NOVEL NEXT Chapter 34
Chapter 34
*
The first thing Tae-geon did after barely managing to carry the half-unconscious Hyeon-woo home was to turn the boiler to maximum temperature. Soon, warm air began to heat the house. His blue lips and shivering body clearly indicated a severe cold was coming on.
Tae-geon wanted to bathe him in warm water and then hold him tightly to sleep, but it was impossible now as he wasn’t K.
He laid Hyeon-woo on the bed, removed his wet clothes, and changed him into pajamas. Covering him with a winter comforter was all Tae-geon could do as himself, not as K.
He couldn’t understand what had happened to make Hyeon-woo like this. An inexplicable sense of foreboding had risen since Hyeon-woo’s whereabouts became uncertain after disappearing during class. Though he thought it wasn’t an alpha-related incident since it wasn’t his heat cycle, his heart kept pounding heavily due to the ominous feeling.
After calling Hyeon-woo dozens of times, he finally got through. But it wasn’t Hyeon-woo’s voice he had been waiting for. A passerby had answered Hyeon-woo’s phone, which had fallen to the ground and was ringing loudly, and informed Tae-geon of the location.
Tae-geon ran like mad through the pouring rain without an umbrella. When he found Hyeon-woo sprawled on the ground like a corpse, he truly felt his heart stop.
‘Hyeon-woo! Wake up, Han Hyeon-woo!’
Hyeon-woo, who had barely regained consciousness, insisted he didn’t want to go to the hospital, so they ended up taking a taxi home.
‘What happened?’
‘……’
‘It’s okay, just tell me, okay?’
Despite gently coaxing and persistently questioning him, Hyeon-woo wouldn’t open his mouth, and he remained sick in bed for three days straight. Tae-geon stayed by his side without missing a moment.
He changed Hyeon-woo into dry pajamas every half day to prevent his body temperature from dropping due to sweat-soaked clothes. He held up Hyeon-woo’s limp upper body, parted his dry lips with his tongue, and poured water he held in his mouth to prevent dehydration. He fed porridge to Hyeon-woo when he regained consciousness and gave him medicine from the pharmacy dissolved in water at regular intervals.
It was when he was helping Hyeon-woo eat, who had finally recovered enough to use a spoon on his own as his fever subsided. Hyeon-woo called Tae-geon in a low, subdued voice.
“Tae-geon.”
“Yes?”
“What about school? How can you keep staying by my side?”
“How could I leave you alone like this?”
“I feel so sorry to you that I can’t even swallow my food.”
“……”
Hyeon-woo’s voice was very hoarse as he said this while putting down his spoon weakly.
“I can get my absences excused later, but you can’t.”
“……”
“Go to class starting tomorrow.”
“……”
“Please, okay?”
“…Alright.”
Tae-geon narrowed one eye at Hyeon-woo, who spoke without making eye contact even once, as if he had committed a crime.
He was clearly hiding something.
[Is there anything you want to eat? Should I buy it on my way?]
[How’s your headache?]
[I peeled some apples and left them on the dining table.]
[There’s porridge in the fridge too. Make sure to eat it, don’t skip meals.]
Tae-geon pretended to give in to Hyeon-woo’s urging, who clearly wanted to be alone, and left for school. He sent messages to Hyeon-woo from time to time, but never received a reply. As he stared at his phone screen full of sent messages, the alpha-omega community suddenly came to mind.
Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? If there was something Hyeon-woo couldn’t tell Tae-geon, it was likely related to his trait. Maybe it was a situation that required K, not Tae-geon.
Tae-geon felt anxious as he accessed the community on his phone. After logging in and immediately opening his inbox, as expected, there were several new messages from Hyeon-woo.
Relief, deprivation, and jealousy all crossed his mind at once. Tae-geon scrolled through the messages with a bitter heart at his position of being less reliable than an anonymous existence whose face he didn’t even know.
[I was in so much pain I couldn’t even walk. Are you an animal?!]
[Are you crazy for doing that to an unconscious person?]
–
[I told you not to do that because it’s embarrassing! Why do you like peeing for others so much?]
[K = pervert]
[You’re not in your twenties, you lied about your age]
[You act completely like a pervert old man.]
–
[The prodrome is getting shorter and shorter, I can’t handle it.]
