Chapter 16

“If you were just going to come back anyway, why did you even run away in the first place?”

Gi-hyeon had been waiting for that exact mocking question. However, he didn’t bother offering a response. Whatever Jo Yeon-oh chose to believe simply didn’t matter anymore.

He obviously couldn’t confess the pathetic truth: I ran away purely to avoid you so I could finally get some fucking sleep. The Alpha would have instantly demanded to know why his presence caused insomnia, sparking an endlessly exhausting interrogation. Nevertheless, Gi-hyeon had successfully managed to sleep like the dead until Jo Yeon-oh finally returned.

Whether Manager Yoo had miraculously procured them or the hotel provided them, a fresh set of pajamas was waiting for him in the room. He had fully intended to take a quick shower and immediately pass out, but Manager Yoo had texted, politely informing him that his spa appointment was starting and he needed to head down to the third floor.

Fully aware that if he rudely blew off the appointment out of sheer laziness, the person who would ultimately be brutally eviscerated by the Alpha wasn’t himself, but poor Manager Yoo, Gi-hyeon had no choice but to drag himself down to the spa.

Judging by the incredibly cautious, hyper-gentle way the therapist handled his injured ankle, it was glaringly obvious they had received strict, terrifying prior instructions. Gi-hyeon wanted to tell them they didn’t need to treat him like fragile glass, but he ultimately just kept his mouth shut and closed his eyes.

The funniest part was that he had passed out almost instantaneously. The highly skilled masseuse had successfully knocked Gi-hyeon unconscious in a mere five minutes. Startled awake by a gentle tap on the shoulder, he realized the entire massage session had already ended. Feeling incredibly embarrassed, Gi-hyeon hastily thanked them and retreated to his room.

Desperate to scrub the slick, heavy massage oil off his skin, he took another shower before officially diving into a deep, uninterrupted coma. Because Jo Yeon-oh hadn’t bothered to call or text even once, the sleep was profoundly deep and restorative.

“You’re back? Let’s go home.”

“You are truly baffling, Gi-hyeon.”

When Jo Yeon-oh finally returned to the suite around 7 PM, Gi-hyeon casually announced he was ready to go back to his apartment.

While the Alpha looked utterly dumbfounded by the abrupt reversal, he was evidently eager to return to their familiar territory, silently instructing Manager Yoo to process the checkout without a single complaint. It was a classic move for a man who had never spent a single night in a hotel room below the suite level. Even though Gi-hyeon had been upgraded, the space was clearly still too suffocatingly small for Jo Yeon-oh. The Alpha’s entire demeanor screamed that Gi-hyeon’s modest apartment was infinitely superior.

A sudden, morbid curiosity struck Gi-hyeon.

Why the hell is he so obsessively obsessed with sleeping next to me? Do I magically emit some kind of deep-sleep pheromone?

But Gi-hyeon possessed no magical sedatives, and since Jo Yeon-oh was the only person who had ever slept over at his apartment, he had absolutely zero control group to test the theory against.

Regardless, the two men returned to Gi-hyeon’s apartment.

After terminating his pathetic, one-night runaway attempt, stepping back into his own sanctuary felt remarkably comforting. While Jo Yeon-oh loudly bustled around the kitchen insisting on preparing a late dinner, Gi-hyeon showered and casually hovered around behind him. Attempting to stealthily crack open a beer, he was immediately caught, and the can was ruthlessly confiscated. Staring longingly at the stolen beverage, Gi-hyeon clicked his tongue.

“Let’s just eat something simple.”

“If I make something ‘simple,’ you’re not going to eat it,” Jo Yeon-oh deadpanned, shaking his head in absolute disbelief.

Thanks to his incredibly short attention span for food and his excessively picky palate, Gi-hyeon had accidentally evolved into a high-maintenance gourmet. Because he ate such pitifully small portions, the food absolutely had to be explosively flavorful to sustain his interest long enough to actually finish a meal.

The only saving grace was that during the workweek, he usually ate lunch at the hospital cafeteria with his colleagues, ensuring he consumed at least one proper meal a day. Hyper-aware of this, Jo Yeon-oh had become increasingly obsessed with sourcing premium ingredients and mastering complex recipes, desperately trying to force-feed his severely picky partner. At this point, Gi-hyeon strongly suspected cooking had simply become Jo Yeon-oh’s newest hobby, and the Alpha was merely using him as a convenient excuse.

