Chapter 34

Staring intently at Gi-hyeon’s flushed erection, Yeon-oh licked his lower lip. His voice dropped to a husky gravel. “You’re a Beta.”

“Ahng, ah—! No, Yeon-oh, no… hng—!”

“I really shouldn’t be dreaming about you like this.”

The whispered tone remained devastatingly gentle. Gi-hyeon summoned every last shred of his willpower just to keep his hips from instinctively bucking up into Yeon-oh’s hand. It was perhaps the final thread of rationality he possessed.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Stop, I hate this—! Hng… ah, mng…!”

“But I still have them sometimes.”

Yeon-oh muttered the confession mostly to himself. The words completely failed to reach Gi-hyeon, whose vision was actively whiting out from the blinding pleasure. Thick, rope-like veins branched across the back of the hand and forearm ruthlessly pumping his cock. From behind Yeon-oh’s earlobe, the suffocatingly heavy scent of a night-blooming flower radiated outward. In a moment of sheer madness, Gi-hyeon violently wanted to bury his nose against that pulse point and breathe it in. He desired it so intensely it felt humiliating. A wave of profound sorrow washed over him. He felt wronged, and bone-deep exhausted.

Entirely oblivious to Gi-hyeon’s internal devastation, Yeon-oh stared blankly at a corner of the bed with an inexplicably empty gaze before opening his lips once more.

“…Anyway.”

“Hng…!”

“Since I’m having the dream, I might as well enjoy it. Besides, you’re pretty.”

It was the first time he had ever heard such a word from him. Every single person Jo Yeon-oh had ever dated had been a female Omega. Gi-hyeon was painfully aware of the vast physical differences between them and himself. Stunned by the unexpected compliment, Gi-hyeon’s eyes widened.

But Jo Yeon-oh wasn’t looking at So Gi-hyeon. Wearing an expression so utterly desolate it defied description, he continued to mechanically pump Gi-hyeon’s cock like an obligatory chore. His eyes, completely submerged in profound lethargy, remained fixed on some invisible point in the room. A chilling realization dawned on Gi-hyeon: Yeon-oh wasn’t truly here. At the very least, whatever Yeon-oh truly desired was not on this bed. The person he was currently mixing bodies with wasn’t So Gi-hyeon.

The moment the truth hit him, Gi-hyeon couldn’t breathe. Why only me. Why is it always, always me. But the devastated questions never made it past his lips. Between his swollen, painfully sensitive nipples, his engorged perineum, the maddening itch in his cock he desperately wanted to scratch himself, and the terrifying, clenching void deep inside him—he was entirely consumed by breathless, desperate gasps, unable to adapt to a body that no longer felt like his own.

It seemed that Jo Yeon-oh, the man who consistently provided exactly enough comfort to keep So Gi-hyeon from dying whenever he suffered, planned to do exactly the same today. Releasing his punishing grip on Gi-hyeon’s cock, Yeon-oh rose to his knees on the mattress. Staring down at Gi-hyeon, who was panting frantically beneath him, the Alpha finally spoke.

“Let’s skip prepping the back. It’s just a dream anyway, I want you to take all of it raw.”

Gi-hyeon barely registered the words. A far more terrifying sound was already shredding his nerves. The sound of the zipper tearing open echoed like a thunderclap across the bed. In order to free the erection trapped against his thigh, Yeon-oh violently shoved his pants and underwear down his legs in one swift motion.

Unbidden, a memory flashed through Gi-hyeon’s mind—a night when a heavily intoxicated Yeon-oh had stood before an ironing board wearing nothing but his boxer briefs. Even flaccid, Yeon-oh’s endowment had peeked out from the hem, the dark crimson glans as thick as a walnut, making Gi-hyeon unconsciously swallow hard.

Now, stripped of all rationality, Gi-hyeon could only stare helplessly as Yeon-oh discarded his clothes. The cock that had once merely peeked from the boxer band was now terrifyingly rigid, brutally thick, and hanging at a length that completely defied comparison to that night.

“Ugh—!”

Gi-hyeon couldn’t suppress the animalistic groan that tore from his throat. More accurately, he couldn’t suppress the feral, agonizing urge to lick the Alpha’s erection. It was a grotesque, brutally masculine weapon that fundamentally clashed with Yeon-oh’s elegantly sculpted, beautiful face. Yet, staring at the dense patch of pubic hair, the massively engorged glans, the thick shaft bulging with aggressive veins, and the seam running down the taut scrotum, Gi-hyeon felt an overwhelming, terrifying desire to bury his face there and inhale deeply. He was entirely unaware that this was the exact epicenter where a dominant Alpha’s pheromones were concentrated at their absolute thickest.

