Kim Seung-jun?
The name sounded familiar, but no immediate information came to mind. Cheon Seung-pil might not have the best memory, but he was good at remembering people. That was how he could quickly gauge whether hanging out with someone like that bastard would cause trouble or not.
If someone didn’t leave a deep impression on Cheon Seung-pil, it meant one of two things: they were useless, whether for fun or for work.
Feeling like it wasn’t even worth cursing at him, he was about to turn away when Kim Seung-jun grabbed Cheon Seung-pil’s arm tightly.
“Is this guy crazy? Let go? Won’t you let go?”
“Ah, I didn’t want to bring this up…”
He suspected this bastard had taken some kind of drug; his grip was inhumanly strong.
“Joo Tae-hyun, Seo Baek-han, Second Prince’s Scholarship Inauguration. Does that ring any bells?”
“What are you talking about? Why would I… Oh?”
Wait a minute. I know this story?
Cheon Seung-pil dusted off the cobwebs in his brain for the first time in a while. He seemed to remember some idiot badmouthing Joo Tae-hyun at the inauguration and getting reamed by Seo Baek-han. Could this be that guy? Ah, that’s right! Kim Seung-jun! That’s him!
Finally recalling the forgotten memory, Cheon Seung-pil gave Kim Seung-jun a slightly pitiful look. His face was so different from before that he hadn’t recognized him right away. If that’s how bad his plastic surgery turned out, his life must be a mess…
“Looks like you remember? Good.”
But why is this moron telling me, Joo Tae-hyun’s friend, all this?
Cheon Seung-pil firmly believed he was Joo Tae-hyun’s closest friend. Regardless of what he thought of him, Joo Tae-hyun didn’t keep anyone closer than him.
So, this guy is out. Concluding this, Cheon Seung-pil crossed his arms defensively, distancing himself from Kim Seung-jun.
“If that’s the case, I have even less to say to you, you bastard.”
“That’s harsh. I came to help because I thought Joo Tae-hyun’s drug use might get you into trouble too.”
“…What the hell are you talking about now?”
He’d had people ask if he was on drugs, but this was the first time someone had tried to drag Joo Tae-hyun into it. Didn’t Joo Tae-hyun look like a total goody-two-shoes?
Since the announcement of his marriage to Seo Baek-han, Joo Tae-hyun had been subjected to all sorts of speculation. Seo Baek-han had been slippery as an eel since then, but Joo Tae-hyun was younger and seemed easier to manipulate, and his public activities weren’t as active as Seo Baek-han’s, making him a fresher target.
When did Seo Baek-han and he start dating? What kind of deal was made between Chairman Joo and Assemblyman Seo? Was one of them not an Alpha? It was a more novel provocation than the reporters who wrote those kinds of stories trying to dig up dirt. Joo Tae-hyun on drugs? It would be more believable if Seo Baek-han was on drugs. That bastard had been hitting on every Alpha, Omega, Beta, and woman he could find.
“…Yeah. Just go. Please.”
“Oh, I thought Joo Tae-hyun was pretty close to you. You really didn’t know he was addicted to Dirty Switches?”
I misunderstood back then, thinking Seo Baek-han was the one he liked, when he was actually a pervert who liked getting topped by other Alphas. Kim Seung-jun chuckled, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
What?
Cheon Seung-pil narrowed his eyes, taking a couple of steps back from him. This guy wasn’t a con artist, he was crazy?
“Anyway, I came all the way here when I should be shopping because—”
Kim Seung-jun suddenly held out something he was holding in his hand, wearing a greasy smile. Fearing that the disgruntled guy might pull out a gun, Cheon Seung-pil cautiously looked around, then froze, his eyes fixed on the object he was holding out.
This fucking bastard, really…
“I want to negotiate about this, but Joo Tae-hyun and Seo Baek-han are ignoring all our contacts.”
…It was a paper with Joo Tae-hyun’s picture printed on it.
It was zoomed in so much that his face was a little blurry, but it wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t recognize him.
“If you don’t want me to spill the beans on Joo Tae-hyun and screw over everyone from Seo Baek-han to Prince Lee, tell them to talk to me.”
Cheon Seung-pil, unsure of how to react, paused to choose his words. Kim Seung-jun slipped his business card onto the paper and smiled widely, pulling up the corners of his mouth.
“That’s what friends are for, right?”
Seo Baek-han was silent for a while, even though he had said he had something to say.
