Chapter 101
*
Ju-on sat down on the bench next to Hyeon-woo, handing him an ion drink bought from the convenience store. Hyeon-woo’s complexion was pale, a mess from cold sweat. When Hyeon-woo just blankly clutched the drink handed to him, Ju-on took it back, opened the cap, and offered it again.
“Drink.”
“Okay.”
As he watched Hyeon-woo finally start to wet his throat, Ju-on thought of someone who must have trained Hyeon-woo into this habit. The person who was supposed to come in a week had shown no sign for over two weeks.
“How was it today?”
“I think it’s better than yesterday.”
“You’re doing well. Just keep doing that.”
Like teaching a baby a game, Ju-on held out his palm and repeated the motion of clenching and unclenching his fist.
“Like this, with the feeling of closing and slowly opening an aperture. Try to focus again.”
Hyeon-woo nodded and closed his eyes. Imagining Ju-on’s hand clenching into a fist, he concentrated his mind on all the nerve points in his body, with the feeling of tightening the aperture to its limit to cut off the flow.
This training had started last week at Ju-on’s suggestion. At first, Hyeon-woo had struggled to even follow Ju-on’s explanations, not having any concept of what it meant to control pheromones. But now he had somewhat of an idea of where and how to focus.
With the feeling of extinguishing candle flames one by one from the edges toward the center, Hyeon-woo slowly began to block the pheromones emitted from his body.
The capricious weather was reminiscent of early summer heat. With the sudden rise in temperature, cherry trees and tulips hurriedly bloomed. Just a few days ago, the buds had been tightly closed like popcorn, but now they were in full bloom, coloring the black night sky white. The crescent moon peeking through the cherry blossom branches looked cute and dainty, like a fingernail.
The day after tomorrow, according to the weather forecast, there would be a heavy downpour, and this unusual heat wave would subside, returning to normal temperatures. So these fully bloomed cherry blossoms would be gone tomorrow. Thinking about how all the white petals would fall in the pouring rain, Ju-on felt strangely wistful.
He could no longer wonder why Hyeon-woo’s pheromones had been so vivid to him, despite being a less sensitive beta alpha. Ju-on carefully lowered his head near Hyeon-woo’s nape, who had his eyes closed, and inhaled. Compared to the first day of training, Hyeon-woo’s control over his pheromones had clearly improved. Amidst the faint pheromones, the warm scent of Hyeon-woo’s skin tickled Ju-on’s nose.
He had heard that cherry blossoms have no fragrance, but he felt that for him, they would be remembered as a sweet scent. Because whenever he saw cherry blossoms, he would be reminded of this scent of Hyeon-woo.
Will I regret this season I spent with you for the rest of my life? Or will I long for it?
Despite everything, Ju-on’s expression as he looked at Hyeon-woo, concentrating with his eyes closed, appeared incredibly peaceful and unburdened.
*
Tae-geon returned home after more than two weeks. It was a week later than originally planned.
‘It seems like a mental split due to cognitive dissonance. It’s a kind of defense mechanism. It often occurs after witnessing the death of a loved one or experiencing an equivalent shock. It doesn’t always appear immediately. The patient you described is such a case.’
He had received counseling about Hyeon-woo’s condition at the psychiatric department of a hospital under the Taeryeong Group.
‘Just as we can’t assume a glass bottle dropped on the floor is fine just because it didn’t break immediately, right? It could shatter at any time due to small, invisible cracks. So what’s inside the bottle doesn’t really matter. It’s just a catalyst that might hasten the bottle’s breaking point. What’s more important is the question of how the bottle got cracked in the first place. In this case, just as the root cause lies in dropping it, any treatment for psychiatric issues must approach the root cause.’
Recalling what the doctor had told him, Tae-geon gazed blankly at the sleeping Hyeon-woo. He searched his memories for the turning point where Hyeon-woo’s personality had split in two. That night when Hyeon-woo had spent his heat cycle with Ju-on seemed like the starting point at first glance, but according to the doctor, that incident was merely a catalyst. The fundamental cause of Hyeon-woo’s split personality lay elsewhere.
‘Try to recreate the situation that caused the split in personality. It’s a traditional shock therapy, and it’s quite effective. You mentioned that the new personality repeats certain behaviors, right? By analyzing those behaviors, you should be able to easily figure out the cause of the split.’
The new personality the doctor mentioned referred to Hyeon-woo at night. The nighttime Hyeon-woo, who had completely forgotten about him, craved his pheromones and burrowed into K’s arms.
Just as Hyeon-woo had split his own self in two, he had also strictly dichotomized Tae-geon into Tae-geon and K within himself. It was a severe personality split due to extreme cognitive dissonance, unable to accept that the two were the same person.
