In the quiet room, where the only sound was the occasional crackle of a dying candle, Marcus’s low, calm voice continued.
“From the time she was a high school student when I first met her, she was already a Golden who could control her pheromones almost perfectly, so while I was with her, I never had to be conscious of the existence of pheromones, but… as I continued my studies… I realized that even while loving her… just because I couldn’t feel them, just because she didn’t complain, I had come to regard her pheromones as if they were a fantasy that had no effect on her… something that might as well not exist.”
Marcus paused his story for a moment and drained the last bit of wine at the bottom of his glass. I looked down at the short-lived candle flickering precariously in its holder and waited for the rest of the story.
“Becoming a Golden doesn’t mean the pheromones disappear; it just means they’re being suppressed. Even if I couldn’t experience pheromones directly… the stress and burden of having to forcibly control the appetite to eat or the desire to sleep was something even I, a Beta, could imagine and empathize with.”
“……”
“I realized that I had been treating her with an extremely Beta-centric mindset.”
Marcus’s words felt like being struck in the skull with a club. I felt dizzy, light-headed, and ashamed. My gaze couldn’t meet Marcus’s across from me and instead darted restlessly through the air.
“It was hard to find my footing for about a year. She suddenly felt as distant as a being from another dimension or planet that I could never understand, and I lost confidence that I could do well. Thinking back now, I was unbearably weak and emotional. I had never thought deeply about her as an Alpha before then, so everything was just that much more confusing.”
I bit my lower lip gently. I stared blankly at the traces he had left in the seat beside me when he’d stood up. The cleanly emptied plate, the neatly placed knife and fork, the napkin on the empty chair—each and every one of them reminded me of him.
The one who had never once asked me to understand him as an Alpha.
“If I had been an Omega, I could have been a perfect match for her. If I had at least been an Alpha, I could have at least empathized with and understood her on a practical level about pheromones, not just a theoretical one. Why am I… just one of these countless, commonplace… dust-like Betas? Eventually, I even fell into that kind of pathetic self-negation.”
I lifted my half-full glass and downed the wine like water. The hazy buzz from the alcohol vanished in an instant, and my mind felt sharp, so I needed more to drink.
“Among Betas, only the animalistic impulses, the negative aspects of pheromones, are emphasized, but in truth, that’s only the story of a few problematic Alphas and Omegas who are negligent in managing their pheromones. Most Alphas and Omegas, unless they’re Goldens, live their whole lives taking medication to control their pheromones.”
Like a chronic illness such as asthma or diabetes.
As if overcome by drunkenness or fatigue, Marcus rubbed his face with his palm and added that in a dry voice. His light brown eyes, fringed with gentle wrinkles at the corners, seemed to be bloodshot.
“Once I learned that pheromones weren’t just some dangerous drug that induces sex crimes… but that when they work between an Alpha and Omega who love each other, they also serve as a medium that elicits the highest form of communion and a freedom close to liberation, it became even harder to bear. Even knowing she wasn’t communing with anyone else through pheromones, the mere fact that a deep world of communion that I could never reach was inherent within her, and that I didn’t have it, made me susceptible to objectless jealousy and an inferiority complex.”
I picked up the half-full wine bottle nearby and filled my glass. Marcus pushed his empty glass forward as well. His words of concern for Marcus came to mind, and I hesitated, but I couldn’t refuse to pour.
From the backyard, Ted’s bark sounded twice. It seemed Ellen and he were enjoying their first time alone since yesterday a bit more leisurely. Marcus and I focused on drinking our wine in silence for a moment.
Everyone around him had said that he was a Golden Alpha who could perfectly control his pheromones, a rare Alpha who extremely disliked and despised the effects of pheromones.
He had never once shown any wish that I were an Omega. So I had been completely at ease. I had forgotten that he was an Alpha. At the very least, I hadn’t taken it seriously. Just as Marcus said, with a Beta-centric mindset. Just as I had with Morae.
What were the characteristics of an Alpha, what kind of suppression was needed, how much of a burden it was… because they didn’t complain, I didn’t try to find out, and I had arbitrarily decided that if pheromones didn’t interfere with their daily lives, it was no longer an important issue in their lives.
And yet, on the other hand, I had been bothered by the existence of Omegas, who could enjoy his pheromones and touch his depths with their own. Just like the Marcus of the past.
But it wasn’t because he had shown me an ambiguous attitude. When you want someone other than yourself, the weak anxiety that arises from within can fuel absurd imaginings. That was probably an ugly facet of instinct that was hard to avoid even for someone with the most mature mind, like Marcus, for example.
“The thought that if she were to be with me, a Beta, she would have to live her whole life denying and suppressing her natural self as an Alpha, losing the chance for free communion… I concluded that I was a flawed being who couldn’t love her completely, and there was a period of about a year when we were broken up.”
