DD 4.4 Confession

■ Lukewarm Water ■

The operational status report meeting was one of the tasks he wanted to avoid the most. A small to medium-sized general hospital with about 150 beds didn’t have many incidents that could significantly disrupt operations. About ten years ago, it had been upgraded to a general hospital after meeting the minimum requirements, but the obstetrics and gynecology department, which had built trust since his maternal great-grandfather’s generation, remained the hospital’s primary source of income.

Although it was equipped with an operating room, emergency room, and funeral hall, patients requiring critical, life-or-death surgeries rarely came in. Furthermore, the hospital’s policy was to transfer patients about whom they lacked certainty to larger hospitals, ensuring stable operations without complex issues arising.

While not as intense as at larger general hospitals, political factions had formed within the institution to some extent, but he, as the son of the director and deputy director, could remain moderately detached from them.

His parents, who would have wanted nothing more if their troublesome second son would just behave, had accommodated his demands – never working more than 35 hours a week, and not taking on dangerous surgeries – and hired him.

Becoming a doctor in the first place was not his own intention. He and his parents had reached an agreement where he would be satisfied with obtaining an internal medicine specialist title, opening a clinic within the family hospital where his other siblings also held positions, and coming to work.

Minimal responsibility and maximum freedom.

It was the life he had wanted, and he had no complaints, yet as he passed thirty, he began to feel that something was missing. Not having complaints did not equate to satisfaction, and he possessed enough cultivation to occasionally feel a sense of responsibility towards himself regarding humanity and the meaning of a finite life. Whether he wanted to or not.

Immediately after the meeting, as the department heads started discussing a golf tour in Chiang Mai, Thailand, he used an excuse about an appointment and left the room first.

He felt he should quickly take off his gown and go find someone for a late-night encounter after a long time. His dissatisfaction wasn’t confined solely to sexual matters, but he felt he needed to resolve at least what could be resolved.

“Doctor, there’s a visitor waiting for you inside.”

A nurse from the internal medicine desk opposite his clinic called out to him urgently, stopping him as he reached for the doorknob.

“A visitor?”

“Your friend who runs the gallery.”

“Him?”

As if he had heard that an enemy had arrived, he raised his voice and scowled. The nurse’s expression darkened at his reaction.

“I was sure it was your friend, so I told him to wait… Did I do something wrong?”

He held up a file and shook his head.

“Ah, no. No, you didn’t. Something comes to mind. Please mark me as having left for the day. Don’t worry about me leaving and continue with your work.”

With a lighter expression, now tinged with curiosity, he entered his clinic. A large presence, incongruous with the cozy clinic of about twenty square meters, stood with its back to him by the window.

“Anyone would think it was your room?”

“……”

The tall man, clad in a navy Italian linen suit that emphasized his broad shoulders and relatively sleek waistline, stood motionless, his hands shoved into his pant pockets.

“What urgent matter brought you all the way to the hospital? Huh? Weren’t you too engrossed in newlywed bliss to keep your wits about you?”

He tossed a file onto his desk, took off his gown, and grinned at the man’s back.

Although they had met outside together a couple of times and he had briefly stopped by, this was likely the first time the man had come to the hospital to see him. Come to think of it, it was impressive that the nurse remembered him as an acquaintance after only seeing him briefly a couple of times… he almost thought that, but in reality, his appearance was hard to forget even if you only saw him in passing once.

In any case, he found himself grinning with amusement at what could have possibly made this solid man so desperate that he had to disregard the usual procedure of making contact and arranging an appointment. “What is it, react if I poke you.”

The man’s back, which had remained unmoving even after he put his gown into the built-in cabinet on one wall, finally spoke.

“You…”

“……”

“Have you ever been bound by an Omega as an Alpha?”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t have. Because you’ve never had a sustained relationship with an Omega.”

The man’s voice wasn’t accusatory. It was dry, like someone searching for hope in a place where it couldn’t be found. This was not the direction he had anticipated for the man’s urgent visit.

“What are you talking about? Is this the main point, the introduction, what?”

He crossed his arms, leaning one shoulder against the cabinet, and furrowed his brow. The man, without any particular sentimentality, persistently fixed his gaze on the ordinary view outside the window.

“An experience where the other party’s pheromones overwhelmingly take precedence over your judgment, choices, or will… No matter how much you struggle, you cannot remain yourself, and you only exist and act as that Omega’s Alpha… Have you been exposed to such an experience…?”

As soon as the man finished speaking, he scowled fiercely and walked over, grabbing the man’s solid shoulder.

“Are you tired of Lee Hyun already?”

The man’s face, as they met eyes, held an expression different from what he knew, but he wasn’t willing to take that into consideration.

“Weren’t you serious? Saying it was dangerous was just a good excuse, I thought you were so smitten with Lee Hyun that you wanted to keep her at your house and dote on her… What, the great Lau Wikun is caught by some Omega, talking about pheromones? You crazy…”

The man’s eyes twisted with contempt towards him. His contorted lips extinguished his excitement.

“It’s about Seo Yi-hyun.”

He loosened his grip on the man’s shoulder and narrowed his eyes.

“What do you mean by that?”

The man grabbed his wrist, pulling his hand off his shoulder, and spoke rapidly.

“It’s not a short story. Let’s talk at your place.”

His voice was a condensed mix of impatience and fatigue, as if he lacked the energy or time for a drawn-out exchange. The man didn’t even bother to check if he had any prior engagements. The atmosphere suggested this was something that had to take precedence over any prior commitment.

They headed to his house in their respective cars. He mulled over the man’s words throughout the drive, but he couldn’t even begin to guess what he would hear upon arriving home.

His prediction that the man’s situation, compelling him to show up at the hospital without notice, would likely involve nothing but matters related to Yi-hyun recently was accurate, but the story the man had begun in the clinic was entirely a riddle.

Had he ever been bound by an Omega as an Alpha?

It was a question he never thought he would hear from a man who despised the instincts of Alphas and Omegas regarding reproduction with cold disdain, a man whose pheromone control was nearly perfect. Especially if the question was related to Seo Yi-hyun, a Beta.

Above all, the man’s unusually serious demeanor, something he had never seen before, weighed on him. He wasn’t the type to put on a grave face over trivial matters. His second prediction, that he would be preoccupied with sweet, cloying worries unbefitting him, having fallen for someone ten years his junior, had been a complete miss.

The man had arrived first. As he rounded the corner after exiting the elevator, the man stood by the wall next to the entrance, leaning there blankly like a specter. Though clearly sober, he looked disheveled as if drunk, and he wasn’t in the mood for his usual jokes. Tsk, he clicked his tongue and entered the password to open the door.

This was the second time the man had visited since he moved in this spring. They could be considered the closest of friends, yet the man rarely came to his house.

He had the man sit at the dining table in front of the stark, model-home-like kitchen, which showed almost no signs of habitation or daily life. He asked if he wanted a drink, and the man nodded, then asked if he could smoke.

He looked like he needed a strong drink, so he brought out whiskey and ice. The man, who showed little reaction to alcohol, took a plate to use as an ashtray and, as if he had been waiting, pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it.

Half the cigarette burned down, and half of the whiskey poured into the on-the-rocks glasses was emptied, yet the man remained silent.

“Speak, you damn fool. Did you kill someone?”

Frustrated, he spoke first. The man let out a dry chuckle and slowly clenched and unclenched the hand he had placed limply on the table. It sounded like a laugh that suggested it might not be much different from killing someone, so he tightened his grip on his whiskey glass.

“Pheromones, or things like that.”

His voice sounded like only the framework of his inner self remained, all human emotions burned away.

“It felt like proof of being an underdeveloped beast… I disliked it from the moment my first manifestation began and I felt its effects. It was shameful and humiliating that my body wasn’t under my control… that I was swayed by actions occurring within my body.”

He, too, remembered the man from his youth. The man had been exceptional. Coming from a family with wealth, prestige, and lineage that rivaled anyone among the Alpha and Omega children at H.M.I.S., where the children of the wealthiest families in the East gathered, and having been assessed with a more than 90 percent chance of developing into a Golden Alpha upon manifestation, the man had no reason to feel inferior about himself as an Alpha. Yet, he was desperately striving to become a Golden Alpha for entirely different reasons than his peers.

Some factions had viewed him with suspicion, calling him someone who disdained Alphas and Omegas who weren’t Golden, but at the time, the man paid no mind to the opinions of his insignificant peers.

If anything, the man wasn’t trying to become a Golden Alpha; he simply wanted to escape the dominion of pheromones. He was one of the few friends from his school days who understood him to that extent.

“The attraction between Alphas and Omegas, the Alpha’s instinct to protect and possess an Omega… It was like living as a beast prioritizing reproduction… Everything related to pheromones was dreadful.”

There was a time when he, too, couldn’t understand the man who tried so hard to be perfect against pheromones. Unless one couldn’t afford the cost of high-grade suppressants, being born an Alpha or Omega, especially one with the potential of a Golden, was actually an advantageous condition.

He had often shaken his head, thinking he lived a tiring life, wondering why the man, positioned at the apex as an Alpha, rejected his given environment so vehemently, unless he was in a disadvantageous position.

However, perhaps deep down, he had felt a sense of inferiority towards the man’s attitude. He himself had never possessed that level of fervor for anything. He had never wanted anything that much, never hated anything that much, never exerted his abilities to their maximum.

He had been assessed with a 40 percent chance of developing into a Golden Alpha, a figure that offered considerable potential depending on effort, but he had never felt the necessity to go to such lengths.

Ultimately, he now remained in an ambiguous state, capable of slight pheromone control, neither Golden nor someone who had to rely entirely on suppressants, a regular Alpha.

There were likely various reasons behind his habit of compromising at a moderate level. He could guess them. However, at this age, he couldn’t whine about his circumstances. He also lacked the motivation and energy to scrutinize himself from the root.

While calling the man’s struggle against pheromones an unnecessary resistance, as if shouldering a solemn duty, he might have actually held in high regard that intensity, which contrasted with his own life. Perhaps so.

“The attraction, interest, and sexual desire evoked by pheromones… I thought it was all disgusting and unpleasant, and in reality, I never found anyone’s pheromones seductive, but…”

The man, who had been speaking slowly, looking at a spot on the table, suddenly widened his eyes as if he had discovered something astonishing on the plain white surface and shook his head.

“In the end, I was just an Alpha too. At least… to one person.”

The man raised his head to look at him, and in his tired face, only his blue eyes glinted with animalistic hunger. It was a radiance that made his previous listless, as if he had lost everything, appearance seem like a lie.

“Explain it so I can understand. What does that have to do with Yi-hyun?”

As if not hearing him, the man took out a new cigarette and lit it.

After taking a deep drag, his cheeks hollowing, the man exhaled a long plume of smoke and asked.

“……Have you ever heard of a Ghost?”

Through the cigarette smoke, the man’s eyes had changed color, appearing empty. Unlike the stronger blue light from moments ago, this gaze, emphasized by a gray melancholy, struck him as truly ghost-like, and he waited for the main point that was about to begin.

Unbelievable stories followed.

A friend he had grown up with for a long time sat in his home, transformed into a stranger. But before he could even fully accept his friend’s new identity, the shock of the man’s actions completely overshadowed the initial surprise.

“You’re joking, right?”

The shock was so profound that it felt unreal, yet his voice, asking the question, held no trace of doubt. It was almost cheerful. However, the man’s firm expression indicated he was not joking.

“Ghost? Hey… aren’t you going too far? What era is this Ghost from? It’s something that’s barely covered in three lines on Wikipedia, something that’s dried up, or rather, something that couldn’t even be verified if it truly existed in the past, only appearing in oral traditions of European royalty…. There aren’t many Alphas or Omegas who even know the term Ghost anymore. Lau Wikun, you don’t need to bring up such legends; you’re special enough as it is.”

“……”

The man’s eyes, gazing at him from across the table, showed no agitation. He knew. He knew this wasn’t the kind of person to make up such stories.

“If everything you just said is true and not a joke… then you’re completely insane.”

His tone shifted as he spat out the words coldly. He poured whiskey into a glass without ice, downed it as if drinking cold water, and slammed it onto the table with a loud noise, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Fine, you’re the Ghost. Like releasing the safety on a pistol and pulling the trigger, let’s assume you can induce a chemical reaction during knotting through trained control to turn a Beta into an Omega. Since the mechanism of Alpha-Omega pheromone action isn’t scientifically explained anyway, arguing that such a mutation is impossible would also be absurd.”

The more he spoke, the colder his head became, but separately, anger surged within him. He didn’t have the leisure to question whether he had the right to be angry at the person before him.

“But you said you were trained. You went to America for two years when you were young for that, right? Why did you release that safety on Yi-hyun?”

As he pressed on with a sneer, an immediate answer followed.

“I never failed. Not once, until now. With anyone. Without even reaching the Changing, I never failed to control knotting. Since Changing can only be induced during knotting, there was no risk of attempting Changing when not knotting.”

“You couldn’t control knotting or Changing… with Seo Yi-hyun!”

He shouted, nervously running his hands through his hair.

At times like this, he wished he knew how to smoke. While he did all sorts of forbidden things as a child, for some reason, he had never touched cigarettes, but there were times in life when he wanted to numb himself, defile himself, and harm himself with a strong cigarette, as potent as strong liquor.

“I thought it was a mistake. That something had gone wrong for a moment.”

The man spoke as if making an excuse, avoiding his gaze, and he slammed his fist on the table, raising his voice.

“Are you saying you slept with them two, three more times to confirm that? Damn it, knowing that it might be possible to Changing or whatever it is?”

The man’s gaze, which had been fixed on a spot on the table, turned sharply towards him.

“Do you think I would sleep with someone just for the reason of confirming that? I don’t have that much curiosity about others or pheromones.”

“Until now, I thought I understood your patterns to some extent, even if not your true nature, but hearing your story today, I feel like I don’t know who you are at all.”

“…….”

There, the man closed his mouth and downed his drink. His face showed he conceded there was no room for excuses. But he wished the man would offer an excuse, at least enough to satisfy him, or at least enough to calm his anger.

As if he couldn’t continue the conversation without it, the man lit a new cigarette and then opened his mouth in a slightly calmer tone than before.

“When we first met. Back then, it was just a strange feeling. It wasn’t precise enough to be sure it was Pheromone. I didn’t think deeply about it then, but could he be a Golden Omega suppressing his Pheromones… Looking back, that wasn’t it either. At some point, it wasn’t just a strange feeling anymore, but he started emitting actual Pheromones. Moreover… not only was he unaware of his own emitted Pheromones, but he also clearly sensed my emitted Pheromones without being conscious that they were Pheromones at all.”

“You emitted Pheromones? You?”

“…….”

The more he listened to the story, the more he felt himself being driven into confusion. The man withheld his answer. Instead, as if suddenly realizing he had stopped smoking while telling the story, he brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. Then, he said as if collapsing.

“Yes, several times.”

The cigarette in his hand, which he was rubbing into his forehead and face as if crushing them, was precariously close to setting his hair ablaze.

After briefly rummaging through his memories to organize them, he shook his head firmly.

“No, no, this doesn’t make sense. Lee Hyun didn’t sense my Pheromones at all.”

