By Zephyria 
Cheon Seung-pil blinked, as if he didn’t know what he had just heard, then slapped his own cheeks. He almost clicked his tongue at his frivolous fuss. He didn’t like it, but what could he do? Cheon Seung-pil was the only one who could act as a bridge right now.
“Tae, Tae-hyun? Why?”
“Why? Joo Tae-hyun is my husband. Is it so strange to be curious about what my spouse likes?”
“Well, no, but Tae-hyun is with Hyung…”
“I haven’t submitted the divorce papers yet, so he’s still my spouse, right? And I’ll keep trying to make sure it stays that way.”
Was the added remark that unexpected? Cheon Seung-pil couldn’t say anything more and just made a foolish “uh-oh” sound.
Joo Tae-hyun’s tastes? Interests? Seo Baek-han was sure he knew them better than Cheon Seung-pil. He never expected to get any useful information from that clueless and lacking guy in the first place.
However, Cheon Seung-pil would tell Joo Tae-hyun everything he had said as soon as he met him. That Seo Baek-han wanted to stay married to him, that he had asked him what he liked.
That was exactly what he was aiming for when he asked him all those questions. Because Joo Tae-hyun wouldn’t be able to refuse this message.
Right now, Seo Baek-han himself couldn’t think of a good way to turn Joo Tae-hyun’s heart around. The best way would be to increase the physical time spent face-to-face, but approaching him rashly would only backfire. Hadn’t he experienced that with the Crown Prince’s lawsuit?
So, for now, he was going to hover around him like this.
To keep him thinking about me, to make him a little concerned.
Hoping that Joo Tae-hyun would no longer cry because of him.
“Tae-hyun, um… he likes to eat undercooked ramen.”
“Ramen?”
But Cheon Seung-pil brought up an unexpected and unfamiliar story.
“Undercooked ramen? Tae-hyun does that?”
“Yeah. He says he likes the chewy noodles. I guess he boils it for about a minute? It’s like he’s cooking it while he eats it.”
Seo Baek-han’s eyes widened slightly as he was wondering what clothes to give Joo Tae-hyun. It was such a fleeting moment that Cheon Seung-pil didn’t seem to notice at all.
“What else is there? Ah! Joo Tae-hyun really hates sweating. He hates weightlifting, running, and walking.”
That’s why Joo Tae-hyun preferred swimming the most. Because it was cool even when his body got hot. Because he could block out the surrounding noise when he was submerged in the water.
“…That’s why Tae-hyun, no, Joo Tae-hyun became the first Asian prom king and the first prom king to run away.”
Cheon Seung-pil, who had been intimidated, seemed to be excited as he recalled his memories after a long time.
“Tae-hyun’s Hyungs and Nuna don’t know, but Joo Tae-hyun is actually interested in bikes. He’s hiding it because his family would faint if he brought it up, but he’s ridden them a few times in secret.”
In addition, Cheon Seung-pil listed very trivial stories about Joo Tae-hyun one by one.
When he first came to the United States to study abroad, Joo Tae-hyun had a lot of trouble with wild animals. He felt sorry for the squirrels, rabbits, and deer that often appeared in the yard, so he gave them vegetables and fruits a few times, and from one day on, the number of animals loitering around Joo Tae-hyun’s house increased every time he woke up.
“I became close to him because of the wild animals. I wondered why he, who usually didn’t even go near Korean gatherings, showed up, but he suddenly asked me if I knew how to keep animals out of the front yard.”
There were so many Omegas who liked Joo Tae-hyun that the university was having a lot of trouble. Even the required liberal arts classes that shifters had to take were difficult to conduct. In the end, the instructor, unable to bear it any longer, gave the students a warning to leave the room, and only then did the situation finally calm down.
Cheon Seung-pil chuckled as he recalled Joo Tae-hyun in those days, which Seo Baek-han didn’t know and would never be able to see.
Seo Baek-han knew he wasn’t trying to tease him on purpose. But he couldn’t help but feel a surge of annoyance at him. He didn’t want to be unsightly and confront Cheon Seung-pil, so he was holding back…
Okay, let’s be a little more honest. Seo Baek-han was jealous of Cheon Seung-pil.
