Chapter 8

Releasing another weary sigh, Gi-hyeon followed Yeon-oh inside.

Despite being blackout drunk, the Alpha had meticulously aligned his expensive wingtip shoes perfectly parallel in the entryway. In stark contrast, Gi-hyeon’s own daily sneakers lay haphazardly discarded, looking far more like the aftermath of a drunken stumble. The sheer absurdity of the visual coaxed a dry, exasperated chuckle from Gi-hyeon before he finally stepped fully inside.

The rhythmic drumming of water echoed from the living room bathroom. While Yeon-oh typically went out of his way to mask his severe neat-freak tendencies around Gi-hyeon, the alcohol had clearly obliterated his self-control, driving him straight to the shower the second he crossed the threshold. It was an incredibly Jo Yeon-oh move.

Whenever he was intoxicated, Yeon-oh’s showers dragged on for an eternity. He ruthlessly suppressed his mild mysophobia while sober, despising the neurotic trait, but the moment the boundary between logic and instinct blurred, his obsessive cleanliness violently reasserted itself. It often took him so long that Gi-hyeon would legitimately wonder if he had drowned or fallen asleep standing up.

Tearing his gaze away from the bathroom door, Gi-hyeon wore the grim, deeply resigned expression of a man forced to swallow bitter medicine. He hastily began clearing the cluttered living room table. Considering the bastard was drunk enough to stumble yet still obsessed enough to immediately sanitize himself, there was no telling what kind of excruciating lecture he would deliver if he caught sight of the mess.

Just as he was pouring the remaining beer down the sink and rinsing the aluminum can, the distinct click of the bathroom latch echoed through the apartment. Relieved the ordeal was over so quickly, Gi-hyeon crushed the can, tossed it into the recycling bin, and stepped out of the kitchen, only to find the living room completely empty.

He peeked into the bathroom, absolutely flabbergasted by the sight.

Aside from the lingering wave of humid steam, the room was immaculate, completely devoid of any evidence that someone had just showered. Even the bathroom slippers were meticulously propped upright against the wall to dry. The maniac had undeniably spent the last ten minutes squeegeeing every single water droplet off the glass shower enclosure. Ironically, the squeegee itself was an item Jo Yeon-oh had forcefully integrated into the household inventory.

Assuming the Alpha had simply migrated to the walk-in closet to grab a change of clothes, Gi-hyeon collapsed onto the sofa. However, after staring blankly at the wall long enough for the residual water on his hands to air-dry completely, Yeon-oh still hadn’t emerged. Suspecting the idiot had passed out mid-wardrobe change, Gi-hyeon pushed himself up and headed down the hall.

His apartment, an exorbitantly priced property astronomically beyond the purchasing power of a physical therapist’s salary, was the sole remaining inheritance left by his late mother. It boasted three rooms: a master bedroom, a study, and a dedicated walk-in closet.

Jo Yeon-oh, a man whose sole objective in life seemed to be sleeping over every single night, had poured an agonizing amount of obsessive energy into renovating two specific rooms: the master bedroom and the closet. While the deed was registered under Gi-hyeon’s name, almost every stick of premium furniture had been personally selected and installed by Yeon-oh. He casually claimed he had “extorted” the pieces from his older cousin who managed a luxury department store.

Gi-hyeon knew the elite operated in a reality where the impossible was effortlessly achieved, but he had never expected that reality to aggressively manifest in his own living room furniture. When Gi-hyeon demanded to know why Yeon-oh was buying him extravagant gifts, the Alpha had merely responded with brazen indignation.

“What, do you want to split the bill or some shit? I don’t possess that kind of pathetic talent.”

The sheer audacity of the Alpha frowning at him as if he were the one being unreasonable had left Gi-hyeon utterly speechless. Instantly drained of the willpower to argue, Gi-hyeon had simply thrown his hands up and let the rich bastard flex his wealth in peace.

The walk-in closet had received the exact same extreme makeover. Yeon-oh had commissioned high-end contractors to completely gut the room, installing custom floor-to-ceiling glass display cases and built-in wardrobes. Gi-hyeon had been too horrified by the sheer scale of the project to intervene, resulting in a ridiculous setup where the interior of his closets automatically illuminated like a luxury boutique display whenever the doors opened. While an ostentatious dressing room perfectly matched the aesthetic of Jo Yeon-oh’s sprawling estate, its existence inside Gi-hyeon’s modest apartment was jarringly alien.

Even at thirty years old, Gi-hyeon’s entire wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of athletic wear from generic sports brands, clothes that required nothing more than a quick fold after washing. However, Jo Yeon-oh, who was forced to don impeccably tailored suits every day, absolutely required dedicated storage. Ultimately, those massive, custom-built wardrobes existed solely to house Jo Yeon-oh’s expensive garments.

