“Sorry, you’re a good person, but I don’t think we’re a good match.”
Replaying the last words his blind date had just said to him, Li Zhao felt a wave of bitterness well up inside, and he couldn’t help tilting his head back to gulp down the rest of the liquor in his glass.
The harsh spirits burned down his throat and all the way into his stomach. With his poor tolerance for alcohol, Li Zhao soon felt a wave of dizziness.
He sighed and slumped weakly into the sofa of the booth, raising a hand to press against his temple.
He, Li Zhao stable job, decent character, good upbringing, passable looks, and a respectable pheromone grade had lived a fairly smooth life for twenty-nine years. Who would have thought that as he approached thirty, he’d get stuck at the hurdle of marriage and finding a partner.
It wasn’t that he’d never dated before, but none of his relationships had lasted long, and without exception, it was always the other party who broke things off for the exact same reason: they found Li Zhao dull and unromantic, boring and joyless to live with.
On this, Li Zhao had nothing to say.
He knew he was awkward with words, stiff, and lacking in charm, unlike other Alphas who understood romance and knew how to sweet-talk. So he couldn’t blame anyone for not staying.
He wanted to marry and have children before turning thirty, to build a harmonious, happy little family. He took blind dates seriously, hoping to meet an Omega whose personality matched his and whose pheromones attracted his. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as he wished, the more eagerly he tried to prove that someone could like him, the worse his dates went.
Like the one this afternoon, which was already the tenth failed blind date of the month for Li Zhao.
Crushed and dispirited, he wandered the streets for a long while, still unwilling to return to his cold, empty home. Then, he didn’t know what came over him on a sudden impulse, as if guided by some spirit, he walked into a bar he happened to pass.
It was Li Zhao’s first time in a bar. He didn’t like the ambiguous lighting and the deafening music, but today, he needed this kind of noise to dull the bitterness and ache in his heart.
After three shots of hard liquor, Li Zhao was already seeing stars, his head spinning.
What little reason he had left told him he couldn’t drink any more, if he did, he’d never make it home. So, bracing himself on the armrest of the sofa, he stood up and swayed unsteadily, preparing to leave.
Just as Li Zhao rose to his feet, before he could even take a step, the blaring music in the bar suddenly stopped. In the sudden silence, the dim neon lights instantly switched to bright, soft white.
Li Zhao was startled. Pressing a hand to his rapidly pounding heart, he felt his eardrums still unable to adjust to the abrupt quiet.
He instinctively looked around to see what had happened and without warning, a face as beautiful as a fairy’s crashed into his line of sight.
It was a face so beautiful it made one forget to breathe fair, handsome, noble, with eyes like spring water, and beneath a high, aquiline nose, a pair of full, rosy, sensual lips.
At that moment, the man was smiling faintly, seemingly not at all surprised by the sudden silence.
It was an exquisitely beautiful face on a whole different plane from everyone else’s. In the quiet, Li Zhao could hear his own heart racing.
The next instant, the sound of his heartbeat was drowned out by the blaring music once more, and only then did Li Zhao regain the ability to breathe.
He was breathing hard, staring fixedly at the beauty sitting in a booth not far from him, when a bold, reckless thought suddenly surfaced in his alcohol-fogged brain.
Such a gorgeous omega—why couldn’t he be mine?
Normally, Li Zhao was the type who would be too shy to even spare an extra glance at such a stunning beauty. But tonight, the excessive alcohol and his string of disappointments had given him unprecedented courage. His head swimming, he boldly stumbled toward that booth.
The distance wasn’t far, and Li Zhao soon approached, only to discover that the beauty wasn’t alone. Sitting beside him was a young, plain-looking, ordinary man.
…Li Zhao instantly felt a wave of awkwardness, and his drunken impulse cooled considerably.
When a stranger suddenly appeared standing at the edge of their booth, both people inside turned their gazes toward Li Zhao.
The beauty looked curious and amused, while the ordinary man was full of wariness.
“Sorry,” Li Zhao said, his words still a bit slurred. “I…”
He had meant to say “sorry to bother you both” or “sorry, I’ve got the wrong booth,” and then retreat. But just as the words reached his lips, the beauty suddenly gave him a faint smile.
That smile stole Li Zhao’s soul clean away. He instantly forgot everything he’d been about to say and just stood there, frozen like a fool.
The ordinary man asked impatiently, “Who are you?”
“I…”
Li Zhao looked at the beauty, then at the ordinary man, and grew even more certain that the two weren’t in that kind of relationship. First of all, their looks were so mismatched that the beauty was unlikely to be interested in someone like that. Besides, the ordinary man’s guarded, wary manner made him look exactly like someone afraid of having his beloved crush stolen away.
So, inexplicably, Li Zhao felt less restrained and more confident. He smoothed his somewhat rumpled clothes, faced the beauty, and said as calmly as he could, “H-hello, would you do me the honor of letting me buy you a drink?”
The ordinary man rolled his eyes.
