Compared to what others think of him, Lee Jaeha’s life is, in truth, nothing special.
As proof, he was about to demand a divorce from his spouse here, in the hotel dining room where he had once proposed.
After the wedding, he reserved this place every anniversary. They weren’t the kind of couple who celebrated each other’s birthdays, but they always had dinner together on their wedding anniversary.
If he’d ended up in a position where he had to demand a divorce on a day like that, didn’t it mean his life was no better than anyone else’s.
Counting by years, they had lived as a married couple for four. In all that time, Jaeha believed he knew nothing about his spouse.
“Who exactly is the divorce for?”
Which meant he had no idea why the other would say something like that.
In fact, he had prepared the divorce purely for his spouse’s sake. And yet—who was it supposed to be good for? When the man asked that, Lee Jaeha found himself with nothing to say.
Across the table from Jaeha sat an Alpha whose presence gave the uncanny impression of a carnivore wielding a knife instead of fangs.
With only his index and middle fingers, he casually lifted the silver-plated knife. The clean blade punched straight down into a lamb chop.
Seeing that, Jaeha unconsciously pressed down the eyebrow that had twitched up. He couldn’t read what the Alpha across from him was thinking.
But the man parted those well-textured lips as if he had no interest in Jaeha’s doubts. Even with the corners slightly raised, he didn’t look pleased.
“If you get divorced.”
“……”
“You wouldn’t even have gotten married.”
His voice had the growl of a beast. Jaeha made his own voice as clear as possible to hide his discomposure.
“Division Head Jang also knows. There’s no point in keeping this marriage any longer….”
At Jaeha’s words, Jang Taegun cocked his head as if puzzled and leaned his back against the chair.
He seemed to be sitting loose, yet the air in the room had gone taut. Even as an Alpha, he was a man fundamentally different from Jaeha by nature.
The faintly spread pheromones were proof that he found the situation unpleasant. When he wasn’t in a bad mood, the Alpha scent Jaeha got from him was a little different—wild rose blooming on seaside rock and a light trace of sea salt.
But if one had to liken this scent, it was the smell of waves whipped up in a storm. Jaeha had to keep his head to avoid being swept away.
Without a smile, Taegun said in that state,
“Am I your Division Head, Lee Jaeha? Did we work at the same company?”
“…Titles aren’t what matter right now.”
“Then fuck, I have no idea what is supposed to matter.”
Since their marriage, he was a man who never swore in front of him.
Even if his family business dealt in rough affairs that offended good morals, Jang Taegun had never once shown Lee Jaeha a coarse side.
Unless you counted the brute force that seeped through in his pheromones.
Four calendar years by his side, a full three lived together, and still the tension that never became familiar drummed along Jaeha’s spine.
For the past few years, the two of them had only shared a bed during Jaeha’s rut. It was no different from a “medical procedure.”
An Alpha’s body wasn’t generous enough to take what he was packing, so Jaeha had to prepare with care. Once he finished preparing and waited blankly in the room, Jang Taegun would wordlessly press in from behind.
Even that alone would settle Jaeha’s rut. It wasn’t that the season of heat ended because something was lodged somewhere; the rut calmed from the physical contact with Jang Taegun itself.
Outside of that, they didn’t touch. They slept in separate rooms, didn’t seek each other out except for appearances, and that arrangement had gone on for years.
There was no affection in a relationship where even sex counted as duty, so if he showed displeasure at a demand for divorce, it must be because of the power advantage Lee Jaeha possessed.
Jaeha suddenly felt a kind of futility at having to say this himself, but he had no choice and opened his mouth.
“…I know what you’re thinking, Division Head. But I don’t think there’s anything I can give you now. Yushin isn’t in sound shape, and I’ve already lost the last threads I had.”
Taegun watched him, expressionless, for a while. Jaeha couldn’t look away.
It had been Lee Jaeha’s own audacity to push through with the engagement to him. Jaeha couldn’t promise heirs to Jang Taegun, and what he had brought as a dowry had long since become shares on Taegun’s side.
Yushin, his birth family, had once been a solid conglomerate with a fair number of subsidiaries, but after Jaeha’s marriage it had walked the road of decline.
There was nothing more Jang Taegun could gain from this marriage. Because he had forced it through, Lee Jaeha had always carried a sense of debt toward him.
So—he meant to let him go. Since he had run out of things to give, he would at least offer freedom. That was how Lee Jaeha’s affection used to shine.
However.
“Lee Jaeha.”
“……”
“I thought you were a man of few words, not someone who had a knack for telling dull jokes.”
