What he woke to after that was Sunday, two days later, in that hotel room. Eunwon had named the lost time ‘the tragedy of a day with extremely bad luck’ and decided to bury it deep in his heart.
So he rather considered it a thousand blessings that Deputy Kang had returned to the venue without seeing anything.
To make it a perfect crime never to be brought up again, it was right that there be no witnesses, at least among people he knew.
But what if…
Someone else had been there instead of Deputy Kang?
What if that someone happened to be Cha Muyoung?
"No, no. That absolutely can’t be."
Eunwon muttered, shaking his head hard. Even if the whole world learned that he was an omega pretending to be a beta and the shameful things that happened that day, there was just one person he never wanted to find out.
Cha Muyoung.
He was a person who hated omegas. A man with mysophobia who shuddered at omega pheromones. If he learned Eunwon’s secret…
"I’m really disappointed. Seo Eunwon, how could you lie to me like that? Knowing how terribly I hate omegas, you dared to deceive me, pretending to be a beta by my side?"
Just imagining Cha Muyoung’s cold gaze pained his heart. Auditory hallucinations like "disgusting, gloomy, filthy" slashed at Eunwon.
Eunwon’s lower lip was pitifully bloody by the time he finished imagining Cha Muyoung, his stress levels high, canceling all schedules and being loaded into an ambulance clutching the back of his neck.
Unaware, Kim Seoyeon, who had stuck her face out from beyond the partition at the suddenly cut-off messenger conversation, discovered Eunwon blankly chewing his lip with unfocused eyes.
"Oh, Eunwon… your lip’s all torn."
"My lip? Ah…"
Only after pressing a tissue Kim Seoyeon hurriedly pulled out against his lip could Eunwon end the miserable imagining and return to reality. From Kim Seoyeon’s side came the urgent clatter of typing. Kim Seoyeon: Seo-bi ㅠㅠ Are you really okay? Your face is pale and you’re bleeding from your mouth? Your lip must hurt so much, what do we do. Want some lip balm? I have a new unopened one. I bought it as a buy-one-get-one… Don’t you dare refuse. What I can give you right now anyway… is… this lip balm… that’s all I have… all I have is this lip balm…
Before he could refuse, an unopened stick-type lip balm dropped onto Eunwon’s desk with a thud. Kim Seoyeon’s right hand, having achieved its purpose, gave a thumbs-up and slid away.
Eunwon, his head complicated, couldn’t even smile at the grateful, cute cheer and just quietly looked down at the lip balm on his desk.
Chu-chu stick that calls for kisses—rich strawberry scent
Even looking at the childish, ridiculous name unsuited to the situation, Eunwon bit his lip. The fishy taste of blood was bitter.
Kim Seoyeon: Ignore the lip balm name. The product’s really good… I don’t know why the name is like that either Haha, I know this lip balm too. It’s super famous. I needed one just now, thank you so much. I’ll use it well. Kim Seoyeon: What, it’s nothing Between us
No matter how confused he was, he couldn’t keep spacing out at work. Eunwon took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to regain his composure. Just as he was about to wrap up the conversation with Kim Seoyeon with a suitably cute emoticon and start work—
"Ahem, ahem… ahem!"
At the obviously artificial throat-clearing, Eunwon’s head snapped up. Team Leader Jeong stood up from his seat, leaning his arm on the partition, looking this way. His expression was similar to usual, but there was an awkward air about him.
"Um… could Deputy Kim come see me in the meeting room for a moment? Special instructions from the CEO to relay."
At the sudden summons, Kim Seoyeon stood up abruptly, grabbing her diary. After a neat smile and a crisp reply, the moment Team Leader Jeong turned his back, she made a miserable face and mouthed at Eunwon.
‘Looks like I’m getting scolded for being late. I thought it was weird they let it slide so lightly…’
If so, his turn was obviously next. Eunwon, coming to his senses along with her, swallowed dryly and tensed.
He stared blankly at the two people’s backs entering the small meeting room attached to the secretarial office, when just before the door closed, Team Leader Jeong suddenly stopped walking. His eyes were fixed on his phone, like someone who’d just received an urgent message.
"And Secretary Seo is being called by the CEO."
Eunwon froze with a ‘yikes’ expression. Team Leader Jeong, belatedly lifting his gaze from the phone screen to look at Eunwon, hesitated with the face of a boss delivering a very sorry instruction, then added an explanation in an excessively careful tone.
"You’d better go in right away. It seems like… um… he’s been waiting for you for a very long time."
