Chapter 31

So Gi-hyeon was a man who rarely dreamt.

“Are dreams bothersome? Then just decide not to have them. Shall we practice together starting today?”

The dreams he had as a child tormented him long after morning broke. While growing children often dreamt of falling from great heights in the middle of the night, young Gi-hyeon’s dreams bordered on sheer nightmares.

“Gi-hyeon is making a promise to Gi-hyeon. A promise not to dream anymore.”

His mother had spoken so nonchalantly to the boy who had suffered through a night of terrors. She possessed a unique talent for condensing every problem, reducing its weight until it was more insignificant than a speck of dust. Whenever anything passed through her hands, even the most severe crises magically transformed into trivial matters.

How on earth was that possible for her? Gi-hyeon had always wondered.

The most astonishing part was that after she said those words, the frequency of Gi-hyeon’s dreams drastically decreased. It was as if that promise to himself had actually worked.

Because of that, Gi-hyeon realized it had been a very long time since he last had a dream like this.

The scorching sun beat down relentlessly from above. “Young Master, please come inside and talk,” the housekeeper had pleaded, calling out to them. But when Yeon-oh refused to answer, she eventually scurried away in restless anxiety.

Feeling guilty for inadvertently ignoring an adult’s words, Gi-hyeon kept glancing in her direction. Yeon-oh’s pale, lightly pigmented eyes, however, remained fixed entirely on Gi-hyeon. As a result, despite the sweat pouring down his face, Gi-hyeon had no choice but to stand in the garden and stare back at the boy.

“How does that make any fucking sense?”

Yeon-oh spat out a curse far too vicious for a child. Until now, the crosshairs of those profanities had never once been aimed at So Gi-hyeon, but today was clearly an exception.

It was mildly shocking. He never expected the boy to direct such raw hostility toward him. After all, So Gi-hyeon was someone who firmly belonged inside Jo Yeon-oh’s circle.

It was a fate decided the moment they were born. Upon his birth, Gi-hyeon had inherited his father’s high-bridged nose and his mother’s delicate features. But there was another gift. The inherent qualification to enter the boundaries of his childhood friend, Yeon-oh, had been naturally bestowed upon him. Yet today, that very circle was violently pushing him out.

Even so, Gi-hyeon couldn’t bring himself to demand an explanation. Even through his young eyes, Yeon-oh’s complexion looked terrifyingly severe.

Shorter than Gi-hyeon, Yeon-oh wore a chilling expression on a face that resembled a pale French doll. Normally, his lovely features made him look so fragile that Gi-hyeon constantly felt the need to care for him like a younger brother. But right now, everything was different. Frozen in shock and consumed by rage, Jo Yeon-oh was displaying a face Gi-hyeon had never seen before.

Still, Gi-hyeon couldn’t help but worry about him. It was the first time Yeon-oh had ever cursed at him, but that didn’t mean So Gi-hyeon was no longer his friend.

“Are you… sick somewhere?”

Gi-hyeon was simply anxious for his friend. The boy’s face, already as white as flour, had completely drained of blood, making it look as though he would collapse at any second.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

His breathing had grown incredibly ragged. Gi-hyeon had only reached out because gasping for air like that wasn’t normal, but before his hand could even connect, Yeon-oh jerked away violently. Completely unprepared for the rejection, Gi-hyeon pulled his extended hand back through the empty air. Hearing the bastard curse at him for a second time left his mind entirely numb.

He wanted to offer some sort of excuse, but it wasn’t easy. He had a vague suspicion as to why Yeon-oh was so furious with him. For the past few days, Gi-hyeon had been strictly forbidden from visiting Yeon-oh. This was essentially the first time they had seen each other since his mother’s funeral.

At the funeral hall, holding onto a Gi-hyeon who had sobbed until he was on the verge of passing out, Jo Yeon-oh hadn’t cried, though his eyes were bloodshot. Unable to find the words to comfort a friend who had lost his mother at such a devastatingly young age, his eyes had been filled with resentment toward his own helplessness, hating that all he could do was hold him.

This was the first time since then. From the moment the funeral proceedings concluded until his father began preparing for their move, Gi-hyeon hadn’t been able to seek out the boy he had treated like a brother since childhood. Even if Yeon-oh had begged the adults in his family to let him visit Gi-hyeon, the outcome would have undoubtedly been the same.

