Chapter 17

***

“Mondays fucking suck. I can’t live like this.”

“Every day sucks.”

“We need to murder Monday first, then execute Thursday before dealing with the others. That bastard always pretends to be Friday.”

Sitting in a row before their office computers, the three therapists spat out their complaints with such perfect comedic timing they sounded like they had rehearsed a script. Finding their grumbling highly amusing, Gi-hyeon silently swallowed the observation that despite their dramatic bitching, every single one of them had dutifully clocked in on time without a minute to spare. There was absolutely no need to deliberately provoke their ire.

Instead, he set a drink carrier loaded with fresh coffee down on the desk.

“Drink up while you work.”

“Gasp! What is this?! Are you actually a secret chaebol, Dr. So?! Why did you buy so much coffee—!”

He certainly wasn’t a chaebol, but because a literal chaebol had chauffeured him almost all the way to the hospital’s front doors this morning, Gi-hyeon had arrived with enough time to spare to hit a café. Furthermore, the credit card he had swiped to pay for it belonged entirely to Jo Yeon-oh. Gi-hyeon occasionally used it without a second thought. If he didn’t artificially inflate the card’s billing statement, the Alpha would corner him and deliver an exhausting, hour-long lecture. To avoid the headache, Gi-hyeon simply whipped it out whenever he needed to treat his coworkers.

Placing a final cup on Team Leader Lim’s desk—despite the man still being absent as the clock ticked toward 9 AM—Gi-hyeon peeled the wrapper off his straw, stabbed it into his own iced coffee, and settled in front of his monitor to organize his patient charts.

“By the way, Dr. So, did something good happen over the weekend? Your face is absolutely glowing.”

“I just slept really well.”

“Oh, so that’s why your skin looks…”

Watching Chang-won enthusiastically flash a thumbs-up, Gi-hyeon merely offered a slow nod.

Yesterday—Sunday—Jo Yeon-oh had miraculously been tied up with a scheduled golf outing. After seeing the Alpha off at the crack of dawn and feeding the goldfish, Gi-hyeon had collapsed into a coma-like sleep.

Somewhere in the middle of his hibernation, Manager Yoo had called. “The Chairman specifically instructed me to make sure you eat your meals,” the secretary had reported. Gi-hyeon had simply mumbled his assent, hung up, and immediately plummeted right back into unconsciousness.

Thanks to that legendary marathon of uninterrupted sleep, his skin, which had been agonizingly dull and dry for days, had fully revitalized. Waking up feeling incredibly refreshed, he had chugged a protein shake, crushed a punishing workout, showered, and immediately gone right back to sleep. It was, without exaggeration, the most blissfully perfect weekend he had experienced in recent memory.

Following his golf round, Jo Yeon-oh must have been dragged into a corporate dinner, as he returned to the apartment incredibly late. Gi-hyeon had already been dead to the world. Consequently, he had managed to sleep gloriously late into Monday morning.

—How much can one person possibly sleep…

Waking up this morning, he had caught Yeon-oh shaking his head in sheer disbelief, yet Gi-hyeon hadn’t even felt a shred of his usual annoyance. The restorative power of a full night’s sleep had miraculously flooded his system with uncharacteristic positivity.

Rising with a remarkably light heart, he washed up and took over breakfast duties for the Alpha. While he lacked a singular signature dish, his cooking was perfectly edible.

Whipping up a simple egg drop soup with a light dusting of black pepper, he set it on the table. Jo Yeon-oh immediately buried his face in the bowl, inhaling the broth before shoving the empty dish back and demanding seconds.

While the Alpha undeniably possessed a healthy appetite, he was notoriously well-mannered and never aggressively started eating before his dining partner even sat down. Wondering why the man was devouring the soup so desperately, Gi-hyeon learned he had drank heavily the night before. Gi-hyeon found the revelation mildly concerning; the Alpha’s schedule seemed suspiciously saturated with alcohol-fueled corporate dinners lately.

—For a guy with a pathetic alcohol tolerance, your drinking appointments have definitely spiked recently.

—Yeah. I feel like I’m dying.

After breakfast, the two men joined the sluggish crawl of morning rush-hour traffic. For whatever reason, Manager Yoo hadn’t arrived to chauffeur them today, leaving Yeon-oh behind the wheel. When Gi-hyeon stepped out near the hospital, he noticed the Alpha looked visibly exhausted, but the sheer novelty of their roles being reversed offered a twisted sense of amusement.

However, the refreshing momentum of his Monday morning was brutally short-lived. A sudden, unsettling wave of heat washed over him, forcing Gi-hyeon to tilt his head in confusion.

He naturally ran cold, yet today, a heavy, suffocating warmth radiated from his core, and a flushed heat violently prickled his cheeks. Having slept so incredibly well, the sudden onset of symptoms felt deeply unnatural.