The sheer audacity was infuriating.

“So, what are you making?”

“Pad Thai.”

That’s literally just beer food. Catching the rich, spicy aroma wafting from the stove, Gi-hyeon mumbled his indifferent approval.

The meal was prepared shockingly fast. Gi-hyeon was fully prepared to grab a trivet, assuming they’d eat straight out of the pan, but Yeon-oh was already meticulously plating the food onto a massive, high-end serving dish. Gi-hyeon marveled at the sheer, unnecessary dedication. Eating straight out of the frying pan was infinitely more efficient.

Since Yeon-oh cooked, Gi-hyeon was permanently assigned dishwashing duty. Consequently, the Alpha unnecessarily multiplying the dirty dishes was slightly annoying. Still, he couldn’t exactly scold the man who had just cooked him a gourmet meal from scratch, so Gi-hyeon politely announced he would eat well and immediately cracked open the confiscated beer. The Pad Thai, generously topped with perfectly fluffy scrambled eggs, was genuinely incredible. As the tangy aroma mixed perfectly with the rich, savory scent of crushed peanuts, Gi-hyeon offered a slow, emotionless nod of approval.

“This is good.”

“Really? I’ll make sure to save the recipe. I’ll make it for you again.”

Matching Gi-hyeon’s deadpan energy, Jo Yeon-oh responded in a perfectly flat, emotionless tone. Since the Alpha had mentioned learning this specific dish recently, Gi-hyeon fully expected him to relentlessly interrogate his cooking instructor for identical recipes. Gi-hyeon simply continued eating in silence, washing the heavy noodles down with cold beer.

It wasn’t a bad Saturday.

The massage had successfully melted the tension from his muscles, and the luxurious, uninterrupted nap had massively restored his physical condition. The food Jo Yeon-oh had cooked paired perfectly with the alcohol, elevating the entire evening.

Diligently shoveling noodles into his mouth, Gi-hyeon idly wondered if the Alpha could also cook Nasi Goreng. Grabbing his phone from the table, he quickly searched for a recipe to show him.

“Do you know how to make something like this too?”

“That’s Indonesian food.”

“Ah, is it?”

They were both leaning over the table, staring intensely down at the screen. Gi-hyeon must have accidentally grazed the display, triggering a sudden, violently flashing pop-up ad. Entirely unprepared for the ambush, Gi-hyeon’s eyes blew wide open in sheer horror.

「This advertisement is based on your recent search history: A unique, thrilling pleasure essential for every couple. Omega-scented perfume exclusively designed for Betas!」

Ah, fuck.

The violent curse exploded from his lips entirely involuntarily. Having leaned far across the center of the table to share the screen, Gi-hyeon frantically flipped the phone face-down and violently threw himself backward into his chair.

“So Gi-hyeon, did you…”

“Don’t say a single fucking word. Shut up.”

Have I been cursed by a vengeful god recently? He couldn’t comprehend why these catastrophic, humiliating disasters kept violently detonating in his face one after another. Sitting in stunned, absolute silence, a sudden Pfft shattered the tension. Arching a single brow, Gi-hyeon glared murderously at Jo Yeon-oh.

The Alpha was desperately attempting to maintain a perfectly blank face while chewing his food. Releasing a heavy, venomous sigh, Gi-hyeon stared at the tips of the Alpha’s chopsticks, which were currently vibrating violently, and clicked his tongue.

“If you want to laugh, just fucking laugh. Don’t sit there holding it in, it’s pissing me off.”

“Hah—!”

The dam instantly shattered. Jo Yeon-oh completely lost his mind, bursting into hysterical, booming laughter. Dropping his chopsticks entirely, the Alpha clutched his stomach, wheezing as he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. The sheer, breathtaking beauty of his laughing face perfectly matched exactly how much Gi-hyeon desperately wanted to murder him. Burying his face securely in his palms, Gi-hyeon quickly drained the rest of his beer and viciously crushed the empty can.

“Omega perfume?”

Unable to stop the hysterical fit, Jo Yeon-oh wheezed, his broad shoulders shaking violently. The fact that actual tears of mirth were pooling in the corners of his eyes was profoundly infuriating. Patiently waiting for the psychotic episode to end, Gi-hyeon stood up and grabbed another beer from the fridge. Since the bastard was clearly enjoying himself immensely, Gi-hyeon decided to just let him suffer.