“…….”

The man’s fierce eyes questioned his words, but he had no intention of being intimidated.

“Why? Did you think you were the only one who could emit Pheromones to Seo Yi-hyun? You’re not the only Alpha in the world.”

He brought the glass to his lips, recalling the evening he met Lee Hyun alone at the rooftop bar and answered Lee Hyun’s questions about Alphas and Omegas, and Pheromones.

A belated thought followed, that perhaps Lee Hyun had felt an unusual aura in his relationship with the man and asked those questions then. At the time, he had simply thought it was curiosity about Alphas, naturally arising from being drawn to Lau Wikun…

“Even if I’m not the only one who can emit them, the one who can affect him… is it only me?”

The man, who seemed to read the conclusion from his thoughtful face, sneered. His face… looked pleased. Having discovered the possibility that his Pheromones might be the only ones that could actually affect Lee Hyun, he couldn’t completely hide the joy of possession.

He increasingly couldn’t tell who the man in front of him was, shrugging his shoulders and chuckling with a click of his tongue.

“Indeed. Unfortunately. If something had happened between Lee Hyun and me back then, if he had reacted to my Pheromones, you wouldn’t have ended up ruining your life by falling into the wrong hands like you.”

Cold blue eyes pierced him sharply.

“I’d prefer if you refrained from provocative words for now, wouldn’t you?”

Turning his gaze away from the man’s eyes, filled with an unstable sense of crisis and aggression he hadn’t even seen in his boyhood, he reached for his drink. The man’s story continued.

“Whether Seo Yi-hyun thinks of himself as a Beta, or a rare mutated form, it’s none of my business anyway, and I’m not the type to be interested in others enough to be curious about such things.”

“…….”

“But I couldn’t ignore it. I was tracking his every move, curious, wanting to know, wanting to uncover… without approaching and provoking him… If he hadn’t been a Ghost in the first place…”

Having said that much, the man shook his head and took another drag from his cigarette. Though he had only smoked two or three puffs, the cigarette, which had burned down on its own, was already short.

“There are more than one or two things I don’t understand. So, when did you start sensing Lee Hyun’s Pheromones?”

The man let out a short snort and stubbed out his cigarette.

“You seem to have forgotten, but I said Seo Yi-hyun was an Omega from the start.”

“But you said he wasn’t an Omega. You said he’s turning into an Omega because of you. So how could you have sensed Lee Hyun’s Pheromones before that? Then what is Seo Yi-hyun? What is he?”

The man lightly clenched his hand resting on the table.

“I asked him… several times. What are you. No, rather than asking, it was closer to talking to myself… He doesn’t know himself either. He still only knows he’s a Beta. Even the professor in Boston who has looked after me since I was young knows nothing about such beings, which is the current situation.”

Holding his glass, the man slowly twirled it in his hand and bit his lower lip hard before releasing it.

“But now, whatever Seo Yi-hyun is… it doesn’t matter. We didn’t come all this way to find that out.”

He spoke as if muttering, and then downed all the remaining alcohol in his glass in one gulp. Watching the man, he clicked his tongue.

“Bringing things this far… it’s not for you to decide whether it matters or not.”

“…….”

“Most people who experience their first manifestation after becoming adults can’t accept the changes in their bodies and become confused. If a male manifests as an Omega, or a female as an Alpha, the psychological shock is even greater… some can’t adapt and commit suicide. It’s not a rare story, as you know. But… his body didn’t manifest on its own… but by another person…”

He couldn’t finish his sentence and rubbed his face vigorously with his hand.

Once he had somewhat realistically recognized his friend’s secret and the absurdity of the incident his friend had caused, the task of informing Lee Hyun of the truth now felt daunting. The man coming to find him was likely for that very reason. Otherwise, there would be no reason to share a secret he had maintained until now.

“I won’t let it happen like that. He’s not… that weak a person.”

The man said, taking out a new cigarette from his pack again.

“If he’s not that weak, if he’s a person with the mental fortitude to endure and overcome… does that mean it’s okay to do such… such things to him? No matter how I think about it, this is… absolutely not like you. Where is Lau Wikun, who hated the idea of Pheromones more than anything in this world?”

“You can’t understand because you’ve never loved someone as an Alpha.”

He doubted what he had heard. It was a choice of words that was as shocking as the other things the man had told him today, making him feel like he was about to stumble forward, as if his center of gravity had suddenly shifted.

“…….”

“…….”

He opened his mouth, speechless, and the man, realizing the word ‘love’ he had unconsciously chosen, avoided his eyes for whatever reason. However, he made no move to correct or retract his statement.

Like an uninvited, oblivious guest, one of the two cell phones the man had placed on the table vibrated. Both of them glanced down at it, and the man stood up from his chair and picked up the phone.

“Just a moment.”

He didn’t move far enough to be heard, but he walked to the back of the sofa directly in front of where he was sitting before connecting the call.

“Yes, it’s me.”

To the man, who had been talking about frustration and confusion with an expression as if he wanted to tear his hair out just moments before, he couldn’t believe the extremely ordinary and calm voice. Conversely, he frowned and stared at the man’s back with a bewildered expression.

“No, it’s fine. Talk. I just stepped out for a moment because the atmosphere was relaxed. …I’m eating here. Did you have dinner? Hmm… you didn’t leave any? …Wow, good job. I’m glad the changed diet seems to be effective. …Uh… I think it’ll take a bit longer. …I’ll leave a message when I start heading over, as I might be working.”

The person on the other end of the phone, Lee Hyun, seemed to have been told it was a dinner appointment with a client. The man spoke fluently, even with a hint of laughter in his voice.

He was flabbergasted. The conversation sounded like he was talking to a lover he was completely smitten with. He had never imagined Lau Wikun’s love life would be like this. He felt like he had aged ten years in just a few hours that evening due to the shock. He felt he couldn’t endure without drinking, so he emptied his glass in one go.

Returning to the table after the call, the man had the same gloomy, dark expression he had before leaving the table. As soon as he sat down, he moistened his lips with whiskey, looking as if he didn’t understand the meaning of the man’s silent gaze.

“Ha, are you a split personality?”

“There’s no need to deliberately cause worry.”

“Who is it that brought things to this point, for you to be talking about worrying about Lee Hyun now?”

“…….”

“Does hiding it now solve anything? Playing with someone else’s life as you please…”

At his accusation, the man hunched his upper body as if feeling actual pain in his stomach or heart, his face contorted in a grimace.

“Don’t… don’t talk to me like that.”

“Then how should I talk to you?”

Knowing that this kind of criticism only led to emotional exhaustion, he didn’t know any other healthy outlet to cope with and express the shock of the moment. So, he couldn’t stop.

The man exhaled slowly and deeply, his lips pressed together. He picked up a new cigarette, brought it to his lips, then moved it back to his hand, his lips parting. He hesitated for a long time, as if choosing his words carefully.

“We are serious with each other.”

The sentence, spoken with his exhale, sounded like a sigh.

There was no need for the man to declare it so solemnly; he knew it too. He had sensed the man’s unusual interest in Lee Hyun from the very beginning, and he had predicted that Lee Hyun might be able to break down the walls the man had built around himself and draw his attention. He just hadn’t expected that seriousness to lead in this direction.

“Is changing bodies without the other knowing seriousness? And then making pathetic excuses that my Pheromones wanted to bind with you as an Alpha and Omega? Your esteemed Alpha nature and Pheromones wanted Seo Yi-hyun?”

“…….”

Strictly speaking, he wasn’t Lee Hyun’s family or a long-time friend, but the man, narrowing his brow and tightening his lips, did not retaliate against the emotional criticism. He remained silent and endured, as if wanting to punish himself through his accusations.

Seeing him weaker than usual only fueled his anger and irritation, so he provoked the man even more harshly.

“Why? You should have just made him 100% Omega and then told me when he got pregnant, right? Huh?”

“…….”

The man turned his chin towards his shoulder, tilting his head further to the side, and ran a hand through his hair. Sensing the meaning behind the man’s reaction, he clicked his tongue and gripped the neck of the heavy brown liquor bottle tightly.

“So you have thought about it. This is truly insane.”

Then, he tilted the bottle and filled his empty glass, taking three or four sips. He couldn’t even feel the heat of the undiluted whiskey as it traveled down his esophagus.

“So. What do you want me to do? Isn’t this the wrong time to be telling me this?”

“…….”

This was a man who had lived his life hiding the fact that he was a Ghost, even from his closest friends. It was unlikely he had come to him now to confess that, or to alleviate his guilt through conversation about changing his ‘serious partner’ into an Omega.

The man couldn’t bring himself to speak for a long time, the cigarette burning down almost to the filter. He drank two more glasses of liquor, but only the edges of his eyes became slightly bloodshot; he couldn’t seem to borrow strength from the alcohol.

Stubbing out the cigarette that seemed like it wouldn’t produce any more smoke, the man spoke with a tight voice, urgently.

“The Changing symptoms have started to appear… and that person is a bit uncomfortable right now.”

“That person…?”

Ha. He had nothing more to say, so he just kept shaking his head. The man’s willingness to readily acknowledge a relationship with someone in front of another person, and his lack of discomfort with it, was unfamiliar. He never spoke about his partners, even those he only had physical relationships with.

“Usually, they experience loss of appetite, stomach upset, or abdominal discomfort… and depending on the person, nausea or vomiting… but those symptoms started a few weeks ago, and he barely eats anything.”

“Of course he’ll feel sick if his insides are changing!”

“It’s not exact, but it’s probably around 10 to 20 percent changed. He thinks it’s just a mild gastritis… but since there’s no sign of improvement, he said he’s going to the hospital…”

As the man’s voice weakened and drooped, he leaned his upper body far back from his seated position.

“You… Lee… no, no, it can’t be.”

The man’s tired blue eyes sent a plea towards him. He shook his head vigorously, refusing the man’s entreaty.

“Don’t tell me you… want me to participate in this insane act?”

A blue glint flashed momentarily in the man’s eyes, which had been a faded, ashen gray devoid of life.

“You knew from the beginning that I was interested in him. You kept encouraging me, knowing that.”

Perhaps the desperation of a person cornered was now drawing out aggression from the man. The man hadn’t seemed sane since sitting at this table.

“Didn’t you want us to get along? Weren’t you amused, hoping for a fairy tale ending where a miserable soul who didn’t know love would open his eyes to true feelings?”

“Yes, I was a bit amused. What’s the big deal? Because I encouraged you, you two became serious, as you said. If I had stayed out of it, would the events that happened not have happened?”

Realizing it was a pointless argument, the man rubbed his face with his large palm and withdrew his hostility. He ran his hand through his black hair, which didn’t match his blue eyes, and propped his elbows on the table, gripping his hair at the crown of his head.

“Help me. There’s no one else… I can ask.”

“Tell Lee Hyun everything. Then you won’t need anyone’s help, and it’s something you’ll have to do eventually, no matter how much you try to avoid it.”

To the most rational, and therefore perhaps the most irresponsible, answer, the man released his grip on his hair and bit his lower lip.

Then, like a severe addict, he reached for another cigarette. It was the first time he had smoked so many cigarettes in succession. However, after lighting it, he held it in his hand more often than he brought the filter to his lips. It seemed he just needed something to cling to.

Looking down at the thin, bluish smoke rising from the cigarette in his hand, the man’s lips were dry and parched.

“I knew… I had to tell him. That I had to stop because it wasn’t something that could be fixed later. But at the same time, there’s a part of me that wants to make him an Omega just a little bit more. If we become more deeply entangled through our Pheromones, then it will be harder for him to reject me. The probability of him accepting me even after I confess the truth will also increase. Through that cowardly… Pheromone-reliant… method that I once despised the most… I am trying to keep him by my side, and I couldn’t ignore the sweetness of that voice… so I came this far.”

As if remembering, he took a deep drag from his cigarette and flicked off the long ash, continuing.

“Whatever Seo Yi-hyun actually is, the fact that he emits Pheromones that stimulate mine makes him a Golden Omega superior to me. Because he can’t resist those Pheromones or control my Pheromones. You, who have never been exposed to Pheromones of that intensity, cannot understand. I believe it’s as impossible as convincing a Beta of the actual effects of Pheromones. I myself felt a huge difference between theoretical knowledge and actual experience in the past. Even though he’s not an Omega I’ve interacted with for a long time… the strong sense of subjugation I already feel towards him, and the impulse for my entire life to be rearranged around him and all my energy to be consumed for him… I guarantee, no Alpha can refuse that.”

His voice was filled with the conviction that if he couldn’t do it, no Alpha could. The man might be right. He was the most outstanding Alpha.

However, even though he had lived as an Alpha himself, he couldn’t immediately accept it. He tightened his grip on his glass and shook his head.

“Even if it meant physically separating you from him, you should have separated Mr. Lee Hyun from the situation itself.”

“…….”

“In the end, you only dragged things out and worsened the situation out of fear that he might refuse to become an Omega and push you away.”

The man made no further excuses. He merely gazed at him with a roughened face and deepened eyes.

“I’m not here to confess to you, nor to seek your understanding. I came to ask for your help… to lessen his shock even a little… at least so that he could hear an explanation of this situation through me… and avoid learning about it in the worst possible way.”

The important things, the things he absolutely had to know, had already been spilled. Yet, he couldn’t respond to the man’s final statement. Countless questions still swirled in his mind.

If this was this shocking to me, a complete third party, separated from the situation… what would it be like for Lee Hyun?

His upper body flinched as if struck hard by a leather whip. He unconsciously looked at the man opposite him. Anxiety flickered in the man’s blue eyes. But the terror the man was directly experiencing was likely incomparably more intense. Just as the deep bond he felt with Lee Hyun, and the intensity of his desire for Lee Hyun, the fear was undoubtedly pressing down on the man without respite.

By now, the liquor bottle was nearly empty. Despite drinking a large amount in a short time, he couldn’t expect the looseness of mind that came with intoxication. He felt the profound fatigue brought on by extreme sensitivity and closed his eyes.

“Go back. I have nothing to say to you today.”

There was no will to see him off, and it seemed the other party had no intention of being seen off.

The man, who had picked up his cigarettes and phone, rose from his seat but didn’t immediately leave the dining table. He turned his body halfway back. The man’s large silhouette cast a shadow over the stark white dining table.

“Beta and Alpha. I even thought that might be the most ideal relationship for someone like me. Even without bringing Pheromones into it, he… shook me, stimulated me, and captivated me. But… it wouldn’t do. When I responded to his Pheromones with my own Pheromones, my mind, body, and Pheromones… the joy of bonding and communicating with him through everything I could muster would willingly overwhelm me. I felt sorry for those born as Alphas who never met such a partner…”

The man trailed off, rubbing his chin with a thoughtful expression. His voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting for a long time. His naturally husky voice was even rougher. Whether from alcohol or emotion, his bloodshot eyes were also rough. The man confessing his love looked like someone who had everything stolen before he could even see the fruits of that love.

“Take what I said earlier as just… a status report to a friend, separate from this request.”

A report as a friend, my foot. It was a plea disguised as a threat, begging him to grant the request because the other person was so desperate.

