He had wanted to frame it as a problem between Liu Weikun and Seo Yeehyeon, but it wasn’t that he didn’t understand his guilt. Perhaps for him, it was the bare minimum struggle to live on, embracing it with his own ego, without despising himself to the core. He couldn’t try to control even that.
Due to the weight of the conversation they’d just had, the two cleared their meal and prepared to go out in a somewhat subdued atmosphere.
Though the weather was clear, the morning temperature was still around 5 degrees Celsius. Liu, wearing a casually designed coat with a muffler wrapped around his neck, caught Yeehyeon, who was about to leave the room without gloves, and put them on for him.
“You were sick just a few days ago. You can’t let your guard down just because you’re feeling a little better.”
Glancing sideways at him as he put on the gloves, he also packed warm coffee in a tumbler.
The sight of them stepping out onto the street, side by side wearing sunglasses and each holding a tumbler, looked like the protagonists of an action-comedy movie, making Yeehyeon snicker several times on the way to the park.
Among the several entrances, the two entered the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont through the gate near the 19th arrondissement’s city hall. True to its name, which includes the meaning ‘small hill,’ the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, with its continuous series of large and small hills, was a place Yeehyeon was more attached to than the larger nearby park, Parc de la Villette.
The two began to walk slowly along the promenade built to circle the large lake.
The park was quite lively with people trying to enjoy the rare sunny Sunday. For the locals who loved to come out to the park for a walk or to read a book as long as the sun was out, even in the middle of winter, a temperature of around 5 degrees Celsius was no issue.
He was quite resistant to the cold, and compared to the winters in Korea, the winters here felt mild, but he still found it difficult to read a book in the park in the dead of winter like the Parisians. He had tried a few times, but if he sat still and read without walking or moving, he felt like he was freezing from the core, regardless of the temperature. After just 10 minutes, his fingertips turning the pages would stiffen and tremble.
Instead, until autumn, he had often visited with his colleagues from ‘The Hands’ or with Yuni and Michel to drink beer, or had a simple lunch here with sandwiches bought from a nearby shop. It was a place where he would also take walks or sketch by himself.
The fact that he was walking here with Liu felt new to Yeehyeon. This moment felt like a miracle he had obtained after enduring a harsh winter. Even if it was a somewhat sentimental exaggeration, it was clear that this was not a simple, lucky happiness he had easily obtained.
Thanks to the temperature rarely dropping below zero, the lawn was still green even after the winter. Though not many, a few people were sitting or lying on the grass, basking in the sun. A female couple, who had brought their young child who had just started to toddle, sat on the grass, leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, watching the child with smiles that seemed to hold the entire world.
In the roughly 500-meter walk from the entrance, he had already witnessed at least three same-sex couples with children. Although they didn’t have a child with them, Liu and Yeehyeon were also another same-sex couple, each holding a tumbler in one hand and holding each other’s remaining hand.
“One of the things I noticed after coming here was that there are many same-sex couples with children.”
Yeehyeon said, his gaze on the waddling back of the child walking and crawling freely on the grass.
Were they a couple of the same primary gender who had adopted a child, or were they an Alpha-Omega couple of the same primary gender? He couldn’t tell, but either case was not common.
“The social atmosphere is probably more flexible than in Korea. It’s a bit easier for same-sex Alpha-Omega couples to be together, and for them to live as part of society with their own way of life.”
People who stubbornly clung to conservative attitudes like Nicholas’s father certainly existed here too. But as Liu said, it was true that the overall social atmosphere was more open.
“Perhaps the ratio is similar in Korea, it’s just that people hide it because they can’t reveal it.”
Yeehyeon nodded at Liu’s added words as he took a sip of coffee from his tumbler.
Once Yeehyeon became a full Omega and was officially registered, Liu and Yeehyeon could legally marry in most major cities around the world, including Seoul. As Liu had said when he proposed in Chicago, there was no need to go through the troublesome process of finding a city that recognized the marriage of same-sex couples with matching primary genders.
Regardless of whether they were actually considering marriage, the issue of whether society recognized and accepted one’s identity was important.
As he followed Liu off the promenade and onto a gently sloping grassy hill, Yeehyeon thought of the people he had met at ‘Late Bloomers.’ Most of them were people who struggled more with the prejudice and discrimination of their surroundings and society than with their own standards for their new gender.
As they passed between the people sitting sporadically on the grass and reached another promenade on top of the hill, Yeehyeon readjusted his grip on Liu’s hand and said.
“Um… I felt my pheromones for the first time yesterday.”
“……Ah.”
