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Liu sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at Yeehyeon’s face. Yeehyeon’s sleeping face looked peaceful. But Liu’s heart and expression as he watched him were anything but peaceful. They couldn’t be.
After sending the driver away, the two of them went up to unit 601 together.
Yeehyeon refused to be separated from Liu, not even for a moment. Not only that, but he buried his forehead in Liu’s shoulder and wouldn’t lift his face. Liu had to hold Yeehyeon even while he was canceling his flight tickets.
He had thought he knew Seo Yeehyeon as well as one could. At the very least, the person Liu knew best in this world was Seo Yeehyeon. He had never been that interested in anyone else.
It was something the Yeehyeon he knew would never have done. And yet, it had happened.
When it was time to part after their brief meetings, Yeehyeon would be disappointed but would never tell him not to go. It wasn’t because parting was easy for him. On the contrary, Liu knew that Yeehyeon ached from their separations just as much as he did.
But Yeehyeon wanted a love built on solid trust and growth, not one that ran wild, consumed by emotion and impulse. If Yeehyeon wanted that, then Liu wanted it too. That was why they endured together.
And that same Yeehyeon had clung to him. In such a heart-wrenching way.
Those were by no means words spoken lightly, nor were they a sentimental demand.
Liu gave Yeehyeon another fever reducer, changed him into his pajamas, and got into bed with him. As if worried Liu would disappear while he slept, Yeehyeon tried not to close his eyes.
‘I canceled my flight tickets. I haven’t booked a new one, either. I’m going to stay here until you’re okay.’
Liu had reassured him like that over and over again. Despite his efforts to stay awake, Yeehyeon fell asleep in less than ten minutes. It was likely due to his psychological and physical exhaustion.
I’m okay. I was just a little sad for a moment and said that on impulse. I’m fine now, so you can go. Even if Yeehyeon were to say that, Liu had no intention of leaving anymore.
As he held Yeehyeon in the middle of the street and soothed him, a scene from the past had surfaced in Liu’s mind.
A summer night, with rain pouring down.
It was around the time after they had their first encounter in Hong Kong and returned to Korea, when they were both conscious of each other.
Even at the ‘Phantom’ company dinner, Liu, who couldn’t attend, could only think about the absent Yeehyeon. He couldn’t hear a word anyone was saying.
The beta who had indiscriminately broken through his defenses, which no golden omega had ever managed to shake. The pheromones with a destructive power so violent they had made him unable to suppress his knotting, his chaining, anything. His first experience… of being utterly helpless before another’s pheromones.
When the call came from that ‘Mr. Seo Yeehyeon,’ Liu had to hide a smile by pretending to rub his mouth. He couldn’t attend the dinner, but perhaps he, too, couldn’t stop thinking about me and had called. He thought he might have held such an expectation.
[This late at night… I’m sorry.]
But the voice on the other end of the line was trembling, as if terrified. Liu had unconsciously straightened up from the back of his chair.
[The only person I could think of… was you, CEO.]
[Where are you right now?]
As he asked, Liu was already bolting from the dinner.
[Here… right now, I’m at your house, CEO. In front of your house.]
When he found Yeehyeon shivering in the rain in front of his gate, Liu had realized it. He had tried to deny it, but his subconscious had known. That he would come to love this person. That perhaps this thing called love had already begun.
He had practically jumped out of the car, rushed over to drape his jacket over Yeehyeon’s shoulders, and pulled him into a silent embrace. Even then, Liu hadn’t asked a single question. Then and now, Yeehyeon’s stability was more important than his own worries or curiosity.
[I’ll… I’ll draw…. I’ll start drawing again.]
As he pulled Yeehyeon, who was repeating those words and asking for help, tighter into his arms, Liu knew that he would not refuse any help this person asked for.
He had had a premonition that he would come to love this person. And that it would be a vicious love, the kind where you bet everything you have, down to the very last coin.
That night came to him naturally. The Yeehyeon of now, just like back then, was not in a normal state.
