Chapter 85

Thud.

He couldn’t finish his sentence. Drawn immediately into an embrace, both his feet dangled clean off the floor. Only then did the body heat and scent seeping into the tip of his nose feel welcome, and Geum Seoul wrapped both arms around his neck. The inner turmoil he had fought so hard to suppress began to throb and weep anew.

“Your pheromones.”

“…Ah, I’m sorry.”

He thought his pheromones had quieted back down without a trace after being left on his own, yet in the brief span since seeing the deputy director, they had flared wild alongside his surging emotions. Geum Seoul knew the reason why.

“Why are you shrinking back? I told you to let out more.”

“……”

The tip of Geum Seoul’s nose stung. It was because the man hadn’t scolded him. Because time felt as though it had frozen. Held in his arms, Seoul quietly steadied his heart for a long while, breathing out slow breaths. He loved being surrounded entirely by the deputy director’s scent so much, relished even the faint trace of tobacco smoke mingled within it, that he shut his eyes tight and buried his face into him again and again.

Ah.

It was a quiet sigh. Geum Seoul realized the second reason why he had been in such poor condition lately.

Sink.

Settling onto the black leather sofa to one side of the office, Gye Do-hyeop pulled Geum Seoul onto his lap. Burying his nose into the crook of the younger man’s neck, he took long, steady inhalations. One hand rested on his waist, the other cupping his rear.

“……”

Having reunited after such a long time, Gye Do-hyeop was quiet. Every night, Seoul had pictured the man returning—wondering whether he would scold him, tease him with that trademark smirk, or immediately pounce on him to fuck—yet this was completely outside his expectations.

Gye Do-hyeop genuinely seemed to be doing nothing more than resting. His arms stayed locked around Seoul as he breathed in and out, slow and deep, again and again. Geum Seoul said nothing either. He closed his eyes and matched that breathing, letting himself settle into the same rhythm. One corner of his chest felt swollen full, almost painfully so. Perhaps that was fortunate; if he opened his eyes now, the tears waiting behind them would surely spill.

Yesterday, Geum Seoul had peeled off the patch marked with a triangle, placed it on the table, and stared at it for a long, long time.

It hadn’t felt real. They had clearly told him his body couldn’t easily conceive. They had said he lacked the receptors to accept an alpha’s semen. That it was a side effect of injecting and swallowing all sorts of illicit drugs. And yet, the triangle before his eyes was far too distinct.

It was something he had never once imagined. Naturally so, since before meeting the deputy director, any alpha’s pheromones had made him thoroughly sick to his stomach. Tangling flesh and having sex with another person had always been someone else’s reality.

Tossing and turning all night without sleeping a wink, lost in thought, Geum Seoul hadn’t been able to find his bearings. Where was he supposed to start, how should he explain it, and whom could he even tell? Everything felt daunting.

Most likely, the deputy director had to be the first person he told. Almost as though he were returning for the sole purpose of hearing that Seoul was pregnant, word of his homecoming had arrived at the very moment Seoul saw the triangle on the patch. So he would tell him first. Then the deputy director would take him to the hospital. Out of the countless questions churning through his mind, the only conclusion Geum Seoul had managed to grasp was who to tell.

“……”

And yet, his mouth wouldn’t open. To the man who had pulled him tight into his embrace the second they met, doing nothing but breathing him in, he couldn’t bring himself to say he was pregnant.

In the simulations he had run in his head countlessly through the night, the man had not reacted positively even once.

‘Pass this blood on to someone? I’d sooner kill it.’

He was a man whose very existence had been constantly tested by his grandfather. He loathed the word ‘family.’ He had said he’d sooner kill it than pass down his blood. His tone had been casual, but it had sounded like anything but a joke.

It was an unwanted child. When told he couldn’t conceive, Seoul had felt relieved, and the man had merely replied, Good for us then. He would despise a child, and he was bound to despise Seoul for carrying one.

The moment he spoke the words, right then and there, this embrace he had finally reunited with would tear away. He would be kicked out of this space he had barely grown accustomed to. He had no idea where he would even go now. Nor did he know how to return to that place where blistering sun beat down relentlessly and mites chewed at his flesh.

Deputy Director. Geum Seoul called him inwardly. Having voiced no sound, there was no way the man could answer.

“I fucking missed you.”

Rustle.

The man’s words stirred a wind through Seoul’s heart. Not a soft spring breeze, but the thin, chilling wind of an autumn dawn. Everything he had carefully stacked inside himself—two days ago, the resolve to ask once the deputy director came home; yesterday, the determination to tell him the truth—stalled beneath his throat and refused to rise any farther. With his lashes lowered, Geum Seoul stroked the man’s jet-black hair with aching tenderness. Even beneath that cautious touch, Do-hyeop burrowed a little deeper into him. Seoul’s chest tightened.

The scent of dry grass drifted from the deputy director’s body. The peculiar aroma he had smelled when they first met hadn’t been his pheromones. It was the scent of the rolled cigarettes he often smoked. That very fragrance lingered faintly throughout this office as well. By now, his vision had turned slightly blurred.

Shift.

Allowing Geum Seoul’s fingers to comb through his hair, Gye Do-hyeop let out a soft snort against his shoulder. At the sound of that chuckle, Seoul stilled his hand. Gye Do-hyeop lifted his head.

“Hey.”

“…Yes.”

“Do you like me?”

