By Zephyria 
Cha Jeong-won scanned the elevator interior with his usual expressionless face.
He looked at Haon. That was all.
“Do you live here?”
Was it because he was startled? Though his mind told him to greet him calmly, Haon’s mouth blurted out something else first.
“What a coincidence. I live here too.”
This was sincere. He had no idea Cha Jeong-won lived in the same building.
Cha Jeong-won frowned as if something displeased him.
“Aren’t you getting on? Then I’ll close the door.”
Haon subtly pressed the close button. Just as the doors were closing, a hand suddenly shot in from outside and grabbed the door with a thud. The sensor reacted and the doors opened again.
Cha Jeong-won stepped into the elevator. Then he stood close to the door and turned his body.
Soon the doors closed and it began descending directly.
Haon pressed himself against the corner of the elevator as if trying to become part of the wallpaper. With two people inside, the space felt much narrower.
“I warned you, didn’t I?”
“Huh?”
Haon reflexively raised his head.
“Wriggling around won’t change anything.”
Cha Jeong-won said flatly, his gaze fixed straight ahead. That tone felt even colder.
“When did I wriggle around?”
A sense of injustice sprang up on its own.
He was the one who had overturned his entire routine trying to avoid him. And now he’s being accused of wriggling around?
“The library. The cafeteria. The lecture hall. The elevator.”
He pointed them out one by one.
“You followed me everywhere I went. Are you pretending that’s a coincidence? I even saw you flustered and rushing around.”
His gaze, as he continued speaking, landed on Haon’s finger. So he saw him get hurt too.
“I guess throwing your body around is your hobby. It’s very uncomfortable to watch.”
A very faint hint of laughter mixed into the end of his words. It was closer to a sneer.
“That’s not it…….”
Haon muttered, feeling frustrated.
That was all because he was trying to avoid him and things got tangled up, it really was just a coincidence.
“Are you going to pretend you’re fine again?”
“I did get hurt.”
“That’s because you moved hastily.”
Haon’s mouth opened, trying to somehow shed this misunderstanding.
Talking to him was infuriating. Was he being scolded right now?
“Senior, please listen to me carefully, please!”
Haon tried to calm his rising agitation and explain somehow.
Then the floor trembled slightly.
The familiar scent of Cha Jeong-won’s pheromones slowly spread within the narrow space.
‘Ah, here we go again.’
Even though he tried to endure by looking only at the floor, his body wouldn’t listen. Trying to take shallow breaths only made him dizzier.
“Senior, it’s all a misunderstanding. I didn’t follow you around, and before that, could you please… your pheromones…”
That’s when it happened.
With a short vibration, the elevator thudded to a stop. Both of them raised their heads simultaneously.
The floor indicator light blinked between 5 and 4.
“…No way.”
Haon muttered without realizing it.
A creaking sound came from above.
The ceiling light was fine. Instead, soon a beep, beep warning-like sound rang out.
“It stopped.”
Cha Jeong-won said calmly. The fact that he spoke so nonchalantly was even scarier.
“I-It’ll be fine, right? It’ll start moving again soon.”
Unlike Cha Jeong-won, Haon was experiencing this situation for the first time. Haon stretched his finger toward the emergency bell.
While hesitating whether to press it or not, thump, the elevator shook again.
This time, Haon also nearly lost his balance and slipped.
He instinctively reached out his hand, but what he grabbed wasn’t the handrail attached to the elevator wall, but Cha Jeong-won’s shirt.
“Ah!”
Haon fell forward like that. Something hard and soft touched his face.
“Sorry, I’m sorr…”
Haon’s words trailed off.
Right in front of him, their breaths mingled.
What filled Haon’s vision was Cha Jeong-won’s neck and jawline. His hand, raised in a fluster, was pressing against Cha Jeong-won’s chest.
“If you’re going to grab something, grab the wall. Don’t cling to me.”
A heavily falling voice. Hearing it up close, even its temperature seemed lower.
“The elevator pushed me first.”
It was such a dazed excuse that he didn’t even know what he was saying.
Cha Jeong-won looked down at him for a moment, then let out a very faint sigh.
“Just press the emergency bell.”
As if his sigh was a signal, his body jolted. Haon barely gathered his wits and firmly pressed the emergency bell.
A short while later, a woman’s voice mixed with a mechanical sound came from the speaker.
[Yes, what’s the matter?]
“Um, excuse me. The elevator… it stopped in the middle.”
His voice was about half a tone higher than usual.
Glancing back, Haon muttered to himself internally.
Trapped with Cha Jeong-won, just the two of them… Haon’s face turned pale white.