As Tae-geon was retracing his memories, he suddenly furrowed his brow. Like a flash, he recalled instances when Hyeon-woo, while confined by him, would often repeat incomprehensible mumbles or stare blankly into space with unfocused eyes.
A cracked glass bottle. The doctor’s metaphor flashed through his mind. Even then, Hyeon-woo had already been full of cracks. What could have caused such a shock to Hyeon-woo?
As Tae-geon probed further into the past, he finally realized that he had no idea how Hyeon-woo had discovered K’s identity.
‘Just like you rolled around with other omegas, I rolled around with other alphas too.’
‘K, except for you. With other alphas.’
Even though his identity had been exposed, Tae-geon had thought it was for the best, believing he could still possess Hyeon-woo as he desired, and had left it at that.
…But. A shock equivalent to the death of a loved one.
He hadn’t known that the ‘Choi Tae-geon’ from that time, when they were each other’s entire world, might already be a dead existence to Hyeon-woo.
Tae-geon smiled bitterly and slowly lowered his hand to stroke Hyeon-woo’s forehead. A warm, soft heat spread through his fingertips. In Tae-geon’s other hand, as he caressed Hyeon-woo, was a vial containing an artificial antibody made from his own pheromones. It was a trial version of the new suppressant he had finally obtained after completing verification of its safety and efficacy.
Hyeon-woo’s eyelashes fluttered as he moved his head following Tae-geon’s touch from his forehead to his cheek. The nighttime Hyeon-woo was trying to wake up.
Everything depended on the decision Hyeon-woo would make this night.
Tae-geon tightly gripped the vial in his hand.
*
“Hngh…!”
“……”
“…Ah… ah… it hurts……”
“…Haa.”
“Haaah. K… wait….. Slowly! …Nngh!”
The room was as bright as day under the fluorescent lights. Hyeon-woo’s eyes were covered with a necktie. Tae-geon held Hyeon-woo tightly in his arms as he relentlessly pounded into Hyeon-woo’s delicate insides from behind.
He buried his face in the exposed nape, greedily inhaling the scent. He nuzzled his nose all over the round back of the head, nape, and crown. Tae-geon’s hands persistently explored every part of Hyeon-woo’s body, as if trying to engrave even the protruding vertebrae along the straight, thin spine into his mind.
His fingers, which had been caressing the prominent tailbone at the end of the spine and the concave sacrum on either side, suddenly moved to the front and scratched Hyeon-woo’s nipples. The already hardened and sensitized nipples bounced elastically under Tae-geon’s fingertips.
“Ahnn!”
Just as Hyeon-woo’s upper body was about to collapse, his arms losing strength on the sheets, Tae-geon caught him and suddenly flipped Hyeon-woo’s body while still inside him.
“Haaugh!”
As a short spurt of semen shot from Hyeon-woo’s dick, his waist arching from the stimulation of his insides twisting tightly around the thick organ, Tae-geon quickly reached out to block the urethral opening. Though Hyeon-woo thrashed from the agony of not being able to ejaculate fully, Tae-geon, groaning lowly from the exquisite sensation of the pulsating inner walls, showed no sign of removing his finger.
With his other hand, he roughly grabbed Hyeon-woo’s chin and forcefully kissed him. He had been wondering where the salty taste was coming from, and only after the long kiss with Hyeon-woo ended did Tae-geon realize it was from the tears flowing from his own eyes.
Tae-geon’s muscles contracted all at once as he increased his speed, mercilessly thrusting as if to split the inner walls.
“Keuuh!”
With a groan resembling a beast’s suppressed roar bursting from Tae-geon’s throat, hot semen shot into the inner walls. The finely woven abdominal muscles writhed and throbbed. Even as he was ejaculating, the thrusting didn’t stop, causing secretions to splash everywhere.
When Tae-geon finally removed his thumb blocking the urethral opening, semen burst from Hyeon-woo’s dick as well. After multiple ejaculations, Hyeon-woo’s fluid had become clear like water.
Tae-geon pulled Hyeon-woo, still trembling from the aftershocks of his climax, into his arms and once again buried his face in his nape, taking a deep breath. As this pheromone, this body scent, filled his lungs completely, Tae-geon engraved it into his mind countless times, reaching for the necktie covering Hyeon-woo’s eyes.
Shock therapy through situation reenactment.
There probably couldn’t be a more suitable method for the shock therapy the doctor had mentioned, as Hyeon-woo had never visually confirmed that K and himself were the same person.
Tae-geon grasped the knot of the necktie covering Hyeon-woo’s eyes and pulled it off in one swift motion.
