“……”
The secretary rolled his eyes as he observed Lyle’s anger. As a Beta, he could not truly empathize with the pheromone issues between Alphas and Omegas, but he understood very well what it looked like when his superior was in pain. And he knew how important a contract like this—one that secured an Omega—was.
Still, the Haejin he had met in person looked nothing like the one he had seen five years ago. The gaunt, darkened face made it painfully clear that the past five years had not been kind. Not to mention, hadn’t he even heard about his parents’ deaths late because he had been with Lyle at the time?
Glancing again at the contract in his hand, the secretary fell into thought. Of course, even taking all of that into consideration, these conditions were undeniably tempting. The fact that Lyle himself had ordered this directly was so unusual that the secretary had almost felt the need to confirm whether he had misheard.
And yet Haejin seemed to have no lingering attachment whatsoever. No—more than that, it seemed as if he truly had no desire left at all.
“Will you go yourself?”
“…No. Find another Omega.”
“This time, I’ll look for a Recessive.”
“Fine.”
Of course, his arrogant superior was not someone who would be swayed by such push and pull. If Haejin thought so naïvely, it would prove useless.
Judging that his superior’s Omega aversion had simply grown more severe, almost like a worsening seizure, the secretary searched this time for a Recessive Omega with faint pheromones. As expected, even after easing the conditions slightly, there were more than enough applicants.
But once again, Lyle could not overcome his revulsion. Watching from the side, the secretary began to sense that the matter was becoming serious. The intensity of the rejection seemed to be growing stronger.
In the end, Lyle had no choice but to walk to the place where Haejin was staying himself.
***
“Jin. Open the door.”
The knocking now echoed loudly enough to fill the room. With a sigh, Haejin walked to the door and opened it.
Lyle was truly standing there.
“……”
“……”
Their eyes met suddenly, and Lyle lost his words for a moment. It had not even been two full weeks, yet it felt as though it had been far longer.
There was nothing in Haejin’s eyes—so transparent they were almost empty—and that, oddly enough, unsettled him.
Wasn’t this what he had wanted to see? The sight of Lyle coming in person?
“What is it.”
After knocking so forcefully, Lyle said nothing. Only when Haejin asked in a flat tone did he tighten his gaze again. The irritation he had momentarily forgotten rose back to the surface.
“Why aren’t you signing the contract?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“……”
The answer came without the slightest hesitation. Haejin’s expression remained calm throughout. It was surprising that Lyle had come all this way, certainly—but that was all. The fact that he had chased after him in anger over repeated refusals was clearly written in the furrow between his brows. Once that question was answered, nothing remained but emptiness.
That expression, devoid of anything at all, grated on him. As did the hand gripping the doorknob, as if ready to close it at any moment.
Something was not going the way he intended. The moment he recognized that, Lyle swallowed a sigh.
“Tell me what you want.”
There was an arrogant confidence in his words—confidence that he could grant whatever it was. And beneath it lay a warning: stop resisting and comply.
True to that absurd confidence, Lyle had the power to grant nearly anything. At this point, he even found himself curious just how excessive a demand Haejin might make.
“There’s nothing.”
Haejin merely let his gaze slide slightly to the side as he answered.
His complete lack of cooperation was suffocating. Lyle’s lungs expanded as though he had just sprinted at full speed. More than anything, he disliked that hollow gaze. Though it had only been two weeks, Haejin’s jawline was even more pronounced now, and that alone irritated him.
The hand clutching the doorknob as if desperate to shut the door was so thin it hardly seemed to contain any strength.
“Hey, Jin. Enough.”
Finally snapping, Lyle strode forward and growled at him. If Haejin had at least pretended to hesitate, he might have argued, might have pushed until he broke. Or perhaps in the process he would have uncovered what the man truly wanted and regained control. But this—this treatment as though his proposal was not even worth hearing—was a first.
At Lyle’s rude tone, Haejin realized something.
Lyle was treating him as though he were negotiating contract terms.
For the first time in a long while, a small spark flickered inside Haejin.
When the other party was this rude, there was no need to preserve courtesy alone. So Haejin abandoned even the polite speech that had become habit.
