23 – His Language

[Beta Test End: Cunning Paper (Side Story)]

9:30 PM, silence permeated the 13th-floor information desk. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling had long since cooled, and even the white light of the three letters ‘AOM’ engraved on the black sign flickered a couple of times before going out completely. A faint ray of light, leaking from a half-closed door, cut across the darkened hallway.

Following the light revealed the CEO’s office. According to a Parisian painter who had recently become engrossed in learning Chinese idioms, the path from the desk to the office was ‘getting better and better.’

‘If you just put a caption next to the door, people would believe it’s a work of art.’

The title he gave it was ‘The End of Modernity.’ The owner of the room laughed heartily at the remark and deeply agreed. Despite not being a work created with great intention, his office itself resembled an installation art piece with profound meaning. Eight out of ten guests who visited the CEO’s office for the first time were so flustered that they couldn’t even bring themselves to sit down.

That was because all the furniture and props were either black or white, perfectly arranged in their proper places without a single flaw. Two L-shaped black sofas faced each other, creating symmetry. The glass table in the center was a perfect square. When viewed from above, the distance between the sofas and the table was uniform on all four sides.

That wasn’t all. On the large desk facing those who entered, the dark-colored lamp body was bent at a 90-degree angle. The document files were color-coded according to the type of contract, but they were classified as black, gray, and white, which, according to the painter, ‘wasn’t color, just differences in shade.’

As befitting a company preparing for a near-future society, the amount of materialized work data was less than that of other companies. Even that was neatly classified according to importance and meticulously organized in the built-in safe and steel filing cabinets on the CEO’s office wall.

There was a plant that the CEO’s lover had brought in, complaining that it didn’t smell like people enough. It was a monstera about 30 centimeters tall, which had initially been brought in a matte yellow ceramic pot. Not long after, the CEO pulled the plant out of the soil. Then, he filled a rectangular glass vase with water and pebbles and tried to grow it hydroponically by soaking the roots. He scrubbed the roots so hard with his rough hands that all the roots were white, without a single grain of soil from when it was first brought into the office.

The person who raised and cared for it was so diligent that there were never any stains in the glass vase or oily smudges floating on the pebbles inside. Thanks to that, the small monstera grew rapidly day by day. Recently, it had grown to the height of an adult’s waist.

The problem was that the monstera plant didn’t have a very neat shape when it stretched out its arms. The green stems of the plant, which wanted to spread its leaves to the left and right, taking advantage of its strong vitality and unique free-spirited energy, were tied with black cable ties at 10-centimeter intervals. The poor plant had no freedom to spread out except to grow vertically.

When the monstera leaves first developed their characteristic two holes, even those were symmetrical on the left and right. Yoon Eun-ah, the CEO’s exclusive secretary and the youngest member of the secretarial office, had once commented that it was ‘like a top student forced to work hard against their will due to the demands of overbearing parents.’

The AOM CEO’s office was a place where even the only plant brought in to improve the aesthetics looked artificial. Even if someone who envied him searched every corner of the room meticulously with twisted suspicion, they wouldn’t be able to find any flaws, except for the colorful eco-bags scattered next to the desktop computer.

There were two bags on the floor in the corner. It was very easy to tell which one originally belonged in the office. The leather briefcase, standing neatly against the desk leg, didn’t feel out of place at all. However, the crumpled eco-bag next to it, carelessly thrown down, was made of roughly hand-sewn scraps of kitenge fabric and didn’t match anything else in the room.

Inside the CEO’s office, which had the highest ceiling in the building, was a short hallway leading to another space. Because of the right-angled structure, only one side of the hallway, with a small frame hanging on it, was visible from the outside. Because of the clean and heavy atmosphere that permeated the entire CEO’s office, guests usually mistook the hallway for a path to a secret vault, but it was actually the way to the bathroom.

From the slightly open door,

“Ah…!”

The owner of the eco-bag groaned.

AOM’s CEO, Cheon Tae-rim, was standing with his back against the door, dressed in a sharply tailored suit. And in his arms was Kang Hae-ah, whose expression, posture, and attire were all disheveled.

“Ugh, ugh…, Tae-rim…”

With his knees awkwardly bent, he couldn’t sit down or stand up straight, and he groaned. Cheon Tae-rim’s tongue touched the back of his ear, which was flushed and about to burst with heat. The action of licking up the back of his ear was like savoring candy.

The silent lips lightly sucked on the round ear,

“Hic….”

Then chewed on it,

“Ah, ah….”

Then licked the auricle with his tongue.

“…Heuk, ugh….”

Unable to bear the chilling sensation, Kang Hae-ah trembled. The arms that bound his slender body were so strong that even if his limp legs gave way, he wouldn’t budge. With his forehead and neck covered in a blush, Kang Hae-ah tried to push, shove, and hit Cheon Tae-rim’s arms to get them off.

“Let, let me go….”

As if reading his active resistance as passive affection, Cheon Tae-rim laughed. When his breath, escaping with a hiss, touched his sweaty neck, Kang Hae-ah flinched.

“If I let you go, are you going to run away?”

His voice, whispering with his lips on his round ear, was very low. Kang Hae-ah groaned softly at the voice that burrowed into his ear.

“I won’t run away…, I won’t.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really, really…”

All the words he hurriedly answered were sincere. The low voice filled with excitement that burrowed into his ear, the tight embrace of the firm arms that held him tightly, the weight of the huge body clinging to his flushed back. Kang Hae-ah couldn’t shake off any of them.

“Umm….”

Cheon Tae-rim shifted his position, making a low groan as if he was contemplating. As he lightly raised his arms, Kang Hae-ah’s upper body heaved greatly and he was pulled deeper into his arms.

It was Kang Hae-ah’s job to hide his flushed face by bowing his head. Cheon Tae-rim alone enjoyed the luxury of admiring the prominent cervical vertebra in the center of his white neck.

Pressing his nose against the round, protruding area, Cheon Tae-rim took a deep breath.

“Haa….”

At the affectionate gesture, Kang Hae-ah also stopped struggling. He placed his hands neatly on the thick arms that tightly gripped his waist, and only let out ragged breaths, ‘Huk,’ ‘Haa’… He was always weak to small touches. He would reject a tongue that rummaged wildly in his mouth, but he would open his heart to the sensation of the tip of his nose lightly touching his neck.

“Tae-rim…”

Kang Hae-ah whispered, as if relieved by the affectionate embrace. Then his ‘Tae-rim’ moved abruptly.

“Yes, Hae-ah?”

Only his voice was affectionate, but Tae-rim’s touch, handling his own ‘Hae-ah,’ was rough. He grabbed the waistband of Hae-ah’s faded jeans and pulled them down mercilessly. Because the buckle wasn’t fully undone, the jeans band got caught on his thigh. His underwear was also pushed down awkwardly, barely covering his genitals.

Seeing his reflection in the bathroom mirror, Hae-ah was aghast. Because he happened to be wearing beige underwear, it looked as if he had no pubic hair at first glance.

“Ha, ah…, no. Wai, wait…! Wait a minute, why…. No, this is a bit, too much, heuk….”

Tae-rim thought that Hae-ah had learned Korean quite well, judging by the fact that he started with ‘no’ when he was flustered. But he didn’t have the composure to say the joke that came to mind. Unable to hide his excitement, he observed Hae-ah reflected in the bathroom mirror.

At the fierce gaze, almost like a glare, Hae-ah cowered and held his breath. He couldn’t look straight at the mirror, but he couldn’t turn around either because Tae-rim was blocking him.

“…….”

Tae-rim’s gaze fixed on the mirror moved slowly, as if not to miss anything of Hae-ah reflected in it. The bottom of his drawers was wet with pre-cum from his erect penis, and above, his sweaty nipples were hard. From his side to his navel, pelvis, chest, and neck, the beads of sweat glistened, making him look very delicious.

Tae-rim grabbed, groped, or stroked every corner of Hae-ah’s body as he saw it. He buried his face in his neck and licked his flesh with his tongue.

Hae-ah’s mind became faint as the actions became more and more sensual.

‘How did this happen?’

He even pondered like an innocent suspect who had woken up at the scene of the crime. But with his dull mind, he could only be bewildered, and Hae-ah couldn’t figure out what had stimulated Tae-rim.