Ultimately, Gi-hyeon had absolutely no one to blame but himself. He was the idiot who had searched for the humiliating garbage, and he was the monumental idiot who had actively shoved the contaminated phone directly into Jo Yeon-oh’s face. Forced to swallow his pride, he sat with a thoroughly unimpressed, deadpan expression, waiting for the laughter to finally die.

“Ah, fuck, I thought I was actually going to die.”

Hearing a man who was very much alive say that only fueled Gi-hyeon’s boiling rage. Propping his elbows on the table and resting his chin in his hand, Gi-hyeon glared at Jo Yeon-oh, who was still fighting off the residual tremors of his laughing fit. Finally regaining control of his vocal cords, the Alpha spoke.

“Why the hell were you searching for that? Are you genuinely curious about what Omegas smell like, or did you actually want to know if that garbage perfume actually works?”

“Neither. I was searching for something else and accidentally clicked it.”

Gi-hyeon delivered the deadpan lie effortlessly. It was technically the truth. Knowing Gi-hyeon was the type of man who rigidly refused to offer pathetic excuses even when his pride was utterly annihilated, Yeon-oh looked genuinely surprised.

“Then what was it? What were you actually searching for?”

“…”

That was a question he absolutely could not answer. When Gi-hyeon clamped his mouth shut, Yeon-oh’s eyes narrowed sharply. The sly, dangerously predatory smile curling the edges of the Alpha’s lips signaled that he wasn’t going to let the interrogation go easily.

“Are you curious about Omegas?”

“…No.”

That was the absolute truth. Gi-hyeon genuinely possessed an exceptionally low sex drive. That biological apathy was the sole reason he had successfully managed to endure seven years of physical proximity with the man he loved without snapping. Furthermore, his overall interest in other people was practically non-existent.

Because he lacked both sexual desire and social curiosity, he had never once wasted energy deeply analyzing the fundamental, biological differences between Betas, Alphas, and Omegas. He had merely been morbidly curious about the exact distinction between the ‘Betas dating’ dynamic Jo Yeon-oh had so viciously mocked, and the ‘Alpha-Omega’ romance the bastard clearly preferred. However, he could never confess that pathetic truth aloud.

Staring intently at his stubbornly silent boyfriend, Jo Yeon-oh offered a low, teasing smirk.

“I wonder what you were so intensely curious about. You should have just asked me. Isn’t that the exact type of thing you’re supposed to ask your lover?”

“…”

What the fuck is the point of asking an empty, hollow shell of a lover something like that?

Furthermore, even if he did ask, the only terrifying truth Gi-hyeon would unearth was exactly how massively, devastatingly different the shape and scale of their hearts truly were. Was there really any point in intentionally digging up that agonizing reality? It was already glaringly, blindingly obvious.

“Forget it. Stop looking at me like a minor who just got caught watching porn. If you’re done, I’m cleaning up.”

“I’m not finished eating. You eat more too. I’ll stop teasing you.”

You literally still have that sickeningly smug smile plastered across your face.

Desperately hiding the venomous retort he wanted to hurl, Gi-hyeon merely covered his mouth with the hand propping up his chin.

When will this suffocating exhaustion finally end?

A fleeting, depressing thought crossed his mind: Is the ‘Alpha and Omega romance’ he constantly talks about significantly less exhausting than this absolute nightmare?

Suddenly, the image of the Omega he had witnessed earlier that afternoon violently flashed through his mind. The slender, elegant waist. The person whose mere presence seemed to naturally, effortlessly harmonize with Jo Yeon-oh’s overwhelming aura. For a split second, Gi-hyeon was intensely curious about their identity.

But he didn’t ask. It was undeniably something he had absolutely no right to know. Jo Yeon-oh had sworn absolute loyalty to So Gi-hyeon. That was a concrete, unshakeable fact Gi-hyeon could trust without a shadow of a doubt. The bastard simply wasn’t the type to make promises he couldn’t keep.

The brutal, devastating irony was that Jo Yeon-oh had sworn loyalty, but he had never, ever sworn love. The catastrophic difference between those two concepts slammed into Gi-hyeon with agonizing clarity.

Slowly, heavily, Gi-hyeon pressed the cold rim of the beer can against his lips.

***