He envied him, he was annoyed, and… the fact that he was the one who let go of Joo Tae-hyun in those days, which he could have had, made Seo Baek-han choke.
“What else is there? Ah, Hyung knows, but there aren’t really any good restaurants in Washington. But there are a lot of restaurants that are open late, and they deliver well.”
Joo Tae-hyun especially liked the cornbread sold at a restaurant a little far from his house. It was usually a side dish for BBQ plates, so he often pushed the greasy meat to him and ate only bread like a bird pecking at its food.
“I’m sorry. All I know is useless stuff like this…”
Cheon Seung-pil, who had been talking for a long time, finally looked at Seo Baek-han.
“…No, I heard you well.”
This was the utmost sincerity.
The Joo Tae-hyun of the past, whom Seo Baek-han had never known, was a little unfamiliar, cute, and…
Seo Baek-han massaged his stiff neck and pulled up the corners of his mouth.
“Clothes, um. Take the shirt over there. It’s clean because it’s been dry-cleaned.”
What good would giving a laundered shirt, not worn clothes, do for pheromone delivery? Seo Baek-han realized his mistake after he said it, but Cheon Seung-pil didn’t seem to care. Rather, he seemed happy to see a chance to get out of this uncomfortable place.
“Then goodbye, Hyung.”
When he nodded to tell him to go, Cheon Seung-pil ran out of the room as if his tail was on fire.
Seo Baek-han leaned his upper body against the head of the bed and stared out the window. The scenery of Seoul, which he thought was as familiar as Pyongyang, felt strangely unfamiliar.
…Maybe it was a rash act. Sending him a gift.
* * *
“What is this?”
Cheon Seung-pil, who knocked on the door with a sullen face, suddenly handed over a white shirt.
“Seo Baek-han told me to give it to you.”
Joo Tae-hyun, who had inadvertently received the shirt, then looked inside the collar. Seo Baek-han preferred to go to a tailor shop and have his clothes made to order rather than a luxury brand, and he always ordered his signature to be engraved inside the collar of his shirts.
“…It’s really Hyung’s.”
Sure enough, a familiar mark greeted Joo Tae-hyun.
“It’s real, would it be fake?”
Cheon Seung-pil raged, asking if he knew how he was treated by that human.
“Then why did you bother going?”
“Am I the same as you? The Director of the Royal Hospital called, and the director of <Guardian Lion> wanted to see me, how can a member just ignore that? And you’re still in a mutual imprinting state. He said that smelling his pheromones would help your body?”
Ah, that’s why he was holding on to Cheon Seung-pil all this time.
Cheon Seung-pil suddenly sent Joo Tae-hyun incomprehensible messages like ‘I think I’ll be late today’ and ‘Please save me’, so he wondered what was going on. It seems like he was holding on to the wrong person and making useless noises.
“It looks stiff, so it looks like it was just laundered?”
“Huh? Oh! Ah, really? Damn, what’s wrong with this bastard? Then it’s useless, isn’t it?”
Anyway, it was an object that was in the space where he stayed, so pheromones would emanate from it, but it wouldn’t be as good as worn clothes. It would be different if it was everyday indoor clothes or workout clothes that he wears often, but shirts are not just one or two in the first place.
“Then there’s nothing now? That pheromone or hormone thing?”
“Well, I can’t sense Hyung’s pheromones right now. But it’s still a shirt that was in Hyung’s room, so there must be a little bit left? Hyung’s rut just broke out.”
“No, why is Seo Baek-han suddenly doing this? He suddenly asked me what you like…”
“What I like?”
“Yeah. He said he was going to turn your heart around before you signed the divorce papers? Then he suddenly started squeezing me to tell him what Tae-hyun likes, damn it. Why are you interrogating the wrong person?”
Cheon Seung-pil complained in detail about how uncomfortable Seo Baek-han had made him, but not a word entered his ears.
Suddenly? Why?
Why is he curious about what I like? Seeing that he’s asking Cheon Seung-pil on purpose, it seems like he’s doing it for him to see… This was unlike Seo Baek-han. No, in some ways, it was too much like Seo Baek-han.
