PAO 4

How petty. He says whatever he wants…

“Anyway, if that guy doesn’t have a girlfriend, set me up with him.”

“Seduce him yourself.”

“Dude, what are friends for?”

“It’s no use even if we’re friends. Because it’s not going to work out anyway.”

“What. Why not? Does he maybe like someone?”

When Seowon didn’t answer, Minhee, who seemed to have caught on to something, pouted and grumbled.

“So he doesn’t have a girlfriend, but there’s someone he’s interested in. I don’t care. I’ll seduce him myself, so just tell me something. What kind of guy is he?”

“Um… he’s like fatigue.”

You know that thing. That hangs on a person’s shoulder and doesn’t fall off.

It must be because Junghoo always had his arms wrapped around his neck like that, that his height stopped growing. They ate the same amount, but there was a reason why that guy was 10 cm taller.

“Do you really not want to tell me that much?”

Seowon, who was comforting himself that genetics were absolutely not the cause, looked at Minhee. Many girls had asked him to set them up with Junghoo so far. Seowon had introduced a few of them, hoping that if he got together with any of them, he would give up on him.

And the result was a complete failure every time.

It wasn’t just a failure. Yoo Junghoo would lose his mind and throw an even bigger fit, so now Seowon had given up too.

“Whatever you do, it won’t work, so don’t waste your energy.”

“You don’t know that. Hey, I’m an omega.”

“Yeah. A nutritional supplement.”

Seowon, who had retorted with a joke but flinched in case a fist came flying, tilted his head when there was no reaction.

“What’s this, what’s wrong?”

Minhee, whose thoughts were unreadable, gave a strange smile.

“You don’t know because you’re a beta, but my pheromone scent is really good.”

Minhee fluttered her hand as if fanning herself. Seeing her chin rise and her eyes half-close along with it, Seowon’s face hardened.

“With just a flick of my wrist like this, nine out of ten alphas have fallen for me.”

“What about the one alpha who didn’t?”

“A beta who I thought was an alpha, like you.”

In fact, Minhee had flirted with Seowon thinking he was an alpha. He had knowingly pretended not to notice, but if she found out Seowon was an omega, she’d probably fall over backwards from embarrassment.

“Anyway, that friend of yours will fall for me too if he feels my pheromones.”

“Sure. Go for it.”

“In that sense…”

Minhee put her arm around Seowon’s shoulder. As Seowon turned his head away from her as if in dislike, his eyes met with Minsung, who had just entered the lecture hall. Minsung, who was about to greet him, was so surprised to see where Minhee’s hand was that his mouth fell open. While Seowon was looking at Minsung, Minhee just kept saying what she wanted to say.

“Set up a meeting for me. Just once is all I need.”

While Seowon remained still, reluctant, Minsung approached.

“What, are you two dating?”

Minsung looked back and forth between Seowon and Minhee with confused eyes. Then, as if trying to understand in his own way, he nodded. Muttering things like, “Well, it’s not like you’re blood-related, and it’s just a trait. Congratulations.”

Seowon shook his head at Minsung as if to say that’s not it.

“What nonsense are you talking about. Just sit down.”

At Minhee’s stern expression, Minsung asked, “It wasn’t?” then grinned sheepishly.

“I thought…”

Then he naturally trailed off. It was obvious what he was going to say. It probably meant that while dating a blood relative was not okay, dating someone with the same trait was fine, but thinking whatever he wanted without listening to Seowon’s side of the story was wrong from the start.

When Minsung came and sat next to him, Seowon was naturally sandwiched between the twins. With their monolidded eyes, fairly high noses, and lips that looked like they were smiling because the corners turned up. Because the two, who looked identical, hated sitting next to each other more than anything, at some point Seowon started sitting in the middle.

Instead, Seowon turned on his phone and went online to look into something he had been concerned about since earlier.

‘Strange. It collapses this suddenly?’

His dad’s company was about the size of a small to medium-sized enterprise, but it was financially sound and had high employee satisfaction. Its relationship with large corporations was inseparable, but at the very least, a company that operated as a prime contractor and managed three or four subcontractors couldn’t possibly collapse overnight.

He typed in his dad’s company name to check for articles and went into a stock trading app to check the stock price. It was in the negative, but it wasn’t a crash to the point of becoming worthless paper. There were no separate public disclosures, and there was nothing particular in the discussion forums.

‘It’s no different than usual.’

That made it even more confusing. For Seowon, yesterday and today were not much different, and his father’s company was also the same, so why would Junghoo say such a thing?

Did it really go bankrupt, or did something happen in between? As Seowon gnawed on his lips in his complicated state of mind, his phone soon vibrated.

[Stop biting your lip.]

Startled, Seowon looked out the window and then back at his phone. Minhee was sitting by the window, so he wasn’t visible, but Junghoo had somehow known and sent a message at just the right time.

“Hey, Park Minsung. You tell Seowon what my pheromones are like.”

“Suddenly you want me to talk about your pheromones?”

When Minhee abruptly brought up the topic of pheromones, Minsung, who didn’t know the preceding conversation, looked around cautiously. And for good reason, Minsung was the only friend who knew that Seowon was an omega. So, even if he didn’t explain, Seowon could smell Minhee’s pheromones on his own, so he looked troubled at being told to explain.

“Your pheromones… they’re just whatever.”

“Just whatever. They’re good. Aren’t they good?”

“Of course I don’t like your pheromones.”

