JADE 38

Jin Sejun quit the academy.

He said he’d stay until May. He said he’d stick around until the competition.

Kwon Joowan was about to confront the director, demanding to know how he could not have been told, but he stopped himself. In any case, Jin Sejun wasn’t a formally contracted employee, the director had been good about paying his part-time wages, and all matters concerning the academy’s operation were handled by the director and the manager.

Although he was the actual owner of the academy, he had only helped with classes and promotions regarding its operation, so he couldn’t now complain that this sort of matter hadn’t been shared with him immediately.

He told me to call if I was anxious!

Though, in all fairness, that was something he had heard a long time ago, and the offer had likely expired.

Weren’t things getting a little better? He knew there was a problem with his recent attitude toward Jin Sejun, but he never imagined he would disappear so suddenly like this.

That’s why, even as he made the call, he didn’t expect to actually hear his voice. But Jin Sejun was never a man who moved as expected. Then again, hadn’t he said before that he hated doing what others wanted?

—Ah, yes. Mr. Vice Director!

“…Mr. Sejun.”

Kwon Joowan felt like crying at the greeting that came back so readily, yet felt so distant, even though he was the one who had called. In fact, he had to hold back a hollow laugh that threatened to escape. As Kwon Joowan hesitated, Jin Sejun recited smoothly, without a hint of awkwardness.

—You must have been surprised, thinking I suddenly skipped out. I had to quit without saying goodbye beforehand due to personal reasons. I did tell the director…

“Yes, I heard.”

He had taken a sudden vacation because of an irregular heat period, and he was surprised that Jin Sejun had disappeared in the meantime. What’s more, Kwon Joowan only found out three days after he had quit.

—…Then why did you call?

The shift from a cheerful voice to a tone laced with a chill was instantaneous. As shameless as Kwon Joowan was, he didn’t have the courage to blurt out something like, “You said you’d stay until May. Did you run away?”

“I was worried because you suddenly weren’t here…”

As Kwon Joowan mumbled, fumbling for a lame excuse, Jin Sejun ended the call in a cheerful yet businesslike manner once again.

—Oh, is that so? Then let’s grab a meal sometime~.

The call was abruptly disconnected before Kwon Joowan could answer.

“Yes…”

If he called again, would Jin Sejun pick up? As strange as Kwon Joowan was, he couldn’t fail to recognize the resolute rejection lurking beneath that last exchange.

He might pick up once, but not twice…

Jin Sejun was gone. It was obvious he had quit because he was fed up with Kwon Joowan. A self-loathing he had forgotten for a while began to squirm and rise up.

A sack filled with dangerous dregs like nuclear waste. That was how Kwon Joowan saw himself. His shell was always precariously taut with things that shouldn’t leak out, and he sometimes even doubted if it was the shape of a human.

Whenever such thoughts suddenly occurred, he would seek advice from Ahn Seha, who knew some of Kwon Joowan’s anxieties without knowing the exact circumstances. He would smile as if troubled but still give an answer.

“Seha, my hands are weird. Are they too big? My nails feel too sharp. I’m afraid to touch anything because I might break it.”

“I guess so. How about going to a nail salon?”

Besides that, getting his hair done, waxing, removing moles… Places in the beauty industry would problematize his former body and improve the flawed parts, so after getting something done, he would calm down a little.

Then he ended up at a hair transplant hospital. The moment he set foot in the counseling office, a mixture of deodorizer, air freshener, and other unknown scents vibrated in the air. Spaces with a lot of foot traffic generally had a similar impression, but among them, a faint, sweet smell that strangely captivated his sense of smell was particularly noticeable.

The scent grew stronger as he approached the counseling manager, but seeing the tall, handsome alpha, it was clearly a mistake or something that had rubbed off from some Omega. If he was wearing it so openly, was it a lover?

Jin Sejun’s shell, no matter how you looked at it, was well-proportioned, his smile was perfect, and even his tone of voice was full of confidence, giving others a sense of assurance.

Like a flawless marble.

Unlike Kwon Joowan…

It was only natural that many people would be charmed into making a payment here, as such a man was also kind. Kwon Joowan, too, was having a pleasant conversation, but it was becoming more and more of an ordeal.

He’d rather be criticized; he had no idea why the man was praising him, and he just wanted him to hurry up and schedule the surgery to make him human.

He didn’t know why, but the more they talked, the more terrifying Jin Sejun became.

It seemed to be because he was a person who was, at a glance, similar yet the complete opposite of Kwon Joowan himself. He looked like an alpha who was allowed to love himself to his heart’s content without needing any self-control.

When Jin Sejun asked to see his forehead, his vision went dizzy, and when his gaze touched him, his whole body stiffened up. Perhaps because of his sharp eyes, it felt like that man would notice Kwon Joowan’s abnormality.