A lightning-fast, depraved impulse ripped through him. He bit his lip hard, barely restraining the urge to drop to his knees and beg to suck it. Utterly inexperienced, Gi-hyeon found the raw, consuming lust so profoundly alien he could barely tolerate it. It was a vile, carnal desire diametrically opposed to his usual calm, rational self. To think he was genuinely going insane with the need to suck Jo Yeon-oh’s cock… The sheer humiliation bred a sense of absolute bleakness. Ultimately, when he finally released his bitten, bloodied lip, the unthinkable happened.

“Ah…”

“…”

Both men simultaneously looked down at Gi-hyeon’s lower half. Instantly realizing what his own body had just done, Gi-hyeon could only stare at his erection with eyes swimming in absolute despair.

Thick ropes of semen shot upward, splattering violently across So Gi-hyeon’s own chest. The crushing, post-ejaculatory lethargy felt as though it were swallowing him whole. Jo Yeon-oh smiled a brilliant, pristine smile.

“Gi-hyeon-ah.”

“…Shut up.”

Gi-hyeon threw both hands up, burying his face in his palms. The sheer, suffocating self-loathing was unbearable. He wanted to evaporate from the face of the earth. Staring down at Gi-hyeon—whose face, ears, neck, and collarbones were flushed a violent, humiliating crimson—Yeon-oh let out a dark chuckle. Gi-hyeon spoke with a dangerously low, warning growl.

“…Please, shut the fuck up, Jo Yeon-oh.”

But the bastard utterly refused to listen. Reaching out, Yeon-oh grabbed Gi-hyeon’s still-twitching, ejaculating cock, laughing out loud. The next words out of his mouth made Gi-hyeon actively want to die.

“Did you… just cum from looking at my dick?”

The bastard laughed. The clear, ringing sound of his amusement only amplified Gi-hyeon’s blinding rage. Completely forgetting about his ruined ankle, Gi-hyeon swung his leg up, aiming a lethal knee strike directly at the bastard’s neck. With a mock-surprised gasp, Yeon-oh effortlessly snatched Gi-hyeon’s ankle out of the air.

“You need to move carefully. This thing is already a mangled mess, remember?”

And whose fault is that? Gi-hyeon had no intention of actually voicing the blame, but seeing the bastard hold his ruined ankle while wearing an uncharacteristically relaxed smile made his blood boil.

What infuriated him even more was the obscene, squelching sound of his own slick-drenched thighs parting every time Yeon-oh manipulated his leg. Hearing such a vile sound originate from his own body was absurd, but the fact that he was physically incapable of mustering any genuine resistance against whatever Yeon-oh did to him was even more mind-boggling.

“Let… go…”

A horribly raspy, broken voice scraped its way out of his throat. It felt as though Gi-hyeon was the only one on this bed actively agonizing over the horror of this situation. He realized with absolute certainty that the Jo Yeon-oh before him was completely out of his mind. If he weren’t, he would never behave this way toward Gi-hyeon. From the very beginning, Gi-hyeon knew their relationship was fundamentally barred from ever reaching this level of physical intimacy.

And because of that, a terrifyingly clear epiphany struck him: between the two of them, Gi-hyeon was the only one who was permanently barred from reaching the other. That hopelessly tilted scale finally made Gi-hyeon laugh.

“Why are you laughing?”

Jo Yeon-oh watched the hollow laughter carefully, prompting the question. Unable to suppress his bitterness, Gi-hyeon fired back.

“Why do you ask? Whether I laugh or not, what the fuck does it matter to you?”

He spat the final words with a violently twisted expression, looking like a man forced to swallow bile. Even asking the question was agonizing. The hotter his body burned, the colder his mind became. Forcing the words past his vocal cords felt like swallowing broken glass, simply because he was forcing himself to say the very things he desperately wanted to leave unspoken.

Feigning deep contemplation over Gi-hyeon’s hostility, Yeon-oh hummed, a low vibration rumbling in his throat.

“Hmm…”

And then, he smiled a breathtakingly handsome smile. The perfectly curved arc of his lips was so devastatingly beautiful that Gi-hyeon genuinely wanted to die.