Perhaps that was why, when Gi-hyeon finally managed to press the doorbell and waited quietly, Yeon-oh had bolted out of the house with an expression of sheer, overwhelming joy. Because of that initial reaction, Gi-hyeon had been entirely blindsided by this sudden rage.

“My father said… I won’t be able to come see you anymore, so I should come say goodbye…”

The two boys, who had lived like brothers only to be abruptly torn apart, stood under the blazing sun. Unable to even step into the shade of Yeon-oh’s roof, Gi-hyeon was forced to explain the situation from the corner of the garden. But Yeon-oh’s entire demeanor screamed that he absolutely refused to understand.

“So what the hell does that mean?”

The boy glared at him with such ferocity that Gi-hyeon completely swallowed the words he had prepared. He couldn’t say, ‘So let’s talk on the phone a lot from now on. My dad said he’d buy me a cellphone anyway. He said I can send about ten texts a day. I’ll save up my allowance and come see you during vacation.’ The excuses he had painstakingly rehearsed the entire way here were rendered utterly useless in an instant.

“And you just said okay to that?”

“Huh…?”

“I asked if you agreed to that completely fucked-up bullshit.”

Gi-hyeon gave a tiny nod. But he immediately realized it was the wrong answer. Without another word, Yeon-oh turned his back and marched right back into the house. Startled, Gi-hyeon called out to him.

“Jo Yeon-oh!”

“Don’t ever speak to me again.”

Slam! The front door violently shut. It was the first time Gi-hyeon had ever been chased out of the garden without even stepping foot inside Jo Yeon-oh’s house.

Gi-hyeon stood there until the sun set that day, but the front door never opened again.

Gasp!

Gi-hyeon snapped his eyes open, a blistering heat scorching his entire body. The moment he realized he had awoken in reality, the dream effortlessly evaporated. Despite how vivid the emotions and the blazing sun of that day had felt just seconds ago, it vanished far too quickly.

“Ah…”

He could feel something going terribly wrong with his body. The scent of rum mixed with vanilla wafted from somewhere. He didn’t know how else to describe it; if forced to put it into words, that was exactly what it smelled like. It was a fragrance Gi-hyeon had never encountered before in his life. Breathing in that sweet aroma wrapped in the sharp tang of alcohol, he realized his entire body was spiking with a violent fever.

“What is…”

His physical state was mutating by the second. It was utterly bewildering. The sheer panic was so massive that he couldn’t even register where he was. There was only the vague, horrifying realization that something was happening to his body, and he was completely powerless to control it.

He couldn’t just stay like this. He had to do something. A desperate premonition screamed at him to act—whether it meant calling the lobby for fever reducers to quell this abnormal temperature or contacting Manager Yoo to drag him to the emergency room.

“Ugh.”

Managing to drag himself out of bed, his knees buckled instantly, completely failing to support his weight. As the muscles he relied on to stand dissolved into jelly, Gi-hyeon swayed violently, nearly knocking over the lamp on the nightstand. Having never experienced anything like this, he collapsed onto the floor, blinking blankly in a daze. But a second after slumping down, a visceral shock jolted through him, forcing his hips off the floor.

“What the hell is…”

Something that had soaked through his underwear and cotton shorts was left behind in a perfect circle right where he had just been sitting. Startled, he rubbed it with his fingers; it was slick, wet, and completely transparent. The potent scent of vanilla-laced rum wafted directly from it. Just when it seemed overwhelmingly sweet, a sharp tang hit his senses, and the moment the fragrance felt too spicy, it immediately softened into something maddeningly smooth.

At first, he genuinely believed he had spilled body wash. He convinced himself he must have accidentally knocked over one of the bathroom amenities onto his pants, fallen asleep without realizing it, and woken up to this mess.

“Ah!”

But that wasn’t it. Something thick and slick slid down between his glutes. Horrified, Gi-hyeon practically scrambled on his hands and knees, desperately trying to flee from his own puddle. He couldn’t even make it a few steps before his upper body collapsed against the floor, his cheek pressing into the rough texture of the bedroom carpet.

And then, it happened. A sharp electronic beep echoed through the suite before someone threw the door wide open. There was only one person who would barge in so aggressively. If it had been Manager Yoo, he would have rung the doorbell.

