Lyle seemed utterly incapable of understanding that a person who had fallen flat in life sometimes wanted nothing at all. Haejin only wanted to remain where he had collapsed.
He had no desire to explain any of this to Lyle now. They stood at opposite extremes. There was no possibility of mutual understanding.
So he asked instead. Why Lyle was going this far.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
He believed an answer would come at once. Perhaps Lyle had not considered it worth explaining to him, but surely he had his own reasons.
Unexpectedly, however, Lyle merely stared at him in silence. That brief gap unsettled Haejin.
“…There’s no one as convenient as you.”
At those words, a faint, self-mocking laugh slipped from Haejin before he could stop it. The flicker of doubt that had crept in scattered like grains of sand.
Right. I must have been useful.
His desperation must have shown itself in that way. Being recessive meant even his heat cycles were less frequent. Lyle despised Omegas who behaved like Omegas. Thick, languid pheromones during heat were something he could not tolerate.
The first time Haejin went into heat in this Estate, Lyle happened to sleep with him. He had been visibly displeased. Watching Haejin’s body grow slick against his will, Lyle had not bothered to hide his disgust. Even through the blindfold, Haejin had felt it.
After that, though irregular, heat came several more times. Lyle avoided him thoroughly during those periods, and Haejin endured by swallowing medication. Once the heat passed, he returned to that room in a battered state and accepted Lyle again.
How could someone like that not be convenient?
“I suppose so.”
Haejin spoke calmly, lowering his head little by little. Meeting those hollow eyes was irritating enough, but when that gaze shifted obviously elsewhere, something in Lyle burned with a different thirst.
Even while recognizing that he did not understand his own state, Lyle forced his emotions down. Bringing Haejin back impulsively did not feel like a mistake. If anything, it seemed inevitable.
Though it was late and he wore no tie, his throat felt tight. As if something were lodged there, he touched his neck. There was nothing.
He ignored the ominous unease and spoke coldly.
“If you’re going to wander around like this and die anyway, let me use you.”
Strangely, those words sounded almost like an answer to Haejin.
So this was the shape of that peculiar calm.
His body felt as though it were being dragged downward. His swollen throat throbbed, blocked and raw. Thoughts born from a body at its limit dissolved quickly into the air.
“Jin.”
Haejin offered no response, only that peculiar expression. Lyle braced a hand on the table between them, irritation flaring at the sight. It was absurd how that one look undid the restraint he had forced upon himself.
He threw the contract down in front of him.
He had brought him here by force. He would have to persuade him somehow. In this moment, the option of finding another Omega did not exist for Lyle.
“I’ll let you live without lifting a finger, just like before. Sign it.”
“….”
Haejin found himself thinking, almost absently, that Lyle was more shameless than expected. A faint, bitter laugh escaped him again. Life in this Estate had never been good enough to describe that way.
Breath would not move properly into his lungs. As though his body insisted on remaining exactly where it was. He did not even glance at the white pages before him. When he forced his eyes upward, the chandelier above seemed strangely blurred.
Lyle, who had been observing even the minute flutter of Haejin’s lashes, clenched his fist at the sight of that blank face. Haejin’s faint pheromones carried no emotion at all, simply sinking to the floor.
An unfamiliar impatience took hold of Lyle. He spoke, knowing it was a threat.
“Or do you want me to force myself on you?”
Haejin shook his head weakly.
He could not endure that kind of emotional expenditure now. And he knew very well that if Lyle truly deemed it necessary, he was the sort of man who would do exactly that.
The thought made his breath hitch.
Only then did he understand that he truly had not wanted to return to this Estate.
But he had already been dragged back. Before him lay confinement disguised as a contract. The sheet of paper felt as though it were tightening around his throat. Though he had eaten nothing, nausea rose. The back of his head throbbed with cold, as if struck against the frozen surface of that lake.
Lyle was breaking him again.
Just like the first time.
“…Jin?”
This time, Haejin had no desperation left to endure such cruelty. There was nothing left in him.
So he collapsed.
“Jin!”
There was no sensation at all when his body hit the floor.
The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was an expression on Lyle’s face he had never seen before.
***
“….”
Haejin lay pale and unmoving, so still one might have to check whether he was breathing.
When Lyle had caught him instinctively as he fell in the reception room, his body had already been burning with fever. The secretary, who had been observing from behind, moved swiftly, and they reached the hospital without delay. In the face of the unforeseen situation, Lyle postponed his morning schedule and waited for Haejin to wake.
Last night had been a chain of impulses.
Even waiting here now, with work delayed, was another impulse.
Lyle preferred precision. He measured even travel time by the minute. Yet anything involving Haejin had long deviated from his plans. Rut and pheromone congestion were not variables one could calculate to the day.
He had thought he was accustomed to this useless trait of his.
He had been mistaken.
Haejin remained an anomaly.
Even by his own rational standards, this situation was unreasonable. Haejin had no reason to accept the contract. If he staggered under the weight of losing his family and died somewhere on the street, that would be his life.
Yet Lyle could not permit it.
When Haejin asked him why, Lyle had wanted an answer too. The assumption that placing Haejin before him would clarify things had long since shattered. He still did not understand why he had to contract with him.
Nor did he understand why he had no intention of letting him go in this state.
Having already resorted to abduction, if Lyle refused to back down, Haejin had little recourse. He knew that. And yet the sense that something was fundamentally misaligned would not leave him.
Why did he want so little from him?
“….”
As if by coincidence, Haejin opened his eyes while Lyle was mired in that thought.
The white ceiling he saw through fading vision was familiar. The hospital scent tightened something in him. But the reflexive tension soon unraveled.
His family was no longer here.
There was no need to fear the misfortune that might strike each time he crossed a hospital threshold. Perhaps once a person had already been swallowed by misfortune, fear simply faded. The fact that he himself was now the patient did not feel particularly important.
He forced his dry eyes to move and surveyed the room. A figure sat in a chair.
It would have been natural to be startled, but Haejin merely shifted his gaze weakly.
It was unexpected that Lyle, rather than a nurse, remained at his side. Then he corrected himself. Until the contract was signed again, Lyle would likely continue behaving strangely.
Lyle stared at him as if carved from stone.
Something tugged at his wrist. An IV was inserted there. The fluid bag bore the logo of Vermouth Pharmaceuticals.
Strangely, that logo struck him harder than the man sitting before him.
In a hospital under the Vermouth conglomerate, receiving IV fluid produced by Vermouth Pharmaceuticals, Haejin was forced to understand.
Unless Lyle chose to release him, he would not escape this situation.
“Are you going to keep pretending not to see me?”
There was anger in the question.
Haejin’s gaze drifted toward him. He had not meant to ignore him. The reaction seemed excessive.
Lyle rose abruptly and approached. The sound of his shoes on the floor mingled with the steady drip of the IV. Haejin swallowed down the familiar ache again. His swollen throat made even that simple act painful.
Still, he forced himself to speak.
“Three months.”
“…What?”
“The contract. Three months.”