In hindsight, it made perfect sense that Yeon-oh had bankrolled all the furniture. The plush sofa dominating the living room, the grotesquely oversized bed swallowing the master bedroom, and even the ridiculously high-tech recliner shoved into the study. Every single item had been meticulously curated to cater exclusively to Jo Yeon-oh’s extravagant comfort.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Gi-hyeon finally tracked the Alpha down inside that absurdly luxurious closet. He must have slipped straight in here after exiting the bathroom while Gi-hyeon was distracted by the recycling. Assuming the man would just grab the nearest t-shirt and go to sleep, Gi-hyeon had opened the door to scold him for taking so long, only to instantly freeze in his tracks.

Jo Yeon-oh was standing directly in front of an ironing board, wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of boxer briefs with a damp towel haphazardly draped over his head. Gripping a fully heated iron, he was meticulously pressing a garment. Utterly dumbfounded by the surreal sight, Gi-hyeon choked out his question.

“I didn’t have anything clean to wear, so I’m ironing something,” Yeon-oh mumbled. The slightly delayed, sluggish cadence of his response glaringly betrayed his intoxication; the shower clearly hadn’t sobered him up in the slightest.

Squinting to see what on earth the maniac could possibly be ironing at this ungodly hour, Gi-hyeon realized it was a pair of the Alpha’s own designer underwear he had stocked in the closet weeks ago. The sheer absurdity of the situation stripped Gi-hyeon of his ability to speak.

“…Are you seriously ironing your fucking underwear right now…?”

Possessing an obsessive fetish for crisp, razor-sharp creases, Yeon-oh notoriously refused to even wear denim, purely because the fabric couldn’t be aggressively ironed. However, Gi-hyeon never in his wildest nightmares imagined the lunacy extended to undergarments. Apparently, his drunken brain simply could not tolerate the texture of unpressed cotton against his skin.

Shaking his head in sheer disbelief, Gi-hyeon’s gaze unwittingly drifted downward, abruptly locking onto Yeon-oh’s lower half. A horrifying realization struck him. If he’s ironing his own underwear, whose underwear is he currently wearing?

While it was highly probable he had just grabbed a spare from his own massive stockpile, the neat stack of freshly ironed boxer briefs resting on the side of the board triggered a terrifyingly ominous suspicion. Desperately clinging to the last shreds of his sanity, Gi-hyeon croaked out a question.

“…Aren’t those mine?”

“All of mine were too wrinkled, so I’m just borrowing yours for a second,” Yeon-oh replied with terrifying calmness. The low, heavy, lethargic timbre of his voice sent a violent, electrifying shiver tearing straight down Gi-hyeon’s spine.

“You’re really…” Gi-hyeon choked, his breathing instantly growing ragged and shallow. He violently ordered his brain to think about absolutely anything else. Anything but the devastating image of the impossibly beautiful Alpha standing half-naked before him, dripping wet and squeezed into his personal underwear. If he didn’t forcefully divert his thoughts immediately, the catastrophic implications of the visual would irrevocably shatter his control.

He desperately needed to stop agonizing over exactly why the front of those boxers looked so obscenely heavy and thick. Was it simply a byproduct of an Alpha with a massive frame squeezing into undergarments sized for a significantly smaller Beta? Or was it something infinitely more dangerous…?

Furthermore, it had been an eternity since Gi-hyeon had been exposed to the Alpha’s half-naked body. Jo Yeon-oh vehemently refused to undress in front of him, going to extreme lengths to fully dress himself inside the steamy bathroom after every shower. Confronted by this sudden, unapologetic display of raw skin, Gi-hyeon felt as though he were hallucinating.

Trapped in that dangerous spiral, his gaze involuntarily dragged itself downward once more. With over a ten-centimeter difference in height between them, the boxer briefs were comically too small, utterly failing to conceal the sheer, imposing mass straining against the fabric. The thick, heavy column was painfully outlined, the distinctly swollen head aggressively bulging outward near the hem of the thigh.

Gi-hyeon truly, desperately wanted to think about literally anything else in the universe.

“…Just wrap it up and come out. I’ll dry your hair for you,” Gi-hyeon rasped, his voice strained.

“Okay.”

The idiot answered obediently enough.

For some inexplicable reason, Jo Yeon-oh harbored a bizarre obsession with blow-drying Gi-hyeon’s hair. Finding the extreme pampering incredibly burdensome, Gi-hyeon had ruthlessly rejected the gesture multiple times, ultimately resulting in a bizarre compromise where Gi-hyeon was forced to dry Yeon-oh’s hair instead. He still couldn’t fathom why they needed to engage in such overly intimate grooming rituals in the first place. Yet, considering the Alpha had agreed instantly without hesitation, a rarity given he typically just ignored requests he disliked, the offer had clearly appeased him.