He turned away from the man and tilted his glass, and the man, pausing to catch his breath, spoke in a dry voice.

“After I get back from Chicago… I’ll tell you everything. Until then… please help me buy some time… I beg you.”

“…….”

“I’m leaving.”

He merely twisted his lips and drank, offering no reply to the farewell.

Watching the man’s back as he walked towards the hallway leading to the entrance, a fiery emotion suddenly surged. It resembled anger, and it bordered on contempt, but… perhaps the emotion it most resembled was jealousy.

Towards what, or whom, was unclear. It was a burning jealousy, so intense that he wanted to fight for it with all his passion and take it away.

■ ■ ■

Although it was sudden, In-woo Hyung’s visit was welcome.

Thursday was a half-day for consultations, so when he received Hyung’s call saying he’d stopped by a nearby liquor store and decided to call, he hesitated for a moment but readily accepted Hyung’s visit.

He had no complaints about his current life, but the visitor’s arrival was a refreshing change, like an exotic chord joining a simple, repetitive, stable melody. Perhaps it was even more so because his business trip to Chicago and the joint exhibition in the latter half of the year were drawing closer, and he hadn’t heard from Yooni Noona or Juhan Hyung at all this week.

“But, I’m really a bit disappointed.”

Hyung said, lifting his lips from the bold wine glass and swirling it on his crossed legs.

The rich, deep, sensual red wine and the cream cheese crackers I had clumsily arranged on a plate were Hyung’s gifts. Hyung had looked troubled, apologizing that they weren’t suitable snacks for the wine, but there was no way I, who barely knew the taste of wine, could quibble about suitable snacks.

I, sitting on a work chair pulled up opposite the sofa I had given to my guest, looked across at Hyung as I placed my glass on the table.

“Ever since you moved into this place, Mr. Lee Hyun hasn’t seen me even once.”

“Ah….”

“Is someone preventing him from seeing me?”

Tilting his wine glass again and swallowing the dark red liquid, Hyung spoke with a slightly mischievous tone.

He had said that he felt jealousy even towards his friend with whom he had grown up for a long time, and perhaps that friend was In-woo Hyung, but strictly speaking, he had never told me not to meet Hyung.

“Ah… no. Suddenly, many things were decided at once, and my environment changed, so I was preoccupied… Also, I was concentrating on my paintings… CEO Ryu said I could invite people over or go out freely, but…”

His long, rambling explanation was interrupted by Hyung’s dry cough.

“Hmm… I never said it was because of Lau Wikun, so why are you defending that guy?”

“…….”

My ears burned, and I lowered my head. Hyung laughed. It wasn’t a mocking laugh that made a joke of my clumsy excuse.

Hyung, who picked up a particularly savory cracker filled with rich cream cheese and took a bite, brushed off crumbs that fell on his thigh.

“Well… the one who needs something has to make a move, what can you do? Thanks to that, I got the chance to secure such a good piece, so I guess I have to be satisfied with that for now.”

Whenever they spoke on the phone, Hyung had always been curious about the painting of Juhan Hyung as a model. Everyone around seemed to find my choice of Juhan Hyung as a model surprising and showed curiosity.

I showed Hyung the painting, which was about 80 percent complete. Unlike during our phone call, Hyung, with a quiet and serious demeanor, slowly admired the painting for a long time. Then, he surprised me by saying he wanted to purchase it once it was finished.

Although I had been practicing coloring alongside sketching, it would undoubtedly be a very amateurish level for my first completed work since I started painting again. Naturally, I had considered it a practice piece, so Hyung’s offer made me happy yet bewildered.

After taking a sip of wine, I rubbed the slender part of the glass with my fingertips and hesitantly began to speak.

“About that, Hyung… I think it’s still too lacking to sell…”

“As a collector, I thought I wanted to own Mr. Lee Hyun’s work even if I had to pay for it, so I think its value is sufficient.”

“I’m truly grateful for your words, and I’m happy, but…”

This time, it wasn’t Hyung’s action that interrupted me. It was the sound of the keypad on the thick steel door leading to the parking lot being pressed. In-woo Hyung, who had just brought the wine glass to his lips, looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“Ah… CEO Ryu must be here.”

In-woo Hyung’s eyes twitched slightly, but before I could even think about it, the door was pulled open from the outside.

“…….”

As he stepped inside the moment the door opened, he visibly flinched and stopped. In-woo Hyung, who was sitting facing the door, raised his wine glass and smiled at him. His eyes, now slightly wider and hardened, quickly scanned Hyung, me, and the wine and crackers on the table. A sense of tension made me involuntarily stand up awkwardly.

“What are you doing here without calling?”

He glanced at me, but addressed Hyung first. His voice was curt.

“I called. Mr. Lee Hyun.”

He dropped his bulging briefcase, packed with densely filled documents, heavily next to In-woo Hyung and looked at me again. His eyes and mouth were set, but I couldn’t expect him to act as usual in front of In-woo Hyung. Knowing that, I still found it hard to sit back down due to a vague sense of unease. With me leaning on the sofa and drinking wine leisurely, and him standing, we formed two vertices of a triangle with In-woo Hyung in the middle.

“This is Mr. Lee Hyun’s studio, so is it okay for you to just come in and press the password whenever you want? Aren’t you infringing on his privacy too much just because you’re the landlord?”

“That’s not it, I just… told him to come and go comfortably. I felt bad that CEO Ryu kept having to go back and forth to the garden because of me…”

Hyung didn’t point it out openly this time, but his eyes, raised over his wine glass, kept looking at me, who was making excuses for him, with surprise.

“But why are you both standing? Mr. Lee Hyun, please sit down. Hey, landlord, if you sit, the tenant will feel comfortable sitting too.”

He took off his jacket, hung it on the back of the sofa, and sat next to Hyung as if he had no choice, rubbing his brow with his hand as if suffering from a headache.

“What did you come here for?”

“To see Mr. Lee Hyun. There’s a rumor going around that he’s painting Kwon Juhan’s nude, and I figured since he’d never call me to show it, I’d come myself.”

Thinking I should get him a glass too, I started to walk past the table towards the stairs, but he grabbed my wrist. The gaze I looked up at was dry and lacking persistence. It was completely different from the way he usually looked at me, as if stroking me.

“Where are you going?”

“The wine… I was going to get a glass for CEO Ryu too.”

Hyung’s gaze, as he sipped his wine, flickered to the wrist he was holding, but it seemed likely that In-woo Hyung had already noticed the change in the atmosphere between him and me.

“It’s fine. I won’t be drinking.”

He lowered his head, continuously rubbing his forehead, and said in an annoyed, tired tone. Then, he pulled my wrist back, signaling me to return to my seat. It wasn’t that he was acting stiffly because In-woo Hyung was present; I was certain he was clearly in a bad mood.

Conversely, I tried to ignore In-woo Hyung’s gaze, which was sticking to me with curiosity and questions, and returned to my seat.

“Ah, I’ve reserved that painting, so it’s mine, okay?”

In-woo Hyung said, breaking a cracker on the plate into bite-sized pieces, and he looked back at Hyung, narrowing his brow.

“What reservation?”

“That the work Mr. Lee Hyun is currently doing, I will purchase it once it’s completed.”

“How much do you think it will be?”

He shrugged and laughed, as if clicking his tongue.

“I’m a Phantom artist and an important client, so surely you wouldn’t break our trust by setting an outrageous price?”

He glanced at me, sitting diagonally across the table. His face looked like cracked porcelain under pressure. As he withdrew his gaze from me, he swept back the hair covering his forehead.

“Nothing has been decided yet. It’s not at the stage where I can even take verbal reservations.”

“Either way, I’ve clearly expressed my intention to purchase to both the artist and the gallery, so I just want to be sure I’m first in line if a sale is decided.”

In-woo Hyung, popping the remaining cracker crumbs from the plate into his mouth, stood up from the sofa, saying he seemed to have taken up too much of my work time. He didn’t say a word about the obviously awkward atmosphere. I had never wished so much for In-woo Hyung to point out the atmosphere with his characteristic indifference and lightness. I didn’t know how to resolve this situation when I was left alone with him, and my mouth felt parched, so I emptied the remaining wine in my glass.

Even if the rough attitude he was showing now, the oppressive aura emanating from his attempt to suppress an even rougher desire, was due to jealousy… this was… a completely different kind from when he had held me and talked about his jealousy just a short while ago in this very studio. It wasn’t the fresh emotion of an immature boy struggling with his romantic problems.

“Mr. Lee Hyun, do you remember that painting from back then?”

Hyung, putting on the jacket he had taken off, asked with a bright smile, as if he couldn’t see the currents flowing between him and me.

“The painting I chose when I asked you to recommend a piece to hang in the bedroom of my new house.”

Of course, I remembered. I nodded.

“I don’t know if you know this, Mr. Lee Hyun, but that painting was never sold. It’s hanging above my bed now… I used to find it difficult to look at my own paintings again. It felt like looking at the dregs of myself that even I rejected. But after you said, ‘Honesty about an dishonest self,’ my paintings started to feel familiar.”

Hyung walked around the table and placed his hand on my right shoulder, lightly massaging it. He, who had been leaning forward with his elbow on his thigh, tilted his head askew and shot a glare at Hyung’s hand.

“Come see it sometime if you get the chance. You’re always welcome, Mr. Lee Hyun…”

Moving behind me, Hyung placed his hands on both my shoulders and pressed down lightly from above before letting go. I rose from my seat, accepting the weight of his gaze, which was fixed on my lips.

As Hyung walked towards the entrance, he turned and smiled, walking backward.

“Oh, and I’ve scheduled a consultation, so I’ll see you at the hospital. I’ll relay the date and time through CEO Ryu.”

I stood, looking back and forth between him and Hyung. Since In-woo Hyung had arrived, I had sent the driver home early, so someone had to open and close the parking lot gate, but he showed no sign of moving.

Tuk-tuk-tuk. At the sudden noise, I looked up at the window facing the garden. Thick raindrops were hitting the window from the start, as if a shower had begun.

“What’s with the rain? I should get going before the traffic gets bad.”

Hyung, who was slowly backing away while keeping both of us in his sight, turned back towards the entrance with a crooked smile. As I reluctantly moved to follow him, he, who had approached my side unnoticed, placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry, but could you bring me some beer from upstairs?”

His eyes were following Hyung’s back, not me. Was I being too sensitive to feel a reprimand in the stronger-than-usual force pressing down on me?

When I returned to the room with the beer, he was standing in front of the table, holding the wine bottle and looking down at the label, having already seen Hyung off. I wondered if Hyung, who had drunk the wine, had called a proper designated driver, but my gut told me it wasn’t the right time to ask. I slowed my steps and hesitantly placed the green, translucent beer bottle on the table.

“Um… I wasn’t out, Hyung came to the house…”

After he got off work, we used to be close, constantly sharing small physical contact as if to compensate for the half-day we were apart. This was the first time we had maintained distance in such an unstable, cooled atmosphere. This unfamiliar discomfort paradoxically highlighted the gentle intimacy of the past.

He quietly put down the wine bottle and turned to look at me, standing awkwardly a few steps away, rubbing his arms. His face was still like porcelain on the verge of shattering. I could feel his patience, exerting all his strength to prevent the cracks from leading to destruction.

“And… it was also almost time for CEO Ryu to leave work…”

“Why are you making excuses?”

“That’s…”

That’s because he looked like he was in a really bad mood.

—I couldn’t say that. I knew his question wasn’t one seeking a real answer.

He thanked me perfunctorily for bringing the beer, twisted off the cap, and drank a third of it in one gulp. Meanwhile, the sound of rain, which had progressed from tudug-tudug to a proper downpour, was creating an irregular rhythm in the room. In just a few minutes, the room had become significantly darker, but neither of us thought to turn on the lights.

“Regarding the painting… it’s problematic to make reservations without consulting the gallery.”

It had only been In-woo Hyung’s one-sided expression of intent, and I had never indicated my acceptance of it, but I didn’t think he would cheer up and smile if I said something like that now.

“Since I didn’t know because it was my first time, I’ll talk to Choi In-woo somehow this time…”

He tilted his chin up and quickly tipped the beer bottle. As if he were pouring it down his throat rather than drinking it.

“Who you’ll send Seo Yi-hyun’s paintings to… From now on, at least let me discuss it with you.”

His face was contorted as if he were forcing out words that were difficult to say. If his low mood was due to jealousy, and if that scope included his paintings, then telling him I had no intention of selling the paintings might help a little.

While I racked my brain, trying to figure out how and in what way to bring up the topic, the phone rang from inside my briefcase. After taking another sip of beer and setting the bottle down, he took out his phone, checked the caller ID, and connected the call with a sigh through his nose, his lips pressed shut.

“What is it now.”

I thought it would be a work-related call, but my first words were casual. He glanced at me and turned his back, moving away from the front of the sofa.

“It’s a party like we’ve always had. It’s an invitation list that we and the other party created together, and we’ve confirmed the final list, so you don’t have to worry. We’ve also invited influential and serious media outlets. You just have to do it the same way we do things here. Yuni and I will be together the whole time, there’s nothing different.”

I thought I knew who he was talking to on the phone. My mood was also rapidly declining now.

He spent about 5 minutes pacing the studio, struggling to persuade the artist Shushu, then suddenly cast a brief glance my way and lowered his voice.

“Okay. I’ll be there in 30 minutes, so go and talk. …What? Cheese ca… Ha… I know which one you mean. I’ll buy it, so don’t fall asleep in the meantime while people are waiting.”

Along with my declining mood, the temperature in my chest seemed to drop. It wasn’t just about being affectionate that could evoke jealousy. Even in conversations filled with complaints, I could feel their long history of knowing each other intimately.

The violent emotions that arose all at once were so unfamiliar that I was bewildered. He acted bothered, inconvenienced, but in the end, he was fulfilling all of Shushu’s demands. I wanted to criticize and attack him with a harsh voice and expression.

I had confessed to him before that Shushu’s relationship had bothered me for a long time, and that I wished he wouldn’t engage in skinship like carrying his sister on his back… but my previous feelings had never been this ugly. My entire face and heart felt scorched and shriveled, grotesquely distorted like melted plastic, and I rubbed my mouth with my hand, averting my gaze from him.

He stood still in the middle of the empty space and said,

“You said you didn’t hear about the party, that you hate parties and photo shoots… We’re back to square one. How are we going to conquer a new market without promotion? I’m sorry, but tonight… I’ll have to handle it alone.”

At his definitive statement about going to see Shushu, my gaze momentarily turned towards him. As I watched his profile, nervously running his hand through his hair and quickly sending a message somewhere, my heart rate gradually quickened. The sound of the rain, falling irregularly, growing stronger and weaker, amplified my anxiety.

Even when the manager rushed me, he always dealt with it as if it were a bother, so why was he so intent on meeting Shushu in person now? Why did it have to be now? The urge to question him harshly was overwhelming. It was my own ugly side that I didn’t want to face, but more than that, I didn’t want to let him go.

As I followed him, who was reaching for the jacket draped over the sofa back, I lightly grasped his upper arm.

“Can’t you… not go?”

