Because of that, he woke aching everywhere. On days with muscle soreness he normally did some light stretching and left it at that, but the lingering low fever annoyed him, so he summoned Coach Park first thing.
There was a sparring gym beneath the estate. It was his only hobby; despite Kim Ranhui’s opposition, he’d had a ring built.
When he first learned boxing he went to a gym, but people kept trying to talk to him, and having to answer irked him; once he shed the beginner’s tag, he started calling the coach to the house.
Boxing was a martial art, and summoning a coach who was practically a master weighed on him, but he found it far more uncomfortable to have strangers strike up conversations.
He disliked showering in the gym’s stalls, too. When he sweated after sparring like today, it was a real nuisance.
He stepped down from the ring and was loosening one glove when Coach Park feigned a groan about his shaky legs.
“What brings you to rough training in the morning, Director?”
“Good question.”
With the glove he still hadn’t taken off, Jaeha tapped Coach Park’s glove and lifted just the corner of his mouth.
Coach Park, who had seen him for years, blinked, wondering what on earth had him on the verge of a belly laugh.
“Looks like you’ve got good news.”
Good news? There was none.
But hit by a sudden rut, taking suppressants without thinking of other side effects, and with the heat still faintly in his system—he’d done the eccentric thing of sparring at dawn, and yet he wasn’t in a bad mood.
Knowing well his single-minded, inflexible temperament, even he couldn’t make sense of the feelings and actions that had run on since last evening.
Glancing at him, Coach Park tilted his head.
“That’s odd. You dislike morning workouts.”
“…I do.”
He had nothing more to add.
Right. He disliked them. Morning exercise, those kinds of gatherings, and Alphas with such violent pheromones.
Strangely, it stuck in his head. Even the name Jang Taegun.
“Jaeha, this one.”
“Will that do? You said you needed something.”
“This is the thing.”
He looked at the watch the Omega had chosen.
You could never call the design or the price common, but it didn’t look remarkable enough to warrant a special trip.
The watch on Sumin’s wrist looked far more expensive than the one he’d picked now… but even thinking that, he didn’t say it aloud.
Both the Omega and Lee Jaeha lived with personal shoppers who would come to the office or the house, but since Sumin said he wanted to see with his own eyes before buying, Jaeha didn’t quibble.
In the end, they were walking the store together, but if he didn’t focus, his mind drifted quickly.
Even with that lukewarm attitude, he was fairly kind to his near-fiancé.
Perhaps the problem was that his kindness was the same fairness he showed subordinates and the house staff.
But Sumin didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t harbor deep affection for Jaeha either.
“May I see this one.”
“Yes.”
At Sumin’s words, the clerk smiled slightly and opened the glass case.
The Omega laid the watch—lifted with white gloves—against his wrist and asked,
“How about this. Think it suits me?”
“It’s pretty.”
The other didn’t seem interested in his true thoughts anyway, so perhaps it didn’t matter.
Jaeha’s Omega was the second son of a family that had kept its line in politics for three generations, starting with a grandfather who had been a pro-Japanese collaborator.
With a father who was a three-term member of the National Assembly from the choicest district of Gangnam, Kim Sumin was a year older than Jaeha.
To settle the engagement, they’d even talked of studying abroad together, but in the middle, Kim Ranhui blocked it with the excuse that both were still young.
More precisely, because the match was too fine to make the man Jaeha’s spouse.
By the time he was sick of hearing her stock phrase—“Our Jaeho should meet someone exactly like Sumin, too”—Jaeha left to study alone.
After that, the engagement, which had gone vague for a time, rose again as a topic just before his promotion to Executive Director.
So Kim Sumin wasn’t his fiancé, but his “near-fiancé”—they had promised to become engaged.
Even so, on holidays they sometimes looked at each other’s faces and traded dull greetings—if only as a show for the elders of both families.
Fortunately, Kim Sumin wasn’t as tight-lipped as he was, and he found ways to pass the time. Shopping together like today was one.
“After this, want to meet my friend?”
“Sure.”
Who? was his first thought, but he didn’t say it.
He had questions, but it would be more accurate to say he wasn’t curious.
Among people at the top, human networks were all the same stew. He didn’t know every figure in politics and business, but Sumin and Jaeha belonged to the upper pool, so the acquaintances were all from the same set.
In that case, there was no one worth the trouble of a formal introduction—so who did he mean? Still, he didn’t ask further, and Sumin stayed silent all the way into the hotel connected to the department store.
Jaeha, not much of a talker himself, kept his mouth shut as well.
It was a mistake to follow Sumin into the hotel restaurant without a thought, assuming he’d introduce a college classmate before the engagement.
Even as the waiter led them toward a private room, Jaeha was thinking about the planning meeting scheduled for the next day. Naturally following behind Sumin, he watched the waiter knock on the room door and open it for Sumin—and found it odd.
“A friend already here?”
At this point, it seemed the meeting was arranged to introduce that friend to him rather than to shop; if the person were that important, there was no way he wouldn’t know who it was.
With a puzzled look, he stopped at the doorway and, over Sumin’s shoulder, looked at the Alpha seated at the table.
And there, he faced Jang Taegun once again.
“He’s my boyfriend.”
At those words, one of Jaeha’s eyebrows twitched up before he knew it.