Beneath his foul-mouthed, violent exterior, Jo Yeon-oh possessed a devastatingly tender and fiercely affectionate core. Keeping pace with those overwhelmingly gentle surges was a constant, exhausting battle for Gi-hyeon, primarily because it contradicted their entire shared history.

During the years they operated strictly as friends, they had never bickered over who got to blow-dry whose hair. Obviously. They were just two teenage boys; their physical contact was strictly limited to aggressive shoulder checks and brief, euphoric hugs after winning a fiercely competitive basketball game for a soda bet. Platonic bros simply did not dry each other’s hair.

Even during his own fleeting romances with girls, Gi-hyeon had never once offered such an intimate gesture. While the lack of opportunity during those brief high school flings was a factor, the primary reason was his own emotionally stunted personality, forged under the oppressive thumb of a heavily conservative, patriarchal father.

But Jo Yeon-oh was fundamentally different. The bastard was the type of boyfriend who wore black hair ties around his wrist underneath his uniform shirt just so he could braid his girlfriend’s hair on demand. Whenever Gi-hyeon had caught a glimpse of that dark band circling Yeon-oh’s wrist, a deeply suffocating, unidentifiable emotion would violently seize his chest.

Gi-hyeon suspected that Yeon-oh’s bizarre desire to groom him was nothing more than a residual habit bleeding over from his past relationships with Omegas. Once that toxic, self-deprecating thought took root, it became completely impossible to genuinely enjoy any of the Alpha’s tender affections.

Just then, Yeon-oh unplugged the iron, meticulously wrapped the cord, and stepped out from behind the ironing board.

“…!”

While the Alpha looked completely unbothered, Gi-hyeon panicked, violently snapping his head away to avoid staring.

Even with that lightning-fast evasion, the devastating visual had already permanently seared itself into his retinas. The impossibly broad shoulders framing clavicles as stark as steel pipes. The thick, heavily muscled chest bleeding into deeply carved, perfectly symmetrical abs. The sharp, prominent V-lines dipping aggressively under the tightly stretched waistband of his boxer briefs. Because the Alpha had started waxing his body hair to prevent chafing beneath his fencing uniform, his lower abdomen was breathtakingly smooth, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Fucking lunatic… Gi-hyeon cursed inwardly. He had just been handed a one-way ticket to yet another agonizing, involuntary night of insomnia.

Releasing a heavy, defeated sigh, Gi-hyeon fled the walk-in closet. He marched straight into the master bedroom, snatched a spare blanket and pillow, and hurled them onto the living room sofa. He was dangerously exhausted and desperately needed to sleep undisturbed tonight.

The sheer, overwhelming visual assault of a man who usually refused to even go shirtless suddenly parading around almost entirely naked, and squeezing his massive frame into Gi-hyeon’s personal underwear no less, was an infinitely lethal dose of stimulation. No matter how thoroughly Gi-hyeon had historically suppressed his own libido, witnessing the man he was desperately in love with wearing his intimately worn clothes was an intolerable provocation. It was undeniably safer to simply surrender the master bedroom to his lifelong enemy and seek sanctuary on the sofa.

After a quick scrub of his teeth, Gi-hyeon collapsed onto the cushions and dragged the blanket over his head.

“What the hell? I thought you were going to dry my hair,” Yeon-oh demanded from the hallway.

“…”

Refusing to answer, Gi-hyeon merely pulled the duvet tighter over his face. He was utterly exhausted by his own pathetic reality. He frequently caught himself wondering if the agonizing years spent loving Jo Yeon-oh in total silence hadn’t been infinitely happier than this.

How was it back then? Was it ever this profoundly humiliating?

Sure, they hadn’t shared the intimate, suffocating proximity of grooming each other, but at least back then, Gi-hyeon hadn’t been forced to flee his own bedroom to suffer through sleepless nights on a couch just to avoid his boyfriend.

“Hey. Are you seriously sleeping?”

Sounding deeply offended, Yeon-oh called his name multiple times. Gi-hyeon remained perfectly still, refusing to throw off the covers or acknowledge him. He wasn’t even pretending to be asleep; having completely drained his daily battery to absolute zero, he simply lacked the physical energy required to part his lips and speak.

Furthermore, violently repressing the emotional fallout from the Alpha’s garbage confession regarding his sexual needs had completely depleted Gi-hyeon’s mental reserves. He just wanted the darkness to claim him. He refused to agonize over it a second longer.

Just as his consciousness began to slip,

“…Ah!”

A startled shout was ripped from his throat. Before he could even register the movement, Yeon-oh had scooped him up, effortlessly hoisting him completely off the sofa while he was still tightly rolled up in his blanket.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Why are you acting so pathetic, sleeping on the couch when there’s a perfectly good bed right there? Especially a bed that your hyung bought for you with his hard-earned blood, sweat, and tears,” Yeon-oh scolded smoothly.

