Chapter 22

A man who would sneer with a gun barrel pressed against his skull, Gwichang frowned in rare consternation. It was true that he was leaking pheromones. Seeing Geum Seoul had made him hard as iron. The trouble was that such a reaction was virtually unprecedented for him.

Gwichang stared down at him in heavy silence. “…”

Was the blocker dose too low? The instant Gwichang pulled back, Geum Seoul drew his knees up and curled into a tight ball on the couch. Burying his flushed face in his hands like a panting puppy and pressing his forehead against his knees to hide from the scent did nothing to cool Gwichang’s arousal, yet it was the furthest retreat the boy could muster.

The cords in Gwichang’s jaw bunched thick before releasing. Swallowing back his pheromones, he clicked the cotton swab into the slender slot of the testing cassette.

Beep.

The analysis took less than five seconds.

● SYSTEM

Ω

A green band indicating stable pheromone regulation. Above it, not a single symbol—neither plus nor minus—marked him as dominant or recessive. Geum Seoul was simply an ordinary omega. Exactly as stated in the dossier.

Yet a glaring paradox remained that Gwichang could not reconcile. He was a dominant alpha. He rarely reacted to the scents of ordinary omegas; rather, it was far more customary for an ordinary omega in his vicinity to have their heat cycle prematurely triggered by his presence.

Yet even after inhaling his pheromones, Geum Seoul was merely leaking the exact same faint trace as usual. Though panting for breath, that was the extent of it—no reflex surge responded in kind. Before Im Gyun-il earlier, the boy’s scent had been locked down even tighter, and the same held true now.

In mortal danger or confronted by an alpha intentionally flooding the air, an omega’s instinct was to release appeasement pheromones whether they wished to or not. Even with modern mandatory injections and blockers, dispersing a biological response before predatory threat was tied directly to survival. Naturally, an exception existed: dominant omegas whose constitution eclipsed ordinary alphas.

“…”

● SYSTEM

Ω

Yet that wasn’t the case here, either.

Clack.

Having studied the indicator for a long while, Gwichang set the cassette down. A scent faint to the point of imperceptibility was a hallmark of recessives. Remaining stubbornly unresponsive to ordinary alpha pheromones was a hallmark of dominants. Geum Seoul possessed both.

Gwichang knew better than to devour whatever happened to cross his path simply because he was horny. Even so, his mouth watered at the helpless prey curled in front of him.

Gwichang called in a low rumble, “Geum Seoul.”

He stepped forward as he said the name. Geum Seoul was folded into the corner of the sofa like a small animal, dragging in deep breaths, the nape of his neck pale as porcelain. Gwichang’s thoughts turned obscene with disturbing ease: one fist in that hair, those soft cheeks at the level of his groin, that small mouth unable to take even half of him.

“…”

Perhaps because Gwichang deliberately reined in his pheromones, Geum Seoul hesitated before lifting his face from his knees. Red-rimmed eyes beneath softly curved brows looked up at him. Without the disguise, the beauty of the face was almost cruel. *How had something like this stayed buried in a gutter for twenty years?* Gwichang reached out and brushed aside the ash-brown hair falling over his eyes.

“You were gagging in front of that bastard earlier, weren’t you?” Gwichang asked, brushing the hair from the boy’s eyes.

As if failing to grasp his point, Geum Seoul lifted moist, uncertain eyes. Fighting the urge to press his swollen shaft against those delicate lashes and finely carved brows, Gwichang cut to the chase.

Gwichang demanded, “So why do you like my pheromones enough to get wet behind?”

Clumped with dampness, brown lashes fluttered upward in a violent tremor. When startled, those rounded eyes curved into an even deeper, innocent arch.

Stunned into mortification, Geum Seoul swallowed down the pool of saliva in his mouth. He knew what getting wet behind meant—the biological shift when an omega primed for sex with an alpha. In frantic denial, he shook his head side to side.

“It’s… it’s not like that,” Seoul protested in frantic mortification.

Gwichang’s gaze bored into him. “Then why aren’t you throwing up right now?”

“…”

He had no answer. Bewilderment settled in Geum Seoul’s eyes as he traced the question backward. This was hardly his first encounter with alpha pheromones. Clients sometimes climbed upstairs to harass the other omegas; Im Gyun-il had prowled the halls before gambling consumed him; even the pheromones of the villagers and Park Gil-pyeong were familiar to him.