***
He wiped the blood from his lips and dutifully applied the strawberry-scented lip balm.
Even in that brief moment of fixing his attire, a typhoon of ‘what ifs’ and ‘no ways’ and ‘but surely nots’ raged through Eunwon’s head.
He had barely steadied his breath and was about to knock when—
"Come in."
Permission came from inside before his hand even touched the door. As if proving Team Leader Jeong’s words that he’d been waiting.
Eunwon opened the door, tense like a student going to the teachers’ office for punishment. From biting his lip again, the fishy taste of blood spread in his mouth, making the lip balm application pointless.
AG Biologics CEO, Cha Muyoung.
His office was as perfectly organized as his notorious reputation for mysophobia suggested. The background, arranged without a single flaw, the man standing in sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling glass—like a subject staged to capture the most beautiful moment.
But even in this suffocatingly perfect space, there existed an unexpected disorder. A scent the all-beta secretaries would never notice—dominant alpha Cha Muyoung’s pheromones, flowing out without restraint, tangled carelessly everywhere.
Some might criticize as selfish the behavior of pathologically hating and avoiding others’ pheromones while stubbornly marking his own territory with scent. Eunwon had never once thought badly of Cha Muyoung for it.
He knew more intimately than others how that crooked personality had formed, and anyway, thanks to it, he’d been able to happily smell his scent to his heart’s content since the days he secretly crushed on him.
A handsome, grown man’s smoky scent that spread softly then gradually tightened around the chest.
Before presenting as an omega, he’d naturally thought it was just Cha Muyoung’s unique body odor. So without knowing to fear a dominant alpha’s pheromones, he’d sniffed and swallowed it whenever he got the chance, clutching his trembling heart.
He’d gotten over his feelings, and having presented as an omega, that scent was no longer the fluttering first-love scent but something to endure, tolerate, and guard against.
‘It seems stronger than usual today.’
Eunwon held onto his dizzying senses and regulated his breathing shallowly. I’m a beta, a beta who can’t smell anything… He chanted the ineffective sentence like a magic spell inside his mouth and bowed politely.
"Good morning, CEO."
"Well. I don’t know about me being good."
Eunwon’s shoulders stiffened further with tension at the crooked reply from the very first line.
"Secretary Seo Eunwon."
What made his heart lurch was the painfully stiff form of address. Just as the ominous imaginings began to swell… an unexpected question was thrown.
"How is your body?"
Blinking blankly, Eunwon let out a dumb "uh…" before answering.
"I’m fine now… I’ve recovered. I’m sorry for causing you worry." In his buffering state, holding his breath and even minding the unfamiliar honorifics, his tongue kept getting tied. Even in his second year of effort, using honorifics with ‘CEO Cha Mu’ was still confusing.
Since learning to speak, he’d spent over 23 years saying ‘I did this, I did that’—changing the ingrained speech pattern wasn’t easy…
Still, it was embarrassing. Eunwon’s earlobes reddened as he snuck a glance. Fortunately, Cha Muyoung just wore the calm, solemn face of a CEO, without a hint of laughter.
Relieved, Eunwon composed himself and added.
"And I’m sorry… for being late."
"Ahem… enough with that apology. If you’re all better, what was the reason for being late today?"
"That was because I didn’t hear my alarm this morning…"
He’d blurted out the truth casually, then faltered belatedly. It struck him as a truly immature and embarrassing excuse to offer before a superior.
I’d been distracted by other things and let my guard down…
Biting his lip and bowing his head deep, he heard a ‘pfft’ of stifled laughter from above.
"I thought you weren’t going to come to work at all."
Catching only Muyoung’s laughter clearly, not the muttered aside at all, Eunwon cautiously raised his head, reading the room, and asked "…Yes?" but Muyoung didn’t bother answering.
Instead, with a strange smile on his lips, he moved his steps. Stride by stride, his steps as long and refreshing as his tall height. Muyoung plopped down on the sofa and gazed steadily at Eunwon, still standing politely, and asked.
"So. Do you have something to say to me?"
"From now on… I’ll listen for my alarm properly… I’m sorry."
"…No, Seo Eunwon. There’s something you really need to say."
Something to say? Me?
Eunwon’s eyes darted around. Anxiety rose in his heart again. This was just like what parents said before scolding a child.
Was he telling him to confess first if he was hiding something? But he was hiding not one or two things, and not knowing how much he knew where… he couldn’t speak carelessly. The silence inevitably lengthened. As Eunwon fell into thought with a serious face, Muyoung burst out laughing again.
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