Regardless of his deteriorating physical condition, a hospital was a battleground dedicated entirely to treating the sick. Ruthlessly shoving his personal discomfort aside, Gi-hyeon poured his entire focus into his clinical duties.

A youth soccer club had booked a mass medical screening first thing Monday morning. The clinic was instantly overrun by a chaotic swarm of hyperactive children under thirteen. Conducting comprehensive strength assessments on that many athletes required a massive deployment of manpower. Yet, Team Leader Lim had selfishly dragged Dr. Park outside for a smoke break, leaving the remaining staff drowning in a sheer logistical nightmare.

The team’s coaches and director had apparently followed Lim outside under the guise of ‘discussing the athletes,’ vanishing entirely. Consequently, Gi-hyeon was forced to wrangle the chaotic children while simultaneously monitoring the rehabilitation exercises of his regular patients. He was being pushed to his absolute limit.

Catching sight of Gi-hyeon’s brutal struggle as she passed by, Seung-hee lied to her department about needing the restroom, slipping out of the general ward to help him run a few strength tests. Her intervention was a massive lifeline, but the mountain of work remained terrifyingly high.

Desperate to finish the assessments on schedule and send the athletes down to the diagnostic department, Gi-hyeon was forced to entirely sacrifice his lunch break.

That was the exact moment the violent chills began to set in. Burning up all morning only to be suddenly wracked by violent shivering was a classic hallmark of a severe cold or flu. He hastily scheduled an afternoon appointment with the Family Medicine department, but the second the official lunch hour ended, the clinic exploded into chaos once more, obliterating any chance he had to slip away for an examination.

By the time Gi-hyeon finally finished his shift, his entire body was drenched in a sticky, freezing layer of cold sweat, despite summer still being months away.

“Wow, you worked so incredibly hard today, Dr. So.”

“I am so, so sorry, Dr. So… I really didn’t want to leave either…”

Watching Chang-won fidget anxiously as he poured out apologies, Gi-hyeon merely shook his head. Team Leader Lim abusing his authority was a daily occurrence; Gi-hyeon assured Chang-won he didn’t need to stress over it. The sole saving grace of working in a hospital was that the doors officially locked at 6 PM.

That was the exhausting summary of his day.

A mandatory wrap-up meeting had pushed him past his official clock-out time, but Gi-hyeon decided it was infinitely better to shower before heading home, regardless of the delay. Administering strength tests wasn’t a passive task; therapists were required to constantly yell encouragement, physically brace the athletes, and haul heavy diagnostic equipment around. Doing that all day guaranteed a sweat-soaked uniform.

Furthermore, having cycled through a fever and violent chills, he was covered in a highly uncomfortable layer of cold sweat. Just as he turned toward the shower rooms, his phone vibrated. Assuming it was Jo Yeon-oh, he answered the call without even checking the screen.

[Doc!]

A remarkably different, infinitely more energetic voice blasted through the speaker. Pulling the phone slightly away from his ear to confirm the caller ID, Gi-hyeon returned the device to his face.

“Yeah, Cheol-jin.”

It was Park Cheol-jin, the swimmer. While it wasn’t the official competitive season, spring was still an incredibly grueling training period. Worried that the sudden, frequent contact meant the young athlete’s shoulder was acting up again, Gi-hyeon braced himself. However, Cheol-jin’s voice was blindingly bright.

[I’m right near the hospital! Let’s go grab dinner together!]

“Ah, today?”

Gi-hyeon threw a fleeting glance at the wall clock. It was just shy of 7 PM. He hadn’t received any specific instructions from Jo Yeon-oh today. Since the Alpha frequently attended late-evening strategy meetings with Seok-chan when the clock struck seven, Gi-hyeon figured he could just text Manager Yoo later to confirm his whereabouts.

Standing in front of his locker, Gi-hyeon swiftly peeled off his scrub top.

“Come to the hospital, then. We’ll head out together.”

[I’ll run all the way there—!]

The call abruptly disconnected. It must be nice to have so much boundless energy… Releasing a breathy, deflationary chuckle, Gi-hyeon stripped down to his bare skin, marched into the shower stalls, and immediately cranked the dial to freezing cold water. Having been wracked by chills earlier, his core temperature had violently spiked again; he desperately needed the ice-cold shock.

His body felt incredibly, disturbingly wrong today. He absolutely needed to get examined tomorrow. The Family Medicine department on the third floor was typically quiet with a low patient queue. He planned to call the triage nurse first thing in the morning and slip downstairs the second they gave him the green light.

After enduring the freezing cascade, Gi-hyeon stepped out. He had literally just pulled his pants up when the locker room door swung open.

“Gi-hyeon-ssaem[1]!”