Until 30 minutes ago, everything had been perfect. It was the day of his dinner appointment, and he happened to pass by the AOM headquarters building on his way to the meeting place. He had stopped by briefly because he wanted to see his lover’s face as he worked late, which was the beginning of the surprise visit. And it should have been the end at the same time.

When he opened the door to the CEO’s office with a light heart, everything was just enjoyable. Tae-rim couldn’t hide his smile and welcomed him. Hae-ah hadn’t fully adapted to the existence of his affectionate lover. He couldn’t easily dismiss Tae-rim’s smile that welcomed him, and his whole heart became limp and his cheeks turned red.

‘Why are you dressed so cutely today?’

Hae-ah was a little embarrassed by Tae-rim’s question. The jeans that had been washed so much that they were almost white, the loose-fitting lavender short-sleeved shirt, and the gray sweater vest with a deep V-neck were everyday clothes that were embarrassing for Hae-ah to say he had ‘dressed up for some reason.’

Since he couldn’t honestly say that he ‘dresses differently only when he meets Tae-rim to imitate the image of a classic writer,’

‘I have a alumni gathering later.’

That was the root of the problem.

‘Ah, ‘alumni gathering’….’

Tae-rim, who had been smiling brightly, seemed to stiffen a little, repeating the words he had heard. Hae-ah, who had no way of knowing his inner thoughts, even added a joke that ‘it’s a gathering where there’s no one Tae-rim would be jealous of anyway.’ Then Tae-rim grabbed Hae-ah’s right hand.

Seeing his large lover kissing the thin ring on his ring finger, Hae-ah smiled slightly, feeling a little embarrassed by the cute expression of affection. His heart fluttered when he bit the tip of his ring finger with his lips and sucked it with a ‘pop’ sound. When he gently pulled the hand he was holding and dragged him into the CEO’s office, he followed him out of curiosity because he was curious about the inside of the hallway, which he had always imagined as an unknown world.

“Now, sto…p, heueu, stop it…. Ugh!”

Holding onto the bathroom sink with both hands, being blocked from his escape route, and being clung to like a dog was not in the plan.

“Tae, Tae-rim, why… ah, ah….”

As the thick, sensual caresses lengthened, the wet stain on Hae-ah’s beige drawers also deepened. Tae-rim’s thick finger tapped the trace of pre-cum that spread in a round shape, as if pointing it out.

Hae-ah tried to avoid the touch by hunching his tightly tensed waist. But his awkward and feeble resistance was worse than doing nothing. Somehow, every time he twisted his body, he was pushed further into Tae-rim’s arms. In the end, he was clinging so tightly that it seemed like he would enter his body at any moment.

“Heu-eut, ugh….”

Hae-ah’s body, which had been heated up by the long caresses, reacted sensitively even to small stimuli. The sensation of the flesh touching his buttocks felt excessively hard and hot. He wanted to get angry at the touch that repeatedly tapped his penis as if teasing him, but his knees trembled and his feet kept slipping, so his reaction was sluggish. Because he happened to be wearing sneakers that were only pretty and not practical, he had to stumble even while standing.

Tae-rim’s large hand grabbed and held his waist, which kept leaning back and staggering.

“Hoo….”

Hae-ah flinched at the feverish groan. His heart fluttered without him realizing it at Tae-rim’s excited breath. It was hard to tell whether the pounding of his heart was his or his.

“…….”

Avoiding the hot gaze in the mirror, Hae-ah struggled. Desire was wriggling inside his damp drawers. The fully erect flesh was screaming that it was suffocating.

‘Still, it’s already time for my appointment…, it’ll be late even if I leave now….’

Hae-ah was constantly struggling, lost in worries about the future. He thought, ‘It’s like my brain and dick are fighting.’ Judging by the fact that he couldn’t think of the expression ‘penis,’ it was obvious which side would win the fight.

The worry didn’t last long. He rolled his eyes and raised his gaze slightly, then he met his fiancé’s eyes in the mirror. He shuddered at the sight of him standing tall like a huge bear, with his forehead bulging with excitement, his arms wrapped around his waist, and his body like a solid wall.

Hae-ah’s lips, which had been fluttering in conflict, closed tightly.

Soon, Hae-ah voluntarily unbuckled his pants. The pants, which had been stiffly constricting his thighs, fell to his ankles all at once. When he hooked his fingers on the waistband of his drawers and slowly pulled them down, his red penis appeared as if popping out.

Then, as if waiting for it, Tae-rim buried his face in his shoulder. His short-sleeved shirt was rolled up to his chest by the hands that were digging in. With a ‘snap’ sound, a couple of shirt buttons fell to the floor. With his upper and lower body exposed around his penis, Hae-ah’s nipples to his knees were clearly visible.

Thick fingers roughly grabbed his white chest flesh.

“Ah! Umm….”

Hae-ah twisted his waist at the action of gathering and squeezing his fingertips as if scratching with hooks. ‘Haa,’ ‘Huk’… Hot breaths kept escaping from his nose. While crushing his hard nipples under his palms, Tae-rim inhaled his lover’s scent with all his might.

What he was holding in his hand was practically not Hae-ah’s flat chest, but the heart that was beating madly underneath it. Kung, kung, kung… The busy, enthusiastic energy resonated through his palm lines. Even his cute boyfriend’s throbbing heartbeat was nothing but lovely to him.

Hae-ah, with his whole body flushed red and not knowing what to do, was stomping his feet and pushing the pants and underwear that were caught on his ankles to one side. After glancing at the clothes that had been kicked into the corner of the bathroom tiles, Tae-rim grabbed Hae-ah’s waist and turned him around to face him.

Then he lifted him up and sat him on the drawer next to the sink.

“Ah!”

Hae-ah cringed as the bare skin of his buttocks touched the rounded marble stone. After shouting loudly,

“Co, cold….”

His face, blushing shyly, seemed to set Tae-rim’s heart on fire.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

He rushed into his cute lover’s arms recklessly.

‘Who do you think you’re meeting?’

Hae-ah had several ‘alumni’ from Korean graduate school who would call him out for drinks. Tae-rim didn’t know their faces at all, but he certainly knew their names. There wasn’t a single one of them that Hae-ah should meet.

He had never been formally introduced as a lover. But as the CEO of AOM, Cheon Tae-rim knew how depraved and messy the ‘alumni’ that Kang Hae-ah’s unconsciousness had shown were.

Hae-ah, who didn’t know the inner thoughts of his angry lover, could only blink his eyes.

“Tae-rim…”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you so excited?”

Even when he whispered the question, Tae-rim only showed a wry smile and didn’t tell him the details.

At the age of twenty-eight, Tae-rim had developed a new habit. It was a somewhat arrogant and obnoxious habit of smiling with his eyes closed, relying only on his face whenever he received a difficult question. But no matter what others thought, what was important to him was that Hae-ah liked his smiling face. Especially, he liked the face that smiled while staring straight into his eyes very much.

Even now, it was the same. Cheon Tae-rim, who was as big as a door and had a fierce look in his eyes that was said to be intimidating wherever he went, tilted his head with a smile, and Hae-ah completely forgot what he was asking and spread his legs. As Tae-rim stood facing him, as if by agreement, his white legs wrapped around the waist of his black suit.

“Did you… miss me a lot today?”

As soon as the question, to which he could answer truthfully, was asked, Tae-rim nodded.

“Yeah. I missed you.”

He kissed his lover’s round forehead and hurriedly unbuckled his belt.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day. I missed you so much.”

Because he was so hasty, he fumbled a couple of times, and Hae-ah pushed his hand away. Then, he unfastened the tightly locked belt with his own hands. When he opened the pants buckle and pulled down the zipper, a bulging black underwear was revealed.

Then, Tae-rim pulled Hae-ah’s hand and placed it on his crotch. Compared to the provocative action, his expression was gloomy. He lowered the ends of his thick eyebrows and asked,

“Do you… really have to go to the appointment?”

He asked like a dejected child.

“Ah, well, that’s….”

“Don’t go and stay with me. Stand up your classmate or whatever… and tell them you’ll meet them next time. Tell them something came up and you can’t go. Huh? Hae-ah.”