“Jo… Jo Yeon-oh… is that you?”

Fully aware of how pathetically his voice was trembling, Gi-hyeon called out. But the person who had stepped into the room said absolutely nothing. He just stood there, deathly still, seemingly staring straight at Gi-hyeon. Because heavy shadows obscured his face, Gi-hyeon couldn’t read his expression, but the weight of that gaze locking onto him was undeniable.

Despite the considerable distance between the front door and the bedroom floor where Gi-hyeon lay, a crushing, suffocating pressure slammed into him, stopping his breath entirely.

It was a sensation Gi-hyeon had never felt before in his life. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell—no human sense could accurately describe it. It was quite literally a scent felt through the skin. A fragrance identical to the physical pressure crushing his bones.

It felt as though he had stepped beneath the branches of an exotic, fully bloomed flower tree, only to be violently crushed under the weight of tens of thousands of petals. Gasping for air, Gi-hyeon barely managed to lift his head from his collapsed posture to look forward.

Where have I smelled this before? He fumbled through his hazy memories. Even though no specific image came to mind, a name slipped past his lips without a shred of hesitation.

“Jo Yeon-oh…”

“…”

Standing there was So Gi-hyeon’s Jo Yeon-oh. But for the very first time in his life, Gi-hyeon felt an entirely alien sensation radiating from the man. This wasn’t the childhood friend he had grown up with, the subject of his unrequited love, or his lover. It was an overwhelmingly foreign, terrifying presence that defied all those familiar titles.

“Ugh!”

A brief wave of nausea surged in his throat.

Simultaneously, his thighs began to tremble violently. This wasn’t some muscle spasm from pushing himself too hard while surfing earlier. Deep inside, a heavy, aching sensation bloomed, accompanied by a maddening itch.

Gi-hyeon desperately wanted to submerge himself in a tub of ice water. He felt like he would go insane if he didn’t. The boundary between rationality and raw instinct was rapidly deteriorating. His own body was now actively oozing the scent of a thick syrup boiled down from rum and vanilla. With the sharp alcoholic tang completely burned off, the remaining soft, cloying sweetness turned the very air in the bedroom into a sticky, suffocating haze.

But the other man’s scent was just as devastating. Jo Yeon-oh’s pheromones exploded with the scent of exotic flowers blooming so aggressively they could burst. It was a dizzying, suffocating aroma, the kind you would only smell standing directly beneath a bough heavy with thousands, tens of thousands of blossoms.

It was merely the scent of flowers, yet it physically crushed So Gi-hyeon. He could only let out broken, choked gasps. It was the absolute, dominating intimidation Jo Yeon-oh was projecting as an Alpha for the very first time. The pheromones clung to his skin like a physical weight. Without even understanding what was happening to him, Gi-hyeon groaned helplessly.

Deep, incredibly deep inside him, a scalding heat began to simmer. Drowning in that fever, the very first thought that pierced So Gi-hyeon’s mind was pure, unadulterated instinct: Run.

Run from what? Not from Jo Yeon-oh. From himself. So Gi-hyeon knew he had to flee from his own body. The terrifying realization that if he stayed here, he had absolutely no idea what he might grab Jo Yeon-oh and do to him completely consumed his mind.

Blindly fumbling for the bedframe to pull himself up, a fresh wave of liquid slid down his thighs. The slick, wet friction between his glutes was unmistakable. It felt exactly like when an unknown substance had spilled onto him at the restaurant he visited with Cheol-jin. Reacting entirely to the sensation, his gaze automatically snapped down to his lower half.

But he didn’t have time to stand there staring between his legs. So Gi-hyeon desperately tried to scramble out of the room. He absolutely could not let Jo Yeon-oh catch him like this. If the bastard saw him in this repulsive state, something vital inside Gi-hyeon might shatter permanently.

He was operating purely on that sheer terror, completely ignorant of what his body was actually going through. Staggering to his feet, Gi-hyeon took a wide berth around Yeon-oh, desperately making a beeline for the bedroom door.

“I’m… not feeling well today. I caught… a cold. So I’ll just sleep alone…”

He tried to push past the man before he could even finish his sentence. And he might have succeeded, if Jo Yeon-oh hadn’t ruthlessly snatched his wrist.