…Why does it feel like someone constantly barges in every single time I’m changing lately. Suppressing a profound wave of déjà vu, Gi-hyeon sighed and waved the boy off.

“I’m in the middle of getting dressed. Wait outside.”

“Gasp… Yes! Ah, yes sir…”

Cheol-jin frantically scrambled backward, practically tripping over himself to flee the room. Despite boasting a massive, door-frame-sized physique identical in scale to Yeon-oh’s, the young athlete’s panicked, blushing retreat was highly amusing. Having just turned twenty-one, Cheol-jin’s reactions were incredibly innocent. Sure, the kid was an Alpha, but Gi-hyeon was a Beta male; there was absolutely zero logical reason for him to be so mortified. Yet, watching the back of the boy’s neck burn bright red as he fled, Gi-hyeon couldn’t help but chuckle at his youth.

Knowing the kid was waiting, Gi-hyeon quickly threw on his street clothes and stepped out into the hallway.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Let’s go.”

“Ah, no, no, not at all… I just, I didn’t realize you were undressed, Doc…”

“Exactly. You need to take responsibility for this. My chances of marriage are completely ruined now.”

As Gi-hyeon delivered the deadpan joke and took the lead, Cheol-jin scrambled to catch up, bowing his head in sheer embarrassment. Standing at a respectable 179 centimeters, Gi-hyeon was by no means short, but the sheer, overwhelming mass of both Cheol-jin and Jo Yeon-oh forced them to constantly duck their heads when interacting with him—a dynamic Gi-hyeon found profoundly irritating. He knew Alphas possessed naturally colossal bone structures as a biological trait of their secondary gender, but having never once been called ‘short’ in his life, moments like this made him cynically wonder if he should have aggressively chugged herbal growth supplements as a child.

He still hadn’t received a text from Jo Yeon-oh. Debating whether to call Manager Yoo, Gi-hyeon ultimately just fired off a quick message to the Alpha, informing him he was grabbing dinner before heading home. Standing in front of the elevators, Gi-hyeon stretched his stiff shoulders.

“What do you want to eat?”

“…Whatever you want to eat, Doc.”

Cheol-jin’s ears were still burning a furious, embarrassed red. He acts like he just caught me completely naked instead of just seeing the bare chest of another guy, Gi-hyeon noted in silent amusement.

“Are you really still embarrassed? Or are you desperately holding back vomit because my body looks that terrible?”

“N-No! Your body doesn’t look terrible at all! Actually, it’s…”

Cutting himself off abruptly, Cheol-jin bit down hard on his lower lip, his brow furrowing deeply. He wore an agonizing expression of intense restraint. Wondering if the kid’s shoulder was suddenly flaring up with pain, Gi-hyeon was about to ask, but the elevator chimed its arrival, instantly distracting him.

“Let’s check out the new place that just opened across the street. They make a great steamed sea bream.”

“Yes, yes sir…”

Listening to Cheol-jin’s flustered, stuttering replies, Gi-hyeon let out a quiet chuckle. It was a subtle, fleeting upward twitch of his lips, but a genuine expression of amusement nonetheless.

Regardless of the chaotic day, having a successfully discharged patient personally return to the hospital to thank him for helping them achieve a new personal record was a profoundly rewarding experience for any therapist. Since Cheol-jin was strictly managing his diet, alcohol was undoubtedly off the table for the athlete, but Gi-hyeon fully intended to reward himself with a cold beer as they stepped out of the hospital into the cool evening air.

The restaurant was a short walk away. Given the dinner rush, Gi-hyeon had worried about securing a table, but they managed to find an empty booth. Instantly ordering the steamed sea bream, Gi-hyeon was wiping his hands with a wet towel when Cheol-jin—who had been nervously studying him the entire walk—finally spoke up.

“…Do you not have a date tonight, Doc?”

“A date?”

The deeply cynical response slipped out entirely unprompted. A date. Had he ever actually experienced something that could legitimately be classified as a date with that bastard?

After Jo Yeon-oh had viciously agreed to their relationship, the Alpha had completely vanished from Gi-hyeon’s life for a significant period.

Ironically, Gi-hyeon had remained entirely unbothered by the sudden disappearance. He had fully anticipated the visceral rejection the exact second the Alpha dry-heaved in horror at his confession.

Gi-hyeon firmly believed that the only reason Yeon-oh had accepted his confession—despite his body physically revolting at the concept—was out of sheer, stubborn defiance. To Gi-hyeon, Jo Yeon-oh possessed a terrifyingly obsessive, unyielding attachment to their specific relationship and their identity as childhood friends.

