"What was so especially pretty? What's so pretty that I should ride in Myungsoon’s car?"
Jaeha had several questions, but Taegun didn’t answer and turned his back. As he strode out, the Omega beside him followed, glancing back this way.
"……"
"……"
Their eyes tangled and it felt strange. …What are they to each other? But he couldn’t ask.
Because Myungsoon, standing next to him, asked in a gentle face and tone, "Shall we go, brother-in-law?"
But that cozy dinner for a family of two seemed, at least for that evening, to have no chance of happening.
"…He’s late."
It was already past ten. It was too late to call it dinner—more of a midnight snack.
Jaeha looked over the dishes set on the table. Among them were things he had prepared himself.
For the platter of nine delicacies, he’d even griddled the wheat crêpes himself. Myungsoon had helped, but he’d seemed busy rolling the fish dumplings for the meat-and-vegetable hotpot and told him to leave the crêpes to him.
"Then have a good evening, Director."
Because he had quickly corrected that bizarre “brother-in-law” title before it got used again, the final goodbye didn’t sound odd.
The problem was that three hours had already passed since the moment Myungsoon said that and left the house.
"……"
He stared holes into his phone, thinking maybe he should call, but given the current state of technology, he couldn’t place a call with his gaze alone.
Since staring wouldn’t make the call, he had to use his hands—but he couldn’t even try. He didn’t have the nerve.
He had just decided to wait another thirty minutes and then call when it happened.
He heard the front door rattle. Wondering what it was, he started toward the hall that led to the entry, and then came the hesitant beeps of someone punching in the passcode on the keypad, and the door opened.
"…Team Manager Jang?"
He’d started to step closer, thinking it might be him.
There was the smell of sea salt with a tang of metal. Before he even processed it, the surge of disgust made his brow knit. It was unmistakably the smell of blood.
Jaeha opened his mouth in shock but couldn’t get any words out.
Because Taegun’s shirt was soaked in blood. The tie he usually wore so neatly had been gotten rid of somewhere; over his shirt he had only thrown on a suit jacket.
His white dress shirt was drenched in blood from who knew where. Not blood that had dried and crusted—something was still seeping, and the blood-soaked shirt clung to his body and outlined his abs.
Jaeha muttered, stunned.
"What is this…."
"Not all of it is mine."
Jang Taegun answered as if it were nothing and stepped inside. He changed into indoor slippers and came toward the dazed Jaeha.
"B-blood, the blood…."
"I said only this part is mine."
He lifted the shirt to show the wound. A gash slanted across the sculpted abs. It looked a good 12 cm long.
Jaeha sucked in a breath. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but the wound was so long it looked like it needed stitches. He suddenly worried about hemorrhagic shock if they left it as is.
"The hospital—we need to go to the hospital…."
He turned, grabbed a car key from the console at the end of the hall by the entry. In his haste he snatched the convertible key instead of the sedan, but didn’t even notice.
He was about to go out to at least start the engine when Taegun caught his wrist and stopped him.
"Where are you going?"
"The hospital…."
"Are you hurt somewhere?"
"Not me—Team Manager Jang—"
"Just come back inside. I just got off work and you want me to go out again?"
Because Taegun spoke as if it were nothing, Jaeha came to himself a little. Maybe the wound was only long, not deep?
While he was thinking that, Jang Taegun had already gone past him and farther inside. Jaeha had no choice but to follow.
Watching him walk perfectly fine nagged at him, so he spoke to the man’s back.
"At least we need to disinfect it."
"Fine. Do it."
His tone said: then let’s see you do it. Jaeha pressed his lips together and tried to recall where the first-aid kit was.
When they first moved in, Myungsoon had told him where he’d put the kit. Besides emergency meds there had been a lot of other things, but he hadn’t looked closely.
Only now did he realize why Myungsoon had told him the location on the first day. He’d known something like this could happen.
"Get a grip…."
It was rare for him to be this flustered.
While serving as a director, a plant in China had burned down, and there had been labor protests. For various reasons the stock price had plunged at times.
Even then, he hadn’t panicked. He’d simply moved a little faster to handle things and had always responded calmly.
He had never been this thrown. He had to clench his fists so his hands wouldn’t disgracefully shake.
Even knowing the wound wasn’t deep, even knowing that if he could walk in like this he must be okay, he still couldn’t help being rattled.
He paced in place several times before he finally remembered where the first-aid kit was.
He finally brought the kit back to the living room—only to find Jang Taegun gone. Puzzled, he headed to the man’s room.