Liu made a sound as if in pain and stopped walking. He was wearing sunglasses, so his eyes couldn’t be seen, but his face looked as if he had collided hard with something.
To make way for a woman who was jogging up from behind, Liu first pulled Yeehyeon’s hand to one side of the path. Placing his tumbler on a bench, he gripped Yeehyeon’s shoulders and furrowed his brow.
“Why… didn’t you tell me right away?”
“When we were both completely drenched in pheromones and on the verge of knotting?”
“……”
Yeehyeon replied with a smile. Liu awkwardly wiped his mouth. Then, from behind his sunglasses, he looked into Yeehyeon’s face. The hands gripping his shoulders were so strong it was almost painful. After a long moment, he wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled Yeehyeon into his embrace.
“Weren’t you scared?”
Yeehyeon shook his head at the concerned voice.
Trying not to show his discomposed emotions to Yeehyeon, Liu only let him go after composing his expression.
The two sat down on the bench. Below the hill, the lake and the island rising high in its center were visible. Looking at the pavilion on the cliff-like island’s peak, Yeehyeon took off his gloves and held the tumbler.
“I’ve always felt your pheromones before, Kun, and I knew my own pheromones were reacting by how my arousal intensified when I smelled that scent… but that was an indirect awareness. Yesterday, I could tell, this is my pheromone, pheromones are flowing out of me right now.”
Liu was leaning forward, concentrating on Yeehyeon. His furrowed brow seemed to still be worried that Yeehyeon might have been shocked or frightened.
But Yeehyeon actually felt relieved. It was a process happening in his own body, but he couldn’t actually feel it, which had been quite frustrating. Now, it felt like his vision was becoming a little clearer.
“It’s hard to explain in words… but the closest feeling is… like I’ve become a speaker…? So it feels like sound waves are spreading out through my body…”
“……”
“Don’t make that face. It started because of you, Kun, but the result was my choice. It’s not Ah Wi’s fault that I’m Diamond Dust, is it?”
Liu’s expression didn’t lighten easily. He found and held Yeehyeon’s hand that was wrapped around the tumbler.
“Let’s go to the hospital together. From now on, I’ll be coming here once a month regularly, so it would be good to stop by the hospital together then. You need to get a proper diagnosis of your condition and get suppressants prescribed that match your progression.”
“Well, I don’t know if a hospital appointment can be made that quickly. It’s fine if I go alone.”
Liu was scheduled to leave on Wednesday, so there was only tomorrow and the day after. Specialized medical institutions dealing with Alpha-Omega pheromones were scarce here too, so it didn’t seem likely that a medical appointment could be made so quickly.
Liu, who had taken off his gloves and put them in his coat pocket, took Yeehyeon’s hand again with a slight hesitation and fiddled with it.
“Actually… I postponed it by two days.”
“……”
“Don’t be angry, Yeehyeon. Okay?”
Yeehyeon shook his head, intertwining his fingers with Liu’s, where the ring was.
“I’m not angry. Why would I be angry? Wanting to be together longer… is the same for me.”
Yeehyeon had heard that as soon as the construction was finished, Inwoo’s solo exhibition was waiting, along with a reopening event. But sometimes, he wanted to be honest about his feelings. He didn’t want Liu to misunderstand that he hated jealousy or that he would be angry if he postponed his schedule.
“It’ll be inconvenient, having more things to worry about than when you lived as a male Beta.”
A hint of tension was in Liu’s voice.
“I know. I looked into everything, whether I could handle it… and whether it was worth it, and I made up my mind after careful consideration. We had that much time, didn’t we?”
As he smiled, Liu stroked Yeehyeon’s cheek with the back of his hand and forced a smile as well.
“So, I also know that once I become an Omega, your Alpha instincts will be stimulated and you’ll become bound to me.”
Yeehyeon was talking about the protective instinct of an Alpha that is exerted on an Omega with whom they have had a continuous relationship and exchanged pheromones.
In the modern era where all Alphas and Omegas take suppressants and control their pheromone exposure, it was treated almost like a vestigial organ, like the tailbone, an old relic.
No Alpha wanted to be bound to another, and Omegas also considered it a burden. While they might enjoy it with a one-night stand through pheromones, the trend was to refrain from exposure in continuous relationships. To avoid being tied down.
“Of course, that’s if we continue to have sex while communicating through pheromones.”
“I want that.”
Liu’s response was immediate. He emphasized, tightening his grip on Yeehyeon’s hand.
“To be continuously exposed to your pheromones… to live a life centered around my relationship with you… I want that.”
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