Boyfriend? For a boyfriend, Kim Sumin looked distinctly tense even sitting beside Jang Taegun.
It wasn’t the nervousness of wanting to look good for someone you love; it looked closer to the fear of someone unable to feel safe beside a caged predator.
He felt the question rise, but didn’t ask this time either. Every other stimulus had dropped away, and he was busy simply watching Jang Taegun.
Though he was the only person seated in the room, his presence was like a mountain.
Indoor smoking had been banned for a long time, yet he held a cigarette stem between lips that looked well-textured. He hadn’t lit it, but Jaeha couldn’t tell what that steady gaze meant.
Though Jaeha stood and the other sat—making it physically impossible—he felt as if the man were looking down at him. It was a strange sensation.
Their eyes stayed tangled for a long time, and the one who broke that bottomless gaze wasn’t the Alpha or Jaeha, but the room’s only Omega.
“Jaeha, what are you doing—don’t stare at people so rudely.”
If they were to talk about bad manners, it was worse for Kim Sumin to introduce that Alpha as his boyfriend without a word to his near-fiancé—but Jaeha swallowed the words.
It wasn’t only Kim Sumin who lacked affection for this relationship. He had never come to feel anything for Sumin, either.
But after an engagement and a marriage, he intended at least to be faithful to his partner. Given his family circumstances, having watched his mother suffer, he had made at least this resolve: do not deceive the other.
Without any discussion about keeping separate lovers, introducing Jang Taegun to him was strange.
Yes. All of it was strange. There was plenty to call out; he had grounds to say a word to both Sumin and Jang Taegun—so why was he—
“We’ve met before.”
The man shattered Jaeha’s train of thought.
A voice that skimmed the crema off coffee like a blade, and came down hard like rain that had fallen through the night.
“Jaeha, do you—do you even know what you’re saying right now?”
Sumin’s face went stark pale, then flushed again. It was a face heated with anger. For a moment, Jaeha even felt a flicker of guilt.
Well then, why did you bring that Alpha there.
If not for that day, Lee Jaeha might have safely gotten engaged to Kim Sumin, married without incident, had an Omega son and an Alpha daughter or two, and taken over management without trouble.
He wondered if the one who had thrown a wrench into that plan was Kim Sumin.
But Sumin wore the look of a faithful partner betrayed, acting as if he bore no fault at all for the situation he was in.
“Ha, fuck, the both of you… Fine. You two perfect bastards go have your fun. I still—”
“Don’t swear.”
“To the very end—”
He could understand Sumin’s anger to a degree.
Their relationship had been implicit but fairly long-standing, and the only “skinship” they’d shared was Jaeha catching Sumin’s hand when Sumin, weak in the ankles, was about to stumble. Even so, the force of time wasn’t small.
…His mouth tasted bitter. He wondered if there really was no other option.
Why that Alpha. Why that man. Why did it have to be Jang Taegun.
He’d had a few dreams and simply wanted to see him; there was no real point of contact between them yet. So perhaps he didn’t need to think about breaking with a near-fiancé who fit all the right conditions.
But for Lee Jaeha, that was hard. To lie down beside someone else with only his body while holding someone in his heart. To be called someone’s spouse and dream of another.
Even if it was only a one-sided love, even if it was only a sliver of feeling—what was wrong was wrong.
He didn’t care if the rest of the world lived that way.
Not everyone is good at the high jump, and not everyone can eat cucumbers. Lee Jaeha happened to be fairly good at the high jump and ate whatever was served, but when it came to love, he had a streak of fastidiousness.
With a face scourged by every kind of insult, Sumin stood and walked out of the coffee shop. Only then did the secretary hurry over and offer a handkerchief.
With a blank face, Jaeha shook his head. A little something on his face wasn’t a disaster. He felt sorry for Sumin, too. After all, he was the one who had ended it.
He showed the napkin he was holding and said,
“I wiped everything off.”
“…It—there’s some in your hair.”
Looking uneasy, the secretary reached out again with the handkerchief. This time, Jaeha didn’t pull away; he asked, puzzled,
“Where?”
And then, a large hand came in, unannounced.
Veins over the back, tiny scars, thick knuckles—hands that could have belonged to a construction laborer, yet the skin wasn’t simply rough; they made you curious about what work he did.
But before that, the other’s pheromones swept over him.
Wild rose and sea salt. Jang Taegun.
“Here, on your nape.”
His index finger touched the back of Jaeha’s neck. Through the snug collar of his dress shirt, a knuckle slipped in and skimmed his skin—just like pushing a finger into a tight hole.
It felt like the point of contact might blister.
Startled by Jang Taegun’s sudden appearance, at a loss for words, Jaeha looked up at him blankly, and the man answered that bewildered expression with a faint smile.
“Good day, Director Lee Jaeha. I’m Jang Taegun of Jang Construction.”
Ah, the dream was definitely a dream.
Otherwise—
“But do I have to say we’ve met before again? Every time we see each other you don’t even let me get a greeting out, so how long am I supposed to introduce myself. My mouth’s getting sore.”
The Alpha’s eyes curved as he laughed. Jaeha swallowed a breath.
A dream is only a dream. His sorry excuse for dreamcraft hadn’t captured even a tenth of the man himself.
From his fingertips, heat pooled and began to spread.