While Joo Tae-hyun was staring blankly at Seo Baek-han’s shirt, which didn’t feel any traces of him due to the confusion, the doorbell suddenly rang loudly. Once bitten, twice shy, Cheon Seung-pil, who was terrified, jumped into the air like a cat.
“Hey, Seo Baek-han didn’t chase us all the way here, did he?”
Cheon Seung-pil pushed Joo Tae-hyun’s back, telling him to go out. It seemed that the time he spent with Seo Baek-han was terribly terrible, and he was stomping his feet and suddenly running into the bathroom.
Joo Tae-hyun sighed softly and walked towards the door. He didn’t think it would be Seo Baek-han, but it didn’t matter if it was. He would just return the shirt this time.
However, the person who was waiting for Joo Tae-hyun outside the door with a bright smile.
“…Secretary Nam?”
“Hello.”
It was Seo Baek-han’s loyal secretary.
He was holding a heavy flower basket that he couldn’t lift with one hand, and politely asked if he could come inside for a moment.
It seemed like an intentional production, as the scent of peaches was subtly wafting in the midst of all the colorful flowers. In the first place, Seo Baek-han’s pheromones are completely different from this artificial perfume smell. If he wanted him to remember his scent while smelling this kind of thing, he was wrong.
“…Secretary Nam.”
“I’ll just decorate it quietly and leave so as not to disturb Young Master. Um… Shall I just leave it here if you don’t like it?”
Secretary Nam waited for Joo Tae-hyun’s answer, saying that he could immediately find an employee who was good at flower arrangement.
Ha. Joo Tae-hyun looked at the ceiling for a moment and swallowed his hot breath. It’s only a loss for him to get angry, and above all, Secretary Nam is not guilty.
“No, I’m sorry, but I’ll decline. Please tell Hyung not to send me things like this. Not only flowers, but also this clothes.”
“Oh, but…”
“I’m not blaming Secretary Nam. You’ve already suffered a lot from choosing my birthday presents and preparing flower baskets for every anniversary instead of Hyung-.”
“Oh, Young Master. I think you’re misunderstanding something.”
Secretary Nam, who had been lowering the ends of his eyebrows and pretending to be pitiful, shook his head from side to side as if he was embarrassed.
“Director has always chosen all of Young Master’s gifts himself.”
He said that all the flowers and gifts that he had sent to Joo Tae-hyun every birthday or wedding anniversary were all designated by Seo Baek-han himself. He mostly went to buy them himself, and when he was really busy, he asked Secretary Nam, but Seo Baek-han himself was always the one who pondered and chose what to buy.
“But… Hyung didn’t seem to know. When I said thank you for the gift or something-.”
“He usually prepares them in advance. My job was just to check Young Master’s schedule and deliver them on the day.”
Seo Baek-han did that? He was the kind of person who could do that for him? As he was blinking in surprise with pure curiosity, Secretary Nam looked at Joo Tae-hyun and carefully added.
“It’s not my place to interfere, but Director clearly cherishes Young Master.”
“…”
“He didn’t seem to know the method or the reason at all. That’s how I see it.”
“…I don’t know.”
Joo Tae-hyun smiled bitterly and denied it euphemistically. If it was Seo Baek-han, he wouldn’t want anyone else to choose the things that his spouse, not someone else, would use. The flowers he received would eventually be decorated in the house where we lived together, so he would want to reflect his own taste. Can you call this kind of thing ‘a heart that cherishes someone’? Possessiveness. Or the desire to control. It was nothing more and nothing less.
“…Is Baek-han Hyung in a situation where he can move? I’d like to have dinner with him.”
“Oh, of course!”
“I’ll go directly to the room where Hyung is currently staying. Because it could affect other visitors.”
“Oh, right. You’ve had an emergency suppressant… Then I’ll tell him that.”
Secretary Nam, who had gained an unexpected harvest, smiled brightly, but Joo Tae-hyun was determined to draw a clear line with Seo Baek-han this time. Stop luring Cheon Seung-pil in the middle, stop delivering clothes or anything else under the pretext of pheromones, and stop having Secretary Nam deliver flowers that he didn’t want.
Joo Tae-hyun was planning to leave for the United States soon, so Seo Baek-han’s eccentric behavior won’t last long. Even if it’s a short time, he hoped that mutually uncomfortable things won’t be repeated.