Before leaving work, Eunwon finished cleaning the convenience store and went to the trash can by the door to empty it. He removed the lid.
“……”
An unopened pack of cigarettes lay there, crushed, the plastic wrapping burst open.
I’ve seen your face today, so I’ll go.
The face of the man who had kept saying things Eunwon could not understand filled his mind. Customers who spoke rudely out of nowhere were not exactly rare, so that alone did not even upset him anymore, but it had been a long time since he had dealt with a customer who said such strange, incomprehensible things.
I’m coming again tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to miss you.
…Why is he coming again tomorrow…?
If someone suddenly asked what time he worked until and then announced he would come back the next day, he clearly was not an ordinary customer. If Eunwon had to categorize him… he seemed closer to the perverted nuisance who came in every day wearing a hoodie, asked Eunwon to have dinner with him, asked him to make time, and kept trying to touch his hand.
“……”
He was definitely a customer Eunwon had never seen before. Eunwon had never seen his face when he used to work here before, nor had he seen him since returning to work. If he had, he would have remembered him. How could anyone see a face like that and forget it?
It was the first time in his life he had ever seen someone so tall and handsome. His appearance was so unreal that Eunwon himself had stood there staring blankly back at the man, who kept looking at him without saying a word.
And there had been a scent coming from him, one that kept drawing Eunwon’s attention. At first, Eunwon wondered if it was cologne, but since his gaze kept drifting toward him and his heart kept turning over strangely, it seemed more like the man’s pheromone scent.
The man’s pheromones were very heavy. It was a scent Eunwon had never encountered before, but it had a strange, addictive pull. Of course it was only natural for an omega to be drawn to an Alpha’s pheromones, and that was a law of nature beyond his own will. Even setting that aside, though, the scent was striking enough to imprint itself in his mind as something that smelled good.
Would it feel like that if he ate very, very rich vanilla ice cream in the middle of a forest full of trees?
Eunwon quickly shook his head after imagining the man’s pheromone scent. He had no idea why he was thinking such pointless things.
If he really comes again tomorrow and acts strange and scary, I’ll report him.
Nodding slightly at that useful resolution, Eunwon pulled the trash bag closed over the crushed cigarette pack, tied it tightly, and carried it out of the convenience store.
He threw the tied bag into the large trash bin behind the store, finished taking out the recycling he had set aside earlier, and was about to go back inside when a car pulled up.
The moment he saw the large, expensive-looking car, the sort rarely seen in this alley, Eunwon remembered a few days ago.
The day someone had been sent from Baekdam.
“……”
Since then, Madam Seo had been contacting him several times a day to ask how he was and what he was doing, but Eunwon still had not managed to think anything through properly. It felt similar to six years ago, when he had heard that his father was actually the chairman of Baum, an enormously powerful company in construction.
Because they said so, he accepted that it must be true, but… it was so enormous that it felt like someone else’s business rather than his own. It did not feel real.
“You’ve grown a lot. I think you were much smaller back then.”
The driver’s door opened, and the person who got out was someone Eunwon had met only once but could not easily forget.
Eunwon stared blankly at the father striding toward him, then quietly lowered his head in greeting.
“I heard your shift ended around this time.”
“Ah… I have about ten minutes left.”
“I see. Finish up slowly and come out.”
“…Yes…”
He did not ask what this was about or why his father had come. He did not need to ask to have a guess. Eunwon bowed again and went back into the convenience store.
“……”
After meeting Madam Seo, he had expected that he might end up seeing his father soon if things continued this way. Even so, he had not imagined his father would come looking for him in person like this, so he felt flustered and a little lost.
Eunwon placed a hand over his racing heart, gently rubbed it down, and returned behind the counter, where he sat dazedly in the chair. He had some idea of what he might hear, yet at the same time, he felt as though he knew nothing at all.
“Eunwon!”
Just then, the door opened and the smiling store owner came in. Eunwon rose from his seat, stepped out from behind the counter, greeted the owner as he patted his back and told him he had worked hard, then headed to the storage room.
Even while changing clothes, and even when he took his bag and went outside to see his “father” still waiting for him in the same place, the whole thing kept feeling unreal. When he met Madam Seo, his sense of reality had not slipped this badly, but with his father, it was much worse.
“I have something to discuss with you. Could you… give me some of your time?”
“Ah… yes. I have time…”
“All right. Then get in.”
Seeing his father point to the passenger seat before going around to the driver’s side, Eunwon carefully got into the car. The driver’s door opened and closed, and soon afterward, the car started moving.
Until the car drove along the road and arrived somewhere, Eunwon faced the suffocating awkwardness in silence, endlessly fidgeting with the bag on his lap. In reality, it was only a short drive of about ten minutes, but to Eunwon, those ten minutes felt like two hours. That was how uncomfortable and difficult it was.
They arrived at a café. When the car stopped in front of the door, a man in a suit who had been waiting there opened the car door. Eunwon lowered his head in thanks and followed his father inside.
“……”
The café was fairly large, but there was not a single customer inside. There did not even seem to be any staff.
All the blinds had been lowered over the glass windows at the front, and among the many tables, only one had two cups placed on it. His father went to that table and offered Eunwon a seat. Eunwon waited until his father sat first, then carefully sat across from him.
“I thought coffee might not be good this late, so I had them prepare tea. I should have asked what you liked before having it prepared. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no. It’s all right. Anything is fine…”
While they exchanged those few words about the tea, the person who looked like a bodyguard inside the café also went outside. The surroundings fell completely silent. Tense and awkward, Eunwon blew gently over the tea, though he could not taste it at all, and took a sip to moisten his dry lips.
“I heard you said you needed time to think. I wanted to come see you right away, but I thought I might be rushing you too much, so I waited a few days.”
“……”
“I know showing up like this again, one-sidedly, can’t be pleasant for you. Even so… I felt I would regret it if I kept hesitating and let more time pass.”
Eunwon knew this man was his father, but perhaps because he had never had a father close to him even once, the very fact that he was facing his father felt unbearably unfamiliar. Unable to look at his father’s face, Eunwon only fidgeted with the warm cup.
“Six years ago… I was too much of a coward.”
“……”
“I was afraid that if I accepted you, my company and my family would be shaken. And… since I hadn’t known, I thought I could simply keep pretending not to know. I also knew you and your mother wouldn’t cling to me.”
“……”
“Everything went the way I wanted, but from then until today, there hasn’t been a single day I’ve felt at ease. I thought your mother, and you, were shameful things holding me back… but that wasn’t true. What was holding me back was the ugly, cowardly way I behaved six years ago.”
At the low flow of his words, Eunwon finally gathered a little courage and lifted his eyes.
Seeing his father in the light for the first time in six years, he looked different from back then.
He was not looking at Eunwon coldly, with disgust, as if Eunwon were something from the very bottom of the world that could never mix with him. Nor did he look contemptuous, as if he wanted to run out at any moment.
“You must have heard, but after your older brother left us first like that, you weighed on my heart even more. They say a dead child has no choice but to be buried in the heart, but I could not bear the guilt and regret of turning away from you when you were alive and well.”
“……”
“I know these words come far too late, Eunwon.”
His father’s hand moved across the table toward him. It wrapped around Eunwon’s hand where he held the cup. The hand was large and warm. Eunwon quietly looked down at his father’s hand touching him.
“I am truly sorry. Even if I spend the rest of my life apologizing, it will never be enough.”
“……”
“Will you give me the chance to repay this? I want to become the kind of father, the kind of parent, you can rely on for the rest of your life.”