The beauty, meanwhile, curled his lips slightly and looked Li Zhao up and down several times, making Li Zhao’s whole body go tense, his palms sweating nervously.
Fortunately, Li Zhao had good looks, tall with broad shoulders, he had excellent physical credentials even among Alphas. After sizing him up for a while, the beauty seemed fairly satisfied with what he saw, and answered with a smile, “Sure.”
The beauty’s voice was lovely too. Even hearing just those two short words, Li Zhao felt his bones turn to mush.
Nervously rubbing his hands against the seams of his pants, he said foolishly, “Thank you.”
The ordinary man rolled his eyes again and turned to the beauty. “Ouyang, we…”
The beauty raised a hand to cut him off. “Let’s end tonight’s discussion here. You go ahead, I have other things to do.”
The ordinary man sighed, looking like he wanted to say more, but in the end he simply leaned over, whispered something in the beauty’s ear, stood up, and left.
Only Li Zhao and the beauty remained in the booth.
Li Zhao swallowed nervously, his prominent Adam’s apple sliding silently down his long neck.
The beauty lounged back against the sofa, watching Li Zhao with a smile. “Didn’t you say you wanted to buy me a drink? Are you planning to do it standing there?”
“Uh! No, I mean…”
Li Zhao rubbed his hands awkwardly on his pants, then walked over and sat down beside the beauty, in the spot where the ordinary man had just been.
Once he was closer to the beauty, Li Zhao felt even more nervous. He glanced sideways at the nearly empty glass in front of the beauty, then waved over a waiter to order.
Li Zhao knew nothing about alcohol and couldn’t name the pale blue drink, so he just pointed and said, “Two of those, please.”
“Very good, sir.” The waiter nodded and asked with a smile, “Anything else?”
Li Zhao turned to the beauty and asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like to order some food?”
“No, thank you,” the beauty said in his pleasant, melodious voice.
“He doesn’t need anything,” Li Zhao repeated.
“Very good, sir.”
The waiter left, and once again only the two of them remained in the booth.
Despite feeling dizzy, Li Zhao did his best to sit up straight, hands resting stiffly on his thighs, back ramrod straight.
The beauty, meanwhile, lounged comfortably against the sofa, watching Li Zhao’s awkwardness with an amused, half-smiling expression.
“Um,” Li Zhao began, scrambling for a topic, “sorry for interrupting your conversation earlier.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t feel like talking anyway.”
“Then?” Li Zhao asked tentatively, “your friend won’t be upset, will he?”
Li Zhao put particular emphasis on the word “friend.”
Whether or not the beauty caught his hidden meaning, he simply smiled and replied, “No, that’s just how he is. Don’t worry about it.”
The beauty’s completely indifferent tone toward the ordinary man put Li Zhao considerably at ease. He was just trying to figure out how to subtly and naturally convey that he, too, was single, when the same waiter arrived at the table with a tray.
“Sir, your ‘Romantic Explosion.'”
The waiter set down two glasses of pale blue liquid, one before Li Zhao and one before the beauty.
So that was the drink’s name Romantic Explosion.
After the waiter withdrew, the beauty picked up his glass and swirled it gently in his hand, then looked at Li Zhao and said suggestively, “Sitting that far away, how are we supposed to clink glasses?”
The kaleidoscopic lights fell across the beauty’s face, making his expressive eyes all the more captivating. Glass in hand, Li Zhao numbly scooted a meter closer in the beauty’s direction.
“To you, and… may…” Li Zhao was starting to stammer, “may you… be happy every day.”
The beauty was amused by how silly and dazed Li Zhao looked. He gently clinked his glass against Li Zhao’s, then tilted his head back and took a big sip.
Nervously, Li Zhao raised his glass with both hands, and after the clink, imitated the beauty by tipping his head back and taking a big gulp as well.
That one gulp was a mistake. The potent alcohol hit him instantly, and Li Zhao choked, breaking into violent coughing.
The beauty set down his glass and moved over to pat Li Zhao’s back. “That’s the strongest drink they have here,” he said as he patted. “You drank it so fast, I thought you could hold your liquor.”
“…” Li Zhao was mortified. He’d seen the beauty drink it so effortlessly and assumed he could too, he never expected one sip to nearly take half his life.
After coughing for a good while, Li Zhao finally stopped. His head was dizzier and his cheeks hotter than before, but at least the coughing had ceased.
“I can hold my liquor just fine,” Li Zhao lied, feeling a little guilty. “It’s mainly that I’d already had several drinks on my own earlier.”
Seeing that Li Zhao had stopped coughing, the beauty withdrew his hand, leaned back against the sofa, and watched him with a smile.
“Cough, cough well, I didn’t expect an Omega like you to hold your liquor so well,” Li Zhao said, trying to cover himself.
The beauty paused for a moment, then the smile at the corner of his lips deepened. “You think I’m an Omega?”
Li Zhao was far too drunk, he completely missed the hidden danger in the beauty’s words. He kept nodding dumbly and answered honestly, “Yeah, you… you’re the most beautiful Omega I’ve ever seen.”