Tap tap tap!
In the dark of night, Shin-Yeon glared at his monitor and pounded rapidly on the keyboard.
[Search: How to seduce an alpha ten years older than you]
└ Why would an alpha ten years older want to date someone so ridiculously young?
└ They might date you for fun, but it’d be hard for them to take you seriously……. Find someone your own age.
└ If he’s an alpha that age, I should be the one dating him. Got any decent alphas?
[Search: How to flirt with an older alpha]
└ Today we’ll learn how to flirt with an alpha. Subtly let out your pheromones, brush your hair back with your hand, and wink.
└ Did the person above write that in 1988? Even in the Joseon era nobody would flirt like that.
└ Most alphas find it cute when omegas accidentally let out pheromones and then get embarrassed about it.
└ How about sending messages at set times? If you send cute messages every day and then suddenly stop, I think they’d start paying attention.
[Search: How to find a runaway omega]
└ We’ll catch runaway omegas for you. Please contact Ilgwang Errand Service.
└ If they ran away, then whatever it was, they must have really hated it. Do you really have to catch them?
└ Poor runaway omega…….
Shin-Yeon, staring at the monitor, let out a sigh and glanced at his phone.
“Haa……”
Time kept ticking by, and the time for his family to wind up out on the street was also steadily drawing closer.
“The hour when people are at their most emotional: 2 a.m…….”
Holding his phone, Shin-Yeon wondered if he should send some pathetic, clingy message like an ex-boyfriend he had never even been.
[Kim Shin-Yeon: …Are you asleep? They say people get the most emotional at this hour. So, on that note, if you could please marry me…….]
“No, no. That makes it way too obvious that my brother ran away. Naturally……. As naturally as possible…….”
Shin-Yeon shook his head hard, deleted the message he had just written, and with a miserable look on his face typed out a new one.
[Kim Shin-Yeon: It’s strange to say this so late at night, but…… you look really good in a suit. Oh, and you had something on your face.]
“Classic flirting really is the best.”
After sending the message, Shin-Yeon stared at the screen waiting for Kyo-Shin to read it, and the moment the read receipt popped up, he hurriedly sent another one.
[Kim Shin-Yeon: Your handsomeness, I mean.]
The second the read receipt appeared, Shin-Yeon belatedly got embarrassed and quickly flipped his phone facedown before springing to his feet.
Then he paced restlessly around his room, clutching at his pounding heart and trying to steady his breathing.
Bzzzz—
“……What is it, a reply? Spam?”
He wanted it to be a reply, but emotionally, spam might have been more welcome.
With trembling hands, Shin-Yeon carefully flipped his phone over, only to see that Seo Kyo-Shin really had replied.
Thump thump—
“What kind of insane thing am I doing because of Kim Shin-Hee? Wow, I’m losing my mind. God.”
His heart felt like it was going to shrivel up and kill him.
As he wrestled with whether or not to check the reply, another message came in.
“God, I’m seriously going crazy. I’ve never even had a girlfriend, and now I’m trying this on an adult ten years older than me……. Ah, Kim Shin-Hee, you lunatic!”
Shin-Yeon raked a hand through his hair, and in the end, driven by the fear that he might be homeless in two months, he finally tapped the messages open.
[Seo Kyo-Shin: Looks like you’re bored in the middle of the night. Wouldn’t sending messages to a working man at this hour be a little rude? Or do you not know that yet because you’re a baby^^?]
[Seo Kyo-Shin: It’s not exactly news that I’m handsome, so I’m fine. When you can’t sleep, studying for English certification exams is also a good option. If possible, just go to bed.]
“……He’s mad, isn’t he?”
Shin-Yeon bit his nail and stared at the messages with a miserable expression, then checked the time again and sent back an apology for messaging so late.
“Yeah, sending messages at dawn was crossing a line.”
Just as he walked over to the bed, threw himself down on it, and teared up a little over his own stupidity, his phone buzzed again.
“……?”
[Seo Kyo-Shin: So if I made time for you, what would you do?]
[Kim Shin-Yeon: It’s a secret. Good night.]
After firing the reply off quickly, Shin-Yeon turned off the light, lay down on the bed, and pulled the blanket over himself.
“Kim Shin-Hee, you bastard……. If you were going to get pregnant and run away, you should’ve broken off the engagement first! Or begged him not to withdraw the investment!”
Sniffling all through the early morning, Shin-Yeon eventually managed to fall asleep, then woke up the next morning looking completely worn out.
Because of the stress, Shin-Yeon couldn’t sleep deeply the way he used to, so he stepped out of his bedroom and headed to the kitchen with a haggard face.
“Mom.”
“You’re up?”
Walking over to his mother, who was preparing breakfast in the kitchen, Shin-Yeon said,
“If I marry Seo Kyo-Shin…… wouldn’t that stop him from withdrawing the investment? Can’t you tell him to marry me instead of my brother?”
“Your father discreetly asked around through some mutual acquaintances, but they said you’re too young, and that makes it burdensome.”
According to her, even when there was an age gap, the pressure was different between a single-digit gap and a double-digit one.
“What if I say it was love at first sight and I’m lovesick?”
“Oh, stop it. He’s not the kind of man who’d fall for something like that.”
“But I have to do something. We can’t just end up out on the street in two months…….”
At the sight of his mother’s pained expression as she prepared breakfast, Shin-Yeon suddenly burst into tears right there in the morning, wrapped his arms around her, and sobbed.