[I came to a nearby hotel first as an emergency.]
[Come to Grand Hotel room 604]
[By the way, the American omelet is famous here too.]
[Well. It’s not just because of room service. I’m telling you it’s delicious, so you should try it too, mister.]
–
After scrolling past all the previous messages with Hyeon-woo, new messages appeared below. They had all arrived today. Tae-geon’s face instantly hardened as he quickly scanned the messages.
[Show me your face.]
[Haha just kidding.]
[Let’s meet just once.]
[It’s okay if you cover your eyes.]
[I’m joking haha it’s not even my heat]
[I just sent a message.]
[Because I’m bored.]
[K.]
[Let’s stop meeting now.]
*
[Goodbye]
With that message, Hyeon-woo left the community.
He should have done this earlier.
Once Tae-geon discovered he was an omega, there was no need to forcibly mix bodies with K anymore. No, it wasn’t forcible. Rather, he had panted with pleasure at the dominant alpha’s pheromones. Like a fool, not even knowing his manifestation was progressing again.
He felt somewhat depressed at the thought of never meeting K again, as if he had grown attached during that time.
When he thought of Tae-geon, he felt his heart constrict with guilt. It was the same when he thought of K, but the texture was slightly different from that towards Tae-geon. It was closer to a sense of sin than guilt.
The comfort and satisfaction he had gained in those arms. The emotional fullness of feeling cherished. The fact that he had felt such sensations in arms that weren’t Tae-geon’s felt like a sin, as if he had committed adultery. It was even more so because he knew he would never forget those hands that had embraced him so preciously and would long for them until his death.
I wish I had never known.
Then my desire for Tae-geon wouldn’t have become so concrete and desperate.
His heat cycle was suddenly approaching. Tomorrow at the earliest, the day after tomorrow at the latest.
He opened the bedside drawer and checked the suppressants he had bought at the pharmacy earlier. From now on, he planned to spend his heat cycles with suppressants.
A terrible pain spread across his chest as he thought of Tae-geon, who must have known that the alpha pheromones emanating from him were not his own, but traces of the partner he had slept with.
Would it have been better if Tae-geon had reproached him for being dirty?
Hyeon-woo felt beyond hurt to devastated by Tae-geon’s indifference, who showed no interest let alone criticism, even though he must have noticed his body changing due to his encounters with the dominant alpha.
He closed the bedside drawer and lay on his side on the bed, pulling the blanket over his head.
He could no longer be certain if Tae-geon’s attitude of not questioning anything about him manifesting as an omega was really to protect their relationship. The conditions weren’t the same to begin with. The weight each of them felt in their relationship was completely different.
“Cough, cough.”
His head rang, complaining of a headache. Hyeon-woo tightly closed his eyes as he coughed dryly.
He knew well that his role was simply to be within Tae-geon’s reach. Nevertheless, he had been happy. Because he was the only one allowed by Tae-geon’s side. There was a time when he thought he had the whole world just for that, but why had it come to this?
When he racked his brains to find the cause, it always came down to one answer.
Manifestation.
After manifesting as an omega, his feelings towards Tae-geon changed completely. He sometimes wondered if these romantic feelings towards Tae-geon were really his own.
Hyeon-woo thought that the manifestation that had happened to him was like an infection.
Parasite infection.
Some parasites manipulate their host’s mind. Hyeon-woo recalled the story about Toxoplasma gondii he had read in the library recently. There are some mice that feel sexual desire rather than fear towards cats, and those were mice infected with Toxoplasma gondii.
Because Toxoplasma gondii can only reproduce in a cat’s digestive system, it manipulates the mouse’s mind to feel sexual desire at the smell of cat urine. When the mouse, intoxicated with courtship rather than fear, follows the cat’s tail and gets eaten, the parasite parasitizes and reproduces in the host cat’s digestive system.
Hyeon-woo thought that he, who had developed romantic feelings for Tae-geon as soon as he manifested as an omega, was like a mouse infected with a parasite. It felt somewhat credible, as Tae-geon’s superior traits would be more than enough to make the omega parasitizing inside him go wild.
If only these feelings weren’t his own. If he could dismiss them as manipulated feelings for reproduction, would the weight of his emotions towards Tae-geon become a little lighter? Could the scales of emotion regain their balance?