He started to step through the door that was slightly ajar, then hesitated. Come to think of it, it was the first time he’d seen the room since the wedding.
Myungsoon hadn’t shown it to him, and he had deliberately kept his distance from it. Even when the man didn’t come home.
"……"
He hovered for a moment, then moved. Even if the bleeding had stopped, it didn’t seem right to leave it alone.
Only the warm, off-white indirect lights recessed near the ceiling along the wall were on. The color was warm, but with only a bed and a console holding a lamp, the room felt a bit barer than his.
His dressing room, like Jaeha’s, was attached as a separate space, so there was no wardrobe in here, and there was no TV or desk either.
There was a long mahogany cabinet, but it was closed in a way that gave no clue what it held. Jaeha assumed it was a safe.
"Ah…."
As he took careful steps forward, he stopped. A shirt and suit pants were scattered at his feet.
He picked them up to tidy them and then lifted his head.
[sfx: shower running]
Water pattered from the direction of the shower. Jaeha was a little taken aback.
Was he showering with that wound? What if it got worse….
While he paced, biting his lip, he set Taegun’s clothes in the laundry basket by the en-suite bathroom and carefully placed the first-aid kit on the bed.
If there had been a desk, he would have set it there, but there was nowhere suitable, so he had no choice but to put it on the ownerless bed.
Since he’d brought the kit, maybe he should leave now. If Jang Taegun saw him waiting alone in the owner’s room, he might think it strange.
He was debating whether to just wait in the living room.
"Have you ever treated a wound?"
He hadn’t even heard the bathroom door open, but there was Jang Taegun, a towel set on his wet hair, bare-chested in lounge pants, looking at him.
Without meaning to, Jaeha stared vacantly as droplets fell, tapping down along that hard jawline.
If Taegun hadn’t pointed it out without expression, he would have stood there a thousand years, ten thousand years, blankly staring.
"Staring pretty intensely for someone I thought had no interest in me."
"…No, that’s not it."
Startled to his senses, Jaeha murmured a reply. He wanted to deny the “pretty intensely” part first; because of that, he missed the rest of what the man said.
But Jang Taegun, unlike Jaeha, seemed to be paying attention.
"What’s not it? That you’re not interested in me?"
"Ah, that’s not—"
"Any more and you’ll cry. I get it, so come here."
Cry? Since his very first memory at about two or three years old, Jaeha had never cried. Even at his mother’s funeral, a single tear was all.
But standing there gaping, it would have been odd to protest, “I’ve never cried.” So he just closed his mouth and stepped to the side of the bed where Taegun sat.
"Do you know what to do first?"
As Taegun toweled the water from his hair and then let the towel fall carelessly to the floor, Jaeha picked it up and took it to the laundry basket.
Watching that, Taegun set his hands behind him and lounged his torso back, then asked. Jaeha couldn’t answer and hesitated.
Because in his relaxed posture, expression, and tone, there was a subtle air. He was clearly asking if he knew how to start treating a wound, but to Jaeha’s ears it sounded different.
"…Beast."
He scolded himself. Entertaining the wrong kind of thoughts toward an injured man was ridiculous.
He had never met someone who triggered an Alpha’s desire to conquer—to want, to take—so he hadn’t known, but maybe he was far more shameless than he thought.
Yet he couldn’t ignore the late hour, the quiet room, the soft off-white light casting shadows across the man’s face.
The light seemed unable to completely cross the mountain-ridge line of his nose and sagged there, draping one side of his face in shadow.
His eyes were so keen it felt like a tiger on a snow-covered ridge was staring from across the way.
Even though the light had failed to climb his nose, it didn’t seem to lose its will. It flowed like silk down his bare torso and densely revealed the well-made muscle.
Collarbones that looked like welded steel pipe, thick shoulders, muscles that looked carved one by one with a chisel on plaster, the way his eyes held him—these things stopped Jaeha’s breath.
For someone born an Alpha, building a body isn’t hard. Whether in a female or male frame, Alphas secrete hormones that accelerate physical development.
Lee Jaeha’s body, too, was lean and made of muscle. But the Alpha before his eyes, Jang Taegun, looked a little different.
It didn’t look like a body built with money, but one piled up rolling on the ground. A body that moved fluidly to tear someone’s muscle, break bone, and seize what it wanted.
He didn’t have many small scars, but there were a few big ones. For a moment, Jaeha wondered what had become of the people who put those on Jang Taegun.
While he stood there thinking and blank, the man chuckled.
"You’ll be drooling at this rate. Been standing there forever."
"…I didn’t drool."
"Did anything else drip?"