Without any sophisticated rhetorical flourish, the words that broke through my desperation were direct. He stopped walking and turned, his eyes widening slightly. I was surprised by my own actions, but after having already thrown out the most crucial words, I decided not to care about shallow pride or fear.

“If you go like this now…”

“……”

Unable to think of any better words to hold him back, I bit and released my lower lip hard. I didn’t have the courage to face him, so I lowered my gaze to his shoulder and said helplessly,

“I don’t want you to go.”

He didn’t react immediately.

The muscles in his arm, revealed below his twice-folded sleeves, were taut. His broad chest beneath the shirt rose and fell with a larger than usual amplitude, stretching the fabric taut. We didn’t raise our voices, nor did we exchange any destructive verbal abuse intended to hurt each other, but we were already being consumed by each other’s emotions. We had given each other that right. It felt like I had seen a glimpse of the raw reality of a relationship.

Within my field of vision, he relaxed his shoulders and exhaled.

“Right now, I’m too… Anyway, it’s better if we’re not together.”

“……”

“Whatever you’re thinking, I’m going just for work…”

It seemed to mean, so don’t have any strange misunderstandings.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t trust him. Even knowing it was just work and that he had no relationship with Shushu, I didn’t want to let him go. And I couldn’t blame him for acting out, his emotions becoming volatile, even though I knew nothing had happened between him and In-woo Hyung. Rather… I understood.

He placed a hand on my shoulder, squeezed it once, and then left the room. It was just… a casual touch, like one that might pass between him and Juhan Hyung, as if we were just acquaintances.

The rain was loud, as if I were standing in the middle of a heavy downpour, because the soundproofing wasn’t as good as upstairs. I stood blankly in the sound of the rain for a long time, trying to calm my emotions.

Thinking I should clean up the messy table, I tried to move, but my hands just flailed about without any efficiency. As I tried to put the cracker plate on a tray, I knocked over a wine bottle, and the remaining dark red liquid spilled. I wasn’t the type to get annoyed by such things, but I cursed my own foolish mistake aloud and wiped up the wine pooling on the table and floor.

After barely cleaning that up, my body felt limp, as if I had undergone strenuous physical labor. I gave up on the reluctant tidying and sank onto the sofa, starting to drink the beer he had left behind.

I hadn’t harbored such a naive dream as to expect only sweet days. But I had foolishly thought that if I were to fight with him, it would be for more profound, internal reasons.

Perhaps his judgment that it was better for us not to be together right now was a slightly more mature decision. Trying to console myself with that thought, I pulled my legs up onto the sofa, propped my knees, and placed the beer bottle on them. How much do I know about the taste of cigarettes, but I felt like having one after a long time.

“……”

My body flinched at a mechanical sound mixed with the rain. It was the sound of the door lock’s password being entered. I awkwardly got up from my seat. My heart began to beat faster, but I didn’t want to anticipate and then be disappointed. Perhaps he had forgotten something. I had left my briefcase. Or perhaps he had returned, still angry, intending to continue the argument.

The lock disengaged, and he opened the door. Even after opening it, he didn’t come inside, standing in the hallway with the doorknob in his hand, looking at me. His face seemed to be asking for permission to enter.

I quickly walked around the table and approached him. Up close, his eyes were no longer trying to control his emotions, unlike before he left the room.

“I’m sorry for acting childishly.”

“……”

As if wanting to make it clear that it was his fault, he said with emphasis,

“I’m trying not to, but… it’s not working. I’m ten years older, yet I can’t control my emotions over something like this… It’s pathetic.”

Pushing the door, which he hadn’t opened fully, with my shoulder, I shook my head vigorously.

“I was angry just seeing you drinking with someone else… and then you showed your paintings, which could be your first work as the artist Seo Yi-hyun, to someone else, and handed them over to someone else’s hands in my absence…”

He stopped speaking and took a deep breath.

“It made my head spin, as if you had slept with someone else…”

I couldn’t let him tear himself down further. Taking the remaining two steps, I leaned in and pressed my lips against his. I felt his body stiffen in surprise. His lips, which met mine, tasted sweeter than before, as if I had lost and regained something.

His hand, which had instinctively held my side, slowly wrapped around my waist. This time, it was my turn to be childish, pathetic, and honest.

“Don’t go. Being alone with that person… I don’t like it.”

As if my bothersome plea were a beautiful and noble confession, he looked down at me with an expression of deep emotion.

His arms wrapped tightly around my waist, and he pressed his lips against mine. His kiss was so strong that I felt a dull ache as he bit and sucked my lips. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he kissed me urgently, as if to engulf and push me down. His tongue delved between our pressed lips, probing every inch of the mucous membrane.

He entered the room, half lifting me as he embraced me. The door lock clicked shut behind him automatically.

He strode directly across the empty studio, tossing his jacket somewhere on the floor, and already slipped his hand inside my t-shirt, tracing the outline of my prominent shoulder blades, while with his other hand he squeezed my buttocks over my jeans.

Clatter, bang. The work chair I had moved in front of the sofa knocked against my calf and fell with a loud noise. Unfazed, trusting him, I tightened the arms around his neck and pressed against his tongue in my mouth.

It was a kiss that brought back memories of Hong Kong. The night we frantically tangled with each other, rummaging through the living room as soon as we entered his hotel room.

“It felt like it might be our first kiss.”

If he hadn’t pointed it out, I, being unobservant, might have passed it by without consciously realizing the significance of it being my first kiss in life.

His hand, which had been twisting my hips, moved forward, unbuckled my belt, and unzipped my fly. Unlike his usual unhurried touch when undressing someone else, today he was impatient.

Ugh, mmm… His hand, which immediately plunged into the opening and wrapped around my penis over my underwear, made me flinch. The groan that echoed from deep within my throat made it difficult to hold his tongue.

As I tried to pull my head back, loosening my grip, he pushed his pelvis against me, pulling my waist tightly against him, as if refusing to allow it.

His slippery, hot tongue retreated from my mouth and then slid back in, pressing with a sharp, firm force between my lips. His gaze, narrowed, was already focused on me with a burning intensity.

As he repeatedly adjusted his hold on my waist, stimulating my penis to induce an erection, and simultaneously caressed the inside of my mouth with his stiffly erect tongue, I too quickly matched his pace of arousal.

“Ugh… Hhheu, hmm… Mm.”

The in-and-out motion of his tongue, which clearly suggested and intended to suggest penetration, made the skin around my cheeks flush. But at the same time, I couldn’t deny that heat was spreading to my penis, and it was becoming proudly hard.

From bottom to top, from top to bottom, between my legs, deeper and deeper. His touch, intended to arouse me, was more forceful than usual.

“Huk. Hhup, euk…”

The rough friction of his palm rubbing my lower body conveyed the bewilderment of being unable to contain the intense sexual desire that had ignited in an instant and wanting to pour it onto the person in front of me.

I didn’t dislike his excitement, which was uncontrolled and irregularly bursting out from a place of reason, restraint, and experienced skill. I found myself feeling a petty, secret pleasure by observing him, who was losing his balance and pattern because of me.

His hand, which was causing friction between my legs, trembling as he forcibly suppressed his arousal, moved more easily as I lowered my hips and widened the stance between my feet. In that simple act, I was newly aware that we were about to engage in sex, and at the same time, a tingle shot up the back of my neck.

He noticed the amplification of his arousal, and his eyes narrowed. Slipping out of my mouth, he then pecked at various spots on my lips, interspersed with intermittent words.

“Tell me… one more time…”

He kissed my entire upper lip densely, then rested his forehead against mine, rubbing our noses together.

“Say you don’t want me to go. That you don’t like me being alone with anyone else.”

“……”

When I heard my own words confirmed through his mouth, my gaze wandered in embarrassment. I suddenly found it strange that I felt more embarrassed by my earlier statement than by his hand currently caressing my penis inside my pants.

“Hhheu, eut…”

As I avoided his eyes without answering, the hand stroking my penis became more blatant. His lips, which had moved across my nose and cheeks, covered my ear and exhaled hot breath, further clouding my consciousness.

“Tell me you want to possess me… so much that you want to separate me from the world.”

“You don’t… dislike that, do you?”

I bit and released my lip, barely managing to ask back, and he let out a faint laugh by my ear. It was a self-deprecating laugh.

“Why would I dislike it?”

“……”

“If I want to do that to Seo Yi-hyun, there’s no way I’d dislike it if the opposite were true.”

His face, a mixture of arousal and lust with extreme mental desires, was contorted as if in pain.

Perhaps the possessive words he wanted to hear from me were actually the words he wanted to say to me.

While I was examining his face with that thought, his hand, which had been rummaging through my front, withdrew. Not having received an answer, he pushed his own anxiety onto me. This time, he thrust his hand inside my underwear from the back, pulling my body tightly against him and creating friction with his entire body.

His wriggling, sensual body squeezed me tightly in an embrace. The solid mass of his shoulders, chest, and arms, and the hot elasticity of his erection. The sexiness emanating from his body, tightly woven with sexual attraction, was raw and vivid even through his clothes.

“Tell me. That you want me as much as I want you. That it’s the same. Tell me you won’t run away…”

It wasn’t that I didn’t have such desires and was delaying my answer because he seemed anxious.

Holding his large body tightly, I writhed my hips in his embrace, rubbing my body against his. I could be bold, honest. It wasn’t so difficult anymore.

“I want you…. I want you a lot too, CEO. So much that I find myself being childish and unfamiliar with myself.”

“……”

He traced every corner of my face as if he had heard something unbelievable, then pressed his lips against mine. Unlike his hands, which stimulated between my legs so violently that his broad shoulders heaved up and down, his kiss was slow and deliberate.

The sensation of him sucking and then gently releasing my lower lip made my soft flesh ache. A moan escaped me involuntarily, caught in the erotic mood. The kisses raining down on my face were ticklishly tender, while the hands that rubbed, grasped, and moved between my legs were impolitely rough.

It felt as if I were being caressed by two different people, one on top and one below, but this was his way, and having no other comparison, I knew no other touch.

“You’re… completely wet inside.”

He lowered his voice and whispered in my ear, as if it were a precious secret. Letting out a sigh that made me feel like I would collapse from the sweet, hot breath, I slipped my hand inside my underwear as he guided me.

“Euh… Hhyt.”

My underwear was surprisingly soaked. To exaggerate, it was so drenched that one might wonder if I had urinated rather than secreted pre-cum. But the viscous liquid that clung to my hand and stretched was bodily fluid from excessive sexual arousal.

It was a mystery of the human body that I hadn’t known when masturbation was the entirety of my sexual life. Lately, there were times when such a large amount of bodily fluid was secreted. It was proof of arousal, and he seemed to subtly like it when this happened, but I was still a little… embarrassed.

But that was just a fleeting regret that washed over me after all the sex was over, and I didn’t dislike confirming my own arousal as a reality, nor did I dislike it stimulating him and making him thrash even more. I was moving away from my former self, changing.

He bent his head down deeply, burying his lips in my nape. His lips brushed against my skin, then bit down hard.

“Haa, ugh… huck.”

His hand, layered over mine, gradually picked up speed. My hips arched from the pleasure of rubbing my wet groin against his. Between our wet skin and palms, a squelching sound, reminiscent of penetration, echoed. His teeth bit into my nape with such force it felt like they would pierce my skin, but it was thrilling rather than painful.

“You’re so lewd, what are you going to do about it….”

His voice held genuine concern. A sigh, like one of frustration, settled on my nape.

“Even when I’m working, I only think of you, these days.”

“…….”

“I’m over thirty… and to have nothing but sex on my mind all day, do you know how pathetic I feel?”

Still, you’re probably enduring it well and working hard.

I was startled by my own thoughts, which seemed to wish he couldn’t work properly because he was thinking of me, and tried to pull back, but it was impossible.

His other hand, which had been holding my waist, rubbed against my lips. Though he wasn’t applying any force, my lips were pushed around wherever his fingers moved.

“Here….”

His hand, which had been gripping my nape, slid down and scratched my nipple through my t-shirt.

“And here….”

The hand that had been layered with mine inside my underwear slid out far enough to caress my penis, which was erect beyond the waistband.

“Here.”

“…….”

Knowing where his next target would be as he traced the sensitive points of my body, I licked my dry lips, feeling shamelessly expectant. The hand that had been stroking my penis moved past the back of my hand, which was inside my underwear, and dug in deeper. He deliberately rubbed harder, and the back of his hand pressing against my testicles made my heels lift.

“……And here too.”

“Ugh, hugh… hugh.”

As his fingers precisely pressed down on my anus and rubbed in circles, I butted my forehead against his shoulder, growing restless. I couldn’t stop my hips from swaying.

“It pops into my head out of nowhere. Really. It’s troublesome.”

As I pushed off the floor with my toes and tensed my lower body, he narrowed his brow, not even pressing on my penis, and let out a sigh of admiration.

“Take responsibility, Seo Yi-hyun. You’ll take responsibility, right? Huh?”

“Ugh, hugh… hughh….”

The sensation of his fingers pushing deep inside made me shudder, and then they pulled back, leaving only my fingernails. Then, they plunged back in, straight and deep.

He exhaled ragged breaths as he pushed his tongue into my ear.

“Huuugh, ng… hu. Huagk….”

Just with his fingers moving rapidly in and out, I felt like I would come. My mouth fell open, letting out uncontrollable moans, and I grabbed his arm with the hand that had been inside my underwear. My hand, slick with fluid, was slippery all over. Every time his hand, presumably just as wet, dug inside, a blatant sound of penetration echoed. His aroused, hot tongue wrapped around my ear. It felt as if he was grasping and licking my hearing itself.

“So soft…. Why is this part so wet too…. Look at the sounds you make, Seo Yi-hyun, from a ‘Beta’.”

“Haa, huck… hu….”

I bit my lower lip and shook my head wildly. His whisper, calling my private part a ‘Beta,’ made an unbearable excitement boil up inside me. No, it felt like that boiling excitement had been overturned.

Beta, Alpha, Omega. Those words, just as commonly used as male and female, felt like… a sexual slang term referring to my anus, which I used for sex with him, as my second sexual organ. A vulgar pleasure washed over me, the same kind I felt when whispering lewd things to him in bed.

With his husky voice, mixed with excited breaths, whispering about what he wanted to do inside me, what he wanted to do to my Beta, I unconsciously tensed my lower body and squeezed his fingers. Inside, his fingers dug into my inner walls as if they couldn’t take it anymore.

“I want to touch it together.”

What on earth did he want to touch together? Even though I thought it was absurd, I couldn’t shake off his hand, which was pulling mine towards that spot. Half hesitant, half unable to suppress my curiosity, I followed his hand and pushed my middle finger… into my own private part. Into my Beta, where his finger was already inside.

“Ugh….”

I bit down on my molars, overwhelmed by an indescribable, foreign sensation, and buried my face in his shoulder. The pre-cum that had leaked enough to soak my underwear must have flowed in with his hand, making my inner walls wetter than I expected, which made my face flush even more.

The feeling of facing myself, wet with anticipation for sex with him, throughout my entire body, even deep inside, was… very naked. There was nowhere to hide in denial.