“Lyle.”
“……!”
Reaching roughly for the door, Lyle froze.
Haejin’s cool gaze, directed squarely at him, gave him the absurd sensation of being seized whole. The sound of his own name in Haejin’s voice struck sharply in his ears.
There was still no emotion in that gaze.
And yet, strangely, Lyle found it easy to recall Haejin’s face when he had once looked at him with resentment.
“I’m not signing the contract. I don’t need it anymore.”
“……”
Had the words “don’t need” ever struck him this hard before?
Haejin spoke as if stating a simple fact, dry and unadorned. His thin body looked fragile, as though fatigue gathered simply from standing. It felt as though a light push would be enough to breach the room.
Yet Lyle could not move until the door closed in front of him.
“Jin!”
Only after Haejin’s figure disappeared did Lyle come to his senses and knock again.
Questioning why he should entertain such persistent refusal in the first place, Haejin simply ignored him. The knocking sounded several more times, but he lay down on the sofa without hesitation.
After waiting a little, silence settled once more around him. Relief washed over him at the thought that this was truly the end. After rejecting him like that, someone as prideful as Lyle would never come looking for him again.
But a week later—
When Lyle appeared in his room again, looking somewhat more haggard than before, Haejin immediately sensed that something had gone wrong.
***
“Is it about money?”
“……”
When Lyle returned and spoke so abruptly, still in that rude tone, Haejin no longer even had the energy to retort.
But the question that had once flared and died now raised its head again. Why go this far? Of all people, Lyle?
“Jin. Answer me.”
Now even in his dreams, Haejin’s empty face joined him. The lingering image surfaced while he worked, driving Lyle nearly to the brink.
If he simply blamed it all on pheromones, the answer was easy. What remained was to resolve the situation, somehow. Feeling impatience for the first time in a long while, Lyle had come again.
He had even investigated the time when Haejin’s adoptive parents died. He remembered Haejin saying he needed to make a payment while being dragged away.
Naturally, the hospital showed no signs of wrongdoing. It would never dare neglect a patient entrusted by the Vermouth Family, and contact had been made on time. The deaths of the adoptive parents had simply been tragic.
Of course, what complicated matters had been the butler’s and Lyle’s own handling of it. In the end, it felt like nothing more than an unnecessarily tangled inconvenience.
“I don’t need it anymore.”
Haejin’s indifferent words circled him like an auditory hallucination. Since hearing them that day, they burrowed into his mind at irregular intervals. The headache that had grown beyond control now required medication.
After that, he brought in several more Omegas. But now he felt nauseous before even entering the same room as one.
Even as his head split with pain, the rejection was so intense he did not want to lay a single hand on another Omega’s body. Something was wrong. He knew that much. But what he needed right now was clear.
It had to be Haejin.
“It was about money. You’re the one who made it not a problem.”
At Haejin’s rare hint of emotion, Lyle lifted his head sharply. The face before him was no different from the one he had seen before, yet his gaze lingered.
He had acted indifferent to everything, but it seemed he had been angry about that after all. Was that why he showed such resistance to the new contract?
“Hey, even I can’t keep someone alive forever—”
“You seem to be misunderstanding something. I’m not saying you’re responsible for my family’s lives.”
“……Then what?”
There was no resentment in Haejin’s voice, just as Lyle said. The faint emotion that had surfaced retreated once more. Words as dry as reading from a legal code poured toward Lyle’s face.
“At the very least, you had the responsibility to inform me of my family’s deaths immediately. Do I need to remind you that you were the first to violate the obligations clearly stated in the contract?”
The clauses Haejin referred to were numerous, but he had no intention of listing them here. If he had intended to recount every single thing Lyle and his estate had done to him, he would have chased after Lyle long ago.
Of course, even if he had, nothing would have changed.
Remembering that clearly, Haejin felt this entire exchange was unnecessary. He did not want to return to the estate. In truth, he did not want to do anything at all. He simply wanted to sit in this stagnant, dust-covered room and turn to stone.
So he hoped that this would be enough for Lyle to finally give up.