Every time, Geum Seoul had retched. More than once he had vomited outright and been beaten for being disgusting, or, with nothing in his stomach, brought up bile until he passed out. He had never been formally tested, but everyone who knew his circumstances assumed he was an allergic recessive omega. Eventually, he had accepted that explanation himself.

And yet.

Gwichang scoffed softly. “Only realized it because I pointed it out?”

“Ah… yes…” Seoul mumbled, blushing to the tips of his ears.

Earlier, the white swab had rubbed the inside of his cheek. The man’s fingers had pressed and parted his lips. Those black eyes had traveled over his cheek, nose, mouth, and throat. All the while, a fragrance had drifted into his chest and touched something deep inside him.

He had never smelled anything so beautiful and had no words precise enough for it. It reminded him faintly of dried flower petals, but was much heavier—something like impossibly expensive leather, dense and supple, a warmth that reached the back of his throat whenever he breathed.

He had smelled it before: when he fell into Gwichang’s arms after the man silenced the loudspeaker and told him to come down, and again when he woke in the deputy director’s bed. Faint beneath the smell of burned leaves, but unmistakably the same.

A ticklish warmth. Never before had pheromones brushed over his skin and made his breathing quicken. After the first dazed wonder, a powder-fine tightness spread from his lungs into his lower belly, gathering there as a dull, throbbing heat. His body recognized what his mind had not: alpha pheromones.

Gwichang watched him sink into silent thought, and the smirk at his mouth loosened. Recessive and dominant traits at once: Geum Seoul became violently ill around ordinary alphas, yet Gwichang’s scent stirred unmistakable arousal. Presumably the reason was simple—Gwichang was dominant. The same explanation fit why Gwichang alone had noticed Geum Seoul’s faint pheromones.

Gwichang tilted his head with a mocking smirk. “If you’re still not convinced, we can test it again—see whether you puke, or get hard and wet behind.”

“What? No, n-no! That’s not true! I’m not wet!” Seoul cried out in sheer panic.

The blunt words shocked Geum Seoul so badly that he shook his head hard and drew his knees tighter against his chest. Gwichang looked down at him, gaze moving slowly over exposed skin, while raw appetite tightened low in his body and sweetened his mouth with saliva.

Chirp.

—“Deputy Director. We’ve identified the buyer who purchased Lee Hee-joong.”

The tiny transceiver Geum Seoul had marveled at earlier cut cleanly through the rising tension.

Even after the transmission, Gwichang kept looking at the small figure in front of him. Red ears. A fine neck. The delicate hollow above the collarbones. Narrow wrists emerging from worn cuffs. Shins still mottled from sunstroke. The hidden cleft between his thighs that might truly have grown slick moments ago. Red ankle bones like fresh peach pits, slim insteps, neat nails, rounded toes.

Leaning forward, Gwichang closed the distance between them in an instant, causing Geum Seoul to gasp.

Gwichang pinned him with an unblinking, pitch-black gaze.

“…”

An impossibly intimate proximity. Close enough that one could inhale the other’s exhaled breath. Gazing at the light ash-brown locks, the smooth forehead, and the flushed cheeks, Gwichang extended his hand. Moving as if to cup Geum Seoul’s cheek, his fingers reached past it to pick up the pin-bug resting on the armrest.

Speaking into his comms, Gwichang ordered, “Stand by for departure.”

The low timbre resonated right above the boy’s head. Having squeezed his eyes shut without realizing it, Geum Seoul lifted fluttering lids. In that breath-stealing proximity, Gwichang chuckled softly, murmuring a quiet ‘Hey.’

“The next time you catch this pheromone,” Gwichang whispered into the boy’s ear, “we’re fucking.”

Step.

Geum Seoul sat with his mouth open as the towering presence finally withdrew. Gwichang strode toward the entrance with effortless authority and disappeared down the hall—then leaned back around the corner with a brief ‘Ah,’ as though he had remembered an errand.

“Put your disguise back on. Gotta hide that face if you don’t want to get fucked.”

His grinning eyes narrowed into slits. A moment later, the front door clicked shut, plunging the house into silence.

“What… what on earth…?” Seoul murmured dazed, clutching his pounding chest.

The outrageous parting words left Geum Seoul staring after him in disbelief.

Thump—pound.

His heart would not slow. Why had he closed his eyes when the man leaned in? Why had those filthy words failed to disgust him? Why had part of him wanted to breathe in even more of that strange, tickling scent? The questions were so bewildering that he cut them off almost at once.

Earlier, the title used for the man over the radio had been ‘Deputy Director.’ Finding that title remarkably fitting, he pulled the cloth at his shoulder and buried his nose in it.

