# 63
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Riyekan chuckled as he watched Jin-ha, whose mouth was shut but whose eyes couldn’t hide his dissatisfaction.
“I’m going to pick up our lunch box too while I’m at it. Let’s eat lunch in the fairy garden. I’ll go get it, so wait here. Don’t wander around unnecessarily. Understand?”
“……”
“Don’t look at me so rebelliously.”
“…I understand.”
Despite the sulky response, Riyekan walked away with an amused smile. Jin-ha rubbed his shoulder where Riyekan had patted him, ignoring the gazes of wizards gathering toward him.
Feeling uncomfortable, he was glancing in the direction where Riyekan had disappeared when:
“Section Chief!”
“What brings you here?”
“You seemed busy since this morning!”
Jin-ha stood up as he saw the young Earth wizards approaching while chattering. At the very back, Seo Ji-seop was waving his hand gently, wearing that lecherous smile of his. He must have seen who Jin-ha had been with earlier.
Ignoring him, Jin-ha asked the children:
“Are you here to eat? You’re a bit late.”
“The teacher was so enthusiastic that it was hard to interrupt. We’re so hungry. Have you eaten yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Would you like to join us then?”
The sociable boy asked with expectation. Though Jin-ha was rather blunt, he didn’t dislike such approaches from children, so he smiled.
“I’m sorry. I’m busy right now.”
“You look free to me.”
“I’m touring the tower with the Master. I’m just waiting for him at the moment.”
At those words, the children were startled and looked around.
“He went to the kitchen. But he’ll be back soon, so you’d better go have your meal now.”
“Yes, Section Chief. See you later at the annex!”
Perhaps they found it burdensome to meet the tower’s most powerful figure? The children hurriedly nodded and were about to walk away.
“I see.”
But before they could move, Riyekan appeared.
Riyekan, who had seemed in a good mood until just moments ago, now had narrowed eyes and a crooked smile. Swinging a picnic basket casually as he approached, he slowly looked back and forth between the frozen children and Jin-ha.
“Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“I’ve been wondering why Hunter Lee Jin-ha sometimes looks at me with such a peculiar gaze.”
“Peculiar gaze?”
“Yes. It’s happened quite a few times. Most recently when we made our contract.”
By contract, did he mean the agreement where Jin-ha demanded information about the Abon Kingdom in exchange for caressing the man?
Could it be that he had been looking at Riyekan with lecherous eyes since then? Jin-ha remembered when he had come to acknowledge his feelings for Riyekan, but he didn’t know exactly when he had begun to follow him with his gaze.
“I was wondering why I felt a bit irritated…”
Jin-ha’s eyes wavered.
“You dare treat me like a child?”
“…Pardon?”
“How can you look at me with the same eyes as those little ones?”
“No, when did I ever…”
“You did. When I collapsed and woke up, when you touched me to keep me from coming to my senses…”
“Riyekan!”
A startled Jin-ha covered Riyekan’s mouth with his hand. Though Riyekan closed his mouth, he still stared at Jin-ha with narrowed eyes full of discontent.
This was a completely unjust misunderstanding.
Of course, there might have been times like that. When he first met this man, when he mistakenly thought he was suffering from fairy disease, he had considered him a child who came up to his waist and tried to be kind. Even after learning the truth, he might not have been able to cut off the sympathy he had already developed.
But Riyekan was also at fault. No, clearly, this wouldn’t have happened if Riyekan hadn’t been acting that way from the beginning.
“Listen to my explanation, Riyekan. That was…”
“There’s something more certain than an explanation.”
There was no need to ask what he meant.
The moment Riyekan twisted one corner of his mouth into a smile, the surrounding wizards began to collapse to the floor. Gasping breaths and suppressed moans brushed Jin-ha’s ears. The moment he heard the pain-filled moans of numerous wizards, Jin-ha understood what was happening.
Pheromones.
This man was again flooding pheromones toward him.
“What…”
Jin-ha was neither alpha nor omega, but he felt like he could understand why Riyekan was doing this.
Unlike before when he knew nothing, now he understood that this act represented a certain desire.
Just as a scent like burning incense brushed his nose:
“If you treat me like a child one more time, I’ll bite you.”
“I…”
“Answer!”
There was no way to appease Riyekan once he started being unreasonable. Jin-ha had no choice but to answer.
“I under… stand.”