Was it a phenomenon caused by his hormones becoming irregular during his presentation process? It was entirely possible. Liu replayed Yeehyeon’s uncharacteristically different behavior in his mind again and again. It was similar to the ‘subordination’ instinct an alpha develops for their omega after prolonged pheromone exchange, or the anxiety an omega shows when separated from their alpha during pregnancy.
Pregnancy? No, that was absolutely impossible.
No matter how much of a diamond dust and an unpredictable special case Yeehyeon was, pregnancy was impossible when he hadn’t even fully presented as an omega. He hadn’t heard anything of the sort during the check-up at the clinic the day before, either.
But whether it was due to hormones or psychological issues, the fact was that Yeehyeon had reached such a state. And that fact clawed at Liu’s heart.
The image of Yeehyeon trudging toward him like a man in a daze wouldn’t leave his mind.
He wanted to make him happy.
It wasn’t because he harbored the arrogant thought that Yeehyeon was a dependent person who couldn’t be happy on his own unless Liu made him so.
There are many kinds of happiness in life.
There is happiness from personal achievement, happiness with family, happiness through friendship, happiness savored through travel or special experiences, and the everyday happiness found in a good cup of coffee or the scenery on a walk. And among them is the happiness of building a special relationship with someone, nurturing love, and sharing a life.
When it came to that specific happiness, he had been prepared to do anything to ensure Yeehyeon never felt a lack.
And Liu looks down at Yeehyeon and thinks. That in his current state, he may have failed at that.
The way Yeehyeon had paced the studio all morning, anxious about whether Liu had packed his things properly.
The way he had uncharacteristically skipped his morning work session to be with Liu.
Even Yeehyeon’s hand, which had unconsciously grabbed Liu as he tried to get up.
All of his unusual actions had been signals sent by Yeehyeon… No, perhaps it had started much, much earlier.
On the last night of their trip in Basel, Switzerland.
“Don’t go. Stay by my side.”
Yeehyeon had already said the same thing while being knotted.
A deep furrow formed between Liu’s brows as he looked down at Yeehyeon’s face. He habitually fiddled with the ring on his left ring finger. He had told Yeehyeon he would wait as long as it took, that they could get married whenever Yeehyeon wanted, a half-proposal made with the ring on this finger. And so he had waited. He had thought that was the way to give Yeehyeon freedom while also proving his own love.
That thought was wrong.
At least now, it had become the wrong thought.
Getting out of bed, Liu picked up his phone from the table and walked to the window. It was a position from which he could immediately check on Yeehyeon just by turning his head. Without hesitation, he quickly scrolled through his contacts and tried to call someone.
It was his ‘Mother.’
“…It’s me.”
It was a somewhat stiff and awkward start. Suki Kim’s reaction was not much different.
Since he made obligatory check-in calls regularly, Liu’s parents were aware of the trip. She asked how the trip was. It was a perfunctory question.
“The trip went well. I returned to Paris yesterday.”
[And Yeehyeon? Is he healthy?]
“Yes, he’s fine. He’s taking his suppressants well and is healthy.”
In truth, he was not in a very healthy state, but this was not the time to elaborate on such things.
[He’s different from people who present naturally. You must always be especially careful. I wonder if this trip was too much for Yeehyeon.]
“There’s no way I would put Yeehyeon in danger.”
Having snapped back sharply without thinking, Liu immediately pressed a hand to his forehead and shook his head. Yeehyeon wasn’t healthy right now, and the thought that he himself might have put Yeehyeon in danger was perhaps correct.
“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to say….”
With a deep sigh, Liu lowered his gaze.
The same unchanging scenery he had seen while standing at this very window on the day he came to see this apartment with the agent spread out before him. The supermarket across the street was still there. He remembered the two men who had walked out of it side by side. A couple, one man wearing a baby carrier, the other with a grocery bag slung over his shoulder.
At the time, they had seemed to him like a dazzling symbol of happiness. People who were enjoying a happiness he thought he could never attain, a happiness he had lost.
But now, Yeehyeon was asleep in the bed of this very apartment.
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