Joo Tae-hyun found even the simple acts of blinking and swallowing increasingly difficult. How do you even breathe? He felt as burdensome and heavy as a death row inmate waiting for execution.
“How’s your body?”
But the opening he offered was quite unexpected.
“Even if the Pheromone abnormality has subsided, other things, like, um. You must still feel sore here and there.”
What’s this? Judging by the content, it sounds like he’s worried about me… Knowing that his kindness was just impartial indifference towards others, he couldn’t help but want to hear it the way he wanted to, given the situation.
“I’m fine.”
Whatever the cause and process, the result doesn’t change.
He slept with Seo Baek-han.
Of course, it was a shameful and disgraceful act that Joo Tae-hyun wanted to cut out entirely, but he couldn’t help but lean on the variable that he had mixed bodies with him.
Adults say there’s nothing scarier than body affection. Now that they’ve accidentally had sex, maybe Seo Baek-han is being so kind because, maybe, just a little…
He was just stirring up a small spark of hope that hadn’t even ignited.
“Doctor Woo said you couldn’t possibly be okay.”
“Ah, no. I’m really fine, ugh!”
Joo Tae-hyun, trying to act nonchalant by turning his shoulder back, couldn’t help but groan at the intense muscle pain he was experiencing for the first time in his life.
“Seriously.”
He thought he had made a fool of himself and awkwardly straightened his posture, which seemed to ease the awkward atmosphere a little. This time, it wasn’t a delusion or his own interpretation. The laughter that escaped him was very gentle.
“Tae-hyun. Do you remember Second Prince saying you were like a Heat Omega?”
Joo Tae-hyun just shook his head without answering. He knew Seo Baek-han didn’t like it when he didn’t answer clearly, but he couldn’t easily open his mouth on that topic.
He wished he didn’t remember anything at all. A few scenes that remained as vague afterimages, his own voice sounding crazy, begging Seo Baek-han to fuck him, tormented Joo Tae-hyun.
“I saw with my own eyes that you were showing Rut symptoms and that your body temporarily changed like an Omega’s, but I still don’t know what ‘Heat Omega’ means. I only smelled your Pheromone scent that I know.”
“…”
“Anyway, it’s true that you gradually returned to a normal state after I came inside you, so as Doctor Woo recommended, for the time being—”
“Hyung!”
“Huh?”
“That, well. That’s…”
Fearing that an irreversible sentence would be handed down from Seo Baek-han’s mouth, he cut him off, but he didn’t have any excuses that came to mind.
That this will never happen again, so it’s okay not to have sex anymore? To forget everything that happened?
Even if he could gloss over the shameful behavior he showed at the Lotus Flower Palace with improvisation, how could he hide the fact that he had Imprinted on him?
It was true that he had been harboring a small hope that if he kept hanging around him, there might come a day when he would look at him. But that didn’t necessarily mean romantic feelings. He hadn’t hoped for that from the start.
A trusted aide who could be kept by his side, the most trusted friend, a companion in life… He would be happy enough if Seo Baek-han thought of him that way.
He was satisfied enough with just holding the title of his spouse, even if it was just a facade, so why? Why did my body go into Heat like that?
“If you haven’t finished organizing what you want to say, listen to Hyung first.”
“…Yes.”
“Even if you say you won’t take the Switch I gave you in the future, now that your body has shown the same abnormal symptoms as yesterday… It’s my responsibility as the one who caused it.”
Responsibility.
Those two syllables heavily crushed Joo Tae-hyun’s heart. He was foolishly excited by the concern and the different kind of kindness Seo Baek-han was showing, but just as much self-loathing came crashing down.
“I didn’t know things would turn out this way either.”
It was a mumble with many meanings. Was he bitter about choosing that Switch? Or did he regret controlling his Pheromone abnormality with sex?
Joo Tae-hyun rubbed under his chin for no reason and dropped his head. He certainly didn’t want to mix bodies with him like this either. Seo Baek-han might not believe him, but he was sincere.
“And I’m sorry. I think I was too, hmm, rough yesterday.”
Joo Tae-hyun’s actions, which had been pointlessly crumpling the blanket, stopped abruptly. Uh…? Did Hyung just apologize to me? And for the reason that the sex wasn’t gentle?
“Excuse me?”
“It might sound like an excuse… No, it is an excuse. Even if the purpose was Pheromone stabilization, there was no need to drive you like that.”