Even though I had discovered the pleasure of my anus, I had never touched it myself because we had sex so often that anal masturbation was unnecessary. It was my own body, yet the fact that I accepted his fingers or penis going inside so much more naturally felt new.

“Hagk, hugh… Don’t… Wait, I don’t like that….”

Inside, his fingers tangled with mine. It was a truly, truly strange sensation. My shoulders stiffened, and I looked up at him with an expression like someone biting into cold food. He, enjoying the new friction by intertwining his fingers with mine inside me, looked like someone who had just had hot water poured on them.

“Why don’t you like it? ……Because you feel it?”

“…….”

I was struck speechless, as if my core had been hit. I tried to swallow to moisten my dry mouth, but there was no moisture to swallow. He placed his hand over mine, in the same direction, and pushed upwards forcefully, while with his other hand, he stroked my hair.

“Feeling it. Feeling it with me, it’s not something dirty. What we feel good about when we’re together… don’t feel guilty about it.”

Unknowingly exposed to socially constructed sexual repression, I still felt a sense of guilt even during sexual intercourse with someone I liked. Until my reason completely flew away.

But there was no need for that.

I thought about whether I felt disgust from his action of rubbing his fingers against mine inside my wet inner walls, but the answer was clear without much thought. If it weren’t him, I would never have agreed to such an act. Because it was him, all the secret events between us could become secrets included in our romance, without a bitter aftertaste.

Moaning at his stimulation, pressing my fingers against my inner walls, I nodded. He kissed my exposed forehead, then slipped his arm under my armpit, embraced my back, and whispered into my ear.

“It’s here…. The place where I go crazy every day when I enter Seo Yi-hyun.”

“Huugh, huck….”

The sensation of his movement inside me, felt simultaneously by my fingers and the mucous membrane, was much more naked.

“Being in here with Seo Yi-hyun, it’s really….”

He omitted the rest of his words, lowered his head slightly, bit his lower lip, and smiled. That smile, which seemed shy despite the content of his words, somehow stirred something in my lower body. I wanted the man before me. My fingers, which had only been responding to his movements, now pushed deeper on their own. The temperature of his gaze as he looked at me instantly heated up.

“Yeah, huck… hu….”

The awareness that his finger was also inside my anus, as I touched myself for the first time… spurred me on. He didn’t take his eyes off the slightest reaction appearing and disappearing on my face.

With him, I moved my arms passionately. Repeating the motion of lowering and raising my hips, I even created a rhythm to match the thrusting in my core.

“This is no joke.”

He muttered that, his voice heavily suppressed, then reached out with the arm holding my waist and roughly pushed down the wet underwear, which had become disheveled and half-peeled off. My jeans, with the zipper open, had already slid down long ago and were caught around my calves.

Rubbing my forehead against his shoulder, I looked down. My penis, red and swollen, was glistening all over. Every time he and I thrust inside, my penis dangled carelessly in all directions, up, down, or sideways.

Though I couldn’t meet his gaze, I couldn’t look away from what was happening below. I could feel his gaze, breathing in heavy gasps, watching below with me.

If my hands slowed, he would increase the speed as if he wouldn’t let me off the hook. His thick, firm, yet smooth arm, with its muscles and veins tautly stretched, thrashed inside me within my field of vision. My penis bounced with the recoil.

“Augh, hugh, hughh, ugk.”

Just as I felt the arousal surge and engulf my chest, there was always a sudden, gushing sensation of fluid erupting from my glans. But it felt different from the precum I had known before. It resembled the feeling of ejaculation, but unlike ejaculation, which brings a sense of relief as something ends, this time I felt a desire that made my body swell as if it were burning.

The fluid that had been flowing down my wildly shaking penis, unable to bear its own weight, dripped down into the air, leaving several round marks on the gray floor. It was a primal, savage scene, reminiscent of a beast drooling over meat in a state of hunger.

My senses ignited by the visual stimulus, I let out a sobbing moan and twisted his shirt in my hands.

“Haa, hugh… Haagk. Khuk….”

My body moved fluidly, but my breathing was completely lost. Gasping for air like someone suffering from hyperventilation, I leaned into him, twisting my body, and continued to thrust inside him.

His hand, which had climbed up my back and over my shoulder, stroked my hair and kissed my forehead several times. When I tilted my chin up, he immediately lowered his head and sucked on my lips. The scent was intoxicating, and my mind was filled with red smoke.

A large amount of precum that had flowed down my penis dripped into my palms and down between my legs. Perhaps it was absorbed by my hand and drawn into my inner walls, as the mucus that seeped between his and my fingers created a messy coupling sound inside. The fluid that flowed down from my penis, from my Beta, and pooled, trickled down the soft skin of my inner thighs, making my hair stand on end.

“Can you feel it? Squeezing and releasing… It’s incredible inside right now.”

He gripped my chin, bit my lower lip, and wiggled the finger inside me. His pupils, peering at me through slightly narrowed eyelids, had a deeper blue hue than usual, making them feel cold.

“When Seo Yi-hyun squeezes like this… does Seo Yi-hyun’s finger feel good too? Like I feel good right now? I’m suddenly curious.”

“What do you think?” he added, asking slyly and mischievously. I hugged his neck and pulled him closer. Lowering my head, I pressed my cheek against his, offering him my ear. I stuck out my tongue and wet his ear. He moved his head up and down, rubbing our cheeks together. Focusing on the arousal blooming within me, I tried to be honest and opened my mouth.

“Just….”

“…….”

“I’m aroused.”

At the word “aroused,” he tensed his entire body for a moment.

“Hmm, it doesn’t seem like just arousal.”

Whispers about the moistness and softness of my inner walls, ready for penetration, followed. And as if to confirm his words, he deliberately scraped the inside, where fluid had pooled, making a squelching sound, stimulating me subtly.

“Huugh, huck… Ugk.”

“Me too. Since Seo Yi-hyun is flowing so much, so much… I’m also… very aroused…. Should I take my finger out and put something else in? Or should we go with that?”

His voice was mixed with irregular breaths due to arousal. At his lewd whispers, my inner walls tightened on their own again.

I felt like I was going to come standing up. Since our encounters usually lasted for hours, I had to delay my first ejaculation as much as possible during sex with him. Without further hesitation, I nodded.

Two fingers slowly withdrew from my body. The sensation of them retreating was so stimulating that I stiffened my shoulders, gripping the base of my penis to prevent myself from ejaculating. As the fingers withdrew, I tried to hide the feeling of fluid leaking from the still-open gap by lowering my head and pretending to focus on taking off my clothes.

In the meantime, I took off my jeans, which had slid down to my ankles, and my stretched, soaked underwear. I figured I’d have to throw the underwear away. He watched me from a step away, then finished taking off my t-shirt.

Only when I was naked did the sound of the rain finally register. It was so loud it felt chilling, as if I were standing naked in the rain, and the thought that I had been so focused on the act that I hadn’t heard it made me feel awkward.

Standing awkwardly, I crossed one arm over my chest, rubbing my shoulder, and tried to discreetly cover my penis with the other hand, but the noticeable bulge made it difficult. Even his gaze, sweeping over my entire body, seemed to stimulate my penis further.

“I can’t take it anymore,” he muttered to himself, unbuttoning his shirt and finding my wrist, which was covering my penis, then leading me to the bed. He led me into the bedroom beyond the partition and sat me on the edge of the bed.

The bed, with its thick mattress doubled and a topper added, was so high that it reached his groin. Despite its simple design, it felt somewhat luxurious to me.

His chest was slightly revealed through his unbuttoned shirt. As I sat on the bed and glanced at him, he looked down at his chest and chuckled. Then he lightly bit my nose.

“So eager.”

With a smile still lingering on his face, he stepped back, unbuckled his belt, and unzipped his pants. Without hesitation, he pulled down his black briefs, and his penis sprang out. It was a firmness and weight that could be described as bursting forth.

He bent over, removed his lower garments completely, and approached me, his smile completely gone. He slowly pushed my chest. He pushed my legs, which were lying across the bed, upwards, making me bend my knees. The sound of the rain suddenly became loud again.

“Huuum… Uugh, huck….”

His erect penis brushed against the back of my thighs, making my supine body writhe. My gluteal muscles contracted, tightening my anus. Watching all of this, he removed his shirt and slowly pushed his knees outwards, widening my legs further.

Conscious of my legs being spread apart by him, I bit my lower lip. His right hand slid down my inner thigh towards my groin. His hot palm followed the traces of the fluid I had just leaked.

He slid his hand down to the point where my buttocks parted to form a groove, and massaged my wet perineum.

“Huughuck… Huugh….”

As I moaned, tensing my thighs, he looked up at me, his face still between my legs. He was also aroused, to the point where he seemed to be glaring at me with resentment or anger.

Maintaining eye contact, he placed his hands on my knees, which were now propped up, and moved closer. His erect penis rubbed against the inner flesh of my spread thighs. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the fluid motion of his waist, reminiscent of sexual intercourse.

Even lying down, my breathing was ragged.

My erect penis stuck to my lower abdomen, and my sweat-soaked chest rose and fell rapidly. The moment his penis changed direction, slid over the gap between my testicles, and pressed down firmly, I widened the gap between my knees further, without anyone telling me to. His eyebrows, looking down, twitched.

The desire, which had been building from outside the bedroom, reached its peak. The worry that I might look ridiculous was already out of the calculation. I stroked the area around my genitals and looked up at him with an obvious look of invitation. In the dimly lit room, made darker than usual by the rain, his blue eyes glinted.

I didn’t know I had this side to myself, but the reactions he showed to my sudden actions sometimes returned to me as a thrilling pleasure.

Like now, when he was focused between my legs with the face of an inexperienced, late-blooming youth seeing another person’s genitals for the first time.

“…….”

His hands, which had been stroking both sides of my groin, slid deeper, fumbling around my Beta, the one we had just entered together. His eyes widened, his breathing grew ragged, and his shoulders, which seemed as solid as stone walls, heaved. He didn’t seem aware of it, but the grip on my knee tightened considerably.

As I pulled the entrance open from both sides, making it seem slightly parted, he let out a sound that was almost a choke and brought one hand to his own genitals. Standing before me, lying on the edge of the bed with my legs spread, he clutched the base of his already sufficiently hard penis.

“Hngh, hng… Krrk.”

The sensation of his swollen glans settling at my entrance and pressing gently was enough to make me arch my back and grip the sheets. He raised an arm to wipe the sweat from his forehead and temples haphazardly, then stroked my heaving lower abdomen and clicked his tongue.

“I used to scoff, saying that the idea of any man other than me being a wolf was something only insecure, pathetic losers believed…”

“……”

His glans, slick with the copious amount of precum characteristic of an Alpha, kept slipping as it merely rubbed against my entrance, barely entering. At that tantalizing contact, my lower body couldn’t stay still and twitched.

“I guess I have to join that pathetic group.”

He sighed and slowly pushed his glans in. Even with just the glans inserted, the pressure that felt like it was crushing my entire body made me lift my chin and pucker my lips.

“Haa, uh… Hh… Hh, hk.”

He grabbed my side. As I convulsed subtly, I looked up at him through eyes that had quickly become moist from the pressure applied below. With his weight shifted lower to spread his legs, his center of gravity lowered due to the slight mismatch in height between the bed and the position of his penis, he was shallowly thrusting his hips to tame my entrance while the glans was inserted.

“He’s handsome and cute, has a great body, and is sexy too… How could I not be anxious?”

“……”

Was it a joke or serious? I examined his face.

His words were more embarrassing than the fact that I was accepting his glans.

As he leaned his upper body over me, turning my head away, he clasped his hands together. Then, bringing his joined hands to his mouth, he kissed the back of my hand.

“Krrk. Ugh. Hh…”

As he leaned forward, the heat penetrated deeper, and I bit my lip, rocking my hips. From the closeness, his eyes greedily watched my reaction. His damp breath rained down on my face.

“I love it when you get this bold in bed… and even if my daily life becomes impossible because of a sexier Seo Yi-hyun, I welcome it… but at the same time, I keep feeling anxious.”

“That… I really don’t think so.”

“What?”

If we’re talking about anxiety caused by someone’s charm, I was confident I could win the world number one title. The person who made me number one in that field was now talking about his own anxiety, so I couldn’t relate at all.

“Are you saying you disagree with the statement about Seo Yi-hyun’s charm right now?”

He narrowed his eyes and thrust his hips, digging deeper. Swallowing my moans, I had to put strength into my clasped hands as if clinging to them. He pinned my hands to the sheets and overlapped his upper body with mine.

He rocked his hips, rubbing his hot tongue against my ear. Each time he lifted and slammed his hips down, the deepest part of my body vibrated. Even though the penis was still less than half inserted, the feeling of my inner walls splitting was vivid.

“Hk, h. H. Haa.”

With the overwhelming pleasure of deep penetration filling me completely, I gasped and instinctively wrapped my legs around his hips. He paused for a moment, sighing as if catching his breath. He brought his clasped hands to his lips and bit my knuckles.

“You say you’re not like that, but you act like this. Where did you learn to be like this?”

“Hngh…”

He whispered how stimulated he was by my movements, meticulously licking the complex curves of my ear.

He told me I was “good.”

The burning sensation of the glans as he forced open my tightly closed entrance, and the dense pressure that felt like he was gnawing on my entire penis as he pushed through the tight inner walls.

And, rendering such resistance and stiffness meaningless, as the penetration continued, as his penis rubbed against the mucous membrane and the protruding part of his glans scraped against my prostate, he whispered about how my Beta gradually softened, opened, became wet, and finally clung to his penis with a passionate honesty.

While listening to these intimate words, sometimes even academic in their explicitness, I moaned as if going mad, shook my head, and pressed him by rocking my hips. He, too, drenched me internally with precum, driving me deeper with the squelching sounds of intercourse.

Looking down at my contorted, sobbing face, he slowly swayed his pelvis from side to side. Even the sensation of his pubic hair brushing against my tender inner skin made me shudder.

“Then I’ll just have to show you. How sexy Seo Yi-hyun is.”

“……”

While I gasped irregularly, unsure of his intentions, he kissed my lips and then pulled away, lifting his upper body. The process of his thick penis, which had been tightly engaged as if about to burst, pulling out, dragging the mucous membrane with it, was so vivid that I instinctively lifted my head and looked down. As if to show me, he looked at me with a sweat-drenched face and grinned.

“Aaaah…”

When he pulled out completely, leaving only the glans, I shook my head and made a strange sound, driven by a mix of anticipation and fear.

His penis, scraping the top of my entrance sharply as it withdrew, displayed its firm elasticity, forcefully grinding against his lower abdomen and vibrating. The bodily fluids tangled on his penis splattered in all directions.

The sensation of mucus leaking from the opening, which was clearly still open, sent shivers down my arms. There were times when this feeling of bodily fluids flowing out from within me felt like the most vivid sensation of sex.

I flinched and drew my legs together, feeling a strange chill that I wouldn’t have experienced if I hadn’t had sex with an Alpha using a place I’d never considered.

Looking at me with a serious expression, he scanned his own genitals, then walked out the open door and returned with his phone from the table. In his hand was my phone.