That toxic attachment had manifested when they were ten, with Yeon-oh glaring at him like a traitor simply because Gi-hyeon’s father was forcing him to move away. It had manifested again in high school, when Yeon-oh had stubbornly refused to acknowledge Gi-hyeon’s existence—convincing Gi-hyeon they were permanently estranged—only to suddenly corner him in a jealous rage, demanding to know why he was so close to Lee Beom-hee.

Jo Yeon-oh had undeniably sensed that Gi-hyeon was preparing to run away. He had absolutely recognized the terrifying finality in that confession—the absolute certainty that So Gi-hyeon was fully prepared to abandon his feelings, sever their friendship, and permanently vanish from the Alpha’s orbit.

Therefore, he had forcefully accepted the confession to trap him, only to instantly flee because he fundamentally could not process the grotesque reality of initiating a romantic relationship with a Beta male. When he finally resurfaced from his self-imposed exile, he had lashed out in pure, unadulterated fury.

—Are you some kind of fucking pervert? Is it your personal hobby to stare at someone who considers you a brother with those filthy, disgusting eyes? Is your sexual preference fundamentally broken, or did you genuinely, delusionally believe I would just smile and accept this? Do you think I’m a fucking joke?

How could Jo Yeon-oh ever be a joke to him?

If So Gi-hyeon had viewed him as a joke, he never would have dared to confess in the first place. He would have ruthlessly crushed the fragile sprout of love the second it breached the soil, mocked the Alpha’s arrogance once, and never looked back.

He would have permanently remained the loyal, platonic friend of a bastard with a notoriously garbage personality who believed everything outside of absolute friendship was fucking repulsive. Gi-hyeon knew exactly how much easier that path would have been. If he possessed a shred of logical self-preservation, he would have chosen it.

Because of that agonizing history, the concept of a ‘date’ had never once been broached. Even after their relationship violently mutated into a bizarre, stagnant purgatory—neither advancing into romance nor retreating back into pure friendship—their dynamic remained functionally identical to the years before the confession.

They analyzed football tactics while watching matches at dawn, and Yeon-oh crashed Gi-hyeon’s apartment on the weekends, relentlessly nagging him before force-feeding him elaborate meals. Those were exact replicas of their platonic routines. Could any of that genuinely be classified as dating?

They had taken exactly one trip together years ago, but ever since Gi-hyeon had been discharged from the military with a shattered ankle, vacations had become entirely obsolete. Furthermore, since Yeon-oh had aggressively seized control of the Foundation’s affairs, his schedule had become a suffocating nightmare; he had never once suggested a trip that wasn’t strictly a corporate dispatch.

Their relationship was permanently barricaded behind that exact boundary. …In stark reality, if Jo Yeon-oh didn’t actively force his way into Gi-hyeon’s apartment, there was absolutely zero tangible evidence to suggest they were actually dating. Trapped in this suffocating, ambiguous limbo, Gi-hyeon frequently wondered if he had any right to continue anchoring himself to the Alpha’s side. Shouldn’t he just step back and surrender the space? To someone like the breathtaking Omega he had witnessed in the hotel lobby, for instance?

“Gi-hyeon-ssaem, what are you thinking about?”

“…I was just thinking that one bottle of beer is entirely too little, but two bottles will make me too full. You’re strict on your diet right now, right? I’ll just have one bottle.”

“Yes, please do.”

Cheol-jin’s voice successfully dragged his mind back from its dark, spiraling descent. Forcing the corners of his lips upward, Gi-hyeon offered a hollow imitation of a smile. Catching the attention of a passing waiter, he rattled off a specific beer brand and requested a single glass.

Fortunately, the steaming platter of sea bream arrived moments later. Apologizing for spacing out while sitting directly across from a guest, Gi-hyeon offered a quiet excuse about work completely draining him today. Cheol-jin’s cheeks flushed slightly as he nodded vigorously in understanding. The sheer enthusiasm radiating from such a massive frame instantly reminded Gi-hyeon of an oversized golden retriever.

“Eat up. You need your protein.”

“It’s been so incredibly long since I’ve eaten anything with heavy seasoning.”

“Why are they enforcing your diet so ruthlessly this time?”

“My coach mentioned I was looking a bit sluggish in the water…”

As Gi-hyeon and Cheol-jin fell into an easy rhythm discussing the upcoming tournament season, the first bottle of beer completely vanished. Just as Gi-hyeon was debating whether ordering a second would be too gluttonous, Cheol-jin perceptively caught his hesitation and immediately flagged down a waiter to order another. Deeply embarrassed at having his alcohol cravings exposed by a literal kid, Gi-hyeon mumbled a pathetic excuse about “being really thirsty…” causing Cheol-jin to flash a bright, teasing grin.

Suddenly, Cheol-jin hesitated, a cautious, uncertain look crossing his face before he finally asked.

“By the way, Doc… did you change your perfume?”