“Is that really… all you have to say?”
Ignoring the grim expression carved into the other man’s face, So Gi-hyeon let his thoughts drift elsewhere. He found himself wondering why this man had abandoned his current lover’s birthday just to attend his commissioning ceremony, and a melancholy fondness washed over him.
You really do know how to drown a person in affection.
“Hey, answer me.” The man’s brow furrowed as he saw straight through Gi-hyeon’s stoic facade and caught him drifting. “Don’t just spew all that bullshit and then ignore me.”
Gi-hyeon silently studied the beauty mark on the bridge of the man’s nose, that tiny dark speck like a splash of ink, then gave a slow nod. He found it strange that the other man would demand an answer to something so obvious. No matter when he asked, the response would always be the same.
To Gi-hyeon, those feelings were as ordinary as a daily greeting.
From the moment he first understood them, that love had been his constant companion. It was as natural as the sun rising in the east, as inevitable as one season arriving when the last one faded. Loving him felt like a promise made before Gi-hyeon had ever been given a choice. Accepting that undeniable truth, Gi-hyeon nodded again.
“I’m more surprised that you didn’t know.”
That was his most honest feeling.
So Gi-hyeon had no talent whatsoever for letting people close. Throughout his entire life, the only person he had ever wanted by his side was Jo Yeon-oh.
There was no way an attachment that deep had gone unnoticed. Gi-hyeon had first recognized the full shape of his feelings in his second year of high school. Naturally, he had fought them. It wasn’t as though he had never agonized over it. Yeon-oh was far too precious to him as a friend. Terrified of fraying the edges of their bond, Gi-hyeon had desperately tried to cut away every emotion that went beyond friendship, beyond brotherhood.
He had simply failed.
After all those years, the man who knew Gi-hyeon better than Gi-hyeon knew himself could not have been completely blind to his heart. Even without certainty, he must have suspected something.
Gi-hyeon was a stark, stoic man, a stubborn eccentric with unsmiling lips and no gift for jokes. He was a murky, diluted gray, like a canvas where dark, muddy colors had been recklessly smeared together and then washed over with white. In that desolate, colorless world, Jo Yeon-oh was the only thing with a vivid hue, the only presence that grew more blinding with each passing day. If Gi-hyeon had looked at him with such unwavering devotion, Yeon-oh must have known.
Knowing that, Gi-hyeon had truly tried to kill the affection. For years, he had tried to forget. He had forced himself to look at other people, denied his emotions, buried them deep enough to rot beneath simple curses. In silence, he had begged those feelings to scatter.
But could something like that ever truly be forgotten?
Instead, as the years bled on, that love had only hardened into an irrefutable law of nature. Every agonizing attempt to bury it had been driven by his own will, but his inability to forget was beyond his control.
Brushing a speck of dust from his officer’s cap, Gi-hyeon looked at the bouquet Yeon-oh had brought him. The Alpha stood there with the extravagant flowers in one hand and a cigarette pinched between the fingers of the other, his brow deeply creased. They were in a secluded corner set aside for an outdoor ashtray, but nearly every passerby still glanced his way. It was rarer for someone not to stare, and Gi-hyeon understood why.
Amid the rigid rows of newly commissioned second lieutenants in pristine dress uniforms, Yeon-oh stood dressed entirely in black: dark turtleneck, heavy coat, polished dress shoes. Even in such inconspicuous clothes, he drew every gaze around him as naturally as gravity.
The man himself, however, flicked ash from his cigarette with callous indifference, as though he had never once noticed the weight of those stares. His entire posture radiated the dangerous aura of someone barely holding a vicious temper in check.
An educated thug.
A hoodlum in designer clothes.
A punk wearing a polite mask.
The sheer accuracy of those silent titles drew a quiet, involuntary chuckle from Gi-hyeon.
“Don’t fucking laugh after turning my stomach inside out,” Yeon-oh growled.
Clearly aggravated by Gi-hyeon’s composure, he shoved the cigarette between his sculpted lips and inhaled so sharply his cheeks hollowed. The ember flared violently, burning almost to the filter in a single drag before dimming again.
Gi-hyeon’s gaze returned to the massive bouquet in Yeon-oh’s grip. It was a lavish arrangement, the sort meant to flatter a graduating friend’s ego and likely worth a small fortune. And yet every flower in it carried the language of eternal love.
Why are these flowers for me? Why am I the one receiving them instead of his Omega lover on their birthday?
Gi-hyeon had long since outgrown the naivety required to agonize over such questions. Yeon-oh’s actions no longer confused him, because Gi-hyeon knew one absolute truth.
Jo Yeon-oh did not love So Gi-hyeon.
That single fact was the entire purpose of this confession.
It was a declaration of an ending, the final execution of a desperate heart that had spent its whole life yearning for a man who would never return its affection. Today was his graduation and commissioning ceremony. It made a fitting stage for a finale.