Not understanding what he intended, I slowly sat up. He, leading with his penis which seemed to be in the way, climbed onto the bed. He showed a brief expression of surprise that the screen wasn’t locked, then tapped the screen a few times. Suddenly, he stretched his arm out and tilted his head back and forth towards the screen.

The moment I realized he had started recording, my hips instinctively slid backward. He quickly slid between my legs, pulling me close by embracing my waist.

As his legs dug under my thighs, bringing our groins closer, our erect penises brushed against each other. That alone made my neck tingle, and I parted my lips in surrender to his kiss.

“Ugh, ng… Hk… Mm.”

I was aware of the camera recording the right side of my face, but my body, extremely sensitive from the prolonged erection, craved his kiss even more.

His sucking on my lower lip stopped. He must have looked at me with unconcealed longing, but I didn’t have the composure to deal with that.

“This is Seo Yi-hyun’s phone… and what happens to the files after I record them is up to Seo Yi-hyun’s preference.”

“……”

He looked at me intently from beneath my lowered eyelids.

“What do you think? Not interested?”

Surprisingly, I was interested.

The thought of how we would appear on the phone screen he was waving around, a lewd curiosity drew me in. Was I this sexually curious and adventurous? Sex with him was always an encounter with unfamiliar sensations, an unfamiliar self.

Stroking his arm as he fumbled with my waist, I pressed my lips firmly against his, which were inches away. He tilted his chin to deepen the kiss. Using only his lips, he gently traced and released mine repeatedly.

I traced his bare shoulder upwards, encircling his firm, long nape with my hands. I parted my lips to take his into my mouth. Our lips, above and below, below and above, shifted positions, overlapping and parting.

We rarely closed our eyes when we kissed.

I don’t know if people actually close their eyes when they kiss, like they do in the media. I also don’t know why he doesn’t close his eyes. At first, I had no particular reason.

I was just curious what he looked like when kissing, and as time passed, now, I couldn’t close my eyes because I didn’t want to miss him, because it felt too precious. I wanted to feel him completely with every sense I could muster, not just my lips and tongue. It didn’t matter if it was a lustful desire.

Being in bed with someone I like, and who likes me… (it’s highly probable, at least) why should I feel guilty if I’m a little lustful?

Perhaps his words, telling me not to feel guilty, had an effect, because I even had thoughts that were quite audacious for me.

Even now, we were entwining tongues while looking into each other’s eyes, but now… I couldn’t help but be aware of the phone in his left hand, which felt like a third participant in this bed.

Nevertheless, my excitement and focus on sex were not at all diminished. Rather, the front-facing camera mode screen, which was filming us, tensed my skin and sharpened the sensations of feeling him.

“Hh… Hh, mm… Hh, hk.”

Moaning at the flexible caress of his tongue, which filled my mouth and then tickled and scraped the inside of my cheeks and the lining behind my lips, I suddenly narrowed my throat and lowered my voice, thinking that even these sobs were being recorded on video.

As if sensing my awareness, he smiled and gave my lips a short kiss. Then, he lightly cupped my chin and rubbed our lips together until the surfaces brushed, whispering.

“Look at the screen. Us kissing.”

Like a coward, like someone watching a horror movie through their fingers, I cautiously turned my gaze.

As I extended my tongue to his courtship gesture of rolling it in a circle and licking the back of my tongue, I gave him my tongue, and with a groan, mm… hmm. Mm. He immediately swallowed it and sucked it intensely until it was numb.

As he tightened his grip on my tongue, he glanced sideways, adjusting the position. In the screen, another version of myself, entangled with him in a passionate kiss, appeared more vividly than the real me kissing him.

No, rather, the me on the screen seemed more sexually prominent than the real me. The me I felt myself to be still seemed hesitant and defensive… but the me on the screen seemed explicit, bold, and enjoying the situation. Which one was real?

My appearance, with my eyes glazed and unfocused, licking his tongue and moaning from the back of my throat, was more foreign than a stranger I had met for the first time today.

The glistening of the red flesh, not fully swallowed, revealed between his lips and my teeth, was more intense than the first porn I had accidentally stumbled upon with a few clicks in my boyhood.

“Hh, hk. Mm. Ughh… Hmm.”

As he pushed the phone further away, his face appeared side-by-side on the screen.

Instead of facing each other directly as usual, we tilted our faces towards the phone, monitoring ourselves and each other in real-time on the screen, testing our stimulation through them.

Every moment of our kiss, rubbing our lips together, deliberately rubbing our tongues outside our lips, and entwining them in a back-and-forth motion… was fully exposed with the blinking red dot at the top of the screen, not just romantic.

The two in the screen were simultaneously the real me and him, and androids modeled after me and him. The initial shock that felt like it was striking my ego scattered too easily, and behind it, human curiosity arose, as if facing one’s own android. Or perhaps, this is how one would feel if they saw their reflection in a mirror for the first time in over twenty years.

It wasn’t just me. He too was showing explicit interest in the new game he had proposed.

As he swept his tongue through my mouth, checking my reaction on the screen, he gently stroked the back of my neck, pulled me closer, and repeatedly bit and released my lips with his.

“You can’t take your eyes off the screen. Who did you fall for? Which one of us? Huh?”

His teasing, spoken as if he found it cute, made me look away from the screen and pretend otherwise, but just as seeing someone eat deliciously on TV can stimulate appetite, I couldn’t deny that the lewd entanglement on the screen was stimulating my desire.

Instead of pressing me for an answer, he caressed my upper body with the hand around my neck and moved downwards. As his lips nuzzled my nape, I lifted my chin and my eyes met my own in the screen, and for some reason, my hips tensed.

He pushed my legs, which were resting on his thighs, making me bend my knees. With a slightly hesitant posture, I changed my position as he guided me. As I sat with my knees bent, his hand slipped under my testicles.

“Ugh, h…”

As I tilted my upper body back, my center of gravity shifted backward, widening the gap between my legs, and his fingers fumbled inside my wet anus, which had been softly relaxed from the recent penetration. He lowered his head, meticulously pressing various parts of the inner wall as if inspecting it, then slowly withdrew his finger, looking up at me with a deliberate, suggestive nuance.

Ting. Ding. As the first video ended, the second recording began immediately. With his thumb, he touched the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen, changing the camera’s direction. The phone, switched to the rear camera, suddenly came close to my chest.

In the extreme close-up and shakily moving screen, which looked like something from an experimental independent film, the hardened nipples were clearly visible even to me.

“Haa, ha… Hh…”

Though nothing touched my body, my moans rose as if I had received intense caresses. My arms resting on the sheets trembled, and my chest twitched. He was engrossed in directing my nipples on the screen, changing the angle here and there with an almost investigative seriousness.

“……”

His hands stopped, and his gaze slowly moved upwards, meeting mine, because of my hand, which had started caressing the nipple on the screen.

The nipple, swollen to a sensitive, reddish hue, was slightly enlarged from the long caresses the night before. Using my middle finger, I repeatedly stroked the plump flesh from bottom to top.

He heaved his broad, thick shoulders as if angry, breathing heavily. Watching my nipple being bent and rolled on the screen, he pulled the camera back and attacked my breast himself.

“Hngh, hk… Hh, uh.”

His tongue overlapped my fingers. Filming his fingers and tongue entangled in caressing a small nipple, he was uninhibited by being aware of himself on the screen.

Looking back and forth between the real him and the him on the screen, I slowly pushed my fingers, which had been teasing his tongue by bending the nipple this way and that, into his mouth. He glanced up at me and parted his lips wide, taking my nipple and the tips of my fingers into his mouth simultaneously. My back arched and my hips heaved at the sensation of my fingers being rolled in his mouth along with the firmly clenched nipple.

My lower half, which had been vaguely rummaged and left empty, twitched, wanting to be filled tightly again. Whether I wanted it or not, I could no longer reach a satisfying climax with just the ejaculation of his penis.

“Ugh, hk… Uh… Ng.”

So much pre-cum had already flowed out that I wondered if any semen would even come out when I ejaculated. My penis was starting to hurt. How could he maintain an erection for so long and hold back from ejaculating? Was this also a sexual ability unique to a Golden Alpha?

But I, a perfectly ordinary twenty-two-year-old Beta, now wanted him to rub his penis inside me and reach climax. I wanted it so badly.

Sensing my animalistic desperation at the extreme, he pursed his lips, spat out my fingers, and then sucked my nipple hard as if to compress it. As he sucked, his tongue flicked and rapidly scraped my nipple inside his mouth.

“Hhuk, hk… Haaht.”

Stomping my feet and wriggling my calves, I arched my back and pulled his head towards me. His body then fell on top of me, pushing me down.

Unable to withstand the weight that crashed down, I collapsed onto the sheets, my back arching off the mattress. Tilting my head this way and that, I rubbed my erect penis against his chest as he bit down harder on my nipples.

“Ugh. Th- that. Hng.”

Moans, more like exclamations than words, slipped from my lips. Finally, he was entering me, a little more urgently. Thanks to the recent penetration, he was able to push his penis all the way in, in about three thrusts.

“Haa, hng… Hngk. Hng…”

Before I could even catch my breath from the pressure of his penis filling me completely, he began to rock his hips. The moans that had been subsiding quickly turned into ragged breaths that hinted at intense sex.

He was now using his tongue outside my lips, teasing my nipples, his face capturing the entire, slightly redder areola, glistening with saliva, on screen.

“Seo Yi-hyun…”

His eyes, looking up from my chest, were hazy. As he thrust his hips heavily, pounding inside me, he pressed his lips to mine, making a sweet sound, then pulled away.

“See? It’s pretty, isn’t it? I was right, after all.”

As if to confirm his words, he turned my chin to face the screen.

“Hk. Ugh, hng…”

The force of his thrusts, increasing in speed, shook me violently. My reflection was far more lewd than the kissing scene where he was licking my tongue. All that was visible on screen was my face, shaking and moaning; it didn’t even show our joined parts, where fluids would be leaking out with each squelching thrust around his penis. Yet, it evoked sex itself.

It felt as though the sex up until now had only been possible because I hadn’t seen myself, because the me on screen was far more sexually undone than I had imagined. I had thought I was having sex with him in a slightly more… restrained way, hesitating before pleasure, but that was a delusion.

I tried to hide the traces of sex all over my face by covering my lips with the back of my hand, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen.

“Even though you’re inside me right now… seeing you on screen makes me want you.”

His excited breaths, piercing me rapidly, drowned out the sound of the rain and filled my hearing.

“Even like this, Seo Yi-hyun… aren’t you sexy?”

Between each word, he asked, pausing to thrust his hips. Our images on screen overlapped and shook. Whether it was because I was sexy, as he said, or because of the unusual stimulation of watching myself in a sexual act, objectified on screen, I had to admit it now.

Unbelievably, I was getting turned on by watching myself.

“Hng, hngk. Hng… Hngp.”

As I watched him rub our lower bodies together wetly, I lowered the hand covering my mouth. My lips parted hesitantly.

“Am I… always like this?”

His response to my evasive question was to gleam in his eyes as he licked his lower lip. That question itself was an admission of the seductive side he had discovered in himself.

The movement of his hips grinding against me intensified. Squish, squish, squish. The sound of penetration, pounding inside me, soaked with precum, was so explicit it was embarrassing even for us, the participants. With every withdrawal, it sounded as if I could see the translucent mucus clinging to his thick glans, stretching out stickily.

“Why? What do you feel like right now, Seo Yi-hyun, that you ask that?”

“Ugh, too…”

“Do you understand why I was anxious now?”

Looking at his flushed face, expecting a lewd answer, I pulled him closer by his neck and kissed him. Ting. He threw his phone onto the sheets and covered me. His broad chest, with its curves, pressed down heavily on me. As our upper bodies overlapped, the friction below deepened. With each of his thrusts, his thick testicles swung, hitting below my anus with a springy elasticity that further muddled my thoughts.

“This… I can’t show this to anyone but you, CEO. So, I was wor…ried… Hng.”

He looked down at me with eyes blazing blue, as if I had betrayed him, and lunged for my neck. He bit into my flesh, sucking, then squeezed and chewed with the pressure in his mouth, causing a sharp pain that felt like a twisted pleasure.

Huff, huff. Having broken through his limit and boiling over, he was no longer suppressing any desire. His broad shoulders, covering me, swelled and heaved before my eyes.

“The fact that I can do this to you, that I can see you like this… only I can.”

It wasn’t a declaration of confidence. It sounded more like a desperate plea: ‘It must be only me.’ As he moved to another spot on my neck to leave his mark, he went into overdrive. His large, glistening body, pressed flat against me, only his lower half moving rapidly, was intensely animalistic.

“Hng, hngk. Hng… Hng, haak.”

The sensation of climax rushed towards me, my breathing growing ragged as if I were about to pass out.

Gripping the sheets with both fists, he pushed up his upper body and thrust his hips with a wild speed that threatened to shatter the bed and me. It wasn’t just his hips. From his shoulders to his back, waist, hips, and thighs, his entire body created large curves, pouring the force of that momentum into me. I convulsed intermittently, almost like a seizure.

“Seo Yi-hyun… Snap out of it and look at me.”

“Hng, hng.”

He grabbed my wrists with his hot hand and pulled them down, making me feel his penis, hotter than my hands. I felt the base of his thick penis as it plunged in and pulled out stickily. The throbbing, hot column seemed to have its own independent pulse.

His eyes, shining with a blue light, looked down at me and said,

“I’m your Alpha.”

“……”

In the rising ecstasy just before climax, his words felt like a small declaration. The furrow in his brow, for a moment, didn’t seem to be from lust. He emphasized it again.

“Yours. Your golden.”

I felt the movement of my Alpha, as he called him, spreading my Beta and pushing inside. Instinctively, I stroked his thick penis as it entered and exited the entrance to my anus, which was stretched to its maximum, its edges taut.

He lowered his head, looking at the movement of my hand, and inhaled with a swoosh, hng.

With rapid movements, thrusting his hips while leaving just enough length for me to touch, my wet inner walls throbbed.

“Hngggggg… Hngk… Kh, hngp.”

“Your Alpha… what is he doing to Seo Yi-hyun the Beta? Huh?”

My tender inner flesh, sensitized by being rubbed and massaged, craved to be pushed harder, to its limit, urging me to give him the answer he wanted.

Scratching his arms gripping my shoulders, and pulling the root of his penis inside me, I trembled.

“Sex… Hah, hng. Let’s have sex… Your Alpha, CEO, here, in this Beta… Se…”

He spat out a curse and lowered his upper body, kissing me savagely, crushing my lips. It was a clumsy kiss for him, messy, but it conveyed a raw, unrefined desire all the more.

“Ugh, mm. Yeah… Hng. Hng…”

“I want to hear more of Seo Yi-hyun being fucked. You know how hearing your sounds makes me come… Don’t you? I’m going crazy with excitement.”

His confession, completely abandoning reason and obsessively fixated on sex, added stimulation upon stimulation, pushing me forward. He was undressing me with words, though I was already naked. I was the one going crazy.

“Haak, hng! Kk, hng.”

With the feeling of his penis throbbing inside my belly, I sensed knotting approaching. The feeling of knotting, approaching like the primal fear-inducing theme music of the movie Jaws, made me grip the sheets with both hands and thrash my hips wildly.

