Chapter 37

Patting the helmet gently, Gye Do-hyeop slid down the visor. Noticing the faint flush dusting the exposed cheeks through the shield, he chuckled once more and asked if the youth intended to travel like that. Startled, Seoul hastily unclasped his arms from around the man’s waist.

Then, with surprising bravery and resolve, Seoul climbed onto the rear seat. Though his hands gripped the rock-hard torso so tightly that his entire frame trembled, his posture settled into relative stability within five minutes of departure. As promised, Gye Do-hyeop maintained an unhurried, comfortable pace across the terrain. When brief bursts of acceleration were required, Seoul instinctively molded his entire body flush against Gye Do-hyeop’s back.

As a result, Yu Jeong-ham had to crawl at a snail’s pace behind them, though Seoul remained entirely unaware inside his helmet, blinking rapidly with scorching cheeks while wondering whether his racing pulse stemmed from lingering fear or the solid frame he was clutching.

Familiar ruined scenery and familiar scents gradually came into view. Releasing his breath in small increments, Geum Seoul loosened his grip as the engine ceased humming. Having stabilized the bike and killed the ignition, Gye Do-hyeop caught Seoul’s wrists to steady him, turning around to physically lift the youth down with his own hands before sliding off the helmet.

“Thank you.”

“Thanking me again?” Gye Do-hyeop asked with an amused smirk.

Ruffling the grayish-brown hair flattened by the helmet, Gye Do-hyeop smiled. A pleasant fragrance. Free from the stifling enclosure of the helmet, Geum Seoul took a deep, greedy breath.

“You’re heading straight into the building, right?” Yu Jeong-ham asked, approaching as he tousled his hair. “I need to retrieve some surveillance hardware. I’ll meet you back here shortly.”

Having parked his own bike right behind them, Yu Jeong-ham prudently referred to the cameras installed throughout the village as hardware. Oblivious to the surveillance sweep, Seoul continued to inhale the comforting scent nearby, while Gye Do-hyeop slipped on pitch-black sunglasses.

Gye Do-hyeop waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah. Get going.”

“Understood,” Jeong-ham answered with a nod.

Deputy Director Gye had Geum Seoul take the lead. As if navigating his natural territory, Seoul strode forward with steady, confident steps. The path entering the village was intimately familiar, yet the absence of gravel poking through worn-out soles felt novel.

Treading carefully over the rough cement that merely imitated a pavement, Seoul glanced down at his feet repeatedly. The new sneakers fit snugly and comfortably. Only the pristine white toe caps worried him, looking ready to be stained by filthy sludge at any moment.

Tilting his head in growing puzzlement, Seoul ventured, “Still… it feels strange. It seems like no one is around.”

Only after clearing the mouth of the alley did Geum Seoul raise his head. With the sun climbing high, people might have slipped outside the settlement to escape the oppressive heat, yet his doubt concerned more than mere physical absence.

Impoverished settlements possessed an atmosphere distinct from the capital. The source lay in the unstable, jagged pheromones of second-gender inhabitants relying on low-grade or illegal pharmaceuticals. While not potent enough to disrupt individual cycles, the residual funk lingered like a persistent musk. Though it had always been a derelict village, it was now completely stripped of life.

“What’s this? Seoul, is that you?” a voice called out.

From a corner of the village, a middle-aged man peeling back a plastic tarp poked his head out. Having just emerged from a shack, he carried a red plastic tub filled with household utensils tucked against his hip.

“…Uncle Jang, hello,” Seoul greeted him softly.

“Hello, you say?” Mr. Jang scoffed. “Everyone’s cleared out. There’s no one left.”

Seoul blinked in surprise. “Everyone cleared out?”

Mr. Jang bobbed his head without enthusiasm, glancing briefly between Geum Seoul and the tall man standing a pace behind him. Heavy alpha pheromones clung all over the youth.

Even shielded by sunglasses, the man’s imposing alpha presence was unmistakable. Jang assumed he was one of the thugs who had ransacked the neighborhood looking for runaways previously, yet he voiced no curiosity. The same applied to Geum Seoul, who had vanished without a trace only to resurface now.

Jang was fundamentally uninterested in prying into other people’s affairs. Knowing that Seoul’s current face was a prosthetic disguise because the youth bought fake noses and silicone padding from him had never prompted questions, either. Lifting a freshly rinsed cup from the red tub, Jang shook it dry in the air.

