voice.
Seeing him so afraid that I might try to distance myself from him, I was reminded of the time not long after we first met. To him back then, I was a nobody. A part-timer who would help out temporarily and leave soon after. And he had been wary of me for the sake of his precious people of Phantom .
I knew now. He wasn’t the kind of person who showed kindness even to people he didn’t know well. He was the type to prioritize those precious to him and focus only on them. He wasn’t even someone who revealed and shared all of himself with those precious people. So, to some, he might not seem like a very good person.
I, too, had felt a wall and been discouraged for that reason at first, but now… it was precisely because he was that kind of person that I was monopolizing his affection, which was focused entirely on me.
It’s an interesting thing. How the same personality trait in a person can first be a reason for hardship, and then become a strength you hope never changes. Once I had entered the world beyond his walls, which had once made me feel resentful and sparked an uncharacteristic rebelliousness in me, I now found myself relieved that he wasn’t kind to everyone. A self-mocking smile crept onto my own lips at my shallowness.
Shaking my head, I interlaced my fingers with his.
“I’m not scared. Everyone else said it was a situation that fully warranted it. It’s natural to be angry. And, thank you for being angry. To be honest, I… was very angry, too.”
“……”
“I’m not trying to condone violence, but… you can’t always make rational and balanced judgments in every situation. Because we’re human…”
A look of deeper relief colored his eyes.
“I didn’t bring you all the way here just to have you hear that kind of crap… I’m sorry.”
He scowled, recalling the blond man’s words.
“That’s… not something you… A Wei… should be sorry for, so don’t say that.”
Unable to hide his pleasure at being called by the name A Wei, he showed a faint smile. Through that name, he seemed to confirm that I truly had no intention of pushing him away over this, and only then did he seem to relax completely.
His eyes met mine as he lifted our intertwined hands and pressed a kiss to the back of mine. Then, he kissed each of my knuckles, which were bent toward the back of his hand. It was a kiss that felt as if he had obtained something so precious he didn’t dare to even grip it tightly.
“I’m glad you can’t smell that kind of stench.”
In the voice that said this, I could feel a blue-tinged rage along with his relief.
I hadn’t noticed, of course, but the blond man had probably released his pheromones at me. If he had mistaken me for an Omega and tried to disorient and seduce me with pheromones, sexually… it made more sense why he had lost control and expressed his anger to that extent. There was probably almost no one who could maintain their composure after witnessing someone they liked being seduced, or rather, insulted, in such a vulgar way right in front of them.
The man I met at The Face Gallery’s party in Hong Kong (come to think of it, he also had flashy blond hair). When that man had released his pheromones at me, he had also reacted harshly. But it hadn’t been to the point of completely leaping beyond the bounds of restraint like now.
As I gazed at his lush eyelashes, his eyes lowered and his lips resting on my middle finger, a question suddenly arose. In truth, it had been on my mind ever since I heard Jane mention the ‘protective instinct for an Omega one is involved with.’ I hesitated, worried I might seem suffocating, but my curiosity won out.
“If an Omega becomes your lover, do you… become like a different person, willing to go through fire and water for them… like that?”
“……”
Without lifting his lips from my finger, he raised his eyes to look at me. His eyes rolled, meticulously scanning every corner of my face for a moment, before he shook his head decisively, as if having reached a conclusion.
“It’s not like that. If the other person is you, it has nothing to do with that kind of instinct. It’s that I can’t stand by and watch your happiness and safety be threatened, not because of some mere instinct… not because you’re an Omega… but because it’s you.”
His last words sounded a little peculiar. Depending on the interpretation, it could sound like he was pleading the sincerity behind his earlier actions, as if to say it wasn’t an ‘instinct’ that arose because I was an Omega, but because of his ‘affection’ for me.
If so, it was an unnecessary persuasion for me, a Beta, but it was all a matter of interpretation. It was also an answer that strayed a bit from the core of the question, but I didn’t want to be persistent. It was just an idea born from the kind of petty jealousy that belongs to the childish realm of romance anyway. A non-productive, fleeting sentiment, assuming things that hadn’t happened and feeling something toward a non-existent, imaginary rival.
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