He looked at my reaction, picked up his phone, and ding, the camera started rolling again. But this time, I didn’t have the luxury of caring about that voyeuristic third gaze.

On the spot where the precum I had leaked earlier had dried white, new precum flowed, and the rear camera, capturing my genitals, turned towards the junction between my legs, our joined area.

“Ughh, hng! Hng…”

The almost violent, overwhelming pleasure of knotting, pulsing powerfully inside me, didn’t lessen its intensity even with repetition. Thump, thump. It felt like he had implanted a new heart inside me.

His eyes, shining with light, looked down at me through the approximately six-inch screen, dissecting and magnifying my every reaction to the knotting, inch by inch. My lips, my chest, my lower abdomen, my wet groin where fluids of unknown origin were tangled, and his penis, bulging as if about to burst – all were laid bare by the lens that allowed no distortion, right before his eyes.

My eyes wide open, my back and hips arching, I came without him even touching my glans. My lower jaw trembled, my hands flailing in the air, driven by the pulse inside me, more vivid than my own heartbeat.

“It’s okay… Breathe, Seo Yi-hyun.”

“Hng, hng… CEO… C-CEO…”

Lost in the ecstatic dream of climax during knotting, I called out to him like a madman. With his free hand, not holding the phone, he clasped mine and pressed it down onto the sheets, rubbing our joined lower halves.

“Yeah, it’s okay. Your CEO is here. It’s okay, you know what this is. It’s knotting.”

As he gently rocked me, still inside me after I had come, and meticulously recorded my changes caused by the knotting through the screen, he whispered for me to call his name.

Even though I had come, he was still knotting. The heat of his semen, gushing into me with each contraction and expansion, was vivid. Releasing my clasped hand, he pushed up the back of my left thigh and thrust his hips like a charging beast, throwing himself completely into the pleasure of knotting.

By now, it had grown dark, and the artificial light filtering in from outside the window reflected on his bare body. His face, illuminated by the phone screen, looked paler than usual, but his eyes, lusting after my body, were a clear blue.

With wet eyes and parted lips, I called him.

“Awi.”

“……”

“Kun.”

“……”

After calling them, I understood. How much I had wanted to call him by his names, not his title.

His names, which had made me feel small, like a privilege belonging to those he cherished. If I could, I wondered how he would react if he knew my greedy desire to make all his various names my own.

His shoulders and chest heaving, he looked at me as if I were an arrow.

“Seo Yi-hyun.”

“……”

This time, he called my name. The camera, which had been reflecting the red shimmer of knotting, was no longer pointing at us. All I faced was the blue flame leaping from him.

“Let’s go to Chicago. Together. Come with me.”

“……”

“Will you… come with me?”

Perhaps afraid to hear my answer, or perhaps due to the pleasure only an Alpha in knotting could feel, a pleasure I couldn’t comprehend, I looked up at his pained face, hesitated, and nodded with a dry, cracked voice.

“I will… I’ll go. I’ll be with you.”

Ting. With the sound of the filming completely stopping, we were completely focused on each other, cut off from everything else.

He continued to rock his hips, maintaining my arousal, until the knotting subsided enough for his penis to barely slide out. He then turned me over without withdrawing.

My entire body felt drained, but I braced myself on the sheets, relying on his arms that held up my lower abdomen from behind. With every pound into my anus, mixed with precum and semen, the squelching sound felt like shoving my fist into a pit full of mud, and my mouth grew dry.

Surprisingly, he immediately re-entered knotting without any process to heighten his arousal, as if he had just changed batteries. This was the first time such a short interval had passed between two knotting sessions.

“Hngg, hng… No… I think I’m going to die… Haa, it’s strange. It feels strange… My insides are melting…”

My insides felt as if they were melting and liquefying, and I crawled on the sheets, trying to escape the terrifying pleasure that made me feel like I was losing my form. I was crying. I thought they were physiological tears, but I didn’t know their true meaning.

He covered me from behind, stroking my penis to distract my consciousness. Kisses rained down on my ears and cheeks. Inside my belly, his Alpha, no, my Alpha, was expanding, creating friction that burned all my internal organs. I felt like my self was exploding and being destroyed along with my fragile organs.

“I’m sorry… Please bear with me a little longer. Go to your limit because of me. Show me everything… Don’t run away.”

Don’t run away, Seo Yi-hyun. Please.

He repeated, his voice laced with longing, mixed with sighs, collapsing. Yet, he didn’t let me run away. And there was no way to escape the penis knotting inside me anyway. What was he so afraid of? Like an idiot.

Biting and sucking and gnawing at various points on my neck and shoulders, leaving behind red marks, he implanted another new heart inside me, where the heat and tremor from the previous knotting had not yet faded.

I didn’t know how much time passed until all desire, impulse, and energy were spent, reaching a complete lull. I could barely recall how this exhausting sex had even begun.

No, I remembered.

It was the desire for mutual restraint and possession. It was the childish yet desperate wish to confirm that such a right existed.

After satisfying the hunger of possessiveness to my heart’s content, five videos remained on the phone, but I didn’t have the courage to play them. However, I didn’t delete them either.

I had to lie on the sheets for a long time, like someone returning home after hours of intense exercise. No, it felt more like severe beating than exercise. My body trembled, and my skin ached all over.

Even after the knotting subsided, he didn’t withdraw immediately. He lay on top of me for a long time, caressing me slowly, stroking my hair, and kissing my face and upper body for an extended period. Only when my eyes regained some focus and my breathing stabilized did he withdraw his not-yet-fully-flaccid penis with a languid groan and got off me.

Unlike me, who was a mess, he showed no signs of exhaustion. He left the bedroom and returned with a towel and water. The outline of his erect penis was clearly visible through the towel wrapped around his waist. Even after two consecutive knotting sessions with a short interval, his erection had failed to subside from sex today.

Ignoring the strong aftereffects of sex lingering and flowing through every corner of our bodies, we sat side-by-side on the edge of the bed and gulped down the mineral water he had brought. We both definitely needed hydration. It felt like all the fluids in our bodies had been squeezed out.

3:13. 5:37. One was 12:02.

As I mentally counted the playback times of each video in the phone’s album, he moved his lips over the marks he had left on me. The studio lights were on, so a soft light permeated the bedroom, neither too bright nor too dark. The rain was still drizzling, though it wasn’t pouring anymore.

“This one left too deep a mark. It must have hurt when you did it.”

After staring at the video thumbnails, which were too frightening to touch, for a while, thirst washed over me. I drank more water and turned to look at him.

He was pointing to a particularly dark kiss mark, like a bruise, just above my collarbone, speaking apologetically, but his face couldn’t hide a smile. He had occasionally left one or two marks in hidden places, but this was the first time he had left so many, spanning my neck, collarbone, shoulders, and chest.

Since this was sex after we had openly revealed our jealousy, I wondered if he had wanted to assert ownership, even with the meager means of leaving marks on the skin. His act of kissing the marks left on my body seemed somehow cute. Though it hadn’t seemed cute at all when he was marking me with possessiveness.

A weak chuckle escaped me. Looking down at my mottled torso, I tried to make a joke.

“Do you like it?”

He looked up at me, his brow furrowed, as he kissed the mark above my nipple, turning my shoulder. Then, he leaned back, creating distance, and scanned the red trails that our sex had left on my body.

“Very much. I might submit it as a work of art.”

Because he was flawlessly handsome, his very appearance conveyed seriousness. His face was incapable of looking frivolous. When he made jokes with an even more serious expression on that face, I still didn’t know how to react.

“Honestly, I have no intention of sharing.”

He said with a laugh, leaning closer to me and kissing my bare shoulder. I smiled too, feeling a sense of endearment at his posture, his large body hunched as he let his arms hang between my legs and rested his cheek on my shoulder.

Embarrassingly, with every laugh, his knotting left behind a thick discharge that seeped out. In fact, it flowed out so much that I couldn’t even try to stop it. The towel I was sitting on became damp. I straightened my upper body instinctively, trying not to let him notice, and spoke while fiddling with the bottle of water and my phone in my hands.

“A job where you don’t have to go to work… it’s nice in times like these.”

He twinkled his eyes and laughed playfully, then stroked my waist and rubbed his nose against mine.

“Are you saying it’s a good job for sex right now? Seo Yi-hyun, you’ve gotten so lewd.”

I didn’t feel the need to deny it. It was true. Responding to his lips, which kissed me lightly as if savoring the afterglow, I let out a slow groan from deep within my throat. Suddenly, the thought that the first visual record of us together was a sex tape made me feel a little bitter. While I didn’t feel guilt or discomfort about those videos from earlier, I wanted some proof that our relationship wasn’t solely about sex. It was a spontaneous impulse.

“Ceo.”

“……”

His twitching eyebrows seemed to express his displeasure at the return to formal address after sex, but he didn’t voice his thoughts.

“Would you like to… take a picture together?”

Perhaps it was an unexpected suggestion, as his eyes widened. But soon, he smiled and quickly moved behind me, as if he had been waiting, and wrapped his arms around my waist. As he rested his chin on my shoulder, pressing his cheek close, he struck a pose for the photo. I opened the camera and switched the lens direction.

The screen, which had been showing the messy table outside the open door, changed to a bust shot of the two of us. It had already been about a month since we started staying glued together day after day, but we had never captured ourselves together visually, so it was a fresh two-shot.

The framing, which captured us up to our bare chests, made the photo feel a bit suggestive. I tried adjusting the arm extension, but a close-up framing filled only with our faces was no better.

“Now that I think about it, this is my first selfie.”

“Me? Do you think mine would be the second?”

He hugged my waist tighter and turned to look at me. Come to think of it, the image of him holding a phone and searching for the right angle for a selfie was so unimaginable that I let out a chuckle.

Unlike him, who looked natural, I looked stiff in the screen. I lowered my arm and bowed my head.

“It’s awkward… should we just not do it?”

“Why, I was already looking forward to it.”

At his voice, genuinely disappointed, I hesitantly raised my arms again.

“Since neither of us is wearing a top, it doesn’t look very wholesome.”

He tapped the screen and laughed, then pressed his lips to my cheek. His right arm crossed over my chest, wrapping around my left shoulder. His handsome face, which even looked good on camera, came close to me in the screen as if to kiss me.

“Smile a little more.”

To ease my stiff expression, he stroked my side and whispered in my ear.

“No matter what, we’ll still look like a couple who just had sex.”

Click. With a slightly awkward and anticlimactic laugh, the image of us was captured in a 4:3 ratio.

Couple. Whether he meant it consciously or not, it was a word that left an impression as strong as the aftereffects of knotting.

Watching his profile as he transferred the photo we had just taken to his own number, I suddenly felt a sense of longing for him, even though he was right beside me. Even after he had knotted inside me twice, he felt insufficient. It wasn’t a hunger born from him keeping his distance. Unable to explain it even to myself, I simply rested my forehead on his shoulder.

■ ■ ■

Given how difficult it was just to stand, refusing his offer to help with the aftermath would have been mere stubbornness.

As he gently cleaned inside me, I tried to support myself by holding onto the showerhead stand, but it wasn’t easy. “Don’t resist, lean on me,” he said with a voice full of pity, kissing my temples and cheeks several times as his skilled hands washed me.

Despite how much had already leaked out on the bed, the amount of murky fluid that flowed down with the shower water and into the drain was considerable. It was astonishing how much semen could be held within my body.

Only after the aftermath was complete and I was sitting in the bathtub did he start showering. He dried himself roughly, put on a robe, and returned with two cans of cold beer.

He sat down opposite me and offered me a beer.

“This is the first time we’ve bathed together in this room.”

It was also the first time we had sex in the downstairs room I was using. Although it was smaller than his bathroom upstairs, I liked this bathroom, with its walls, floor, and ceiling finished in tiles of various shades of blue. I also enjoyed watching him, looking awkward because his movements were restricted in the small bathtub, which was adorned with charmingly sized tiles rather than a luxurious whirlpool.

“It might sound persistent…”

“……”

“What did you talk about with Choi In-woo?”

As if he felt awkward bringing up the question, he couldn’t look me in the face.

“Just… about painting.”

“Are you saying Seo Yi-hyun’s first work is going to be handed over to another man?”

He leaned his elbow on the edge of the bathtub, tilted his head, and twirled his hair around his fingers. His displeased face looked like that of a thirteen-year-old boy… I thought I’d want to capture that look in a photo, but my phone, with its nearly depleted battery, was on the bed.

“Hyung did say he wanted to buy it… but I told him I didn’t think I was at that level yet.”

He let go of his hair and straightened his head.

“Then you must have felt wronged when I said it would be difficult if you signed something like a reservation.”

“It wasn’t exactly… wronged…”

He said he was worried I might get hurt if I went out into the world, because I seemed too docile and accustomed to staying silent even when misunderstood or taken advantage of.

But I wasn’t docile and kind, staying silent as he described. I was simply a coward, more accustomed to resignation than ordinary people, and habitually avoided problems for fear of them escalating.

A coward who, instead of revealing my true self to the person I liked, saying, “I’m this kind of person,” would silently drink beer and endure his worried gaze.

“The wine Choi In-woo brought. Do you know it’s a wine often ordered when seducing someone?”

Earlier… when I came down from the first floor, was he reading the label to confirm that? I shook my head, wiping away water droplets running down my eyelids.

“There was no seduction… nothing.”

“I know. And I know that even if that guy had tried to seduce you, you would have been firm.”

His voice was firm, leaving no room for doubt.

“Knowing that, why was I so unable to control myself?”

He said this, then picked up the beer he had placed on the edge of the tub and took several gulps, seeming embarrassed by his jealousy. The sound of rain still pattered through the small window hanging high near the ceiling.

He placed the beer can back in its original spot and said,

“About Chicago.”

“……”

“It might have sounded like an impulsive remark because I said it while knotting. Please know that it wasn’t.”

I recalled the sense of fulfillment of possession I felt when I first called his name, and the subsequent moment of invitation that returned like a confession. My mouth felt dry, so I drank more beer.

“Actually, ever since I moved into this house and Seo Yi-hyun started painting again… I had been thinking about it alone… but seeing Kwon Juhan’s painting nearing completion… I started to concretely wish that you could introduce Seo Yi-hyun’s paintings too, even if it was at an informal party. And beyond artistic achievement, travel is also stimulating. There’s no material more important for a creator than experience.”

He smiled faintly and swept back the clumped hair on his forehead. Then, as if recalling a funny memory, he chuckled, looking into the air.

“Now that you’ve seen all my unglamorous sides, to be even more honest.”

Despite his shy tone, his eyes, shifting to look at me, were intense and unhesitating. They clearly conveyed his lack of hesitation regarding his feelings.

“It’s also because… I don’t want to be apart from Seo Yi-hyun. Even if it’s only for a few days.”

He said it with conviction, then lowered his head and smiled. Watching his long, firm neck as he swallowed his beer, I also took a couple of sips.

It wasn’t just him who lacked confidence in a separation of mere days. It wasn’t just the selfish desire of not wanting to be apart, of wanting to be close… I felt an instinctive anxiety about his impending absence, so much so that I even felt a vague sense of dread, and tried to avoid thinking about his business trips as much as possible.