Gi-hyeon traced the deep furrow between Yeon-oh’s brows with his eyes. The way the Alpha impatiently rubbed his forehead with his thumb meant he was either wrestling with a dilemma or facing a thoroughly unpleasant situation. Knowing Yeon-oh, it was likely both. This confession was nothing more than an inescapable nuisance the man would have preferred to avoid.
Not wanting Yeon-oh to suffer too deeply over it, Gi-hyeon set his officer’s cap back on his head and broke the silence.
“I only told you so you would know. I don’t expect anything else.”
Perhaps that was the worst thing he could have said.
The confusion churning in Yeon-oh’s eyes plunged into something dark and dangerously cold. His eyes narrowed, and his lips curled into a sharp, terrifying sneer. His tongue dragged across his lower lip before pressing hard into the inside of his cheek.
At the subtle shift, Gi-hyeon clicked his tongue inwardly.
Ah. The bastard is pissed now.
The sheer force of Yeon-oh’s fury crashed over him. Yeon-oh in this state was notoriously difficult to handle. Anticipating the fallout, Gi-hyeon flinched slightly, and a second later, the reaction was justified: Yeon-oh violently hurled the expensive bouquet onto the concrete.
Watching crushed petals scatter across the ground, Gi-hyeon understood the root of that explosive anger. The Alpha was furious because this emotional burden had been unilaterally dumped on him. But to Gi-hyeon, the confession had become so deeply ingrained that holding it back any longer would have suffocated him. He had chosen today to place the final verdict of his love in Jo Yeon-oh’s hands.
“It’s just so obvious to me, that’s why I said it,” Gi-hyeon continued quietly. “As for why I chose today…”
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the surroundings.
In the distance, a massive banner announced the Military Academy’s graduation and commissioning ceremony, underscored by a grandiose slogan that made Gi-hyeon smile faintly. No one understood the gravity of this day better than Yeon-oh. To have a heavy confession dropped on such a monumental occasion must have felt suffocating.
Gi-hyeon wanted to explain that he had not meant to burden him, that the words had simply burst out on their own, like a flower unable to keep its petals closed.
“I suppose it might feel heavy to you. But that wasn’t my intent—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Yeon-oh viciously flicked the cigarette stub against the concrete wall, sending sparks into the air.
Gi-hyeon’s attention caught on the discarded butt as it tumbled across the ground, the ember still burning bright. It did not annoy him. It simply bothered him. The sight of something thrown away and rolling in the dirt while still desperately burning felt far too much like his own pathetic existence.
When he lifted his gaze, Yeon-oh was digging his fingers into the underside of his brow bone, a clear sign of an oncoming migraine. A headache always made Jo Yeon-oh infinitely sharper and crueler.
Perhaps I really did choose the wrong day.
But if he had not spoken today, Gi-hyeon feared he would have swallowed the words for the rest of his life. Waiting was no longer an option. Besides, no matter what day he chose, the inevitable answer would always be the same.
Gi-hyeon methodically erased the last traces of hesitation circling his mind.
Admittedly, dumping such a heavy confession on a childhood friend who had come to celebrate his commissioning, while holding the engagement ring that matched his own officer’s ring, was an incredible burden. When Yeon-oh arrived today, he certainly had not expected to be ambushed with a symbol of lifelong devotion.
As he reflected on it, a sharp pang of regret pierced through Gi-hyeon’s resolve.
Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut.
Such quick regret was absurd, but realistically, he had survived just fine while burying these feelings. Even without laying his heart bare, even without confessing the depth of his devotion, Gi-hyeon had lived remarkably well for a man carrying the crushing weight of unrequited love. Perhaps its sheer familiarity had made it bearable.
From the moment he recognized his feelings at eighteen until now, loving Yeon-oh had been like chronic rhinitis: unbearably agonizing when it flared up, but otherwise only a mild, constant discomfort.
That chronic pain was precisely why he had needed to confess. The long-endured emotion had become too ingrained, and somewhere inside him was the desperate hope that putting it into words might finally force it to end.
“So what the hell do you want to do about it?” Yeon-oh snarled.
The crushed, guttural voice forced through his gritted teeth revealed such absolute anger that guilt and embarrassment rushed over Gi-hyeon at once.
Was my confession really that repulsive?
With no other choice, Gi-hyeon scrambled to downplay the situation. He had wanted to avoid such cowardly backpedaling, but Yeon-oh’s terrifying reaction had genuinely shaken him.
“Nothing. Like I said, I just wanted you to know.”
Gi-hyeon gave a flat shrug. Though the words came out sounding like a hollow excuse, they were the truth.
He could hardly demand a relationship from Jo Yeon-oh, a man who despised the very thought of dating Betas. And yet Gi-hyeon had desperately needed to prove that his biological status as a Beta did not lessen the weight of his love.