Hae-ah swallowed hard at the temperature and feel of the flesh sticking to his palm. As he carefully stroked it, the outline of the erect penis, which had become even harder, stood out long to his thigh. Anyone who saw it would mistake it for hiding a club.

Hae-ah also had a time when he was surprised by the size of the hidden object. After a weekend date, he was sad to part and was playing with his hands one night when he checked Tae-rim’s ‘that’ and called him crying the next dawn. After falling into worry all night and drinking wine alone, Hae-ah said in a slurred pronunciation:

‘I don’t think I can put it in my butt even if I die, what should I do? Is insertion sex very important to you, Tae-rim-ssi? If I can’t do it, will you break up with me? Do we have to break up? Why? Why? Can’t we not break up? I can do everything else for you…. Please don’t break up with me. Huh?’

Tae-rim laughed for quite a while after receiving that call. He asked the tearful and coquettish drunkard what the ‘other things you can do’ were, and whether he had ever done them for anyone other than himself.

And he promised. Until you finish organizing the surroundings of our relationship and you are ready, I will not bother to have insertion sex.

The ‘first’ in anything was bound to have power in itself. For Hae-ah, the power that Cheon Tae-rim had as the first male lover who did not force insertion sex was like that. Even the consideration that was common sense and natural to others was precious to Kang Hae-ah.

It was so easy to win the heart of the seemingly haughty and aloof youngest young master of Hanseong Group.

“Shall I do it with my hands? …Or I can… do it with my mouth, too.”

Hae-ah whispered, blushing on his cheeks and ears. Then Tae-rim slowly lowered his head closer to his face. Stretching his neck, Hae-ah enjoyed the rushing kiss.

“Eum, euung….”

As Tae-rim grabbed his chin with one hand and pressed his cheek, Hae-ah became a goldfish. A hot tongue rushed into his gaping mouth. Hae-ah flinched for a moment at the tongue that had reached his palate, but soon joined in the rough kiss. The two men’s tongues began to explore each other’s mouths.

Kang Hae-ah was the one who was good at kissing, no matter what anyone said. Actively pressing the tips of his tongues together, sweeping the inside of his cheeks, and sucking on his lower lip was, as Tae-rim felt, extremely seductive. When their lips were all wet from the chasing kiss, he felt like he had fallen into a marshmallow lump.

“Ang.”

Hae-ah made a sound and bit Tae-rim’s lower lip slightly.

Chop chop chop!

Tae-rim laughed as he gathered his lips and gently pecked at them, making a sound. He laughed, but suddenly became serious.

“Kang Hae-ah. What did you say you were going to suck with that mouth?”

Hae-ah, who had his chin grabbed, became a goldfish again. With his few cheek fats pressed inward and his upper lip bulging out, he passively released his legs that had been wrapped around Tae-rim’s waist.

“…I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean I was going to suck it all up….”

“Shh.”

The excuse made out of shame was cut off in one stroke. Hae-ah’s lips, which had been about to grumble something, were also closed again. Tae-rim pulled down his black panties and took out his bulging penis and held it.

Tae-rim was tall, and his hands and feet were big. It was not thought that his thing would be small. The world joked that the Dominant or recessive tendencies of Alphas were a ‘grade,’ so Dominants were called branches and recessives were called jalapenos.

Even so, the human body was meant to exist according to degree and purpose. But Tae-rim’s penis was too much in degree and suspicious in purpose. It seemed that there would be other uses besides the function of reproduction, which would cause a ‘Not available to those under 19’ notification window to pop up when searching on a portal site.

Feeling his mouth dry for no reason, Hae-ah swallowed. His two pupils blatantly looked at the thing that was so big that it couldn’t even be held in his owner’s big hand.

“Um, Tae-rim-ssi. I’m….”

At the same time, Hae-ah was embarrassed. He was also a man without a doubt, and he was confident in his naked body. He had been told several times that ‘his size is overseas because he studied abroad.’ But when he compared it to Tae-rim’s, his thing looked relatively small, and he had to taste an unfamiliar shame.

Tae-rim would have laughed it off if he had heard it. He might have sneered, saying, ‘You’re not a child, you’re a grown adult, what are you trying to compare to me, a Dominant Alpha?’

So Hae-ah kept his mouth shut and allowed the approaching big hand to grab and hold the two warmly erect flesh.

“Euh, euut….”

Come to think of it, it was really unfair. Whenever Hae-ah played with Tae-rim’s hands, he always came first, and he reacted more strongly each time a stroke was added once or twice. He didn’t know if Tae-rim was insensitive or if he was too sensitive.

It was the same today. As Cheon Tae-rim took a long breath and rubbed the two clenched penises hard with his palm, Hae-ah fumbled.

“Ha, ha-ah, euung….”

“Hae-ah.”

“Heu, heueut, eup….”

“Ha-ah, Kang Hae-ah….”

The two men’s hot breaths filled the bathroom. Tae-rim lowered his heated head into Hae-ah’s arms, who was struggling slightly. Then, as if waiting for it, his lover’s two arms hugged his neck and clung to him.

“Euut, euung, eu-eung…!”

Hae-ah groaned, trembling whenever his hand moved up and down. As wet breaths lingered around his ears, Tae-rim’s touch gradually became rougher. Soon, precum gushed out from the tip of Hae-ah’s penis.

‘Even though there’s nowhere to put it.’

Tae-rim smiled slightly, thinking something that Hae-ah would have screamed if he had heard it. Somehow, his lover’s penis was also pretty. If he was allowed, he wanted to put it in his mouth and suck it. When he wasn’t excited, the texture was soft, and when he was erect, the tip was red and the shaft was pink. Compared to his own penis, which had bulging blood vessels, was dark red, and was roughly large, it was even cute.

“Euung, euut….”

Tae-rim liked Kang Hae-ah exactly at times like this. For example, when he was dripping the tip of his glans, which had nowhere to insert, with precum. When he got excited like a rabbit from the rough grip and stroking, and moved his waist back and forth, saying he was also a man.

“Ha-ah, ha-ah…!”

And when he bit his lower lip tightly and closed his eyes to hold back the urge to come.

Tae-rim felt a heavy thirst for those aspects of Kang Hae-ah. He wanted to grab his small butt and shove his thing in wildly. He wanted to stick to this man, who envied things that were adult-like and manly, like a dog and see him being hit with sperm or water. He thought it would be nice to admire his face crying in resentment at him in confusion.

Unaware of his lover’s dark thoughts, Hae-ah entrusted his body to his hands. Tae-rim left a kiss on the forehead of the person who was closing his eyes and concentrating on his senses, a kiss so soft that it could not be felt.

“Ah, ha-ah, aht…!”

Soon, the penis in his hand seemed to wriggle, and he began to shoot out white sperm. Knowing full well that the white, thick liquid was dripping and splattering, Tae-rim did not stop his touch or block the end of the ejaculate. Rather, he urged the liquid to splatter here and there, rubbing and shaking the penis in his hand even harder.

“Ack, a-aht, ah…! Heuk, euut, wa, wait, stop…!”

Hae-ah burst into tears at the constant stimulation being applied while he was ejaculating. Looking at him flailing his arms and legs in a hurry, he didn’t seem to know he was crying. His back, which was wet with sweat and slippery, was completely collapsed on the marble cabinet, and his lower body, with his legs wide open, leaned against Tae-rim’s body as if entrusting his entire weight to it.

Hae-ah gasped and sobbed twice more, making a hiccuping sound. Drops of sperm splattered on his red belly and chest.

“Heuek! Heueeuut….”

Hae-ah hugged Tae-rim’s neck tightly, panting and sobbing. Tae-rim forced himself to hold back the laughter that was about to come out because he felt so good. The face crying because he couldn’t stand the stimulation after he had just jerked him off was unbearably cute.

“I’m sorry.”

He made an insincere apology, trying to manage his expression. When he kissed the crown of his head covered with disheveled hair, Hae-ah turned his head to the side. A snorting breath flowed out with tears.

“Heuk…, now, let, let go of me….”

At the words that he didn’t know whether he was sulking or begging, Tae-rim looked down at the penis that was twitching in his hand. It was pitifully red because it had been stimulated recklessly.

