He started eating the candy because of that? My scent is the original?
It was nonsense Eunwon could hardly make sense of. "Snff—hah—snff—hah," Muyoung was now completely burying his face in the crook of Eunwon’s collarbone, obsessively inhaling.
Eunwon hunched his shoulders, embarrassed by the sensation of nose and lips rubbing against him, but as always, that was the extent of his resistance.
Even as Muyoung’s solid thigh insinuated itself between Eunwon’s legs and pressed flush against him without a gap, Eunwon only let out a single soft "Nngh…" before whispering timidly,
"I… think I smell like sweat."
"You don’t."
"I sweated a lot earlier, so I’m a bit dirty…."
"It’s fine. You’re not dirty."
"No, I… I mind, I don’t think it’s okay…."
"I like it, actually. It’s your scent, isn’t it? I like everything about your scent."
"….Huh…?"
"The scent you’ve had since you were little Apple Seo Eunwon. The scent only I in the whole world could smell. Heh… you don’t even know, do you? How delicious you smell, Seo Eunwon." "……."
What on earth had he been talking about all this time?
Cha Muyoung even chuckled throatily here and there, as if sharing some delightful secret, and Eunwon couldn’t understand him at all.
A delicious scent?
It definitely wasn’t about omega pheromones. Eunwon had presented far later than others, at twenty-three, and his recessiveness was severe—he’d only gone through the physical changes, his pheromones were nearly nonexistent.
That was how he’d managed to hide as a beta for over two years under Cha Muyoung—the hypersensitive dominant alpha who proclaimed his hatred of omega pheromones. With no pheromones pouring off his body, there was no scent to detect. It was also why he’d never had a heat cycle until then. Which was why that day had been all the more—
This time, it felt real.
Eunwon gently closed his eyes. Though he had never kissed anyone, his lips parted as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The tips of their noses touched first, and their lips drew so close they nearly brushed—
Bzzzt.
"……"
Bzzzt, bz, bz—
The violent vibration of the phone in his hand yanked him back to reality. Eunwon’s eyes flew open and he shot off the bed as if struck by lightning.
He moved so fast that Muyoung, who had been holding his little pup in his arms just moments before, could only drag both hands down his face and exhale a sharp sigh.
"…Hah."
But Eunwon, clutching the phone that buzzed like a freshly baked sweet potato as it bounced around in his hands, couldn’t even hear that sigh.
"A call… there’s a call…"
"Calm down, Seo Eunwon."
"I have to take it, sir. There’s a call—"
"I know, so don’t answer it. Come back here. It’s an unknown number anyway." Muyoung, having checked the caller on the screen Eunwon held up, answered gruffly and patted the spot beside him, but Eunwon only shook his head and kept backing away.
"But what if it’s my mom’s hospital…"
"I know the hospital’s number. If it were urgent, they’d have contacted me too. So don’t worry—come here, lie back down. We were going to listen to music together, remember?" Muyoung smiled coaxingly and beckoned, but Eunwon had already come to his senses. After a brief, wary freeze, he fiddled with the now-silent phone, set it down at the foot of the bed, and retreated as if fleeing.
"I put a song on. I’ll just… I left my phone—no, I left something in the living room. I’ll just… be right back…?"
Soft harp music began to flow from the Bluetooth speaker. Watching Eunwon’s retreating back vanish before he could stop him, Muyoung felt hollow—until he checked the phone Eunwon had left behind and burst out laughing.
The track currently playing was titled, of all things, "Classical Harp Collection for the Emotional Stability of Separation-Anxious, Fussy, Sensitive Baby Cats."
Scrolling through the playlist with its firmly pressed red heart, Muyoung grinned. Did Seo Eunwon even know? That he himself was exactly like a baby cat.
He gazed fondly at the fluffy kitten on the album art as if it were Eunwon himself, then looked further and ended up laughing even harder.
The playlist folder—filled with soft, sentimental tracks like "Lullabies for Puppies," "Sounds of Nature to Comfort a Weary Heart," and "To Someone Precious – I’ll Protect You"—was titled with his own name.
"Muyoung-hyung."
"So the baby cat… was me?"
His mood, which had soured over the kiss timing ruined by a wrong number, lifted in an instant. Imagining Eunwon, squirrel-like, gathering acorns and chestnuts—each of these soft songs chosen one by one with only him in mind—warmed his chest.
Savoring the gentle harp melody steeped in Eunwon’s affection, Muyoung closed his eyes, and for a long while afterward, an almost eerily benevolent smile lingered on his face.
***
Eunwon dashed into the kitchen and gulped down water.
"Ugh…"
He let out a long, helpless breath and slapped his cheeks hard enough to make a sharp smack, trying to snap himself back to his senses.