“Who the hell is calling themselves hyung?!” Gi-hyeon spat, thoroughly infuriated by the brazen audacity.

Completely ignoring Gi-hyeon’s furious sputtering, Yeon-oh confidently carried the blanket-burrito straight toward the master bedroom. The bastard was actually humming a cheerful tune, a detail that made Gi-hyeon want to strangle him. Usually, Yeon-oh was so paranoid about exposing his neurotic cleanliness that he forced himself to delay showering, but having completely bypassed that filter to sanitize himself the second he arrived had evidently put him in a spectacularly buoyant mood.

Releasing an exhausted sigh, Gi-hyeon glared resentfully at his captor. Even considering Yeon-oh was a Dominant Alpha standing over 190 centimeters tall with a physique forged by years of competitive fencing, lifting a fully grown, heavily muscled adult male like Gi-hyeon shouldn’t have been this effortlessly simple. The sheer, rock-solid stability of the Alpha’s carry was infuriating. Yet, terrified that violently thrashing around might genuinely injure the idiot, Gi-hyeon was forced to abandon his resistance, suffering the ultimate indignity of being meekly hand-delivered to his own bed.

“Look at how pale your face is. Were you sick to your stomach all day again? You should have gotten checked out the second you got to work. Why do you think I opened a Family Medicine department in that hospital in the first place?” Yeon-oh clicked his tongue, chiding Gi-hyeon with the condescending authority of a parent scolding a toddler.

Gi-hyeon refused to engage. His pale complexion had absolutely nothing to do with digestion and everything to do with being thoroughly, profoundly sick to death of the chaotic disaster that was Jo Yeon-oh. Lacking the energy to explain that undeniable fact, Gi-hyeon simply remained motionless on the mattress and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Why are we angry again?” Yeon-oh cooed in a sickly-sweet, teasing drawl, practically collapsing over Gi-hyeon’s chest to trap him in yet another suffocating embrace.

Even without the Alpha’s relentless physical harassment, Gi-hyeon was genuinely teetering on the edge of physical collapse. His body had barely recovered from last night’s violent indigestion, and his nerves had been shredded into fine ribbons from obsessively analyzing the toxic garbage Yeon-oh had spewed. Dragging that shattered wreck of a body through a grueling workday had been absolute torture. Resorting to a desperate plea, Gi-hyeon croaked, “Please… I’m so fucking exhausted, Jo Yeon-oh.”

“Then go to sleep, dear husband,” Yeon-oh murmured smugly.

Utterly repulsed by the ridiculous pet name, Gi-hyeon wrenched his arms free from the blanket and delivered several sharp, punishing smacks directly to the Alpha’s breathtakingly beautiful, overwhelmingly punchable forehead. Despite possessing notoriously heavy hands, the blows merely elicited a dramatic whine of “Ouch!” from Yeon-oh, who perversely tightened his grip even further.

“Stop giving me the cold shoulder,” Yeon-oh complained. “Do you have any idea how much it drives me completely fucking insane when you get randomly pissed off like this and refuse to tell me why?”

I’m the one who’s actually losing his fucking mind here, so who the hell are you to complain? Disgusted by the sheer hypocrisy, Gi-hyeon clamped his lips shut in stony silence.

Trapped in the arms of a man who had somehow managed to slip into his silk pajamas, radiating the exact same body wash and shampoo scent as Gi-hyeon, he was condemned to yet another agonizing night of suffering purely because the depth of their hearts would never align. So Gi-hyeon was the one truly going insane, yet the bastard possessed the gall to act like the victim.

“Hey, Dr. So. Are you ignoring me again?” Yeon-oh whispered, burrowing even deeper into Gi-hyeon’s space. Pressing his lips directly against the sensitive flesh of Gi-hyeon’s nape at the precise biological location where an Alpha would sink his teeth into an Omega to initiate a permanent mating bond, he waited for a reaction.

“Ha…”

“Oh? You laughed. You definitely just laughed,” Yeon-oh declared triumphantly.

The bastard was right.

A hollow, involuntary laugh had slipped past Gi-hyeon’s lips. He violently jerked his head away to dodge the hand attempting to pry his jaw around for a better look at his face. He wasn’t laughing because Yeon-oh was funny. He was laughing at his own pathetic existence. He was laughing at the devastating reality that such a meaningless, casual brush of lips against his nape could still make his heart violently plummet to the floor.

Tonight, another suffocating layer of insomnia would undoubtedly settle over his pillowcase. It was an unavoidable, inescapable tragedy, much like the agonizing truth that So Gi-hyeon’s choice had absolutely zero bearing on his unyielding love for Jo Yeon-oh.

Accepting his fate, Gi-hyeon simply closed his eyes.

***