‘Am I being swept up in Cha Jeong-won’s misfortune now, or did I catch it?’
He wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t the time to dwell on that, so he forcibly suppressed the thought.
[Yes, we’re checking now. Please wait a moment.]
Soon the speaker fell silent.
Now all that was left was to wait. The inside of the elevator was strangely quiet.
“To continue what we were talking about… I really didn’t do it.”
There was nothing else he could do. Haon steeled himself and spoke up.
“I really didn’t follow you around, Senior. It’s actually closer to the opposite. I was trying to avoid you.”
“Avoid?”
At Cha Jeong-won’s questioning echo, Haon bit his lip. Rambling on like this, he’d ended up saying something he shouldn’t have without realizing it.
“So… because I was afraid I might pounce on you?”
The words came out loudly as he blurted them out while racking his brain.
Cha Jeong-won looked at Haon with a gaze that seemed to ask how far he would go.
“It’s really not like that, but since you see me as an Omega who just pounces on people…”
Then the ceiling flickered once, the lights went off and came back on.
They flickered for a moment, as if it might just be temporary, then went off completely, plunging everything into a darkness where nothing could be seen.
“……”
“……”
Only the sound of breathing filled the narrow space.
“Now the lights are out too.”
Haon muttered, looking around at the pitch-black surroundings. This was exactly like before playing ghost games with his siblings at night after turning off the lights.
Of all times, for this to happen while he was with Cha Jeong-won. He couldn’t exactly suggest they play ghost games to him. He didn’t know if it was even a mood to keep talking in the dark. It was truly troublesome.
If it were Cha Jeong-won, he’d probably be blaming his misfortune by now, so Haon didn’t particularly want to add his own two cents.
In the darkness, he heard Cha Jeong-won exhale a long breath.
A short, trembling breath. A breath that sounded agitated.
…Huh?
“Senior, are you okay?”
Haon asked cautiously.
There was no answer. Instead, the sound of fabric rustling and a low breath briefly leaked out.
“…Tch.”
Followed by the sound of a tongue click.
‘Did he bump into something somewhere?’
At first, he simply thought that.
Narrow space, stifling air, Alpha’s pheromones.
Then, soon, the contents of the original work came to mind.
The accident that happened to Cha Jeong-won. And because of it, how he particularly hated dark, enclosed places.
＊ ＊ ＊
It was a car accident.
The overturned car interior was like a space beyond night, as if black ink had been splattered about.
Cha Jeong-won quietly checked each of his senses one by one. The dust that came in through the shattered windshield, the acrid smell. Unpleasant sensations tangled together, blocking his nose and throat simultaneously.
‘Again.’
That thought was the first to arise in his mind.
Not once, not twice. Throughout his life, even when all sorts of things got tangled up, he had somehow endured.
Only after finding himself in an overturned car, hanging upside down, barely breathing, did he finally admit it.
‘This time it’s real.’
The seatbelt tightened around Cha Jeong-won’s shoulders and chest. Even though he knew he had to undo it, his hand wouldn’t move.
It felt like the car body would creak if he moved his hand just a little, and he imagined the mass of metal that would come crashing down from above. The sound of a glass shard, precariously clinging, falling grazed his ear.
The floor that had been the ceiling loomed right before his eyes, and at the edge of his red-blurred vision, the deployed airbag swelled like a white balloon before slowly deflating.
“Ha, haa…”
Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult.
He couldn’t even gauge what hurt. His whole body felt lumped together, as if pain had coalesced into a single mass, aching all over.
‘Isn’t it funny, Cha Jeong-won.’
That self-deprecation surfaced before the fact that an accident had occurred. A joke he would have laughed off normally couldn’t even leave his lips here.
Every time he inhaled, it hurt as if being stabbed, and the air itself felt like it was gradually decreasing.
‘Because of misfortune, I fall. Because of misfortune, I get hurt. Because of misfortune, people leave too.’
It felt like someone in his head was calmly reciting it, as if organizing it. It seemed only the last line remained.
‘Because of misfortune… I die.’
He took one big gulp of air and coughed it back out.
Something cold trickled down from around his knee. A liquid, whether blood or something else, dripped down beside his face.
Fear rose from within, climbing up his throat, but no proper sound came out.
He didn’t even think that help would come.
This dark, narrow space.
What surrounded him was only iron, glass, smoke, and a weight that felt like all the misfortune he had experienced so far had settled upon him at once.
‘Still…’
Even in that moment, a very small regret remained.
He had thought a proper chance would come at least once.
He had thought his luck would turn at least once.