“This?”

Pretending to steal the sperm smeared on the tip of his glans, Tae-rim rubbed the sensitive skin with his thumb.

“Eu, euung…! Yes, it, it hurts…, now, let go of me.”

Perhaps what Hae-ah wanted to say was not ‘it hurts’ but ‘it stings.’ Thinking that he should tell him later… Tae-rim gently released the flesh he was holding. Then, the penis, which had become much softer and gloomy, drooped over his dry belly.

Tae-rim swallowed silently. The abnormal impulse to suck someone else’s cock filled his head again.

“…Are you okay? Hae-ah. Are you angry?”

He only asked that in words, but Tae-rim’s mind was elsewhere. He imagined putting that cute thing in front of him, the penis that would never be used for the rest of his life and was just a sensually pretty decoration, in his mouth. Hae-ah was crying sadly just by touching the red flesh with his hands. If he put it in his mouth and sucked it hard until his cheeks were sunken and scratched it slightly with his teeth, he would hear a different kind of begging that he had never heard before.

Unaware of what his lover was thinking, Hae-ah said,

“I’m not angry. I’m okay….”

He gave an unforgivable forgiveness.

Regulating his rough breath, he adjusted his sitting position. The marble under his butt had already become warm. Blushing, Hae-ah looked at Tae-rim’s penis. Then, he felt an unnecessary sense of guilt. Because he had come first, only Tae-rim’s thing was still hard and exuding heat.

Hae-ah did not know that he was the only one in the world who felt sorry for the fiercely bulging penis of the Dominant Alpha. After a brief hesitation, he put his thumb in his mouth and licked it wet with his tongue. Then, he slowly lowered his hand and gently rubbed the tip of the dark red glans with his moist finger.

“Eueum.”

Tae-rim groaned pleasantly at the small but effective stimulation.

“…You can come on me.”

Tae-rim’s smile deepened at the series of whispers. Hae-ah was quick to learn anything. Not only was he smart, but he was also very perceptive. He already knew what his Alpha wanted.

‘Hoo’ Tae-rim let out a hot breath and put the end of his penis on Hae-ah’s belly button and pressed it as if stabbing it. Then, the firm flesh was slightly pressed and wrinkles formed on his belly. As he held the heavy shaft as it was and began to stroke it roughly, only the sound of skin rubbing and rough breathing echoed for a while.

Hae-ah blankly looked up at the Alpha who was standing close between his legs and masturbating. He was leaning against the wall with his left arm and roughly rubbing his thick penis with his right hand,

“Heoeok….”

The groaning sound fell into his ear.

“Tae-rim-ssi….”

Even while masturbating, Tae-rim did not leave Hae-ah’s ears alone. After accidentally finding out that his round ears were an erogenous zone, he kissed his auricle and sucked on his earlobe whenever he had a chance, which made Hae-ah very embarrassed. Perhaps because of the frequent stimulation, his heart fluttered and he groaned even if he only sucked on his earlobe slightly.

At Tae-rim’s rough breathing,

“Euut….”

Hae-ah’s groan was mixed in.

Soon, Hae-ah completely lifted his crumpled shirt and knit vest over his chest, allowing the Alpha to ejaculate on his belly. However, the effort to avoid soiling his clothes was immediately rendered useless. The sperm, which had a strong smell and concentration, passed over his belly and chest, splashing and wetting his face.

Hae-ah flinched and closed his eyes at the warm temperature and smell. As his vision was blocked, Tae-rim’s excited breathing sounded like an angry sound. His heart pounded at the rough breaths echoing in the narrow space, and his legs lost strength.

“…….”

When Tae-rim had released all of his lust, Hae-ah’s penis was half-erect even without direct stimulation. At Tae-rim’s gaze that was staring intently, Hae-ah lowered his hands and covered his penis like a person who could feel the gaze.

Discovering the movement of his pupils fluttering under his anxiously closed eyelids, Tae-rim smiled.

“Don’t worry. I won’t touch you against your will.”

Then, he reached out and wiped Hae-ah’s dirty eyelids, eyebrows, and cheeks. He also wiped the sperm smeared next to his nostrils with his thumb. Strangely, the more his touch lingered, the less the sticky sperm was wiped off, and it only spread around.

As the dampness on his face did not go away even after he had been caressing him for a long time with a gentle touch, Hae-ah’s eyebrows twitched. Barely opening his eyes, Hae-ah glared at his lover’s smiling face.

“Mr. Tae-rim, I think it’s getting more buried now?””

“Eueum. It’s not?”

Only after replying in a flustered manner did Tae-rim take out a handkerchief. As he began to wipe him carefully with a soft cloth, Hae-ah snorted, entrusting his face to the soft touch.

“Did you also bury pheromones on my body?””

Then, Tae-rim’s hand, which was going down his neck, stopped.

“Eueum…, a little.”

“‘A little’?”

“A little a lot.”

Hae-ah shook his head, snorting out loud.

“Really… I can’t live with you. Who on earth would touch a Beta….”

Tae-rim’s heart became twisted at the words he said with a deep sigh. He had told him several times that ‘unmanifested Omega’ and ‘Beta’ were different, but Hae-ah’s habit of expressing himself was not easily corrected. Occasionally, Tae-rim felt that the attitude stemmed from self-deprecation.

One thing that was fortunate was that even though he knew that Tae-rim was recklessly pouring out and burying strong pheromones, Hae-ah didn’t hate that as much. It was the same today. He was only humming in words, but he was smiling as if he liked it.

“You’re not going to the dinner appointment.”

Tae-rim said, folding the damp handkerchief to the dry side. At the touch of pressing down on his belly button, Hae-ah slapped the back of his hand.

“You’re an idiot. Anyway, I can’t go even if I wanted to after the pheromones.”

Hae-ah replied, swinging his floating feet slowly.

Because of that, Tae-rim was a little puzzled. The classmates that ‘Kang Hae-ah’ was meeting around this time were Park Jun-woo, Min Hyung-shik, Lee Ki-hyung, and Shin Hye-rim from the Korea Graduate School of Art. The three guys were recessive Alphas, and Shin Hye-rim, who had been perfectly fine, was a Beta, and he couldn’t understand why he was hanging out with those guys. None of the four people had any reason to be affected by the Alpha’s pheromones.

It was Hae-ah’s mutterings that gave Tae-rim’s lost thoughts a clue.

“It’s a little disappointing. I was going to meet him because he said he came to Korea after a long time….”

“…‘Came to Korea after a long time’? A classmate?”

“Yeah. He’s a friend I made when I was in college in Paris, and he said he went to Shanghai for a tour exhibition this time… and he’s only stopping by Seoul today.”

“…….So flustered, Tae-rim even forgot to tell him that the correct expression was ‘to stop by’ instead of ‘to be heard.’’ In front of Tae-rim, who was speechless, Hae-ah said that ‘that friend is an unpartnered Omega, so something big will probably happen if we meet like this,’ and ‘What if he smells Tae-rim-ssi’s pheromones and falls for me?’ His mischievous jokes continued. He seemed happy, laughing at his own jokes.

On the other hand, Tae-rim’s heart sank with a strange sense of self-blame.

‘I was spouting nonsense, wasn’t I….’

Unable to shake off the awkward feeling, Kang Hae-ah licked his dry lips. Hae-ah, unaware of Tae-rim’s feelings, continued with a bright face.

“I was thinking of having dinner together and introducing you to my graduate school friends.”

“Ah, really? You were going to introduce me to your graduate school friends?”

“Yes.”

Only then did an inexplicable sense of relief make Cheon Tae-rim smile. Rushing in like a dog in heat and plastering someone with his pheromones wasn’t a complete waste, it seemed.

Kissing his lover’s chin as he smiled broadly, Hae-ah said,

“They’re all really fun people. I think Tae-rim-ssi will like them if you meet them. They’re very innocent and incredibly passionate.”

“……”

It was a brazen lie. It was a statement that could only be made because he didn’t know exactly how much information Cheon Tae-rim, the CEO of AOM, had learned through the so-called ‘Beta Test’.

“It’s a shame, I was looking forward to getting together with everyone for the first time in a while….”