I never thought that even if I liked someone and started dating them, I would want such an intimate relationship. I was actually relieved that he said it first.

“Last time, after I went to the exhibition, I said something, didn’t I?”

His gaze turned to me.

“‘Better a lie than silence.'”

I placed the beer can on the edge of the tub and scooped up water with my hands, splashing it on my face. I wiped away the flowing water with my palm.

“Perhaps that’s because I’m someone who stays silent.”

“……”

I pursed my lips once, then continued.

“Because I hated my silent self.”

His eyes, looking at me, seemed to already know what I was about to talk about. Perhaps it was the story he had been curious about since that time I had hyperventilated in his living room. Yet, he had waited without asking, showing his consideration.

His calm, steady blue eyes conveyed that he was ready to listen.

I realized I didn’t need to gather my courage or plan for the right timing to talk about the past. I just hoped that what I was about to say would be an expression of my feelings for him. I was now confident that we were in a relationship where even the smallest details about each other became precious secrets.

“It was a collision accident… the cause was a malfunction in the braking system of the truck that was the perpetrator. No one violated regulations, nor was there a criminal with cruel intentions involved…”

He, who had been resting his arm on the edge of the tub, put down his beer can and withdrew his arm.

“My mother was the victim… but while there was a cause for the accident, the fact that there was no perpetrator who intentionally caused the incident with a terrible motive to curse, hate, and despise… that was what made it difficult… I think I was at a loss for how to handle the sudden situation, the emotions…”

My father, who had been waiting at the Thai restaurant for my mother, received the news of the accident over the phone. Without giving a detailed explanation, he ran out like a madman, and my maternal grandparents personally inquired everywhere to confirm my mother’s accident.

Then I took a taxi home alone and trembled in anxiety and confusion until the next morning when my father, looking like a ghost, returned after refusing to attend my mother’s funeral.

What kind of accident had happened to my mother, how she had died instantly at the scene, whether the previous report might have been a mistake, whether there would be a correction stating my mother was alive… repeatedly searching the news articles, spending the night… it was a horror akin to waiting for another death sentence from within the grave, a suffocating shadow of death slowly creeping over my skin.

The accident news was reported not only on the internet but also on TV news. In this day and age, traffic accidents weren’t a sensational enough news item to attract much attention, but a large-scale collision accident in the middle of Seoul, which resulted in five serious injuries and three deaths, was a different story.

At the end of the news, the announcer added, “It is truly an unfortunate event,” with a rather regretful expression, but it soon disappeared from his neat face as the report transitioned into related news emphasizing the importance of regular vehicle inspections.

They said the core of the incident was whether the cause was the perpetrator’s vehicle maintenance negligence or a defect in the car’s body, but that was merely an interpretation from the perpetrator’s perspective. His life depended on how the cause of the brake failure was determined.

As soon as my mother’s death was confirmed, my maternal grandparents immediately prepared for the funeral, and a simple three-day wake was held. Leaving my father, who had shut himself in his studio and refused to speak, my maternal grandparents made sure I attended the funeral. My maternal grandfather was the chief mourner. No contact was made with my Great Uncle’s family.

Even after the funeral was over and I returned home still in mourning attire, my father refused to leave his studio, so I was at a loss as to what to do alone and contacted Hani Hyung.

My mother died in a traffic accident. My father won’t come out of his room, won’t eat anything, and won’t say anything when I ask him anything. I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared. I’m so scared…

As I spoke to Hyung, my words became increasingly emotional and incoherent. Sitting on the bed with my knees drawn up, wearing an awkward black suit that didn’t fit me, I shed uncontrollable tears. It was probably the first time I had cried since clearly realizing my mother had died.

Until then, due to the suddenness of the accident and the surrounding circumstances that demanded I perform my assigned role without detailed explanations, I hadn’t truly grasped the reality of my mother’s death.

Two days later, my maternal grandparents visited. Facing my father, who showed no reaction, they left after saying they were cutting ties completely. They said they had no lingering attachment to life in Korea and would spend the rest of their lives creating art in Europe. They also said they would handle all legal and paperwork issues related to the accident, as well as the settlement with the perpetrator. Before leaving the entrance, their eyes, as they looked at me, held a fleeting, complex light, but they turned their backs even more coldly.

It was a sudden death due to an accident, and no one was prepared for it. Everyone was in chaos, and everyone was desperately trying to find a sense of realistic balance in their own way.

Everyone except my father.

Even after several days, my father showed no signs of improvement. When I brought him meals I had clumsily prepared, he would eat a little plain rice, but he still wouldn’t say a word. My worry and fear for my father blocked even the emotions I might have felt to mourn my mother’s death.

“Back then… I wasn’t sleeping properly anyway, but when I woke up at night, I would get up and open the studio door. I was scared to sleep next to my father, who had become a completely different person… but I was also afraid that my father… might… take his own life… I was afraid that he might be suffering and dying… and I wouldn’t know…”

I tried to sound calm, but my voice trembled uncontrollably. I rubbed my face with my wet hands, hiding the moisture gathering around my eyes.

“For my father, a world without my mother… is as good as worthless… so I thought he could easily have such thoughts. That’s why… when Great Uncle came and I moved to Grandfather’s house, I was actually relieved… I thought I wouldn’t have to bear all that weight alone anymore…”

As my father’s condition showed no improvement, Great Uncle had no choice but to leave his work and come home. Since my father adamantly refused to go to the hospital, we had to use our connections to hire a doctor to come to the house, incurring additional costs.

The doctor diagnosed my father’s condition as psychological aphonia.

After experiencing an event that deeply shocked my emotions, a phenomenon where a person’s hearing becomes paralyzed despite having no physical defects. The unconscious activity of the subconscious mind preemptively blocking any response to given external stimuli… this was the general content I researched online after my Great Uncle told me the diagnosis of psychological aphasia.

I accepted it as a kind of defense mechanism, a way for the subconscious to block the conscious mind’s response.

In other words, it meant that for my father, stopping listening and speaking felt safer than listening, speaking, and communicating with the world.

Even if I, his son, was included in that world.

“They say it’s possible that your father himself chose to close his mouth, even though there’s nothing wrong. That he can hear everything and say everything, but he just decided not to.”

That night, after the doctor had visited, my Great Uncle had said that while drinking soju in our kitchen.

I think I understood.

Unlike many people who cannot accept the sudden death of their spouse and cannot even bring themselves to look at their belongings, I understood by watching my father’s stubborn refusal to leave the studio where my mother’s traces remained… I realized that to my father, I was merely a byproduct of the love he shared with my mother.

When his love for my mother was intact and threatened, my existence was also precious to him as part of that love. But in the absence of my mother, my value faded.

It’s not that my father didn’t love me at all. It was simply not enough love to heal the grief of losing his wife by loving his remaining son. The grief of losing his wife had engulfed my father’s world, and I was just included in that world.

After that series of events passed, I stopped painting. There was nothing I wanted to paint anymore, and that was the same as having nothing I wanted to say or express.

And I became afraid of love.

If love is something that can turn one person into a monster by the disappearance of another, it felt like a risk that needed to be insured against. However, I had learned through my mother’s accident, etched into my bones, that insurance only lessens the burden of dealing with the aftermath of an accident, not prevent the accident itself.

Before that winter ended, my father and I moved to Grandfather’s house. Not only could I not handle my father alone, but my father, who had stubbornly resisted any suggestions, reacted when my Great Uncle mentioned returning to the seaside village.

And so, without even attending my middle school graduation, I left the house where our family of three had lived together for a long time, and my father remained silent for over six years after that.

Sitting with my knees drawn up, my hands loosely clasped in front of my ankles, I continued to speak, hesitating as I looked up at him. Hoping he wasn’t wearing too pained an expression.

“……”

“Hmm……”

Seeing his face, which seemed to struggle to control emotions that felt ready to erupt violently, unlike the wind, I let out a quiet sigh.

He bit his lip, his stiff shoulders slumping.

“I never imagined… you would stop painting for that reason.”

And as he listened, he roughly wiped his now dry face with his hand and shook his head.

“No, I just… I hoped it was just that you… somehow… as time went on, playing with friends became more fun, and painting felt trivial… that you naturally drifted away from the brush due to the whims of adolescence… I hoped it was something like that. In case…”

“……”

“I was afraid of hearing a story like this.”

His tone implied he couldn’t forgive himself for trying to escape my reality with such a wish. Even though nothing in this story involved his fault.

Gently stroking his calf, which was loosely extended to my right, I managed a faint smile.

“It would be a lie to say it doesn’t affect me at all… but it doesn’t feel like I’m going to die anymore… I haven’t overcome it, but it has dulled.”

“……”

He looked at me with an expression that seemed to say, ‘Is that even a thing to say?’, but I restrained myself, thinking that such words wouldn’t help me and would only result in spewing out unrefined, regrettable emotions. I could read his thoughts just from his expression.

The bathtub, made by filling the gaps between bricks with cement and then tiling over it, was large enough for one person, but not long enough for him to stretch his legs fully. As I stroked his long, awkwardly bent legs as if massaging them, I looked down at the meager foam that had mostly dissipated.

“ was painted before the accident, and even then, the emotions I felt between my parents weren’t at a critical level. I don’t know about others, but for me… it wasn’t always about painting intense things… Just like other friends at that age wanted to escape their parents’ interference and had complaints about their parents’ parenting methods for various reasons… I felt a childish jealousy towards my parents’ bond, extending from that…”

He now seemed to understand why a painting, drawn from the self-centered emotions typical of adolescence that could exist in any family, had become so terrifying it induced hyperventilation. But he didn’t look relieved.

Resting one arm on my raised knee, I swept my hair back with my right hand while massaging his ankle.

“In that process, the emotions I couldn’t properly process… probably distorted my inner self into an unnatural form. And I… let myself harden in that state…”

“……”

He couldn’t easily open his mouth. Complex and varied emotions flickered in his eyes as he looked at me.

I knew that reacting to someone sharing such a story would be a burdensome task for people. We used to be careful not to bring up such topics, even by mistake, around a friend whose personality had changed due to the shock of his parents’ divorce. Whether out of consideration or discomfort.

“I was afraid and cautious of feeling things, of forming relationships with others and experiencing emotional changes within them. What I wanted was… days of safety, without any plus or minus, to continue. Thinking that was the best way to protect myself.”

I lowered my head further, resting my chin on my knees. I couldn’t help but think of my own insignificance when faced with the struggles of Morae, Hyung, Yooni Noona, and Juhan Hyung, as they fought to overcome the obstacles in their lives.

“But I think I’ve realized that what I was pursuing wasn’t peace or safety, but emptiness… That it was just another form of silence, different from my father’s. I had silenced myself…”

The way they chose might not be the absolute, only right answer. Their present might not be perfect either. Every choice I witnessed and heard about was followed by someone’s sacrifice. What’s important is that I felt shame in their choices and their efforts to take responsibility for those choices.

I couldn’t like the way I chose. I couldn’t say it was the best. If my father was extreme silence, I was a weakened ‘small silence’.

“At that time, you were…”

He seemed to be trying to maintain his composure, but his voice, unusually, trembled slightly.

“You were only sixteen. A child who needed someone’s care to process and sort out such situations. It was your father and the adults around you who abandoned that duty. You should have been protected and cared for, emotionally and environmentally.”

His voice and expression contorted unnaturally, like someone trying to suppress anger.

“Yes… I thought that too, and I was angry and resentful for a long time. The target of my anger and resentment was mostly my father, but sometimes it expanded uncontrollably, and later I couldn’t even tell who the target was. But not everyone receives the help they need when they need it… Of course, it would be nice if they did… but I couldn’t…”

I don’t know if sharing heavy pasts is a prerequisite for love. Wouldn’t it be better if only one person knew about it, rather than both suffering? I had thought that too. But as I spoke to him, I think I understood. I wasn’t seeking his empathy for the pain of my past.

Gently cupping his ankle, as if gauging its thickness, I carefully opened my mouth.

“It’s presumptuous, and it’s still… too early…”

“……”

“But now, I think I can understand my father, just a little… Of course, not completely. I still have so many questions, and my resentment and hatred are so great that I’m afraid to ask them and hear the answers… but just a vague feeling that I can understand him a little, I do feel it…”

Strangely, I felt breathless. I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath to regain my composure.

“The meaning of a stranger… becoming more important in one’s life than anything else, perhaps even more than one’s own child…”

His eyelids creased, and his gaze flickered wildly. He looked like someone who had completely abandoned the restraint he had been trying so hard to maintain. To calm him, I fiddled with the ankle in my hand and continued speaking.

“Thank you for asking me to go to Chicago. I… didn’t impulsively agree in a knotting state either.”

Perhaps more than confessing my past, it was far more difficult for me to honestly express my emotions in these moments when reason controls instinct. It was certainly true, given how long I had remained silent about my feelings. But now I wanted change.

“I want to go. I don’t want to be apart from you, Representative.”

His lips moved as if to say something, and then he whispered with a pained sigh, collapsing.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry, Representative?”

“Just… seeing you talk about this, and yet unable to cry…”

Watching him rub his face with his palm, unable to finish his words, I reached out and gently took his fingers, which lay limply on my thigh.

“I already cried a lot… before.”

“……”

“And now, I have Kun… and Awi…”

With the sound of splashing water, he enveloped me.

Our wet lips met deeply, and his high nose pressed against my cheek. As his large hands covered my cheeks and ears, the sound of air flowing, which I couldn’t normally hear, was muffled. The kisses, repeated several times without using tongues, were more of a comfort than an erotic act.

Holding his broad, firm shoulders tightly, I finally let my emotions overflow.

“Can I think that way?”

“……”

“That I’m not alone anymore because you’re here. Can I think that… it’s not a delusion?”

He pressed his forehead against mine, his lips tightly shut, and remained silent for a moment.

“Can I be honest?”

“……”

He cupped my chin, making me meet his gaze, and I looked up at him, my eyes welling up.

“I’m angry at your father for abandoning you in such solitude when you were young… but if I were to lose you and suffer the same thing… I don’t have the confidence to cope in a better way. It might be too early to say this, and you might not believe me…”

There was no way I wouldn’t believe him. It was for the same reason that I could vaguely understand my father.

He didn’t try to comfort me with carefully chosen words or to reassure me. After the kiss, he took me out of the bathtub and dried every part of my body with a large towel. We returned to the messy bed, and we came together once more.

It felt like an act to sense and confirm each other’s presence rather than to stimulate our bodies, touching each other’s faces more, looking into each other’s eyes more than usual. The caresses were long and drawn out, and though not as primal and intense as our previous sex, it was more profound. I felt him fully, sufficiently, checking with my hands several times as our lower bodies rubbed together, becoming one without any gaps.

Perhaps it was the first day since that winter when I was sixteen that I revealed my most vulnerable weaknesses and my most hidden flaws, both to myself and to another person.

The next day, I set a lock on my phone for the first time, which I had previously only needed to drag my finger across. And about three weeks later, we headed to Chicago together.

To be continued in Diamond Dust Vol. 5