While Minhee raised a fist at her younger brother, threatening him to speak properly, the professor came in. As the murmuring atmosphere subsided, Minsung, having escaped from Minhee, stuck to Seowon.

“What’s with her?”

Minsung whispered softly so only Seowon could hear. When Seowon replied, “I don’t know either,” Minsung grumbled in dissatisfaction.

“Honestly, your pheromones are way better, but she doesn’t even know.”

Tell me about it.

Seowon just nodded his head and opened his book. How did they end up talking about pheromones. Ah, it was from when Minhee spotted Junghoo. But what to do. Even if Minhee bragged about how great they were right now, pheromone seduction would be useless on Junghoo anyway.

Because he can’t feel pheromones well.

*

Yoo Taeha took off his glasses as if his head was throbbing. In front of him, Junghoo was rolling down the sleeve he had rolled up to have his blood drawn.

“Junghoo.”

Yoo Taeha, looking at the test results, took a pen out of the front pocket of his doctor’s coat. It wasn’t that he was trying to write something, but he took it out from a desire to hold something, anything, in his right hand. Yoo Taeha, who had been fiddling with the ballpoint pen, click-clack, put down the results sheet.

“Your numbers are really bad. The function of your pheromone glands has dropped a lot.”

“There’s no way it’d be normal when I’m getting so many shots.”

Junghoo muttered nonchalantly and got up from his seat, walking over to the window. His cousin’s office, located in the university hospital, was on a fairly high floor, so the view was decent.

Yoo Taeha sighed as he looked at his cousin’s tall and handsome back.

“Let’s stop the shots.”

“I think I said this last time, did you get dementia?”

“Your body is at its limit now. You won’t be able to last much longer with just shots.”

Yoo Taeha shook his lab coat as if frustrated. Junghoo’s face was as indifferent as it had been from the beginning.

“I didn’t come here to hear that from you.”

“Hey, man. I’m your attending physician, I can’t even say that? Stop getting shots and find a mate.”

To think that he was wearing the coat of a specialist in trait medicine, yet he couldn’t even treat a single illness of his own cousin. Yoo Taeha, whose heart ached for Junghoo, expressed his frustration. Knowing his concern, Junghoo spoke thoughtfully, as if considering his brother’s proposal.

“Really? How many mates should I consider having? They’ll have to handle my pheromones, so one won’t be enough.”

“Should we gather some dominants? If they’re just dominants, I think two or three would be enough, what do you think?”

As if he could start looking right away if Junghoo agreed, Yoo Taeha’s hands busily scanned the desk. But this was as far as Junghoo would play along.

“Hyung, it won’t work even if you bring a hundred of them.”

“Aah, Junghoo. Don’t say that and please listen to me. You’ll really die if you keep this up.”

Yoo Taeha was frustrated as if he had a sweet potato stuck in his throat, but Junghoo himself just snorted and wouldn’t change his opinion, not even if he died.

Not taking in an omega. That meant he was abnormally twisting the rut cycle that he should be going through normally after presenting as an alpha.

Yoo Taeha sighed and grumbled about what had happened to Junghoo.

“Haa… other people can’t become alphas even if they want to, so why are you overflowing with so many pheromones?”

Some people said they wanted to feel pheromones just once. There were also people who considered presenting as an alpha or omega to be special. Because of that rarity, those with traits were highly valued even in the entertainment industry.

So, becoming someone with a trait had more advantages than disadvantages, but not for Junghoo. Not only did he present as a dominant, but the amount of his pheromones was so much more than a typical dominant’s that it was reaching a point where it was difficult to handle.

Pheromone Over-secretion Syndrome.

Like the name of the illness, it was a dangerous situation where Junghoo’s brain could melt at any moment due to the unmanageable excess of pheromones.

“How did it come to this.”

The time he was in danger due to pheromones was when his first rut came simultaneously with his presentation. He survived, but the memory of that day, when he had thrashed around like a beast, having completely lost his reason, became a lifelong nightmare for Junghoo after the rut ended.

‘Of all things, to remember all of that time…’

It would be better if he lost all those memories, but Junghoo remembered everything vividly from beginning to end. The omega who had happened to pass by him during Junghoo’s rut had collapsed, unable to withstand the overwhelming pheromones.

After learning that he had almost ruined a person’s life with his presentation, Junghoo never spent a rut with anyone ever again.

“I didn’t come here thinking I’d prolong my life anyway.”

Although he had been in the hospital for a long time for treatment, Junghoo, who came out without being fully cured, viewed his condition skeptically. Just periodically getting shots was the entirety of the treatment he was receiving now.

Due to the shots, Junghoo’s pheromones barely leaked out, and he also had the side effect of not being able to smell others’ pheromones, but it seemed to be considered a trivial matter for someone facing death.

Yoo Taeha knew he wouldn’t listen even if he tried to stop him further, so he used an indirect method.

“Let’s have you admitted and watch your progress for a few days. First of all, if we use the omega pheromones in the hospital, won’t we be able to find some kind of answer?”

“No.”

“Hey, if your hyung tells you to do something, you should…”

“I’m going to meet Seowon today.”

The moment Seowon was mentioned, Yoo Taeha lost his words and just moved his lips. And Junghoo’s face, which until just now had looked as if he had lived his whole life and was uninterested in everything, bloomed like a flower.

“I’ve decided to live with Seowon.”

The moment Seowon’s name came up, the whole situation was over. Yoo Taeha immediately gave up on recommending hospitalization.