“Mom…… I-I’ll, sniff! I-I’ll figure out how to win him over somehow……. Waaah!”
With a sigh, Shin-Yeon’s mother patted him on the back and said with a bitter expression,
“Good grief, what hardship you’re going through because of that thoughtless eldest son. No matter how much we doted on the oldest, all he ever did was cause trouble, while the second one, the one who only listens well and is nothing but sweet, can’t even properly go out and have fun after taking the CSAT, hm?”
“That’s not the issue! If our house goes under, I won’t be able to have fun either……. Uwaaah!”
His mother said she regretted having raised Kim Shin-Hee with so much care and devotion, but spilled water could not be gathered back up.
“At times like this, you need to act more grown-up. Enough crying—eat breakfast.”
Sniffling, Shin-Yeon ate breakfast with his mother, then went back to his room, flopped down onto the bed, and picked up his phone.
“It’s not like I’m in a position to be picky about anything. I have to win him over and marry him, no matter what.”
[Kim Shin-Yeon: The weather is so nice today. It made me think of you, Executive Director Seo.]
After sending the message, he walked over to the window and pulled up the blinds, only to find gloomy gray skies dumping heavy snow.
Whoooosh!
“……Wow, I’m screwed.”
[Seo Kyo-Shin: (Photo of the company’s giant window with a blizzard outside) Looking at this weather made you think of me?]
What’s running down my face right now—sweat, or tears?
“I should’ve checked the weather before sending that…….”
Shin-Yeon decided that Kyo-Shin replying at all was still a good sign, and hurried to try flirting again.
[Kim Shin-Yeon: It’s full of atmosphere. I like snowy days like this!]
“Let’s show some sincerity.”
He quickly pulled a padded coat out of the closet and put it on, then pulled on a fuzzy hat and wrapped a scarf around himself before hurrying to the front door and saying to his mother,
“Mom! Take some pictures of me!”
“Why are you taking pictures when there’s a snowstorm outside?”
The moment he opened the front door and dashed outside, the fierce wind and blowing snow slapped him in the face, but…… I-I can’t lose!
“M-Mom! Hurry and take them!”
Bracing himself against the snowstorm, Shin-Yeon struck poses as earnestly as he could, then darted back inside.
“Brrr, it’s cold.”
“You don’t even like snow that much.”
“I have to start liking it from today.”
Shin-Yeon opened the phone his mother handed back and checked the photos first.
“……Wow, why do I look so ugly?”
Most of the photos made him look like he was three heads tall, and with the snowstorm twisting up his face, it looked like every bit of ugliness in the world had been gathered into one place.
“What does being ugly matter? You’re a good, sweet son who listens well. That’s enough.”
“This won’t do.”
Shin-Yeon ran back out into the storm-ravaged yard, posed with a V sign under a tree piled with snow, and took more pictures.
Click!
Whoooosh!
“Blech!”
He checked the selfies he had taken in the middle of the snowstorm, but by then his hands had gone numb from the cold, and the screen wouldn’t press properly.
“Ughhh……. I really hate the cold.”
Shrinking into himself, he hurried back inside and sent Seo Kyo-Shin a message.
[Kim Shin-Yeon: (photo), (photo) I like this kind of weather.]
After sending the reply, he went back into his room, took off his coat, and quickly crawled into the warm bed, pulling the blanket over himself.
He was weak against the cold, so his hands were already freezing stiff.
He tucked them under the blanket and stared up at the ceiling.
“Fuck……. Seriously, how am I supposed to seduce him?”
***
In a high-rise office with a full view of the snowstorm-swept city below—
Seo Kyo-Shin was working when he checked the message that had arrived in his private messenger on the side monitor.
[Kim Shin-Yeon: (photo), (photo) I like this kind of weather.]
When he enlarged the photos, a pretty face in a sky-blue furry hat filled the screen, winking and making a V sign.
Because Shin-Yeon had spent all his time indoors studying, his face was pale as milk, and the cold wind had turned it red.
The tip of his nose and his cheeks, reddened from the cold, and his eyes, still carrying traces that he had cried, especially caught Kyo-Shin’s attention.
Looking at those gentle brown eyes framed by long lashes and those slightly parted lips, Kyo-Shin rubbed a hand over his mouth and murmured,
“He looks like a baby camellia.”
The first time he had seen Kim Shin-Yeon, Kim Shin-Hee’s younger brother by three years, had been at the formal meeting between the two families for the business engagement.
Seventeen-year-old Kim Shin-Yeon, who had come along with his parents and older brother, had looked so young and small for his age that he really had seemed like a baby.
He had also stood out more because he was pretty in a type completely different from his older brother, Kim Shin-Hee.
If Kim Shin-Hee was a coy rabbit, then Kim Shin-Yeon, with his innocent childlike gaze, felt more like a hungry baby kitten.
Still, no matter how much he had caught Kyo-Shin’s eye and appealed to him, at the time Kim Shin-Yeon had been an actual child.
What could he possibly do with a minor ten years younger than him?
Recalling the past as he admired Shin-Yeon’s face, Kyo-Shin flipped to the next photo and let out a small laugh.
Shin-Yeon’s distorted face, caught full-on by the snowstorm while trying to pose in the yard, was quite adorable.
“Looks like he never once considered that I might zoom in on the pictures, did he?”