Caught off guard by the abrupt question, Geum Seoul bit his lip. An immensely monumental yet simple inquiry sliced cleanly through the languid air.

“……”

Geum Seoul’s brimful, teary eyes remained fixed on Gye Do-hyeop for a long moment. The man figured he had already received half the answer. The way Seoul tensed his hands and body gave it away. Leaning back, Gye Do-hyeop rested against the sofa cushion. With the back of his head sinking into the padding, the downward gaze he cast turned lazy and languid.

“Why else are you crying, then?”

“……”

A heavy lump sealed his throat. Of all the words he had wanted to pour out the instant he saw the deputy director, those had been the heart of them. Do you like me, Deputy Director? Is that why you sent ‘213’ every single night? Because I like you. And because of that, even though I was safe every night, I was never at peace. That was what he had wanted to say. At least until yesterday. Until he saw the pregnancy patch, those were the words he had wanted most desperately to speak.

“Am I wrong?”

“I like you.”

When Gye Do-hyeop spoke once more, his face relaxed and drowsy from the faint pheromones, the reply followed right on its heels.

Drip.

As Geum Seoul blinked, the pooled tears carved a path down his face and gathered at his chin. Carrying the man’s child hadn’t changed this answer. Only, the fear was immense. He was terrified that every tender moment—the man willingly touching him, holding him, burying his face in his skin—would vanish into thin air. That was all. Though suppressed in shock over the realization of his pregnancy, the sheer magnitude of his feelings remained unchanged.

Gye Do-hyeop opened his palm. The tear that had gathered at Seoul’s chin and dropped dried quickly against his broad hand.

“……”

“I was waiting for you, Deputy Director.”

Gye Do-hyeop’s dark gaze shifted up from the tiny droplet. Sitting on his lap, Geum Seoul’s face, with trembling eyes pressed down against his chest, looked strange. Rather than shy, he seemed aggrieved and overwhelmed. Tears flooded his eyes once again, to the point where one wondered if he could even see straight.

As if even drawing breath was a struggle, his shoulders heaved with an inhale, and he parted his lips again with hesitation.

“Waiting every night for the numbers you sent, I kept thinking. This is… something I’ve never experienced before, but…”

“……”

“Even so, I know that’s what this feeling is.”

Gye Do-hyeop silently stared at Geum Seoul as he confessed in a calm, deliberate manner. Along with a swirling rush of ecstasy, a tide of thoughts surged into his mind.

Why did this kid like him? Because they’d tangled bodies? Or because he’d pulled him out of that hellish slum? Next, he tried to gauge why Seoul looked so sorrowful while confessing his feelings—why he wore an expression more brokenhearted than when he’d taken a beating from someone. It had been a long time since he faced guesswork with no answers, but Geum Seoul was always an exception for him.

“I’m sorry. For crying. It’s just… seeing you after so long… made me so glad.”

“Glad.”

“Yes.”

And so Gye Do-hyeop bought Geum Seoul’s clumsy excuse. It was the sort of thing a twenty-year-old would do. It didn’t seem particularly strange for tears to spill over during a breathless confession. He simply found the boy overwhelmingly endearing. The sorrowful, wretched crying, with the corners of his eyes drooping from the long separation, felt like a measure of the depth of his feelings, and a corner of Do-hyeop’s heart creaked like a poorly oiled hinge.

And so Gye Do-hyeop—lost in the thrill of reuniting with this vivid life and existence, shedding the bone-deep exhaustion clinging to him, drowning in the scent of real greenery rather than artificial leaves—failed to catch the peculiar anomaly. It was one of the few blunders in his entire life.

As Gye Do-hyeop cupped the underside of his chin, a couple more drops fell. Seoul’s drifting gaze finally locked with his. Tears shimmered across the clear whites of Geum Seoul’s eyes.

“Seoul.”

“…Yes.”

In full bloom, Geum Seoul was all the more breathtaking. Gye Do-hyeop noticed that over the past month or so, Seoul’s irises had grown a shade lighter. Even though his heat had passed, far from reverting to their original hue, they had become noticeably clearer.

“I wonder how much pheromone you leaked all over the place while I was gone.”

That was also a question that had crowded Gye Do-hyeop’s thoughts countless times during his absence. Still perched on Gye Do-hyeop’s lap, Geum Seoul lowered his head. When the man applied a firm squeeze to the wrist he held, Seoul met his eyes again.

“I took my suppressants. And I was really careful about it.”

Swallowing his trembling breath and the tears that threatened to burst forth again, Geum Seoul spoke as normally as he could manage. He didn’t want to be found out. Not today. Not today—later. Since the deputy director had arrived today, fresh off an exhausting, grueling overseas assignment, he could let just this one day slide without saying a word.

Of course it was an excuse. His heart and his head both felt ready to burst. Tears kept welling up; his ears and nape throbbed hot. He loved the deputy director’s hands on his body. He loved hearing that voice after so many weeks without it. But beneath all of that lay the one truth he could not escape: he was carrying the bloodline this man hated more than anything. That knowledge hurt with a cruelty all its own.

The man’s hands began to slowly stroke Geum Seoul’s thighs and waist. Geum Seoul repeatedly snuffled and swallowed his saliva.

“Keep liking me a whole lot as long as you live.”

At the man’s low voice, Geum Seoul lifted his wet eyelashes, and Gye Do-hyeop fixed an obsessive stare on the fragile face panting before him. From his ankles to the nape of his neck, loveliness radiated outward.