“Hmm. Really? You were looking forward to it?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t like hanging out with friends?”

Then Hae-ah smiled faintly. Knowing how drastically the graph would plummet when he met his graduate school classmates, Hae-ah now looked like someone who was genuinely disappointed that he couldn’t meet them.

“…But I like hanging out with Tae-rim-ssi the most.”

Even with the lovely addition, Tae-rim couldn’t smile at all.

For Tae-rim, Hae-ah was irreplaceable. The fact that he felt guilty for deceiving the other person whenever they tried to deceive him was an experience that only today’s Hae-ah could provide.

‘Innocent, passionate, and fun friends, huh….’

None of it was true. He just wanted to pretend he had such friends.

It wasn’t like Tae-rim had many friends around him either. Nor had he ever shown or boasted about any of them to Hae-ah. So, Hae-ah’s lie today wasn’t something he said specifically in front of Cheon Tae-rim. He was simply adorning himself with habitual lies, as he always had.

“Okay… I’m sorry.”

Tae-rim replied. Rather than pointing out the lie and embarrassing Hae-ah, it seemed better to play along.

“Tell your friends we’ll hang out next time. Today, let’s go home together.”

When Tae-rim tapped his cheek with his fingertips, Hae-ah kissed him ‘peck, peck’ on the spot. Because his lips had thinned with a smile, it was a very gentle kiss.

Late at night, the elevator that crisscrossed the AOM building from top to bottom stopped on the 4th floor. There was a man standing facing the smoothly opening door with a ‘ding’ sound. Kim Min-soo, the head of the development team, was left alone in the 4th-floor office, which was only lit by some of the many incandescent lights on the ceiling, wearing a triumphant smile on his face, which was full of fatigue.

“I know that the only person who comes down at this hour is the CEO, that’s what I know!”

‘Ehehehe,’ Kim Min-soo chuckled somewhat lightly, boasting greatly.

“Do you know what I found? Kyaa, even the great CEO Cheon Tae-rim couldn’t find this Easter egg… or, would you not understand if I said it like that? So, I found the code hidden deep in the Beta Test results! Ah, is this… ‘the power of the developer’?”

The corners of Kim Team Leader’s eyes were bluish as he leaned back and gloated. The madness brought on by successive nights of overtime flickered in his eyes. Because he was busy waving the paper filled with codes and numbers in his right hand, Kim Team Leader couldn’t even observe the reaction of his highest superior.

One day, Yang Min-hee, a bright new employee in the development team, had said this: ‘Why does Team Leader have to be a Beta?’ Today, Tae-rim deeply sympathized with that statement. If he were an Alpha or an Omega, he could have compensated for his lack of awareness with his sense of smell.

For example, even if he didn’t notice with his eyes that his superior in the elevator, which had stopped at 11 p.m., had hardened his face, he would have noticed with his sense of smell that Alpha pheromones were overflowing and boiling behind his back.

Tae-rim straightened his back and sighed silently. Only the marks on his cheeks revealed the pressure applied to his molars.

Forcing himself to hide his expression, Tae-rim said,

“Say hello.”

“Yes?”

“…This is Kang Hae-ah, the youngest son of Hanseong Group and a writer. He’s my fiancé.”

At the sudden introduction, Kim Min-soo hurriedly adjusted his glasses. Rubbing his dry eyes and stretching his turtle neck, he finally saw the chestnut-brown crown of Hae-ah’s head, which had been hidden behind Tae-rim’s massive shoulders. Soon, Kang Hae-ah revealed himself, one step at a time. The suit jacket he wore as a top was too big for him, so the shoulder line was protruding and crumpled, and even that was haphazardly buttoned up incorrectly.

“Hello….”

His complexion was flushed as he greeted awkwardly. It was because he knew that his appearance was quite suspicious.

At the appearance of the guest, whom he didn’t even know was there because he was completely hidden behind Tae-rim, Kim Team Leader almost jumped up from his spot.

“H-Heok! Hello? Kang, no, Aagh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there…!”

Hae-ah smiled slightly at the sight. His flustered attitude looked just like a messenger emoticon, and the heart that had been racing as if he had been caught doing something bad calmed down a little.

“You’re the development team leader, right? I’ve heard a lot about you from the CEO.”

Hae-ah gave a formal greeting, and

“It was mostly insults, right? Ehehe….”

The conversation ended with Kim Team Leader’s immediate reply.

“……”

“……”

With his mouth open and a smile on his face, Hae-ah couldn’t continue. Hae-ah’s Korean level was too low to say, ‘No, he said so many good things, that there’s no developer like Team Leader, that you’re a valuable asset to the company, haha hoho.’

Wrapping his arm around his lover’s shoulder, who had turned to ice, the CEO, who had meticulously listed his subordinate’s shortcomings, said,

“We have to go now. Kim Team Leader, why don’t you stop and go home?”

“Yes? Ah, but, but… CEO! The Easter, ah, no, the code I found, what about it?”

“We don’t need that anymore.”

It seemed that even if he was serious about telling him to go home, he didn’t want to go down together. There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation in Tae-rim’s movement as he reached for the elevator’s close button.

In the brief moment when their eyes met, Kim Min-soo saw Cheon Tae-rim’s eyebrows arching smoothly. Then he winked very slightly at Kang Hae-ah, who was standing behind him,

“You don’t have to cling to that anymore, now.”

He made it clear what he wanted to convey.

“Ah, but….”

Kim Team Leader just repeated the same words over and over, but he couldn’t hold on to Tae-rim. The talented but presentation-challenged college student had grown up to become a talented but speech-challenged development team leader.

Leaving Kim Min-soo in the 4th-floor hallway, the elevator doors closed without regret. The numbers on the instrument panel also went down in a row.

Standing blankly in the chilly silence where only the air conditioning was circulating, Kim Min-soo felt a strange sense of loneliness. It was as if a game friend who had maintained a two-person guild system, spent days and nights clearing quests, and won enlightenment had suddenly deleted his character because he wanted to focus on dating.

His heart ached with a deep sense of betrayal, and Kim Min-soo shuddered. Then he turned his body weakly. Looking quietly at the paper in his hand, he snorted ‘hmph’. His angry feet made a thumping sound as he strode towards the shredding room.

However, even after stopping in front of the high-performance shredder that grinds even hard disks into powder, Kim Min-soo couldn’t shred the single sheet of paper in his hand.

“……”

So many memories had been built up during the past two months.

Cheon Tae-rim, the CEO who he thought was a picky and scary person, became the disciple of Kim Min-soo, the development team leader, every evening and learned how to interpret the code. He felt reassured that he had a huge colleague on the nights when he always kept his seat alone and worked overtime bored.

Ah, of course, in the process, he had to write a letter of apology because his arbitrarily twisted spaghetti code was discovered. Also, because that ‘colleague’ was his superior, he couldn’t lie down on his desk and sleep while working overtime, he couldn’t take off his shoes and socks and put his feet on the chair, and he couldn’t yawn and pick his nose. Indeed, Cheon Tae-rim was a picky and scary person.

When he thought about it carefully, he felt half resentful and half relieved.

“Hey! I can solve it myself, what. Does he think that the Easter egg in his program is something that… anyone can enjoy? It’s a hidden item, that’s what it is!”

Drying the corners of his eyes, which had been moist for a moment, in the air conditioning, Kim Min-soo hummed a song. With a lighter step, he returned to his seat. In his hand, singing ‘Min-soo is free’, a piece of paper that needed to be deciphered was crumpled up, and then it landed on the non-contact keyboard.

The paper, covered with alphabets, numbers, and error codes, looked like a letter of apology that someone had pressed and written down one by one.

A man with a natural actor and a lover who is good at lying is usually happy. Until he, or she, notices that he is lying.

In that sense, it was okay to say that Cheon Tae-rim was a man who had shattered the happiness he could have enjoyed while being a fool with his own hands.

His lovely lover, Hae-ah, was as beautiful and upright in his words as he was in his appearance. When asked how he spent the day, he would answer that he was very happy all day long, and when asked if he had any worries or problems, he would say that he was only happy every day these days, so don’t worry.