In truth, So Gi-hyeon was still profoundly naive. He had thrown himself into the confession without fully untangling the complexities of his own heart. Even after years of loving Yeon-oh with absolute certainty, Gi-hyeon remained terrified of the unknown. He could not predict how this confession would distort the lifelong bond between two men who had practically grown up together, nor what devastating conclusion it might hurl them toward.
Jo Yeon-oh, after all, was his first everything.
Ah. Perhaps that’s the real reason.
Because Yeon-oh was his first, Gi-hyeon knew nothing about love. Perhaps he was terrified that if things remained as they were, Yeon-oh would inevitably become his last as well.
That terror was why he had unleashed the confession today, the very day the man had come to celebrate his commissioning. It was a desperate plea for Yeon-oh to execute those feelings on his behalf.
Condemn my love. Punish this selfish heart that chose to abandon our friendship and ignore your pain. Please, end it for me.
That plea may have been the only true purpose beneath his confession.
Unfortunately, Jo Yeon-oh had always been unusually weak when it came to So Gi-hyeon.
“You just want me to know?”
Although Yeon-oh glared at him with eyes full of disgust, his expression fractured beneath the weight of countless warring emotions.
“…”
“You’re just spouting infuriating bullshit to piss me off again.” The Alpha lowered his head and buried his face in his palms. He looked so genuinely tormented that Gi-hyeon nearly stepped forward to soothe him. “Was what we had love? No, it wasn’t. But here you are, spewing romantic garbage all on your own without my fucking consent. Fuck…”
Yeon-oh clearly viewed the confession as a visceral betrayal.
To him, it was a rejection of every bond they had ever shared, a cruel goodbye to their history and their brotherhood.
That profound sense of betrayal was why the color had drained from his face as he spat those venomous words. Gi-hyeon genuinely had not expected him to take it that way.
…No.
Some small part of him had always known.
He had always understood that his love would crash violently into this exact, miserable ending.
I might lose Jo Yeon-oh today.
He had confessed knowing he might have to pay that devastating price. He would likely have to pour the rest of his life into the grueling task of forgetting the Alpha. Eventually, a day would come when this shattered memory no longer hurt.
Before Yeon-oh had even finished speaking, Gi-hyeon had already surrendered half his heart to defeat.
“You crazy bastard. Fucking ambushing me on a day like this, fuck… Did you completely forget that you’re a Beta?”
Yeon-oh choked the words out, his pallid face twisting as he hurled curses between violent dry heaves.
The sheer force of that physical rejection cut Gi-hyeon deeply. A heavy, suffocating ache bloomed in his chest. Even so, he understood his friend, the agonizing object of his affection. Yeon-oh had every reason to react with such revulsion. Gi-hyeon had caused this despite knowing this explosion was coming.
Only now did he fully register the brutal truth.
He had not confessed to begin something beautiful.
He had spoken in order to annihilate it by force.
Beyond mere understanding, Gi-hyeon suddenly felt a profound surge of remorse at Yeon-oh’s panic. He had forced the agonizing burden of rejection directly onto the Alpha’s shoulders today.
Yeon-oh was now hunched over completely, desperately fighting off nausea. Struck with panic, Gi-hyeon rushed forward and patted his back, only for Yeon-oh to shove him away with vicious force.
The Alpha slowly lifted his head.
“…”
“…”
The gazes of the betrayed and the betrayer clashed in the heavy air. Staring into Yeon-oh’s bloodshot eyes, burning with fury, Gi-hyeon felt absolute regret pulverize his resolve.
If this confession was going to wound you this deeply, I should have kept my fucking mouth shut.
But it was not too late to salvage the wreckage.
He could laugh it off as a sick, twisted joke planned for his commissioning day. Yeon-oh would not believe it at first, but Gi-hyeon only had to play dumb until the Alpha finally buried the memory.
Armed with that desperate rationalization, Gi-hyeon parted his lips to speak.
Instead, Yeon-oh ruthlessly crushed the discarded bouquet beneath his dress shoes and closed the distance.
A brutal, unyielding hand shot out. His fist twisted into Gi-hyeon’s pristine tie and the lapels of his dress uniform. In the cold air, the icy metal rank insignias clattered harshly against each other.
Yanked forward by the collar, Gi-hyeon stumbled a few steps closer.
Yeon-oh bared his teeth.
“Fine. Let’s do it. Let’s date, you fucking selfish bastard.”
Despite the venom tearing through his throat, Yeon-oh’s eyes held a devastation that cut deeper than rage.
In that suspended second, Gi-hyeon finally grasped the horrifying truth.
Every single word he had spoken today had felt to Jo Yeon-oh like the ruthless severing of their lifelong bond.
Ah…
A quiet, miserable groan slipped past Gi-hyeon’s lips.
If he had only apologized—if he had uttered even one word of remorse for inflicting such pain on him yet again—would the two of them have forged a very different relationship that day?
The confession tasted of blood and bitter tears.
It was the miserable beginning of a relationship rimmed entirely with salt.