“No, I, I understand. Hyung probably didn’t even want to, well, do it with a man anyway…”
Joo Tae-hyun, who had been reflexively repeating that it was okay, was able to understand the circumstances in which Seo Baek-han had offered an unusually soft apology only after recalling Doctor Woo, who had used swear words in front of him for the first time. Ah. He must have been scolded by the doctor.
“Did Doctor Woo say something to Hyung?”
“Hmm? No.”
Seo Baek-han, slightly wrinkling his eyes as if he had never heard of it, smiled faintly. It was an awkward smile that seemed to want to hide his embarrassment and emptiness, as if he knew why Joo Tae-hyun was asking such a thing.
“Doctor Woo must have been talking about me behind my back to you?”
“No, it’s not that—”
“That’s understandable. He fucked you for hours after pinning you down, so there’s no way your body could be okay.”
Seo Baek-han swept back his hair and slightly averted his gaze, and Joo Tae-hyun blankly looked at his body here and there.
Hours… He mixed bodies with Hyung for that long? Surely I didn’t say anything else crazy besides begging him to fuck me?
“And yes, it wasn’t sex I wanted to have. Especially with you? Absolutely not. The act wasn’t very pleasant, that’s true.”
“…”
“But even if it wasn’t sex I wanted to have, there was no need to treat you so carelessly. Especially if it was because of the Switch I gave you that your Pheromones went wild.”
“…”
“Later, when I came to my senses a little, I noticed you slumped over.”
Seo Baek-han apologized once more, plainly but not in a way that felt like he was just going through the motions. He said he didn’t act like an adult, and he was sorry.
“Um, Hyung. Just now.”
But more than his rare apology, another part kept lingering in Joo Tae-hyun’s mouth. Fearing that the short sentence might evaporate from his mind or disappear from his memory, he hurriedly called out to Seo Baek-han without even giving a proper answer to the apology.
“Yes. Tell me.”
But in this situation, is it okay to ask something like this? His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was about to burst. But it felt like if he didn’t confirm it right now, it would be even harder to do so later.
“So, you said you only checked your condition after Hyung came to his senses…?”
“Huh? Yeah, I did.”
“Why…?”
Seeing that he didn’t understand the intention behind his question, Joo Tae-hyun hypnotized himself.
I’m about to enter an event to which we were invited as a couple, and Seo Baek-han’s important guests are swarming inside. If I can’t manage my expression and get caught, Hyung, as well as my family, will be criticized. So, don’t blush, don’t sweat, and don’t roll your eyes for no reason. Act like it’s nothing.
Yes, just ask as if it’s no big deal. It’s a natural question in the flow of the conversation.
“Just listening to that story, it sounds like Hyung did react to my Pheromone… I’m just curious.”
“…Ah.”
“Ah, I’m not trying to argue. Unlike Second Prince, you said you couldn’t feel my Pheromone… But even if it’s hard to perceive, if your body somehow, well, if you reacted…”
In truth, he wanted to ask more explicitly. Was the sex with me good enough to lose your mind, could you have kept cumming even if we only repeated one position…?
In short, considering you hated men, was having sex with me bearable?
He wanted to ask such embarrassing things, but the lingering image of him saying things he shouldn’t have when he was feverish at least made him save face.
Watching Seo Baek-han carefully recall the memories of that day, Joo Tae-hyun steeled himself again. Calm down. What are you expecting? I’m standing in front of reporters right now. So, I need to stay calm and manage my expression well.
“…Well, in a way-.”
Ring, ring. Suddenly, an ear-splitting ringtone cut off Seo Baek-han’s words. It was usually on vibrate, so even Joo Tae-hyun was startled and slightly shrugged his shoulders at the loud decibel.
“Ah, I was worried about missing a call from Doctor Woo, so I changed your phone to a ringtone after coming home.”
“I forgot,” Seo Baek-han said, picking up his phone from the side table.
…I don’t know who’s calling, but you don’t have to answer it right away. A complaint that wasn’t quite a complaint rose to the tip of his throat out of disappointment, but Joo Tae-hyun adultly held it back.
“Hyung?”
But Seo Baek-han, who was about to hand him the phone, stopped moving and stared intently at the screen.
“…Cheon Seung-pil is calling at this hour.”
“Seung-pil?”
Seo Baek-han chuckled softly and held out the phone. Unlike a moment ago, if it felt slightly cynical, was that also just his imagination?