"…Sir should have a glass of cold water too." Not just himself, swept away by the dominant alpha’s pheromones, but Muyoung too, who had been acting strange all day—they both needed cold water to clear their heads. Eunwon set a glass of ice water on a tray and carefully headed toward the bedroom where Muyoung was. But at the door, he stopped short.
Should I go back in?
A room thick with a dominant alpha’s pheromones was a tiger’s den to a recessive omega. Normally he would have thought, "Surely hyung, a dominant alpha, wouldn’t do anything to me," trusted Cha Muyoung, and walked in with the resolve to just keep his own wits about him—but today, he wasn’t his usual self.
In the end, Eunwon spun around and headed back to the kitchen. Chewing his nails, he circled the island counter aimlessly, and his eyes caught sight of the familiar candy.
Just like in the car, baskets of green-wrapped green-apple candy sat on the dining table and the kitchen counter. He approached and picked one up, and Muyoung’s languid voice from earlier echoed in his ears.
—Your scent is much sweeter. How could some candy ever beat the original?
"…Better to just forget that."
He must have misheard. Or misunderstood the meaning. Or Muyoung, out of his mind, had confused something. Either way, the conclusion was clear: he must have twisted those words with foolish hope.
The idea that Cha Muyoung had taken to keeping apple candy in his mouth because some apple scent drifted off him without his knowing—it was absurd.
Hyung must really be sick.
Chewing over that comfortable thought—one that would have made Cha Muyoung’s blood boil had he known—Eunwon resumed his aimless wandering through the kitchen and living room.
His gaze drifted toward the front door. Should I just run? But then Muyoung’s pale face and labored breathing came to mind, and he couldn’t. How could he leave a sick person alone?
After several more laps around the house—spacious as a playing field—at a brisk pace, Eunwon’s mind tipped toward "I don’t know. Just run." But then he remembered his phone. The one he had left behind in that room with his own hands.
He couldn’t abandon Pandora’s box—the modern person’s other self, holding all his secrets.
"I’ll just grab my phone and come out… keep it together, just the phone." The resolve steadied him a little with a deep breath. And then the house came into focus as if he had never really seen it. Having always visited strictly as a "secretary," keeping business and personal strictly separate, this was the first time he had looked around Muyoung’s new place—where he had moved last year—on his own.
True to Cha Muyoung, who pathologically hated dark, stifling spaces, the house was bright and airy. Through the soaring floor-to-ceiling windows, the glittering city nightscape spread like a panoramic photograph.
Not a single corner was dim or neglected. As he marveled at the delicate craftsmanship, he recalled what Muyoung’s mother, Director Yoon, had said during the renovation.
—Muyoung, he’s my son, but he’s such a fussy, exhausting kid. He never used to be like this, so why is he making such a fuss over this place? Our interior director said he’s the hardest client she’s ever had, and I actually apologized to her. I even asked her to just go along with him as much as possible. Call it a mother’s instinct, but I think that boy plans to start his married life there. Eunwon, does hyung have someone? Anything he’s told only you?
The living room Muyoung had poured so much care into was, astonishingly, exactly the library-style living room Eunwon had dreamed of since childhood. One wall was filled floor to ceiling with books, and the gaps between them held tasteful objects and framed pictures of various sizes, lending warmth.
Eunwon gazed, spellbound, at the space that matched his taste perfectly—until he began examining the frames closely, and his expression tangled into complexity.
"……"
Because the subjects of the dozens of framed photos… were all him.
Age four playing in sand, age six at a birthday party, age ten at the beach, age fourteen in his first school uniform. And even—he couldn’t fathom how they’d been obtained—a field-trip photo from elementary school, classroom shots from middle and high school, even one of him at a college MT, smiling awkwardly with a soju glass in hand.
How did he get photos from places he couldn’t possibly have been? The question flickered briefly, but a much bigger thought churned through Eunwon’s head and cut the suspicion short.
This makes it feel like I’m really the most important person to hyung… how could anyone not misunderstand? He didn’t want to blame others for the most foolish chapter of his life—hoping that maybe hyung liked him too—but this… anyone would get the wrong idea seeing this, wouldn’t they?
The one Eunwon picked up was the oldest: seven-year-old Muyoung in a bow tie, grinning even as one-year-old Eunwon in a colorful hanbok grabbed him by the collar. Smiling, yet somewhere in his expression there was a shadow—and even that ached Eunwon’s heart.
Eunwon thought back to Muyoung’s past, which he had dug up on his own in middle school. He had started digging out of curiosity about how his utterly ordinary family had become entangled with the chaebol heir’s household.
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