The problem was that Cheon Tae-rim knew Kang Hae-ah’s true feelings inside and out. Kang Hae-ah couldn’t have been happy on the day he met Im Geon and declared that he would take a break as a writer for a while. It was absurd to say that he was only happy every day, even though he had received five consecutive calls from Kang Il-hae and had been lying down all afternoon feeling depressed.

And yet,

“Tae-rim-ssi tends to see me as too young. My condition is very good these days. So don’t worry.”

The words that came with a smile contained sincere affection in themselves.

If Cheon Tae-rim had been even a little indecisive, he would have been absorbed in wondering if the AOM Test was wrong. Kang Hae-ah was a top-notch actor to the point that he made the creator doubt his creation. The numerical result was clear in itself, and Cheon Tae-rim himself had completed the proof. Nevertheless, Tae-rim sometimes couldn’t figure out Hae-ah’s feelings.

This was even more so because Kang Hae-ah, who had greeted the early summer of his twenty-sixth year, had not yet awakened as an Omega.

These days, Tae-rim wanted his lover to awaken more than ever. His desire for knotting, his anxiety during the rut period, and the question of reproduction were no longer a big problem for him. He simply wanted to know Kang Hae-ah, to recognize his feelings like his own skin, to read his condition as if he were breathing, and to feel all of him completely as his own, so Tae-rim wanted Hae-ah to awaken.

Tae-rim knew early on that Hae-ah was a tenderhearted and fickle person. Tae-rim also knew that he was weak to pain and suffered from violence. Tae-rim knew that he sometimes cried even in his dreams because he was so sad. Hae-ah also knew that Tae-rim loved him even though he knew all his weaknesses.

As his lover, Hae-ah no longer had to pretend to be happy when he was sad. He didn’t have to pretend to be bright when he was depressed. He didn’t have to suppress his anxiety and smile nicely. He didn’t have to hide his pain and pretend to be healthy.

However, just because there was no need didn’t mean that the habits disappeared. Hae-ah’s acting, which had been adorning himself with lies and watching the mood around him for a long time, was his personality in itself. Even after the camera was turned off and out of the director’s sight, the actor easily couldn’t stop acting.

Hae-ah, who was sad when he was sad, depressed when he was depressed, and only smiled with joy when he was happy, had never existed.

Even when he was four years old, if he woke up in the night with a stomach ache, instead of calling or looking for someone, he would sit on the couch in the dark hallway and wait for someone to find him and comfort him.

‘Baby. Why are you sitting here alone?’

In comparison, Cheon Tae-rim was an adult who found the couch where the young master was sitting.

‘Let’s go together. Let’s go to my house and live happily together, just the two of us. How about it?’

A couple of kind words while making eye contact were enough for four-year-old Hae-ah to open his heart.

‘Okay….’

Holding the small hand that was touching his stomach with a sullen face and walking together one step at a time was the end of it. It was an abduction that was easy enough to be sad. Cheon Tae-rim, who stroked the small back of his head with his big hand, was an adult. He was an adult who dreamed of escaping the young Hae-ah from the dark house.

Then, when he woke up from his sleep at night, he would somehow make eye contact with the twenty-six-year-old Kang Hae-ah, who had woken up from the same dream as him.

“I, I had a dream… a strange dream….”

“Really? I had a very good dream.”

They had long nights. They had sincerity that they shared until the sun rose. There were masks that were slowly peeled off, one layer at a time.

Hae-ah’s growth resembled the metamorphosis of an insect. The only difference was that he was very slow and careful.

Tae-rim felt impatient every day or two as the love inside him deepened. It had already been three months since they started dating. It had been two months and 20 days since they exchanged engagement rings. Just as he had proposed ten days after they met, the two men’s affection and love for each other were truly like fire.

Recently, they had entered into a de facto marriage. It was a cohabitation that had started as if by agreement since the day they adopted Cheon Do-jin, a good dog with a plump butt and a tail curled up over his back. In the morning, they woke up in the same bed, and in the evening, they held hands and whispered about the future, showered together five times a week, and ate French-style dinners every Friday night.

The cohabitation of Cheon Tae-rim, the workaholic CEO who was crazy about his work, and Kang Hae-ah, the Western painter with a free spirit, boasted a perfect balance. It was thanks to Hae-ah accepting Tae-rim’s cautious request to take a break from his artistic activities for a year.

Instead, Hae-ah put a little more effort into finishing the interior of the house. He brought in lush flowerpots on the wide-open terrace, and started participating in puppy classes for Cheon Do-jin’s happy life. When he was bored, he went to writer’s meetings, went to invited fashion shows, read poetry in the morning and evening, and wrote short stories in Korean.

Tae-rim was also taking time to reorganize before a full-scale business expansion. For two people who were blindly and passionately workaholics in their respective fields, the best time to get married was probably never going to come in their entire lives.

However, all the ceremonies that had been scheduled for them were canceled with a penalty for breach of contract.

‘I want to take a little more time… and proceed step by step. Won’t you wait for me just a little longer?’

Hae-ah had said that. It was the day he suddenly disappeared to the first-floor studio in the middle of the night, startling people. When he was led back to the bedroom by Tae-rim’s hand, Hae-ah’s eyes were filled with sadness and his feet were filled with coldness.

Tae-rim couldn’t possibly refuse the plea whispered with tears in his eyelashes.

‘…Okay, Hae-ah. Do as you wish.’

Tae-rim didn’t know when he answered that. That Cheon Tae-rim was not as patient as he thought. That he would become a terrible puppy who was terribly excited and terribly anxious, giving meaning to every expression, tone, inner thought, and sigh of Kang Hae-ah, and that he would spend a spring that was terribly exciting and terribly anxious.

Nevertheless, Cheon Tae-rim was a born businessman. Throughout the days of waiting, which stubbornly filled four months, he didn’t just sit back and do nothing.

While Hae-ah was preparing his mind, he began to clean up his surroundings. So that when the four letters ‘Let’s get married’ fell from his lover’s mouth, he could hold the ceremony that day, so that there would be no trash rolling around in their future from start to finish.

Cheon Tae-rim prided himself on being lucky by nature.

His Father, Cheon Hee-jung, was usually a strong but gentle man to his people, and was a respectable figure both professionally and as a head of household.

Mother Kang Mi-yeon was always gentle yet strong when needed, providing Tae-rim with a healthy childhood through a warm home and clear education. She was the mother who, holding the hand of her son, whose innate temperament was fierce and whose classification as a ‘Dominant Alpha’ was ambiguous, went to and from the hospital, making him realize that his seizures were a disease, not his true nature.

Having grown up without any lack, Tae-rim set his life goal as soon as he became an adult. His Father supported his son’s words that he would become a businessman who would not take shortcuts. With the research institute and business foundation inherited from his grandparents, combined with his innate brainpower and talent for handling people, his startup business set sail from the very beginning.

Everything surrounding Cheon Tae-rim was going smoothly. Anyone who encountered him could almost deduce the ending of the story of Cheon Tae-rim:

‘And so, everyone was happy.’

That was until he faced the marriage partner of fate, whom he would drive to death and protect even in death.

The beautiful youngest son of Han-seong Enterprise, the most successful painter in his twenties in Korea, a new generation icon who rose to celebrity status with his innocent personality and likable appearance, a handsome twenty-six-year-old man with a promised Omega awakening and no scandals… Kang Hae-ah, who appeared on the marriage market, was a very good match for Cheon Tae-rim, the CEO of AOM. So well-suited that it was almost too much. Han-seong said so, the world believed so, and even Cheon Tae-rim himself nodded.

However, Kang Hae-ah, stripped of all the known modifiers, was a man at odds with Cheon Tae-rim. He was a man who had no innate luck, so unfortunate that one could believe he was cursed.

Happy endings in fairy tales clearly end with ‘And so, everyone was happy.’ Happiness did not need a specific reason. However, the ‘so’ in the sad ending of a novel, ‘And so, they were unhappy,’ required a more detailed and tearful explanation.

Reality was no different. Cheon Tae-rim’s innocent and happy family history was simple. If you gathered the happy families of the world, noted only their characteristics, and mixed them up without names, it would be hard to tell which happiness was his.