“Division Head.”
“So for four years I’ve been the one lining up the holes, but which Division Head bastard did you bend over for that you can’t drop the title? Are you the spouse of Lee Jaeha, or just one of the Division Head bastards cluttering the street.”
…How could Division Heads be cluttering the street. To be a Division Head, a company has to be big, and it’s not like the country is overflowing with conglomerates.
Blankly, Jaeha thought that. More than all the insulting words Taegun had just thrown at him, that came first.
As if he knew exactly what was in Jaeha’s head, Jang Taegun rose, fastened the last button of his jacket, and, with both palms braced on the table’s edge, leaned his upper body toward him.
His gaze darkened and wavered. It occurred to Jaeha that it was the first time Jang Taegun had looked at him with eyes like that.
“I like living as ‘honey’ and ‘you’ with you. Don’t think otherwise. I’ve got work, so I’ll head out first. Make sure you finish your meal before you come out.”
…When have we ever lived as “honey” and “you”?
Jaeha wanted to ask, but the man had already turned that mountain-like body, opened the room door, and gone.
A waiter, about to knock with a tray of food, started and stepped half a pace back, bowing to Taegun.
Looking down at the top of the waiter’s head, Taegun said,
“If he leaves food on the plate, tell the chef to call me directly. Since he took this much money, I should at least get to hear the bastard who cooked dog slop.”
And then he left the room. Jaeha barely stopped his mouth from falling open.
His eyes met the waiter’s. Jaeha gave a small shake of his head and said,
“…It isn’t dog slop. The dishes are good.”
“…Yes. Thank you.”
That night, he had to go home with an awkward meal, a pointlessly full stomach, and no answer to the divorce.
Three days later, Taegun’s grandfather, Jang Changsik, passed away.
That day, Lee Jaeha left home unprepared to face fate.
He had to attend a gathering he needn’t have gone to, and because it was the will of his stepmother and of his younger brother Jaeho’s mother, Kim Ranhui, he couldn’t skip it.
Kim Ranhui kept Lee Jaeha under relentless check. Sometimes openly, sometimes by indirection. To a degree one might almost admire for its persistence.
But his grandfather, Lee Wonung, had been firm of will. Though he had passed away, he was still the spiritual pillar of Yushin Group, so his father, Lee Ikhyeong, could not fully satisfy his new wife. Perhaps he didn’t love the new wife enough to defy Lee Wonung’s wishes and cast out Lee Jaeha entirely.
But Kim Ranhui was not a woman to back down easily. Ever since his birth mother’s funeral, the situations themselves had become so tiresome that he let most things go, but today he was a bit irritated.
Because drugs were circulating at the gathering.
It was a transparent ploy to lower his standing by surrounding him with a pack doing low-class things.
Kim Ranhui would know it, too—that Lee Jaeha could see right through her play.
Even so, she tried without stopping, and he didn’t avoid it. It wasn’t stubbornness or spite that kept him from avoiding. He was simply tired.
That day was one of those same stale days. He went to a place he could have skipped because dealing with the tenacity of Kim Ranhui was the more tiresome option.
“There’s plenty to eat. Why drink only alcohol? If you’re bored, chew a bud or something.”
“…Not my hobby.”
Some guy whose name he couldn’t remember came over and started talking.
Thanks to him, the spine that had been relaxing had to snap straight as if he’d plated it with steel. The way everyone agreed to come apart in places like this had nothing to do with him.
He was not the same as the crowd. From very early on, since he was old enough to be self-aware, the boredom that trailed him like a chronic illness carried a bit of blame for those around him. The largest share in the causative factors of that illness-like boredom belonged to his stepmother, Kim Ranhui.
She had called him out at all hours to places like this, trying in any way to pull down his reputation; he had come because he was tired of that earnestness.
He didn’t even have anyone he could call a friend, and even the acquaintances he sometimes dealt with wouldn’t bother attending, saying the level of the crowd was beneath them—yet here he was.
Only Jaeha had come, suffering his boredom, at Kim Ranhui’s urging. So there was no reason anyone here would be familiar.
For someone like him, who thought first of the financial statements of the company behind a face rather than the face itself, an unfamiliar face meant a person not worth replying to—but suddenly he was curious.
Two people in this shabby pack who couldn’t blend in and stood alone. One was himself. He found himself curious about the other’s name.
What was the name of the Alpha who stood shining alone among this rabble, half of them dulled by drugs. The curiosity itself felt unfamiliar.
And the man yammering at his side finally proved his usefulness by following Jaeha’s gaze and saying the name.