“Because you never smile for me. No matter what kind of fucking bullshit I pull, you never give me a single smile.”

“…”

“You’ve changed, So Gi-hyeon.”

It was the exact tone of a needy lover whining during a relationship slump, and it made Gi-hyeon’s ribcage ache with a phantom pressure. Dropping his voice to a low, husky register, Yeon-oh spoke as if genuinely hurt.

“Do you have any idea how hard I try for you? Making me say shit like this… it’s fucking embarrassing.”

“…”

The bastard let out a heavy, quiet sigh. Gi-hyeon simply stared at him in silence.

Jo Yeon-oh’s words were entirely true. His complaint was perfectly valid. The man had genuinely poured his blood, sweat, and tears into protecting Gi-hyeon. Just as Gi-hyeon meticulously hid his feelings, knowing that dating a Beta would become a lethal political weakness for his lover, Jo Yeon-oh had exerted unimaginable effort on multiple fronts to ensure they never became a detriment to one another.

Gi-hyeon knew exactly what Yeon-oh had sacrificed. He knew Yeon-oh had turned his own snide cousins into blood enemies, obediently swallowed his grandfather’s humiliating orders, and dragged himself all the way from Seoul to distant Namhae every single weekend armed with apple boxes stuffed with 50,000-won bills and Bacchus crates. He knew the only reason the Alpha was currently digging holes in the dirt with golf clubs worth hundreds of millions of won was entirely for Gi-hyeon’s sake.

Jo Yeon-oh cherished So Gi-hyeon. He adored him. He constantly exhausted himself trying to minimize any discomfort in Gi-hyeon’s life. Gi-hyeon understood this fact down to his very marrow. It had been seven long years; it would be impossible not to see it.

For the past several years, Gi-hyeon had lived his life thrashing helplessly, drowning in this profound affection that perfectly mimicked love. An absurd reality for a goldfish that could only flare its gills in water. Just because the gelatinous jelly surrounding him was wet, he mistook it for water and swam desperately, only to constantly gasp and choke as the oxygen slowly ran out.

A goldfish trapped in solid jelly. An orchid taking root in styrofoam dirt. Jo Yeon-oh’s oldest lover, So Gi-hyeon. They were all titles for things forced into positions they didn’t belong in, existing purely for the sake of appearance. So Gi-hyeon was slowly forgetting how to breathe by Jo Yeon-oh’s side. Despite the undeniable fact that he was deeply loved.

Therefore, Jo Yeon-oh’s accusation was correct. So Gi-hyeon’s love had mutated. It was fundamentally different from how it had begun.

In the very beginning, his love had simply been a manifestation of his desire to stay by the boy’s side. During their youth—when So Gi-hyeon was chronically lonely and Jo Yeon-oh was perpetually defensive—the two scarred, young beasts had licked each other’s wounds, genuinely believing the other was the only thing they had left in the world.

So Gi-hyeon had been the one to initiate the tragedy. He had committed the cardinal sin of falling in love with a Jo Yeon-oh who had absolutely no intention of returning the sentiment. To Yeon-oh, it was the ultimate betrayal. He clearly believed Gi-hyeon was the one who had poured water over the flawless sandcastle they had built together.

But in the beginning, Gi-hyeon had only started loving him because he cherished him so deeply. His desperation to never leave Yeon-oh alone, his fierce desire to become a pillar Yeon-oh could lean on—it had naturally evolved into romantic love.

Consequently, the very start of their relationship hadn’t reeked of this suffocating mold. Back then, So Gi-hyeon smiled easily and treated his place by Yeon-oh’s side as a natural right. But everyone grows up. As the years piled on, older So Gi-hyeon was left with absolutely nothing. He eventually realized he was clutching onto a completely hollow, puppet-like facsimile of love.

Gradually, Gi-hyeon stopped smiling.

Slowly, piece by piece, he became profoundly unhappy. In the end, he lived his life permanently tethered to depression. There was only one reason he never let it show: you couldn’t break down and cry in front of someone just because you didn’t smile for them. He knew perfectly well that this was the miserable reality of his love, and that Jo Yeon-oh was cherishing him in the exact same, twisted manner.

That agonizing realization was precisely what drove So Gi-hyeon to absolute despair.

“Smile for me. I’m trying my best here. Ain’t I pretty?”