However, Kang Hae-ah’s unfortunate and tear-stained life was intertwined with so many detailed circumstances that it resembled no one else’s misfortune. Kang Hae-ah was like no one but Kang Hae-ah. Even if you brought any other unfortunate person in the world and put them next to him, they would not be the same.

Kang Hae-ah was not a troublemaker, but everything around Kang Hae-ah was problematic. His Father, Kang Jun-il, who valued only outward appearances and business, had no interest in disciplining his children and only valued their innate qualities.

His Mother, who gave birth to a Dominant Alpha first daughter at the age of twenty-nine, repeatedly gave birth to three children, unable to withstand the old-fashioned pressure to have a son. However, the second was a son but a recessive alpha, the third was a daughter again, and the fourth was not even an Alpha. At the age of thirty-two, she suffered from severe postpartum depression and chose suicide.

In staging such an intense and extreme protest of death, she must have hoped to instill some remorse in her husband and in-laws. However, those she resented had no conscience, and instead, the wound was transferred to the youngest child, whom she had last laid in the cradle and sang a lullaby to just before her death.

Kang Hae-ah, the most beautiful of the four siblings and the one who most resembled his Mother, was left in the world like that. As the son who killed his Mother, and as a discounted product with an Alpha awakening rate of 0 percent and an Omega awakening probability of only 77 percent.

Having grown up being ignored by his unknowing older sisters and moving from nanny to nanny, the only guardian who cared for Kang Hae-ah was his Hyung, Kang Il-hae, who was two years older. However, just as not all guardians take good care of their children, the young guardian Kang Il-hae raised his younger brother through abuse. Four-year-old Kang Hae-ah grew up as a punching bag, running in front of six-year-old Kang Il-hae and offering his cheek whenever he couldn’t contain his anger and stomped his feet.

Even after Kang Jun-il left for Paris as if being chased out, moving according to the scenario he had laid out, the situation surrounding Kang Hae-ah did not improve.

“Hae-ah, you are a very attractive person.”

Whenever someone, deceived by his handsome face and slender figure, approached him with affection or ulterior motives,

“Then, would you like to have a drink with me?”

Kang Hae-ah willingly delved into the arms of others.

Kang Hae-ah grew up into an empty adult, relying on others, being abandoned by others, and sometimes abandoning those others himself.

He had a natural talent and aptitude, quickly learning languages and manipulating colors at will, gaining fame at a young age, but Kang Jun-il did not want Kang Hae-ah flying freely in a world beyond his control.

He called his son to Seoul and made him sit down. Kang Hae-ah mistook the order to become a painter active in Korea as a call to return to his family and rejoiced. Seoul, which he returned to with expectations of shaking off his long loneliness, was, however, a prison with shackles.

“You must have been living well. Your wretched face is beaming.”

When he met Kang Il-hae again, Kang Hae-ah realized a new fact.

“Ah… no….”

That the body remembers the violence that the head has forgotten.

“No, it’s not like that.”

There was a day when he forced a smile and dragged his carrier. Most of the luggage he brought back from Paris to Seoul were canvases of his works. It would have been nice if at least one of them was a person, but he was deeply saddened by the fact that there was no one to stand by his side.

Before long, Kang Hae-ah lost even the slightest self-esteem he had filled from the outside. He became an adult who was dry inside but outwardly happy and joyful.

When a warrior born with a happy ending met a Prince born with a sad ending, one of their worldviews had to be broken. The one who had to be ‘so’ happy and the one who had to be ‘so’ unhappy were inherently an incompatible couple.

Dozens and hundreds of numbers and codes told Tae-rim so. That, so accurate and detailed that it could infringe on the human rights of the participants, and even received a public notice that a comprehensive revision was needed, which made it even more famous and enjoyed a significant promotional effect, a rookie item in the business world with test run reservations full until the year after next, that was the result of the AOM Beta Test system.

In the first test, Cheon Tae-rim’s happy ending worldview was shattered. In vulgar terms, it was completely destroyed. Swept away by Kang Hae-ah’s misfortune and the misdeeds of those closely affecting him, by an evil that was too cruel to be a coincidence and too precious to be called inevitable, Cheon Tae-rim lost the entire foundation of his happy ending.

His family was ruined, and his business was almost entirely caught in the clutches of Han-seong. He even lost his mental health and self-control, and in the end, he lost his memory through self-harm.

In the second test, Kang Hae-ah’s sad ending worldview was broken. He couldn’t completely destroy it, but at least Kang Hae-ah struggled to break free from the shackles and bonds attached to him. As a bug who remembered the results of the first test and a pure and diligent protagonist who didn’t even know he was a bug, he changed himself to avoid the sad ending that was about to come. He abandoned the painting he was proud of as his only possession and wanted to live as Kang Hae-ah, the spouse of Cheon Tae-rim, and no one else.

Holding the test results in his hand, Cheon Tae-rim felt a heavy sense of debt. To be exact, he felt indebted to Kang Hae-ah in the test. He would never be able to shake off that feeling for the rest of his life.

As a businessman, Cheon Tae-rim was a man who knew how to use a calculator when necessary. So, looking at the results of the two tests, he thought that he should not start a project with such a high risk in the first place.

However, on the other hand, Cheon Tae-rim was the kind of person who couldn’t stand living with debt. Therefore, he wanted to change the value of the future, in which he himself had not even tried to resist. The wounded Kang Hae-ah didn’t need to know anything. This time, he wanted to pull the unhappy Prince into his happy ending worldview with his own hands.

And Cheon Tae-rim knew what he had to do in the process. To crush Kang Il-hae. To completely remove him so that he couldn’t even ‘twitch’ and never interfere in Kang Hae-ah’s life again.

Therefore, Tae-rim first requested Han-seong to renegotiate the marriage contract. Chairman Kang Jun-il, who was displeased with the breakdown of the arranged marriage, was pleased that a young and promising CEO was pretending to take care of his Father-in-law and spoke first. And he was careless.

As expected, the meeting, which seemed to be progressing smoothly, did not last two days. The agent sent by Kang Jun-il conveyed a subtle complaint.

“While we are renegotiating the marriage contract, how about reconsidering the terms of the collaborative business?”

This was exactly why Tae-rim didn’t like businessmen. Even the Joseon Dynasty officials didn’t express themselves so indirectly when arguing. Thinking that they didn’t want to be caught, but they were eager to catch others, Tae-rim slightly adjusted his posture.

“Are you saying that there is a problem with us designating the person in charge of collaboration in our business?”

Tae-rim said, crossing his arms and stroking his chin. It was Han-seong’s lawyer who opened his mouth at the sudden direct statement.

However, it was Cheon Tae-rim who spoke up again first.

“That’s strange. In the first place, the vice president had already laid the foundation for the work, so wouldn’t it be natural for us to be dissatisfied if the representative was replaced by a managing director? To proceed with the work flexibly, the person in charge should not be changed.”

Although he didn’t bother to mention names, there was no one who didn’t know that he was weighing Kang Hae-in and Kang Il-hae.

It was not uncommon for Kang Il-hae to take over the work that Kang Hae-in had started. However, no one in any business had ever turned away Managing Director Kang Il-hae, who appeared as the ‘chief person in charge from now on.’ This was because there was no need to arbitrarily point out that Chairman Kang Jun-il was pushing his son.

However, Cheon Tae-rim was different. Not only did he send Kang Il-hae back without any gain, but he also openly expressed his dissatisfaction in front of Chairman Kang’s agent, mentioning the siblings’ titles.

Even though he was the CEO of a business with a guaranteed smooth path, Cheon Tae-rim’s reputation could not match that of Han-seong’s Chairman Kang Jun-il. Therefore, the guests who filled the CEO’s office immediately closed their mouths,

“We will visit you again after discussion.”

They left, leaving behind a greeting that was full of displeasure.

Chairman Kang Jun-il was not a person who would get upset at the rude remarks of a young CEO. He was a businessman to the bone, with a snake-like nature, and he smiled as soon as he heard the story from his agent. He only thought that if he added a few words to this matter, he could change the terms of the marriage contract more favorably.

After quickly finishing his calculations, Kang Jun-il sent a contract with new conditions added, containing a slightly regrettable message. And he received a very unexpected reply.