“Jang Construction. Team Manager Jang Taegun.”
There was a sneer in his tone.
Jang Construction meant, so they said, a corporate-gangster outfit. Not newly risen, but a construction firm in its third generation, starting from the backstreets of Jongno.
In construction they were solid enough and had a place, but even so, apartment projects in the metro area kept getting snatched by others, and they kept their line going by squeezing another corporate-gangster company.
To Lee Jaeha, Director of Yushin, which the central bank listed every year among the top ten in the business ranks, it was mediocrity like any other.
And yet, even so, his eyes went to him.
“……”
“……”
About then, the other man began to look this way, too. There wasn’t even time to avert his eyes.
Their gazes tangled in the air. Heat surged from somewhere low in his belly as if a fire had been lit.
Startled, Lee Jaeha stumbled back. Someone called his name, but he turned and left the place.
Even the single wetting of his lips counted as drink; he called a driver he never summoned and slid into the back seat, and even then, he hadn’t realized why he had run.
In his life, such a retreat was a first. It was also the first time he’d been flustered at the sight of someone.
And that night, a sudden rut came upon him. That was the first meeting of Lee Jaeha and Jang Taegun.
He thought he’d fallen asleep, but his body felt heavy from wandering in a dream. What had he dreamed.
It felt like lying down in a garden made of all the things one longs for.
But Lee Jaeha had nothing he longed for, so perhaps those were merely dreams.
“……”
He sat on the bed and stared into the quiet room.
The dim hush of dawn filled the room. It felt like being in the middle of the deep sea.
He wanted to lie down longer, but he knew well that if he took a day off like this, nothing would come of it. He stretched his long body out and rang the intercom on the bedside console.
While the signal went through, he rolled his stiff neck.
His personal secretary, who resided at the estate, picked up immediately. This secretary handled private matters and was different from the staff assigned to the Yushin Group director’s office.
“Yes, Director.”
“If Coach Park is available, ask him to come right away.”
“Yes, I’ll contact him.”
Last night, after running into Jang Taegun at that worthless gathering, Lee Jaeha was hit by a sudden rut.
The heat that flushed his lower body and lifted his whole frame mixed with a haze of pleasure and turned the dawn into a delirium.
Such things were rare—no, it was the first since his manifestation as an Alpha. As a dominant Alpha, his timing never wavered.
He usually controlled it with medication; in months when his attending physician warned about pheromone-agent resistance, he met an Omega to release it, but even that was tedious—the process of dragging someone into bed bored him.
Sleeping at a hotel felt grimy, and bringing someone home was even more bothersome.
The family mansion was large, and his room in the annex stood apart, but if Kim Ranhui happened to see the partner in the morning, she acted as if she’d marry him off on the spot.
The reason she wanted him wed to a one-night Omega was obvious: to meddle in his marriage, knock down his value, and, further, to exert massive influence over the succession.
He wasn’t desperate to inherit the group, but he had vaguely assumed it would be his.
Born the eldest son, as his grandfather proclaimed, and manifested as a dominant Alpha—since he was born anyway, what would be wrong with climbing to the top of this vast pyramid.
Besides, if he succeeded to the group, it would deal a heavy blow to Kim Ranhui—the former mistress who slipped into the mansion while his mother was ill—and to Lee Jaeho.
He didn’t hate her enough to want her dead, but he wasn’t so magnanimous as to pass up a chance to push her out.
Because of that caution, he found it improper to bring in partners who weren’t Omegas.
Among Alphas he knew, quite a few had the quirky taste of being drawn to Betas or even other Alphas.
But Jaeha had no inclination. Perhaps his straight-line life showed up in his sex life as well; he had no taste for that.
So during rut, he had no choice but to lure an unknown Omega into bed—and even that failed to interest him.
He didn’t have time for a proper romance. More precisely, he lacked the thing called affection.
Where the heart to care for and love someone came from—he’d forgotten since his mother’s bones returned to the earth.
For all these complex reasons, unless his attending physician warned him very strongly, he handled rut with pills. No exceptions.
But last night, the rut that struck without warning was truly sudden. After seeing Jang Taegun, it crashed in like a fit, and he left early, ignoring the time his stepmother demanded he remain at the gathering.
Back home, he took suppressants and, as usual, planned to take care of it with a perfunctory hand and go to bed.
But yesterday, that didn’t calm it. No matter how he stroked himself, the urge wouldn’t resolve; cords stood in his brow.
By the time the suppressants—twice as expensive as anything on the market because of their complicated refinement—finally took effect, it was around four in the morning. He had practically pulled an all-nighter.