“Good.”
Simultaneously, the alpha wizards pinned to the floor gasped for breath, as if released from something pressing down on them. They rose, panting, and resumed what they had been doing as if nothing had happened.
Among people who were eating food, leaving the dining hall, or continuing conversations, an Earthling couldn’t help but feel a chill. Not just because of the influence of a sense that didn’t exist in himself, but also because no one even protested to Riyekan despite what had happened.
Upon closer inspection, the alpha wizards weren’t unaffected. Their awkward expressions and the cold sweat on their necks proved it. But rather than protesting to the tower’s Master who wasn’t in his right mind, they chose to pretend the situation hadn’t occurred.
“I’ll be watching you from now on, Hunter Lee Jin-ha.”
Riyekan declared toward Jin-ha with an arrogant expression. Jin-ha let out a hollow laugh.
Was this really something to get so angry about?
“…You, really…”
Jin-ha secretly gestured to Seo Ji-seop, who was watching while protecting the children behind him, to leave this place quickly. Though Seo Ji-seop seemed to hesitate a bit, he soon led the children out of the dining hall. If something were to happen, the children would only be obstacles, so that was for the best.
Only after the children had disappeared did Jin-ha grab the man’s arm and look around for a private space. The place they eventually found was a storage room next to the kitchen where food ingredients were stacked.
Jin-ha pushed Riyekan inside and crossed his arms irritably. Despite not hiding his anger, Riyekan maintained an arrogant expression, as if daring him to try something.
“…Did you really have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“If you didn’t like being treated like a child, you could have just said so! Why did you flood me with pheromones again? I can’t even feel pheromones, so what were you hoping for?”
At that, Riyekan opened his eyes round, as if hearing an unexpected question. After tilting his head thoughtfully for a moment, the man frowned while rubbing his chin.
“Well… I just felt like I should do it.”
“Are you mistaking me for an alpha who can be brought to his knees by your pheromones?”
“Hmm… I don’t think so. I don’t particularly want to bring Hunter Lee Jin-ha to his knees.”
“Then why are you doing this!”
Riyekan smiled with satisfaction at hearing Jin-ha’s informal speech that only emerged when he was very confused or angry.
“Because I wanted to see you like this?”
“…You are truly… a mischievous, irritating, and troublesome man.”
Jin-ha suppressed the curses he wanted to say and barely managed to voice a refined criticism before sighing like a growl.
As he was pressing his forehead, throbbing with a headache, Riyekan pulled Jin-ha’s hand and kissed the back of it. It wasn’t a courteous and gentle kiss like from a fairy tale. It was a sticky kiss that started as if taking a bite of the back of his hand and ended with the moist sound of mucous membrane meeting skin.
“But you said you wouldn’t leave me, didn’t you?”
“…I did.”
“It’s too late to regret it.”
“I know.”
Riyekan grinned while gripping his wrist tighter. He seemed satisfied with Jin-ha, who nodded obediently despite his displeased expression.
“But for someone who said they’d stay by my side, aren’t you too indifferent to me?”
“Pardon? What do you mean?”
“Being near doesn’t mean I’m not lonely. Be careful not to make my heart lonely, or I’ll go into heat again. Understand?”
“What is that…”
He didn’t even have the energy to ask what kind of absurd threat that was.
Jin-ha rubbed his face wearily. He had been enjoying himself until just moments ago, and he couldn’t understand why things had suddenly turned out this way.
“Why is your personality like this?”
It was more of a lamentation than an interrogation.
“Your moods change like boiling porridge, and your feelings fluctuate even when treated well.”
“That’s the problem, Hunter Lee Jin-ha.”
“Treating you well?”
“Treating me well like a child.”
Riyekan pointed out as if he had been waiting for this.
“If you’re going to treat me well like that, don’t treat me well at all.”
“Like that means…”
“If you treat me like a kid, I can’t do this.”
Riyekan stepped close to Jin-ha and brought his face near. With their lips almost touching, Riyekan smiled, raising the corner of his mouth.
“May I?”
“What if… I say no?”
“Then I’ll get lonely.”
He was saying he would go into heat. No, could an alpha’s heat, or rut, be triggered at will like that?
Jin-ha, who had no way of knowing the details, pressed his lips against Riyekan’s with complex feelings, even while clearly thinking that Riyekan’s threat was a lie.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