Marcus rubbed the corner of his mouth and smiled self-deprecatingly. His neatly trimmed, short silver beard glittered in the candlelight. Gently swirling the glass he had refilled and already half-emptied, Marcus smiled at me from across the table.
“But now, I’ve come to think that maybe it was because we were an Alpha and a Beta… that even after our days together became routine, we could be grateful for each other’s existence for a long time without forgetting that there’s no such thing as happiness taken for granted. Because we can never forget that we are an Alpha and a Beta who need constant effort… to stay together and understand each other more completely.”
Marcus briefly looked down at the empty chair next to him, Ellen’s chair. He smiled gently as if she were sitting there, then reached his arm out long across the table and proposed a toast to me. I gladly offered my glass.
A love that does not take the happiness of every day together for granted. That might be the most difficult practice of love. Just as one doesn’t consciously think about the preciousness of the sky, the earth, and the air every day. And yet, it wasn’t impossible. No, perhaps it was something worth striving for, for the person one loves most. More so than filling special anniversaries with events.
With the sound of the back door leading to the backyard beyond the hallway opening and closing, Ellen’s and his voices could be heard. Marcus quickly finished the remaining wine in his glass, destroying the evidence. We looked at each other and laughed silently.
“What were you talking about? Badmouthing me again?”
He leaned down from behind me, wrapped his arms around my neck, and kissed my cheek. At his display of affection, Marcus and Ellen’s eyes widened as they looked at each other. Marcus, in particular, cleared his throat and gulped down water instead of wine.
“I’m scared I’m going to be handed a breakup notice as soon as we get back to Seoul. Please, really, stop badmouthing me now.”
His joke brought the long dinner to a close. To make cleanup easier for Margaret the next day, we all carried the dishes to the kitchen together before leaving the dining room. Marcus, who had seemed fine while sitting, staggered a little as if the alcohol was hitting him all at once. Once we were in the hallway, I could see his face was flushed a dark red. He tried to help Marcus to his bedroom, but Marcus said it wasn’t that bad and disappeared with Ted into the bedroom on the first floor.
I was anxiously watching Marcus’s retreating back and was about to head upstairs when Ellen gently caught my arm. He, who had turned to look at us, said he would go up first, lightly grasping the nape of my neck before heading to the second floor. Ellen, who had been looking up at him with a curious and playful expression, gently stroked my arm at the bottom of the stairs.
“I was always worried about what would happen if I never got to see that boy pour his affection onto someone and have that affection returned. He was a stubborn one who insisted on refusing to let others deep inside him….”
Saying that this visit was a precious gift to her and Marcus above all else, she thanked me and kissed my cheek. It felt like I had received too much gratitude for having done nothing but receive his love, but I smiled back at her.
He was in the room, packing. I tried to help, but he said he was almost done and pushed me toward the bathroom, telling me to wash up first. When I came out of the shower, everything was packed, and the lighting had even been dimmed to a level perfect for sleep. He said it was okay for me to go to sleep first, but instead of lying on the bed, I took a seat at the table by the window and opened my drawing notebook.
Although I had taken a few pictures with my phone camera, I wanted to leave a sketch of the impression I got from this room. Next to the sketches I had drawn last night and this morning, I drew fragments of the street visible from the window, the intertwined dry branches of the street trees, the quaint red brick buildings, the soft glow of the gas street lamps that were a symbol of Beacon Hill… landscapes that made me feel as if I had time-traveled to the early 20th century.
As my pencil moved, imagining the gaze of the thirteen-year-old him who must have sat in this very spot some 20 years ago, looking out at this street, he returned to the room.
Having finished his shower, he was wearing thin loungewear on his lower half, his torso bare. A cool dampness could be felt as he approached.
“Aren’t you tired? We have to get up early tomorrow, too.”
Standing behind me, his hands, which had been lightly massaging my shoulders, slid down to my chest as he lowered his body. He rested his chin on my shoulder and looked down at my sketch, then turned his head and buried his lips in the nape of my neck. His lips, cold for a moment upon contact, soon grew warm.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
I caressed the firm arm wrapped around my chest and glanced back at him.
“Just… what was A-wei like during the time he lived in this room? Things like that….”
He let out a dry laugh by my ear. With one arm still around my neck, he knelt on the wooden floor to the left of my chair and gently caressed my lower stomach and chest with his other arm.
“I think you’ve heard enough from Marcus and Ellen over the past two days.”
But I hadn’t heard anything about the stories that couldn’t be told with a smile. Such stories weren’t appropriate topics for a dinner table with precious people one was meeting for the first time in years and who were leaving after a two-day stay.
“This is where… you trained with Marcus to become a Golden Alpha, right?”
“……”
Looking up at me silently in the dimmed darkness, he let out a deep breath, then rose to his feet and plopped down onto the chair opposite me.
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