He hadn’t struggled this much when receiving counseling and procedures for other things, so why now? That’s why he wanted to end the consultation quickly. But…

When Jin Sejun advised against the surgery, he felt not only perplexed but also, for some reason, a sense of cheapness. After leaving the hospital without even being able to swipe his card and going about his day, his heart felt stranger and stranger. The well-to-do alpha’s request kept ringing in his ears.

“You can contact me whenever you feel anxious.”

He could do that on their first meeting? The only person Kwon Joowan could do that with was Ahn Seha. And even that was only possible because they both felt a certain amount of guilt toward each other. When asked why he was doing this, Jin Sejun winked and pushed Kwon Joowan’s back.

This is what he had said then.

“If I’m not going to make money, I might as well try to talk to a handsome man.”

The three characters of his name imprinted on the business card made his heart stir. He couldn’t focus on work and was fidgeting until it was almost evening when he sent a message. Since he had received the number, leaving at least a greeting was what a ‘normal, good person’ would do.

The reply came quite quickly.

Moses is a Miracle Counseling Manager: Hello, Mr. Joowan. I hope you had a delicious dinner too, Mr. Joowan? ^^

What was so special about a smiling emoticon? The moment he saw it at the end, Jin Sejun’s smiling eyes came to mind vividly. Perhaps if he hadn’t been wearing glasses, Kwon Joowan would have made an excuse and run away the moment their eyes met.

He felt swept away… But it couldn’t be helped. Jin Sejun had told him to trust him, the expert, instead of Ahn Seha. And to do so for just one month, as if taking a leap of faith.

A strange sense of trust tends to form for people who act contrary to their own interests. Of course, there are also many cases where they ensnare others in a Monkey’s Flowered Shoes-like manner and lead them to ruin.

In any case, the tension that had reached the top of his head transformed into something pleasant. It felt like he had grown gills while flailing in a large fish tank.

But no matter how much he himself had allowed it, he couldn’t show even a sliver of his anxiety to Jin Sejun. He knew very well that those words weren’t offered with the thought that he would handle something so deep.

Even Ahn Seha didn’t know exactly what Kwon Joowan’s problem was. No, even if he knew, he might not have tried to understand, or maybe he couldn’t.

“Joowan, do you want to spend my next cycle with me?”

Seeing that he still says things like this. It was an offer he had received many times, but Kwon Joowan’s answer was always the same, even when they were engaged. When Kwon Joowan shook his head, Ahn Seha smiled pitifully and nodded.

“Sorry.”

“I’m just asking lightly because we seem like a safe partner for each other. I won’t get hurt if you refuse.”

He said he was sorry, but he wasn’t actually sorry. Because this was the best way.

In the past, he used to refuse, citing premarital chastity, so it was unknown what would have happened if they had actually gotten married. But they had also broken off the engagement because they couldn’t do it.

That’s right, Kwon Joowan was a broken alpha. It would have been better if he had been broken in an ‘un-alpha-like’ way, with very faint pheromones or something, but his influence on others with secondary genders, whether blood-related or not, was immense.

During his first rut, he almost had an absurd accident with his half-Omega brother, and he almost killed his alpha father on his family’s side with a pheromone clash that would have been simple teenage rebellion for others.

It was hard to tell if he was born in the wrong era or the right one. In some medieval times, he would have become a leader, and at the same time, he was the perfect type to have his head cut off or die being sent around a battlefield with a bomb strapped to him.

The fortunate part was that Kwon Joowan’s family had the background to not abandon their out-of-wedlock alpha firstborn and to make continuous efforts.

When he became hostile to alphas, those alphas would become unwell, so he was always dazed from taking a mix of suppressants and tranquilizers, and there were many other side effects. Suppressing aggression also meant that survival instincts and danger detection abilities as a living being would disappear, so finding that balance was difficult from the start.

In the end, after being semi-voluntarily isolated under the pretext of studying abroad, he even underwent a pheromone surgery whose risks had not yet been confirmed.

As a side effect, his rut, the heat period, seemed to almost disappear, and those with secondary genders couldn’t recognize Kwon Joowan’s pheromones.

“Can I go back and live at home now? As soon as I graduate from college, I can go back to my family home, right?”

The joy of having solved the problem he had carried his whole life and become normal was short-lived. He learned that his pheromones had merely hidden themselves, while their influence remained, during his time playing American football as a big ‘Beta’.

“What the hell. Silas, my god! What the hell happened? There was no collision!”

“Figure out the cause later. The patient first.”

…From a weapon visible only to those with secondary genders, he had become completely stealth1).

Open warfare and somewhat violent assassination were both the worst, but the latter felt more despicable. Even Kwon Joowan himself had difficulty perceiving his own pheromones, so at first, he didn’t even know that his pheromones had taken someone down, and naturally, others didn’t know the reason either.

It might not have been solely because of Kwon Joowan, but the circumstances of the repeated misfortunes pointed to Kwon Joowan, to his pheromones. If he hadn’t known from the beginning and had caused an accident upon presenting, he might never have known, but a certain pattern was terrifyingly familiar.