The fabric smelled only of cheap detergent. Gwichang’s pheromones had been so exquisite that Geum Seoul had secretly hoped some trace might have soaked into his clothes. He stayed frozen for several moments with his nose pressed to the cotton.

‘The next time you catch this pheromone, we’re fucking.’

Flustered all over again by the absurd words echoing in his head, Geum Seoul hurriedly rebuilt his disguise at the table. Not long afterward, he followed the unfamiliar operatives into the living room and out of the safehouse. The vehicle waiting outside was the same kind he had ridden before.

Vrooom.

The tall vehicle rocked as it climbed the unpaved mountain road. They had apparently found the buyer who purchased Noki; these men would probably never need to return to the village. Geum Seoul felt it instinctively. People as formidable as them would catch the runaway quickly. Their paths would not cross again.

Still, if Noki was found, that was a relief. Geum Seoul hoped he would be reunited with his parents as soon as possible. Holding to that thought, he rested his brown eyes against the window as the vehicle entered the familiar shantytown. Every so often he lifted his sleeve and breathed into it, but the man’s scent was gone.

***

It took Gwichang three days to lay eyes on Lee Hee-joong again. By then, Lee Hee-joong was a corpse.

With both eyes gouged out, Lee Hee-joong lay dead, the words Iljang Trading carved across his lower belly. Yet despite stealing the key ledger and fleeing, every organ besides his eyes had been left intact. The rumor that Gwak Chun-young had cherished Lee Hee-joong rather dearly, it seemed, had not been entirely false.

The eyes of gemstone omegas fetched high prices as ornaments. Hadn’t people said their pupils took on the color of their gemstones after death? One of the rumors traded through the deep web flickered through Gwichang’s mind, and with it came a brief thought of Geum Seoul. Only for an instant.

Someone had beaten Iljang to him. There might even have been a chance to recover Lee Hee-joong alive, but with Noh Pil-gyu returning to the country, Gwichang and the rest of the team had no choice but to head straight for Seoul. Pressuring the buyer who had purchased Lee Hee-joong made locating him simple enough. The harder part was staying outside Noh Pil-gyu’s line of sight, forcing them to move with painstaking caution. In the end, all that caution had bought them was a bluish corpse.

It did not look as though Gwak Chun-young had entered Geum Seoul’s neighborhood. If anything, the reason that route had been skipped was that Im Gyun-il had brought Lee Hee-joong near the gambling house. That area was Gwak Chun-young’s turf to begin with, so the news could hardly have failed to reach him.

Yu Jeong-ham sighed. “Nothing after all.”

Gwichang, thin half-rim glasses perched on his nose, wore a dark jacket stamped with a luxury logo. Watching Lee Hee-joong’s corpse through the monitor, he sent up a curl of white smoke. It was a black plastic cigarette—not the hand-rolled ones he usually smoked.

Lee Hee-joong’s autopsy yielded not a shred of useful evidence. There was no narcotic residue, no incision concealing microfilm, no contraband hidden inside the body.

Yu Jeong-ham frowned. “Do you think the ledger ended up in Gwak Chun-young’s hands?”

“No,” Gwichang answered flatly.

As Yu Jeong-ham and everyone on the squad knew, Gwichang never answered unless he possessed absolute certainty. Even the casual curses he chewed through were genuine every time.

Gwak Chun-young was a legendary gemstone collector. The rumor went that Lee Hee-joong—whom he paraded like a lover—had fled with the ledger because Gwak Chun-young brought another pretty gem into his home. A crime of passion; had Lee Hee-joong surrendered the ledger compliantly, his corpse would never have surfaced on the docks.

While extreme rage might have led to execution, the corpse was remarkably preserved for such a scenario. Not a single organ had been harvested, the carved-out gemstone eyes were the sole mutilation, and no signs of sexual defilement existed. It was Gwak Chun-young’s twisted version of mercy.

“He killed him because he couldn’t find it,” Gwichang stated dryly.

Yu Jeong-ham grimaced. “Then… does that mean recovering the ledger is blown?”

Silence answered the question. While retracing his hypotheses threatened to stretch on, the silence shattered abruptly as his wrist terminal chimed with a summons from Noh Pil-gyu.

“Dispose of it,” Gwichang ordered.

Issuing the curt command, Gwichang rose from his desk in the Deputy Director’s office and strode past the glass door. Floating holographic monitors went black in an instant. A blue indicator blinked twice, signaling that the working cache had been purged.