“On a day I was away buying stock, some mobster thugs came in and flipped the whole place upside down,” Jang recounted. “Heard they dragged off several gems too. Park Gil-pyeong vanished into thin air, and with no auctions running, why would anyone stick around? Packed their bags and moved to the next slum over. Abandoned shacks are plentiful everywhere.”

Gye Do-hyeop was already well aware of those events. Surveillance lenses planted throughout the village had captured Gwak Chun-young’s operatives storming the area, interrogating locals, ransacking properties, and abducting gemstone omegas. The only error in Jang’s account was that Park Gil-pyeong had been captured alive by Gye Do-hyeop, while several omegas observing the raid through doorway cracks had fled immediately. Securing the abandoned trikes before anyone else, their sharp instincts had saved their lives.

“Ah… I see,” Seoul whispered, his voice noticeably dipping.

Stepping forward, Gye Do-hyeop slung an arm around the youth’s slender shoulders. Startled, Seoul raised his downward gaze.

“What,” Gye Do-hyeop murmured dryly, “missing your friends after being gone a few days?”

Gye Do-hyeop didn’t truly believe they were friends. He understood the social dynamics of this gutter the instant he laid eyes on it. When Seoul had been beaten by Park Gil-pyeong and nearly smashed his head on the stairs, other omegas had merely covered their mouths in superficial shock, harboring eyes that comforted themselves that their lot was better than his. Geum Seoul had never possessed friends here.

“No. Just… goodbye, Mr. Jang,” Seoul said.

Seoul moved to bow politely, but the firm hand clamped over his shoulder halted the motion halfway. Concluding the farewell with a slight dip of his head, he turned away with an uneasy glance, while Jang indifferently resumed organizing his belongings.

“It’s the people who found Lee Hee-joong… right?”

The question carried an unspoken weight: asking whether the raiders were the ones who had found and murdered Lee Hee-joong first.

Gye Do-hyeop clicked his tongue, “Yeah. Look at the fucking mess they made. I’m not like that. I came quietly and asked politely.”

“Relatively speaking, yes,” Seoul murmured in agreement.

Even though it hadn’t been genuinely quiet. Shamelessly slandering Gwak Chun-young’s syndicate, Gye Do-hyeop pulled the covered shoulder close, burying his nose near Seoul’s hair. The sweet forest scent that had soothed his nervous irritability upon his initial arrival was gone from the village, lingering exclusively beside him now. A scent imperceptible to anyone other than a dominant alpha—anyone other than himself. A spark of fierce possessiveness narrowed Gye Do-hyeop’s pupils before fading, noting that the pheromone coating had worn thin.

Creak.

Gye Do-hyeop shoved open the building door, its heavy mass grinding with a dull screech. The humid stench unique to ancient concrete buildings billowed outward alongside clouds of stale dust.

“Uh….”

Though mold and stains were inevitable, the space Geum Seoul had swept and maintained daily had once been relatively orderly. Aside from Park Gil-pyeong’s desk, chair, and a tattered sofa spilling stuffing, minimal furnishings were kept to accommodate regular auction crowds. Yet now, the floor was unrecognizable.

Gye Do-hyeop surveyed the debris with a scoff. “What the hell happened here? Did they throw a festival?”

Just as he noted, the ground floor was littered with junk. Piles of discarded bedding and garbage lay heaped in corners, suggesting multiple vagrants had sheltered there before departing. The office door hung wide open, its interior thoroughly overturned.

“It looks like the villagers stayed here for a while,” Seoul observed quietly.

The signs pointed squarely to that. When Park Gil-pyeong failed to return following the syndicate’s raid, locals living in squalor nearby had occupied the structure, only to abandon it shortly after, leaving behind mounds of trash.

The building’s rapid decline over only a matter of days left Geum Seoul dazed. Wearing a troubled expression, he started up the stairs while Gye Do-hyeop watched him closely from behind.

“Hah…!”

Seeing the second floor, Geum Seoul’s breath hitched. Open doorways revealed rooms clogged with the same chaotic debris as downstairs. Standing before the corridor, a sudden shiver seized his shoulders.

‘Come to think of it, I’ve never stripped our little Seoul-ie bare, have I?’

His final memory of this floor. Crawling frantically along this very corridor to reach the window frame to flee Park Gil-pyeong. Saliva flooded his mouth as nausea roiled his gut, the memory dredging up the phantom stench of Park Gil-pyeong’s revolting pheromones. Squeezing his eyes shut, he clamped a hand over his mouth.

Rustle.