‘In order to maintain trust between each other, I ask that you take special care to ensure that the information shown to Chairman Kang is not leaked to the outside.’

The documents that Cheon Tae-rim had his secretary deliver were top-secret files that included some of the Beta Test results. As a result, Kang Jun-il tasted an experience that no one could have. Seeing in a quantified graph what results were produced by the combination of his vague desire for the political world and his son’s very specific inferiority complex was indeed an unpleasant and shocking experience beyond comparison.

In addition, Cheon Tae-rim offered a new deal. He proposed inserting a clause into the marriage contract that would promise to prohibit Kang Il-hae from approaching Kang Hae-ah, without the unnecessary process of submitting the data to the court and without causing any embarrassment between them. Cheon Tae-rim knew that it was essentially a threat, and Kang Jun-il understood it as well.

Kang Jun-il laughed in vain when he realized that Cheon Tae-rim’s slip of the tongue, which he had grabbed thinking it was his trump card, was a trap. Then he turned cold.

Kang Hae-ah, who was more obedient to his Father than any of the four siblings, suddenly declared that he would live as a jobless person for a year. He had left it alone, thinking it was just a temporary whim due to falling in love, but Cheon Tae-rim was behind it, and there were more detailed test results than he had expected.

After a brief consideration, Kang Jun-il sided with Cheon Tae-rim. Objectively, Kang Jun-il was the one who had more to lose, as he had taken the lead in changing the terms of the contract. As others said, Han-seong’s Chairman Kang had a reputation that young CEO Cheon Tae-rim could not match. He should never lose that. The same was true for his good son, Kang Hae-ah, who had many unfulfilled uses.

Cheon Tae-rim was not surprised by the visit of the lawyers and agents he was seeing for the first time. Unlike before, they processed the work in a businesslike manner, examining the terms of the contract.

Was he not a snake wearing a human mask? Tae-rim clicked his tongue, thinking of Kang Jun-il. Kang Jun-il didn’t care about the relationship between his children. The only important thing was that nothing should negatively affect his business. So, he nodded to the extreme clause that his first son, Kang Il-hae, could not approach his youngest son, Kang Hae-ah, without the consent of Cheon Tae-rim, who was still only a future son-in-law.

On the day the contract was finally concluded, Cheon Tae-rim met Kang Jun-il for the first time in a long time. As they lightly shook hands and asked about each other’s well-being, Kang Jun-il said this.

“Having lived in this world, I’ve learned that things never go according to plan.”

Cheon Tae-rim smiled.

“The formulas are different. If you put in the same numbers, you get the same answer. The only problem is who solves it on what day and at what time.”

It was a long handshake.

Ever since he started bringing Kang Hae-ah into his world, a black eye had always been rolling around in Tae-rim’s heart. Quickly reading the situation and the people, he thought busily. He would never take the damn misfortunes as his and his lover’s.

‘Hae-ah will be happy when he hears this story.’

On the night he returned home with the contract containing the clauses only for ‘us,’ he met Kang Hae-ah with a gloomy face.

“Why did you go this far?”

Hae-ah said, widening his surprised eyes. The person who came out with swollen cheeks until the day of the blind date, the person who made a ‘ouch’ sound when he first kissed and wrapped his arms around his waist, the person who was about to throw away a scarf with blood stains on it while cleaning the dressing room and made a tearful face when he was caught, said so.

“…I think it’s good. I’m really happy that Tae-rim-ssi cares about me…. But I’m worried that my personal affairs will interfere with Tae-rim-ssi’s work…. Our brothers are adults now, so if we talk it out….”

Tae-rim was very puzzled by the words he muttered with a complex expression. And on the other hand, he was furious. He couldn’t understand Hae-ah’s attitude of acting as if he didn’t care. Even though he knew what kind of person Kang Hae-ah was, he wanted to nag him, ‘Why are you really like this’ at times like this.

“To use the word ‘adult now,’ you’re twenty-six and twenty-eight years old.”Tae-rim said, suppressing his desire to reproach.”

“…Yes?”

“‘Adult now’ is a word used for kids in their twenties to twenty-two.

Kang Il-hae had not changed even at the age of twenty-eight, and Kang Hae-ah was a victim even in the spring of his twenty-sixth year. The wrong hierarchy and violence between the brothers had already become too old and had solidified into a shackle that could not be easily broken without outside help.

Hae-ah was not stupid enough not to know that he was pointing that out. Tae-rim quietly looked at his brown eyes, which were lost in thought. After a moment of silence, Hae-ah smiled bitterly.

“I don’t know. I’m still not good at Korean.”

The excuse he often made was used again today.

At dinner that night, both of them were quiet. Hae-ah was busy watching Tae-rim’s mood, and Tae-rim was busy organizing his complicated mind and boiling heart.

Feeling the brown eyes that were glancing at him, Tae-rim let out a long, silent sigh. Many of the words of his lover, Kang Hae-ah, were completely different from what he had guessed. At first, that’s why he liked Kang Hae-ah. He thought it was fun to have a lover who gave him dozens of mysteries even on a single date.

Since starting to date, Hae-ah had always shown him a happy face. He was the first to say he liked him, and he was always the one to take his hand when they walked. The first kiss, too… Tae-rim would never forget Hae-ah’s reddened cheeks as he mustered the courage to approach him.

And yet, Hae-ah kept postponing their relationship. This was the case with marriage, and it was the same with sex.

He was a lover who would only kiss, caress, touch his chest, and rub his whole body. It was difficult to dismiss it as simply a matter of insertive sex due to the size of his genitals. It was hard to believe that Hae-ah wouldn’t be disappointed with intercourse that only involved spreading pheromones every day.

Now, Cheon Tae-rim didn’t find his lover, Kang Hae-ah, interesting anymore. Now, Cheon Tae-rim didn’t easily like Kang Hae-ah. Cheon Tae-rim loved Kang Hae-ah. In a very difficult way.

Reaching out, Tae-rim grasped Hae-ah’s right hand. It was the moment Hae-ah’s eyes sparkled, as he had been busy looking around.

“I love you.”

Tae-rim confessed.

“…….”

But there was no reply.

At the sudden confession, Hae-ah’s eyes slightly reddened, then he lowered his head, gripped the hand he was holding tightly, and then just smiled silently. He didn’t return the words, not the words of love. He didn’t answer, only glossing over it with a fake smile.

In the awkward and stifling silence, Hae-ah was the first to get up. He walked around the table and approached Tae-rim. Facing the man sitting in the chair, he slowly lowered his upper body and kissed him on his forehead, both cheeks, and lips.

As he received the tender kisses, Tae-rim felt a pang in his heart.

‘What’s the problem? Where did I go wrong…’

They say you know a person by looking into their eyes. Hae-ah was a man with the easiest eyes to read. His brown eyes held Tae-rim with a warmth that was more tender than anyone else in the world. No matter when, where, or how he turned his head, Hae-ah’s eyes were always on Tae-rim.

Hae-ah would smile when Tae-rim smiled, and he would furrow his brow as if it were his own problem when he was deep in thought. Occasionally, he would even call out ‘Tae-rim-ssi’ in his sleep. Tae-rim already knew that he loved him, even if he couldn’t say it.

If ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ had an owner, there would be no need to worry about calculating what state the cat was in inside the box. The cat’s owner would have already smashed the box to check on his cat with his own eyes and hold it in his arms.

That was humanity. They endlessly yearned to prove the invisible entity, but in the end, rather than relying on the probabilities that equations told them, they used their own hands to tear open the box. That’s how they flew in the sky, launched spaceships, and set foot on the moon.

Cheon Tae-rim also had a cat in a box. His one and only cat, the object of eternal inquiry, was Kang Hae-ah. Kang Hae-ah, who clung to him as if he would do anything for him, yet refused to have sex. Kang Hae-ah, whose eyes welled up at the words of love, yet didn’t return the answer.

‘What are you thinking right now?’

The moment he thought he knew, Kang Hae-ah had a strange look on his face….

‘What do those eyes, that smile, that gesture mean?’

In front of Cheon Tae-rim, who held a cheat sheet in his hand, Kang Hae-ah was a new application problem of equations.