Almost instantaneously, strong hands encircled his waist and hoisted his feet clear off the floor. Letting out a startled gasp, Seoul opened his eyes to find Gye Do-hyeop already supporting his hips with effortless ease.

“If your hands are free, wrap them around my neck,” Gye Do-hyeop ordered.

Seoul let out a faint breath. “Ah.”

Though having only two hands hardly made them spare, Geum Seoul obeyed without asking why he had suddenly been lifted, winding both arms around the man’s neck. He buried his face against the muscular shoulder. Gye Do-hyeop’s clean, pleasant scent filled his lungs, and as the nausea ebbed, Seoul’s back gradually settled into slower, steadier breaths.

Did he look frustratingly slow? Hesitating before the corridor might well have appeared that way. Yet despite knowing that, the gesture felt unmistakably protective. Pressing his burning cheek against Gye Do-hyeop’s arm, Seoul held on tightly.

Carrying a grown man without displaying the slightest strain, Gye Do-hyeop traversed the corridor. Though debris crunched beneath his boots, Seoul remained clinging like an arboreal creature, keeping his face buried against the comforting warmth.

The tighter those arms clung and the more Seoul’s warm breath seeped through the fabric of his shirt, the wider Gye Do-hyeop’s lips curled in a subtle curve. An unnamable, unprecedented satisfaction settled deep within his chest, though he was still pondering what label to assign to it.

Tap, tap.

Seoul’s fingertips prodded Gye Do-hyeop’s shoulder, signaling a request to be set down. Though lacking any desire to release him, having arrived before the communal shower made locating the hidden item Seoul’s responsibility. Lowering his frame slightly, Gye Do-hyeop deposited him onto the floor. While it looked like a careless drop from the outside, it was remarkably gentle for a man unaccustomed to handling anyone with tenderness.

“Thank you,” Seoul murmured, his ears scorching red.

It had merely been a brief shudder from an ugly memory. Though nausea had threatened, he hadn’t actually smelled the odor or reached the verge of vomiting. Yet being held in those arms had chased Park Gil-pyeong’s repulsive voice far into oblivion. Feeling faintly bashful, Seoul wiped his palms against his trousers.

“Yeah. You can pay me back later, so feel free to use the service often,” Gye Do-hyeop drawled like a merchant.

Rubbing the back of his ear at the teasing remark, Seoul felt Gye Do-hyeop’s voice and playful grin stirring strange embarrassments within him, even when there was no rational cause.

“Um… that item. Could you tell me roughly how large it is?” Seoul asked.

“Never seen it myself, so I don’t know the exact shape,” Gye Do-hyeop replied. “Small enough to palm and run away with, I’d wager.”

Pinching his thumb and forefinger to demonstrate a tiny gap, Gye Do-hyeop indicated the scale. Nodding in understanding, Geum Seoul stepped into the shower room.

Though compact, the space could accommodate five or six people at once. While only two functional faucets remained, multiple capped pipe fixtures along the walls suggested a more robust setup in decades past.

Stepping three paces back from the doorway, Gye Do-hyeop struck a match to light a cigarette. While the sweltering heatwave had broken in Seoul, the temperature here remained mercilessly suffocating. Shielded from direct sunlight inside the concrete hull, the air felt like a steaming pressure cooker. Tossing his hair back, Gye Do-hyeop dragged smoke deep into his chest, the tip flaring crimson.

Geum Seoul threw himself into the search. Crouching like a squirrel foraging for hidden nuts, he combed through corners, running his fingers across loose tiles, scraping along crumbling grout, and even unscrewing drain grates. He followed instructions with relentless diligence. Exhaling a plume of smoke, Gye Do-hyeop watched the slender frame bend awkwardly over a decommissioned pipe, looking impossibly small.

“…”

He’ll find it, Gye Do-hyeop thought. Even though his squad had swept the premises, they had followed standard protocol: tearing down vent covers and checking drop ceilings. Structural fissures and obscure hollows were best known to those who lived there. The shrinking cigarette turned bitter on his tongue.

“Deputy Director,” Seoul called out softly.

Lifting his eyes from the glowing tip of his cigarette, Gye Do-hyeop saw Geum Seoul pressed against the wall, extending a hand toward him. Pinched between fingers blackened with grime and dripping wastewater, something small caught the dim light.

“Could this… be it?”

Bingo.

Gye Do-hyeop gave an appreciative wink, then flicked away the cigarette and crushed the glowing ember beneath his boot. I’m going to eat his ass raw once we get back, he decided, entertaining a fantasy whose primary beneficiary remained decidedly debatable.